William enjoys the extreme honor of being on the show for a third time, a great opportunity to check back in and get refocused, because this dude is super focused and superconscious.
Our conversation kicks off with some great commentary from William about the importance of developing an “anchor” for a productive day, which in his case is waking up at 4:30am and getting to the gym. We did a whole Breather show about that deal, and I ponder the fine line between taking care of yourself and not overstressing, but also getting focused, disciplined, and getting shit done. Could me not wanting to awaken at 4:30am be a self-limiting belief that I manifest by being too tired to wake up at 4:30am? Could I manifest a more productive day from my wussy boy fragile ex-athlete mindset by waking up at 6:00am and kicking some butt, instead of waiting for that perfectly graceful awakening at 6:45-7:15am usually?
After all, when I loosened my dietary guidelines in the experimental phase of eating more overall calories, including starting my day with a big green super nutrition smoothie instead of fasting, I admit that this became a slippery slope of indulgence and diminishing discipline. On the flip side, I share the benefits of my morning cold plunge and recent experiment of fasting until 12 noon every day being mainly to ingrain pro-active patterns and self-discipline. William definitely knows first-hand how essential discipline is, and as we discuss what it is that makes Tiger Woods such an exceptional athlete, William makes the astute observation that, “He has a mental edge that so many of the other guys don’t have.” Yes, being physically committed to your fitness is important, but if you don’t have discipline, how can you expect to get anything done? How can you expect to push yourself beyond what you think your limits are? William points out that, “Adhering to your goals comes down to understanding what your priorities are, and that comes from a certain awareness: What are your health circumstances, what are your goals, what’s important to you?”
He then shares the inspiring mindset he applied to his acting career, which he says anyone can apply to basically any circumstance in life. Once William got the “burning desire” to act, he focused on the vision he had of himself booking a starring role in a TV show to work towards. He broke it down extremely practically: he knew he needed an agent, credits on a resume, acting skills, but also to clear up his skin, since he had severe acne at the time. But he knew all of these steps, no matter how big or small, were crucial moves he had to make in order to achieve his goals. His priorities shifted, and he committed big time to pursuing his dreams, showing up to every audition he could, and creating a great daily routine in the process. What’s interesting is that William discovered during this extremely hectic time in his life that, “Putting my health and fitness at the forefront is the only thing that allowed me to work so hard my last year of college without having burnout or health issues.” He was dealing with an enormous workload while pursuing a career in an industry that is infamously difficult to break into, but his commitment to his fitness allowed him to balance his priorities as he steadily made moves in the right direction.
Yes, it’s turned out pretty well for William so far, and because of his success and positive perspective, he often gets asked for advice on his Instagram about what people can do to start making seriously affective changes in their life. A lot of the time people want all the answers and they want to start implementing every change they need to make in one day. But William’s outlook is much more realistic and relaxed: just change one thing – like starting to do as many pushups as you can in the morning, right after waking, for 1 month – and then get back to him. William believes starting people off with one specific fitness ritual is really where massive change can occur, because once people start being mindful about their fitness routine, then that bleeds over to their diet, which carries over to all areas of their consciousness. Once you start eating better and feeling better, you find that you have more energy, and then you realize you’re literally happier, and actually motivated to set goals and go after whatever it is that you want out of life. For William, the goal is to wake up excited about whatever it is you can accomplish that day, and not feel like there’s this mountain of responsibility and doom looming over you, and the best way to do that is through discipline and self-awareness. This show will help you leverage your best intentions for diet, fitness, and lifestyle goals, and follow William’s policy of “take action, then ponder things later!”
TIMESTAMPS:
Brad and William discuss outstanding sports performances. [05:01]
Putting yourself in pressure situations teaches you a lot. [10:26]
It depends on self-awareness of who you are that determines what your priorities are. [13:15]
Putting health and fitness to the forefront is the thing that allowed him to work so hard. [16:36]
You have to commit to something. [20:42]
William’s wake up time is 4:30 a.m. Doesn’t recommend it for everyone. [22:41]
When you compromise, it leads to more compromise. [25:42]
Instill the habit of ACTION. [32:55]
William describes his transition from vegan to carnivore diets. [33:57]
If you want to try carnivore, it’s important to check off some boxes. [39:19]
If you have a compromised immune system, consuming those plant anti-nutrients can be a problem. [40:46]
Is broccoli the miracle food? [44:15]
There are many ways to supplement for calcium like eggshells or bone supplements. [47:48]
Everything is up-regulated when we are fasting. [49:22]
What is someone doing carnivore actually eating? [52:21]
Brad wonders about the long term effects. [57:17]
There’s a lot less to think about if you commit to this diet. [01:01:48]
Food is an experience. [01:04:27]
To do it right, a “cheat day,” is a social experience. [01:07:41]
What is carnivore shredding? [01:09:42]
LINKS:
QUOTES:
- “Instill the habit of action.”
LISTEN:
Get Over Yourself Podcast
Brad: 00:00:00 Welcome to the get over yourself podcast. This is author, an athlete, Brad Kearns, discovering ways to be healthy, fit and happy in hectic, high-stress, modern life. So let’s slow down and take a deep breath. Take a cold plunge and expertly balanced that competitive intensity with an appreciation of the journey. That’s the theme of the show. Here we go.
Brad: 00:03:56 Hey folks, it’s time to check in again with my main man, William Shewfelt the rising star in the health and fitness and carnivore diet scene. We had a great show with him talking about his intentional lifestyle focus, motivation, goal setting, getting your priorities straight, finding an anchor. In his case, his anchors getting up every morning at 4:30 AM. Oh man, that one opens up a can of worms for me. What does that important balance point between? Of course getting enough sleep, acknowledging that, but the balance between having that great discipline and work ethic and then nurturing and taking care of yourself and maybe being a little bit of a wimpy sides. We do a whole breather show on that topic of waking up early, but we get into the carnivore diet in this show. Increasingly interesting, fascinating, compelling. I pride myself on having an open mind and constantly examining fixed rigid beliefs, trying to be more open minded.
Brad: 00:05:01 How about you? Would you agree that’s a good idea? Would you want to hear from someone who has been hitting it hard with the carnivore diet for two years and getting fantastic results and the gentleman we refer to in our conversation a lot is Dr. Paul Saladino, S. A. L. A. D. I. N. O. He appeared on William’s podcast that he does with Chris Bell, a noted documentary filmmaker called Better, Stronger, Faster, go listen to the show there. I did a great show with those guys too, so definitely pick out that channel better, stronger, faster. And Dr Saladino was also on Ben Greenfield show and sounded like in the span of an hour or however long, made a believer out of Ben Greenfield, very knowledgeable and a practiced person here in the health and fitness scene. So I am definitely paying more and more attention to this carnivore diet scene. It is the real deal and there are some very compelling and interesting arguments. Like what if someone told you that vegetables might not be good for you, might cause an auto immune disturbance and that all we need to eat really we get from the animal kingdom and especially the most nutrient dense items. And William talks about his handpicked, carefully structured, well formulated carnivore diet. I think you’re going to really enjoy this show. It’s very thought provoking. Here we go with Williams Shufeldt on motivation, peak performance, goal setting and the carnivore diet.
Brad: 00:06:26 Hey William, how are you man?
William: 00:06:29 Yeah, doing pretty good. You’ve got a nice set up there. I finally got a background going with a little bit of Tiger Woods.
Brad: 00:06:36 That was a, that was a joke. Art, my friend, did a long time ago when all the girls came forward, you could see girls like embedded into his clothing. Beautiful, beautiful artwork. Uh, but yeah, I got a light too . Oh my God. It’s the greatest, greatest comeback of all time.
William: 00:06:59 It’s incredible.
Brad: 00:07:00 I mean, uh, I thought he was the greatest athlete of all time all along. But, um, I mean this is something I never even, I kind of gave up on him when he was pulled over in 2017 full of like zillion different drugs. I’m like, alright, this dudes, I just hope he has a nice healthy life again. Yeah, he is winning.
William: 00:07:21 It’s amazing. You think he’s the greatest athlete of all time in any sport?
Brad: 00:07:25 Yeah, there’s, there’s, I think Usain Bolt is right there. Okay. Tiger. Just because of what they did. Usain Bolt. I mean really, when you think about all the sports and like access to them and who, who you’re competing against. You know, Tom Brady’s the greatest quarterback. You know what, there’s not too many quarterbacks, right? There’s only, there’s only a hundred and something in the NFL and that’s great what he’s done. But like when you think about every kid on this planet has raced a foot race in their life in Africa and Frickin Antarctica, you know, Poland, Canada, Australia, Japan. So we’ve, we’ve found the fastest human for sure. And that’s the most competitive events.
William: 00:08:08 What, why is Tiger on the list then? Because not that many people play golf.
Brad: 00:08:12 Yeah. I think just his, his level of athletic domination and what he’s done against, you know, in an individual sport, like to go out there and win against 156 guys. It’s not like the Chicago Bulls just beat the Jazz. And Michael Jordan’s the greatest, I mean, you know, the u s open golf tournament, it really is open. The word open means that anyone can qualify. And so there’s actually 9,000 guys that tee it up at all these little events around the country. There’s probably one in, um, in Ripon at Spring Creek man. And they’ll, they’ll have like, you know, a hundred of the best local guys and like one or two will make it to regionals. And then at regionals, you know, 12 make it to sectionals. And so there’s guys in the U S Open that made their way there. So it really is open in that sense.
William: 00:08:56 But just, you know, a lot of sense to me now, cause I, I would’ve said, why not Michael Jordan up there, guys like that. But I see what you mean. Like the, the biggest pool possible and they’re the biggest fish in that pond.
Brad: 00:09:07 Yeah. And that’s only one part of it. I mean, just, you know, overall the, the guys that are at the top of their game in any sport are amazing. But I think what Tiger did when he came in and just stormed the scene and transformed the sport and just kept winning at a rate that it’s just an unreal what he did. And back in the day and you know, coming back to, I mean, no athletes ever come back from anything close. Really?
William: 00:09:30 Yeah, man. The guy like rock bottom. I was about as far as I could get.
Brad: 00:09:36 Yes. Rock bottom in life and then rock bottom with his body too. I mean, that’s, that’s fine. He had to go get it on the tabloids, but that’s um, you know, five back surgeries or whatever. That’s a whole nother deal there.
William: 00:09:48 You don’t think of golf being like a gritty, like, you know, sport that’s going to test your humanity. But in his case it absolutely is.
Brad: 00:09:57 Yeah. And I mean it’s, it’s a tough battle mentally. You saw those guys cave under pressure, hit the ball in the water and all that. I mean, it takes, it takes quite a mind and an athletic focus to, um, you know, to, to perform out there too. It’s, uh, it’s amazing athletic event.
William: 00:10:15 There’s so many lessons to be learned from that. Even just the focus aspect of it under that amount of pressure, He has a mental edge that so many of the other guys don’t have. Yeah.
Brad: 00:10:26 And like, what is it, you know, what, what, what is it? It’s, it’s hard because the guys has never said shit his entire life that’s really revealing or vulnerable, which is fine. You know, he’s got his way. But I, I wrote a book about him 10 years ago and, and read all the interviews ever made about him and, uh, you know, tried to figure out like what this guy has gone that other people don’t. And it’s, it’s hard to define, but, um, you know, putting yourself in those pressure situations and some people say, I love it. Uh, I want to take the last shot. And like those people exist and like how are they different than those people that are shaken when they get called to do the public public speaking event? That’s what is it? Genetics. Is it like experience? Cause I know if you give 20 public speaking presentations, your 21st one, you’re going to be okay. Even if you’re a nervous Nellie on your first one, you know?
William: 00:11:18 Hm. That’s, that’s really interesting. So I, I know we’re supposed to be podcasting, but this really intrigues me. Um, what that public speaking stuff, I feel like I feel like the way I feel about it and everybody else is the exact same. I’m pretty sure everybody gets nervous as hell. But I think the only thing that I do is whether it’s arrogance or confidence. Like I’ll say, yeah, sure I’ll do it. You know, and you go up there and like you’re still shaking anyway. Like the, the Paleo FX coming up this weekend. I’m speaking of that. I’m nervous about it. Like I’m nervous about everything ever spoken at. But once I’m up there, um, you know, the preparation takes over. You kinda relax, you feed off the audience. I’ve never not been nervous for a public speaking thing though, you know.
Brad: 00:12:04 Well it’s called, um, optimally excited and uninhibited. And if you’re not, then you’re not in a peak performance state. Right? If you’re, if you’re that chill, you got to find that balance and um, you know, you got to have a little bit of edge to you, otherwise you’re going to waste people’s time cause your boring ass up there.
William: 00:12:23 That’s really true. All of that energy gets redirected somewhere.
Brad: 00:12:28 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh, I’m back with William. We are so warmed up. I might even leave that we, we talked about Tiger Woods, people. I might even let you listen in on it cause, um, when you get with this guy and I, I, I met with you a couple of months ago and we were going to talk about Keto and William’s diet and his carnivore thing. And, um, the first 51 minutes of the recording were you look at me in the eye and tell me about motivation, peak performance, goal setting a listeners, this guy’s a young dude, he’s what, 23, 24 now. And I’m like, this guy has it down. It’s a, it was the most beautiful story and that, that journey that you described, it happened to be in the world of acting where you just set the intention that you wanted to become a famous actor with no experience and no background.
Brad: 00:13:15 And it put a time table of a year and then a year later you’re the Red Power Ranger guy. So I thought this show, um, I wanted to get into this carnivore thing cause now w we’re getting very intrigued. Uh, but first, maybe a few minutes of just kind of that recap cause it really applies to goal setting and adherence to let’s say a dietary goal. It’s very relevant. What your mindset’s like. I mean, we can tell you this food is bad and you shouldn’t have sugar and Starbucks and then you should have more sardines. Cause they got a lot of uh, Omega 3. But I think so many people are missing that intermediate step where they want to walk their talk and live according to their stated goals. And it’s very difficult. What do we do?
William: 00:13:56 And the rules on top like that. You, you watched this guru, you listen to this podcast, you read this book and now you have a list of 50 rules and you’ve got your Broccoli sprouts, you’ve got your mockup powder, you’ve got this smoothie you make in the morning. Like I know that strategy where you just try to stack on every good habit possible. But ultimately what adhering to your goals comes down to is understanding what your priorities are, which come from a certain self-awareness. What’s your health circumstance? Um, what are your goals? What’s important to you? Is it energy? Is it muscle building? Is it fat loss? Um, do you have a thyroid issue? Do you have an autoimmune issue? So it depends on self awareness of who you are, which then determines what your priorities are. Um, you know, so, so for me, my priorities as far as health and fitness go,
Brad: 00:14:46 A six-pack, man, come on admit it. I interrupted you But like that was the greatest line when you said, everybody says, I just want to feel good and feel better. And you’re like, you know what? I don’t know anybody who don’t like a six pack. So if you want to say six pack, that’s a wonderful goal, right man.
William: 00:15:07 Hey that’s, that’s the truth right there. I love, yeah, I’ll, I’ll repeat that line cause it’s such a good line. I love when people say, you know, I just want to feel good, live a long time and you know, I might want to look good too. And it’s like, no, no, no. That’s at the top of the list. You’re trying to get a six pack first and then you’d like to feel good and maybe live a long time. But I’m actually, Rob Wolf is talking about this recently, which I kind of liked. It was really prioritizing your health in the short term, and that can actually have a huge impact on your health in the longterm. Everybody’s getting super obsessed with longevity, restricting protein, you know, doing a lot of calorie restriction, just really, really pushing it, but they’re feeling like crap in the short term. And it’s like, is that really the best strategy for longterm health? And then we’re also talking about quality of life as well. Um, and if you’re living, you know, 120 years and they’re all crappy years, what have you really achieved? Um, in that sense. So like I was saying, it’s just self awareness, knowing what’s important to you, that’ll determine your priorities, but your priorities are what determine your goals. So that really determines, okay, what are your daily habits? What’s your daily routine? What do you got to get done this week? What are your quarterly goals? Like? Um, it’s funny that you brought up the, uh, the acting story. So I mentioned that in the last podcast. But really even though this had to do with acting, this strategy can be applied in literally any area of life with better or worse success. You know, it, it depends on what you’re doing.
William: 00:16:36 But basically having a vision, having a goal is something that’s very, very important to you that you have a burning desire for that’s going to get you up at 4:00 AM every morning. For me, that was booking a starring role on a TV show. Um, so I had that vision in front of me and then from there I would break it down and I would say, what needs to be done to achieve this? I need an agent. I need credits on a resume. I need acting skills. I had severe acne at the time. Okay. So I’ve probably got to clear my skin up. Um, there were all these little steps that I had to take and then that determined what my daily actions were, apply to every single casting network, go to every audition, I can go to all of my acting classes, you know, balance that with everything else I have to do. And that determines what you’re doing daily. So then you just create a great daily routine for yourself and you prioritize your health and your fitness. In my mind, putting health and fitness at the forefront is the only thing that allowed me to work so hard that last year of college without burning myself out or you know, having some sort of a health issue. Cause I, I was getting up at 4:00 AM every day and then it was pretty much foot on the gas the entire day. But at the beginning of that day, there were some time spent being mindful, which for me was in prayer. There was some time spent in the gym. I was very meticulous about what I was eating, so I was kind of taking care of the machine so it didn’t fall apart along that journey. Um, and I think that’s, that’s one of the big reasons why I’m so passionate about health and fitness and primal nutrition, carnivore nutrition, because it really does affect every other area of your life.
Brad: 00:18:11 Yeah. It’s a good argument to make, especially to people who are not prioritizing health and fitness, admittedly. Oh, but it’s so important that I have to be the, the, the announcer for the, uh, the, the, the basketball game and I’m traveling so much and I’m doing this, I’m doing that. But everybody is going to suffer a decline in performance if they’re not sleeping enough. A and not an eating crap B. So what, you know, there’s, there’s no one that should be ignoring it, but I think what do we have two thirds of the population are ignoring it by definition because of the blood values and the increase in type two diabetes, two thirds of over American of American adults are classified as overweight or obese right now.
William: 00:18:53 I think if people want to make one lifestyle change, like a cornerstone habit that will not go over the rest of the dominoes. I think it’s health and fitness. I think, and I actually think it starts with fitness. For me, most people like to do something. So a lot of the time with health it’s cutting stuff out and not doing certain things. But if you just start with something that you can do, I often recommend people on Instagram when they say, you know, I want to start working out, what should I do? Instead of giving them the whole carnivores shredding spiel, I’ll just tell them, start with doing one set of as many pushups as you can do every single morning as soon as you wake up. And then once you’ve done that for a month, get back to me. And I think just starting with that fitness and then you start to change your diet and then all of a sudden your energy changes and then your outlook on life changes. And then you want to set goals and then you want to use this energy for different things. And it doesn’t feel like everyday you’re waking up and there’s a mountain in front of you, but it’s more like it’s exciting. It’s like, what can I take on today?
Brad: 00:19:54 Yeah. And here’s the thing, if you can’t so much as try a set of pushups every morning for a month and then get back to you, I’m going to guess that a certain percentage of those people a month later couldn’t do it. So that means they’re not ready at that time. And I see that so frequently. I remember working in corporate wellness and trying to help people quit smoking. And I wasn’t an expert on cessation smoking strategies, but I said, here’s an idea. Send me an email every time you’re going to go have a cigarette so you can bring some mindfulness into your bad habit that’s so reactive and all that. Can you do that? Yes or no? Oh for sure. Are you joking? That’s so silly. I’m like, please take this seriously and promise to send me an email every time you go smoke. Okay, thank you for the meeting. Goodbye. This Consultation, they’re often running
Brad: 00:20:42 My email inbox is full, man, but it ain’t coming from them and doesn’t say I’m about to smoke. And so a week later you see him in the hall or you have your next consultation. And what about Oh yeah, yeah, sorry about that. I forgot his spaced. Therefore you’re still addicted to smoking. So these, these um, these steps, that first step out of the gate to commit to something I think is the huge one. And then we have people committing to too much. So, oh yeah, I saw, I went to the gym, I bought a 12 pack with a trainer for a $287 and a boy you could easily slip out of that 12 bad-ass workouts that make you sore and tired. But can you commit to doing a set of pushups every morning? I love that.
William: 00:21:26 I, I love the idea of what you just said. You have to commit to something. I think that there’s so many things that people want to commit to and it’s like the whole new year’s resolution mentality where you set yourself 50 new goals and you buy the workout gear and the membership and you think that spending a certain amount of money will give you buyer’s remorse. So you know, you’re not gonna you’re going to go to the gym for sure. Cause I spent 100 bucks on clothes and then it doesn’t happen after awhile. I think it’s literally as simple as finding an anchor for yourself. So what’s the one thing that no matter what you can base the rest of your life around? For me personally, I like to do that around a wakeup time. Cause that, that I’ve found has been the one thing that allows me to get the most done every day. And I can structure my day around it, you know, on schedule what needs to happen based off of that. For some people it is, you know, it might be going to the gym at a certain time. It might be their diet. People can have different anchors. Like for me, diet is not an anchor. Um, every couple of weeks I’ll go out for a cheat meal with Chelsea, which is a great way to start off the Primal Blueprint podcast right now, telling people that I’ll have a cheat meal, um,
Brad: 00:22:32 Search for cheating with Chelsea Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah. I love the music in the background and to now, here they are at the donut shop. Duh, Duh, Duh, Duh, Duh.
William: 00:22:41 But, um, for me it’s like knowing that that wake up time in the morning is the one non-negotiable for myself and.
Brad: 00:22:48 it’s 4:00 AM dude?
William: 00:22:50 For me it’s four 30. Oh, sorry.
Brad: 00:22:52 That’s big time. Let’s, let’s, um, listeners, let’s check back with William when he’s 54 years old. No joke. But um, yeah, I want to know more about that because you, you need your sleep. So I assume you’re going to bed on time. Is it difficult to get up? Do you feel like you’ve trained this into habit now where it’s easier? Do you recommend it for everybody, et Cetera?
William: 00:23:16 Okay. So I, I do not recommend it for everybody. This is all dependent on your own personal life circumstances. It works well for me. I work for myself. I work on my own thing so I can kind of set my own schedule. Um, it works really well for me. In terms of sleep protocol. My goal is to get seven hours of sleep every night, so I’m trying to go to bed nine or nine 30. Um, occasionally it’s 10. Occasionally it’s, you know, I might only get three or four hours of sleep every now and then. Um, that kind of just depends on what I’m working on, what I’m doing. If I’m traveling this upcoming week, I’ll be flying out to, uh, Austin, Texas at midnight. So that’s going to be a weird sleep night. But the next day that’s my non negotiable. It’s still getting up at the same time, Austin time, whatever that’s going to be.
William: 00:24:00 Um, but it’s still getting up at the same time because I have to pick one thing that, you know what, no matter what, Will, you’re going to do this thing. And then I have, I have faith in myself. I have trust in myself cause I know that I’m not going to cheat myself on that. Um, so that, that’s the thing about the pushups. That’s the thing about smoking cessation. It’s like those mornings when I get three or four hours of sleep and I get up at four 30 and any reasonable person would say, shouldn’t you probably get more sleep? It’s actually, I believe in the longterm, better for me to stick to my habit. And to suffer through the short term tiredness of that day rather than abandon my habit. And then I feel like I’m floundering around at sea, so if I can average seven to eight hours a night of sleep on most days, and then occasionally I’ll have some crappy nights, that’s okay with me. But I really, really believe in sticking that out.
Brad: 00:24:55 Oof. And what about, uh, do you give yourself a nap if you’re dragging ass on a particular day or ?
William: 00:25:01 I rather wake up at the same time and then take a nap later than just sleep through that. Now as far as circadian rhythms go, yes, it’s probably better to have one long sleep, but for me, I got to get up at that time when I have to start doing my daily routine just to give myself that step forward every day. It’s like that journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. I need to take that step forward every day. And then if I’m crashing, crashing at two or 3:00 PM and I’m just not, not being focused, then sure I’ll, I’ll take a nap. I’ll take like a 30 minute nap, maybe an hour nap. Um, but I don’t like to skimp on that daily routine.
Brad: 00:25:42 Well now we’re getting, now we’re getting heavy listener about it. We’re about to slap you in the face a little bit here. And I told you I’m off, uh, off recording, uh, about my, my recent dietary journey and how you got me kind of recalibrated and refocused because I allowed myself to have a more and more uh, freedom and, uh, lack of discipline or lack of restriction, uh, because I feel great. I didn’t have big body fat concerns. My blood work’s fine. I’m trying to perform and recover from athletic events. I am, you know, banking hours and months in strict Keto and then compare and contrast to having increased carb intake increased caloric intake. But as you get down this slippery slope, I woke up one day and I realized, wow, I’m a lazy, undisciplined Fatass. I actually put on I think several pounds of body fat, uh, from, from the looks of it.
Brad: 00:26:33 And it was from enjoying these evening popcorn binges and eating a lot of dark chocolate. Cause I love dark chocolate. Uh, but when it’s unregulated and there’s no boundaries or restrictions as there are, when you say I’m trying carnivore, I’m trying Keto a, I’m ditching grains, sugars and refined oils. When I go into primal Paleo, of course I, you know, I’m, I’m not in that camp so I’m still eating healthy, nutritious foods. But the time of day is open season for me in this, you know, recent phase. So I’m eating, I find myself eating early in the morning instead of waiting until, uh, mid day, which was my historic pattern for many years prior to that. And it was a really interesting, uh, journey and experience to reflect upon and realize where we, we want to have personal freedom. Uh, maybe the listener is now disagreeing with Will saying that, uh, you should get up at four 30 every day and they make their own judgment saying, Nah, that’s, that’s bullshit.
Brad: 00:27:30 Sleep is number one. Matthew Walker just said, so on a podcast. But listen, if we continue to verbalize these rationalizations and cop outs, we are heading down a disastrous path, which we wake up to at whatever age. And realize that we were not living the life of our dreams. And why did this happen is because you compromise, you compromise again, you compromise again. So I’m reporting back to the, to the listeners that you know, I just for the heck of it, just rolled the dice and threw something out there and said, you know what, maybe I won’t eat any calories until 12 noon and launch a new experiment that I’m now, uh, five weeks into. It doesn’t, I don’t feel more energy or fantastically better or my blood values. It’s just something that I’m doing mainly for the psychological aspects. Uh, and getting back on track to where I have an intentional life just like my morning cold plunge, which I’m such a huge fan of.
Brad: 00:28:24 And the representation, I know I’m getting a hormonal benefit jumping in the tub but also representing to the world because I’m saying it to the public, putting it on Instagram, I jump into a fricking freezing cold water every morning without a second thought. And that feels good to me to be that guy that that saying I’m committing to something and then I’m going to tee you up here with my final comment is like hopefully this will translate or correlate to me being more disciplined with the use of my email inbox while I’m trying to focus on a peak performance task. And that’s the challenge that you’re talking about creating leverage and having an anchor point. That’s a great word. That is a huge ass deal. So if you declare that it’s important to you to wake up at four 30 you know these are, there’s a lot of downstream effects to them and you get to have a nap. Anyway.
William: 00:29:12 That’s the thing though that that is what allows me to do everything else. Um, I’m sure a million people use this quote but I heard it from Stan efforting which is compliance is the science and the way I usually put that for myself is consistency is king. And a lot of people also like to say this thing, you know, the best diet is the one you’ll stick to, which I think that’s a little too far. Cause what if you’re good at sticking to the standard American Diet? Um, so, but the thing is like you have to, you have to stick to these once you set them. So what you’re saying with, you know, now you’re five weeks into not having any calories until noon and also these cold plunges in the morning. To me in the short term, it doesn’t matter so much if all my energy is not as great now or you know, I feel super cold in the morning when I do that or whatever it happens to be.
William: 00:30:00 Even if it sucks because you’ve told yourself you’re going to do it, do it, and then you know, you gather data after the experiment. You say, okay, I’m going to change this or I didn’t like this but at least I did. You know, whatever amount of time I said I was going to do and now you can take that and you can go do other things. But like, man, that’s, that’s one thing that I’m just going to share my personal experience with this. I handicapped the hell out of myself with pondering and questioning and analyzing and trying to find perfection. You know, back when I would experiment with all these different things and I still deal with this. So I’m still like every day I’m trying to push myself. Take action. You can ponder once you’ve done it, but take action first and then you can start to meander and be like, oh, what’s the perfect way to do it?
William: 00:30:46 But stopping yourself in the middle and saying, oh, this isn’t perfect. Let me just say screw it and let me go listen to 10 more podcasts and look for the perfect way it’s going to screw you up. You keep stop, start, stop, start and you never get anything done. So just something that I remind myself and you know, to all of the listeners, I struggle with this. Absolutely. So I’m always reminding myself as a mantra, take action now. Action over pondering. Don’t, you know, don’t ponder, don’t stop yourself. You can figure it out after you’ve done it. That’s something that’s been really, really helpful to me just in terms of consistency and like compliance and execution. And it’s so funny that we haven’t even gotten into micros and macros and fat loss and carnivore and all these different things. But these are the building blocks.
William: 00:31:30 It doesn’t matter what the diet approaches, if you’re not even gonna, you know, if you’re gonna stop in one week or two weeks, what’s the point of reading all these books and listening to the podcast books aren’t making you healthier. Like podcasts aren’t making you healthier. You have to actually do it. So that’s, that’s our long rant on um, you know, sort of self motivation and, and executing.
Brad: 00:31:51 Well, that’s great. I mean, if this was said 30 years ago, it would be great. And now it’s extremely critical, urgent because we have this information overload lifestyle where we can sit in our head forever forevermore and just analyze and process information and not do anything. And this scares me because I’m, you know, it’s like, it’s like just go and write your, write your paper instead of reading all day long. I had to write a write a book and um, uh, I kind of have a ban against reading books while I’m writing a book because you can get, you can dive into 12 books that are going to help you write a book and all you’ve done for the day is read a bunch of books and it might make you, you know, down the line, a better author, but then there’s that blank page staring at you. So I’m thinking of that uh, example applied to uh, applied to, uh, what, what I’m doing with my day. But everyone has to relate to this example. It’s really, really important that, that taking action aspect of it ,cause it builds so much momentum.
William: 00:32:55 Sort of a good way to, um, it’s almost like a compass. One thing that I use throughout the day that helps me out and it might help out some of the people listening to this is when you feel sort of a mental block around something and you’re afraid to do something, let’s say, it’s honestly so simple. Some days it’s like, oh, I don’t want to send that email, or I don’t want to make this post, or I have to go get this content, or I have to, you know, write a talk or whatever it happens to be and you’re feeling a little bit of fear around it and you’re going to start doing some advanced procrastination where you reschedule it and you do some other work instead.
William: 00:33:28 And all these different things. That’s the thing that you need to be doing if, if that’s what you’re afraid of. That’s what you need to be doing simply to instill the habit of action. And that’s, that’s really, really helped me out lately, especially with just tackling a bunch of different projects and all of a sudden days are more productive because you’re sort of just starting this snowball effect and you get to the end of the day and you’ve gotten so much done simply by attacking the things that you would have rescheduled or reprioritized and done all that.
Brad: 00:33:57 So, so here we are man. And this, uh, this carnivore thing that you’ve been into for quite some time is picking up traction. And getting a lot of attention. And I want to pride myself as being an open minded person who will listen carefully and, and uh, you know, not, not have these beliefs overpowering the way that I live life. But I think most everybody who hears it, uh, dropped an offhanded manner just like Keto had to fight through a massive amount of misinformation of the medical community, mischaracterizing it as, as, um, ketoacidosis and dismissing it out of hand before even knowing the definition of the term. And it had to work hard to get up to a high profile position and in general life. And now here’s carnivore knocking on the door. And most people are immediately dismissive because it sounds so ridiculous. But then some of these experts, a you and Belle on the podcast man going at it and talking real life stories. And then listening to Paul Saladino who was, you know, very highly credible with his medical background, talking about us being obligatory hunter gatherers, obligatory gatherers rather than, uh, you know, the assumption that we did this for health. So I want to, I want to tee you up a little bit and first talk about, um, you could set the stage a little bit for what’s going on and what, what’s been your experience with this, uh, this crazy carnivore diet thing?
William: 00:35:20 Yeah. It’s so interesting to see how it’s really taking shape right now and there’s sort of a wave going on with this that can’t be denied. Who knows where it’s going to go in the next couple of years. But some of the information that’s coming out about the effects of Sulforaphane on the body and these different plant anti-nutrients and also probably the most powerful thing is the role that social media is having in really creating a cognitive shift with people. When you see somebody’s transformation and you hear their story, but it’s really seeing the pictures. When you see somebody who’s been super obese or they’ve had an auto immune condition or they’ve had skin issues and then they post their pictures and then they tell their story. Yes, that’s not technically evidence, but that anecdote, you know, as far as mentally, it’s so impactful. And I love seeing those.
William: 00:36:11 So I think that’s probably what’s really leading this wave. And then on top of the anecdotes you’re getting, guys like Paul Selidino that are explaining so many things. Obviously Shawn Baker, who’s always been a loud voice in the movement and he’s really promoted it heavily. Um, so I’m really, really excited to see where it goes for me and my experience with it. So I’m a little over a year. I’m probably like, or I mean a little over two years. I’m probably about two years and two months into this I was coming off of the heels of Keto when I did this and when I started Keto, I was coming off the heels of a four year stint as a card-carrying Vegan, which didn’t go too well for me. Um, so I threw that card away. I, I went with the Keto life. I love Keto, you know, it was great for almost everything, but I just wasn’t getting the athletic performance and the leanness that I wanted. So I wanted to have a lean athletic physique, explosive, strong, powerful. I wasn’t really getting that with Keto. And I realized in hindsight I was heavily restricting protein and then it was also a very heavily plant-based Keto approach. I still had a lot of, you know, previous ideology around a plant based diet.
William: 00:37:19 So I figured, you know, I can bring that into what I’m doing with Keto as long as I’m restricting the starches. Um, yeah. So it was, it was pretty good. I was probably 80% of the way there. And then I finally go on an experiment with carnivore and when I started carnivore it was just, the difference was almost overnight. So my physique goals of you know, being super lean, shredded, being athletic, getting stronger in the gym. Those started taking shape about a week after doing this, a week into this carnivore experiment. And then as I continued along, I wasn’t even actually training for strength. I was training more for muscle mass. I was doing a hypertrophy training, but every now and then I would test my max numbers and suddenly I was stronger than when I had been power lifting and training for strength. So that was another crazy effect for me.
William: 00:38:09 My muscles that kind of re comped in a way where I got stronger without actually training for strength. Um, mentally I was great, uh, wasn’t really dealing with any of the anxiety that I was having, especially as a Vegan, but I also had a little bit of anxiety when I was on Keto. So with carnivorel I noticed a huge mental benefit as far as anxiety goes. Um, but really I just had nothing I could complain about. I think way I was doing carnivore though was very different than what people were doing at the time. So everyone was very influ, uh, red meat and water with steak and water. Um, but I always liked to include a full spectrum of animal foods. I was doing red meat, that was kind of the foundation of it, along with pasture raised eggs along with a wild caught seafood, some oysters in there. And at the time I was also doing a lot of cottage cheese and Greek yogurt. So I kind of had, you know, this, this big spectrum of animal foods that I was eating, doing my fasting, doing my training every day. And I felt fantastic. There’s a few things that I’ve changed now to really optimize it and I’d love to get into those, but I do think that there are certain keys to carnivore.
William: 00:39:19 If you want to try this carnivore thing. Um, there are certain boxes that I think most people should try to check off just to make sure they’re getting in good nutrient density and high quality animal foods.
Brad: 00:39:30 What do you think the reduction in anxiety symptoms between Keto and carnivore? We can probably guess between Vegan and Keto because all of a sudden you’re nourishing your body, your brain’s getting a nutrient dense foods. But what, what do you think that shift is attributed to?
William: 00:39:47 Off hand? I would guess possibly I was having maybe too much of these plant anti-nutrients. I don’t know if it’s lectins, cellesalates. I don’t know if that’s, um, I, I really don’t know. I don’t have that expertise to say that was just sort of, um, it’s like a subjective experience that I had where I realized I wasn’t getting as anxious throughout the day and I kind of felt just more mental stability. So that’s really something I can’t say. I have no idea why it was.
Brad: 00:40:13 Well, we’ll talk about the objections to plant, plant based diet. This is such a shocking revelation where some of this stuff is actually potentially causing problems in the body. I mean, whatever. Wherever you stand on the side of the debate, we can ascertain for sure that people have had dramatic health transformations from eliminating a healthy vegetables and fruits. So what, what’s the, um, what’s the scene going on there? What are these things that are, uh, taking hold of our auto immune function and stuff?
William: 00:40:46 Yeah, so one of the interesting things that’s been brought up by, by people like Dr Saladino is really the immunological effects of these plant anti-nutrients and what they can do to your body, especially in a compromised immune state. So if you have autoimmune issues consuming those plant anti-nutrients, these natural toxins that are meant to ward off insects and things like that, um, naturally it wouldn’t have much of an effect on us if you have a perfectly healthy immune system. But if you have a compromised immune system, it’s going to have a bigger, more amplified impact on your overall health. Who knows how that can express itself. Maybe it’ll be like acne the way that I used to have. It might be something more serious. You might have Lupus,. You might have vitiligo, which is something my mom deals with. So it’s removing these plant antigens and then you can really focus on highly bioavailable animal foods, which in my opinion, you know, if you’re ranking them, I think liver is way up there. So some grass fed liver, that’s way up there. Egg yolks are way up there, especially pasture-raised. Um, I think oysters are fantastic. Wild caught salmon is fantastic. So you’re getting, you’re getting an Omega threes, you’re getting an iodine, you’re getting in all of these different fat soluble nutrients without kind of that, the attack from those plant toxins. So that’s, that’s something that I think a lot of people, the benefits they’re experiencing on carnivore is probably attributed to removing those plant antigens.
Brad: 00:42:16 Right? So here’s where we have varying levels of sensitivity and all the listeners are familiar with gluten. And the idea that some people, uh, the celiacs will have an immediate adverse reaction that’s extreme and other people will go their whole lives thinking that they have, uh, that they love their bread. Uh, but they have gas, bloating, digestive trouble in association with meals for years and decades and thinking that’s just normal. Uh, and only when we eliminate these, uh, these foods, do we notice the potential, you know, uh, subclinical effects on our immune function. Mark Sisson in Primal Blueprint said he’s, he went primal. He ditched grains in, in, uh, 2002, and all of a sudden his arthritis that he developed in his hands went away. And those stories are multiplied by literally millions of people saying that they’ve corrected these strange, very common, just they couldn’t attribute the reason, but, uh, they changed their diet and their, uh, their, their skin improved. And if you talk to a dermatologist, uh, they’re gonna want to give you, um, you know, powerful drugs to, to manage acne rather than saying, hey, why don’t you try quitting dairy and sugar? So, you know, we’re now getting more and more knowledge along these lines. But I think this is a new revelation for, um, virtually everyone that, that, uh, that plant matter can have this adverse consequences, especially if you’re sensitive
William: 00:43:41 Vegetables are almost that person in a detective movie that you never suspect of the crime. And then finally it starts to come out and you’re like, no, the old grandma. Um, but it’s really interesting how we’re really starting to analyze vegetables in these and these fibers, plants the things that we loved, Kale and spinach, they could do no wrong. Everybody, when you talk about a healthy diet, you put those right there up at the top dark. We all agree on that. Yes. Yes. It’s like, okay, we can at least start with this and then we can start to bake these other things. But now it’s like, no one’s safe. We’re even looking at the vegetables.
Brad: 00:44:15 Remember when you said broccoli sprouts earlier, which if you haven’t heard this, uh, craze people, it’s, it’s being found to have these incredible health and antioxidant benefits. It’s like a super food to the extreme. And, uh, I think Ben Greenfield was talking to Dr Saladino and said, so the, the two kilos of broccoli sprouts I have in my freezer aren’t good. He goes, not only aren’t they good, he goes, those are so concentrated and have such high levels of the anti-nutrients because the seed is the thing that the plant protects more than anything. So you’re thinking you’re eating the best part of the plant, but you’re arguably, again, we’re having an open conversation here. I want listeners to just absorb this information and maybe open your mind a little bit to what’s going on in there and especially doing some experimentation. But that was pretty heavy revelation for, you know, I’ve been, I’ve been studying and in this nutrition world for a long time, and some guys saying that super foods are the very worst thing you can get. Then you’re like, you start crying at the end of the show. I’m like, what? What do I believe now? Where do I head from here to the sardine cans?
William: 00:45:16 How, how do you define optimal health? And a lot of the time, these so called superfoods are defined by these. Oftentimes kinda arbitrary figures like your Oreck score with antioxidants and things like that. But how do you know that this oxidative theory of aging where you want to, you know, keep, uh, oxidative stress to a minimum? How do you know that that’s necessarily going to be achieved by eating dark leafy greens and these different foods? So in an actual experience setting where people try these things, a lot of the time it doesn’t so much match up to this theory that’s being put forth. And that’s where carnivores, like, it’s just mind boggling because this is literally the worst diet you can imagine according to, you know, if it’s your Harvard Board of Health in talking to any of those guys, World Health Organization, this is probably the diet that’s gonna make you drop dead in a year.
William: 00:46:07 But everybody seems to be getting better with it. So I don’t claim to have the answers for why that’s happening. I think there are a lot of other people that can explain it better. One of the things that I really, really find interesting that I had asked Dr Saladino about was this idea behind hormetic stressors. You know, you’ve got cold showers, you’ve got coffee, you’ve got exercise. Um, but plants were seen as this huge hormetic stressor. So you know, a lot of the detractors, well meaning detractors of this carnivore diet would say, yes, there are toxins in there. They’re anti-nutrients. But by consuming those, you’re actually making your body’s defenses a little bit more robust. And that’s kind of the, the action of these hormetic stressors. It kind of strengthens you the same way weight training does. But I asked Dr Saladino about that and he said, but why even have those stressors on the body, especially if you’re not able to deal with them, don’t you have enough stress from sleep deprivation?
William: 00:47:04 Don’t you have enough from work? Don’t you have enough from blue light constantly surrounding you and environmental stressors? And he’s saying, you know, you might want to remove this one cause we’re not so sure that it’s actually doing good things for you anyway. And that was something that kind of struck me and I was like, that’s, that’s really interesting. So give the body all of these, uh, you know, highly bioavailable animal nutrients and then remove these stressors and just let it thrive in optimal without barraging it with all of these chemicals. Um, that kind of struck me in a different way and I thought that was really, really cool. He has a lot of very fascinating ideas about how to do a carnivore diet that I’ve started to play around with a bit. Um, for example, incorporating calcium to balance out the phosphorous that you would be getting from muscle needs.
William: 00:47:48 So doing things like egg shells or supplementing whole bone calcium, actually getting into the bone. People love to talk about, nose the tail, but nobody’s really eating bone out there. Um, so finding a way to supplement in that bone matrix. I’ve been doing egg shells. I also do whole bone calcium. I even have some of these ancestral supplement, um, bone marrow pills that I take every now and then. So I think that’s an interesting way to do it. Dr Saladino also brings up, um, the idea behind iodine and making sure you’re getting that in from seafood. And all of a sudden I see everybody on Instagram now posting salmon roe. Um, this information is having a pretty big impact and a lot of waves are happening.
Brad: 00:48:29 Yeah, I think there’s some, we can make some good assumptions as we progress down the, uh, the free thinking path and you can’t dispute the nutrient density of these animal foods. Liver, uh, salmon roe is oftentimes credited as being the single most nutritious food on the planet. If you had to choose one going out to your desert island, you could do, uh, you could do salmon, roe and look pretty good. Um, and I also like the contention that, uh, we know that our body makes antioxidants internally. Uh, glutathione being the superstar, very powerful antioxidant that we make in ourselves. Uh, not having to get it from our blueberries our [inaudible]. And so if you’re in this nutrient dense diet, but you’ve eliminated what we call the high antioxidant foods, the vegetables, the fruits, um, the doctor comes with some compelling information saying, Oh, you’re just going to upregulate your own internal antioxidant production.
Brad: 00:49:22 And we can all agree that this happens because in fasting, we know this to be true, that when you’re not eating food, your immune function, uh, improves dramatically. Uh, your metabolic function is most efficient. The process of autophagy and apoptosis, that’s the cleaning house of damage cells, dysfunctional cells. Everything is upregulated when we’re fasting. So we are in our healthiest state when we’re fasted, I don’t think anyone can dispute that, right? So now we’ve got to go take a step down and say, well, one, we’re Keto, um, we’re not producing a lot of insulin. So we’re minimizing insulin just like when I’m in a fasted state and therefore these benefits accrue. And now when we’re talking carnivore, there’s an argument that this anti nutrient exposure, especially as you’re sensitive and possibly, especially when you’ve been banging and sugar and bread along with your Kale and your smoothies and all those things, that could be the representation between, um, you know, pushing you over the edge where you’re just getting too much stuff in there and you’re, you’re getting autoimmune conditions from diet.
William: 00:50:24 Yeah. That’s one of the ways I like doctor Ted Naiman puts us as he says, if you send somebody out into the forest with just a spear and a loin cloth, they’re not going to be eating too many plants. For one you’ve got to figure out which are poisonous. And then the other thing is you’re not getting many calories from it anyway. And then the other thing about that is a lot of the plants that people are eating nowadays, these were kind of selectively cultivated through the agricultural revolution. And I think a lot of them come from this um, Brassica plant, which is, it’s like a mustard plan. I’m forgetting exactly the name of it right now, but they’re kind of all variations of this one parent plan. So a lot of the wild plants that we would have eaten back in the day, which you know, may have been more fibrous, would have had less carbohydrate, might’ve had a different nutrient profile.
William: 00:51:11 We don’t really have access to those anymore.
Brad: 00:51:13 So obviously you look at these strawberries you buy at Costco at December, the gigantic, highly cultivated over sweetened nutrient deficient lower antioxidant than the wild stuff you find on the roadside, uh, in the Pacific northwest and the summer. So we also will open up the discussion here to, you know, your, your awesome veggie plant based diet. A lot of that stuff could be considered. You could, you could heavily critique that you’re, you’re hitting this stuff hard in the middle of winter when, you know, we’re not historically adapted to eat fruit. And then I’ll, I’ll set you up on the other side too because you’re talking about, you know, carnivores started with the, the bodybuilders, the bell brothers 20 years ago were doing it to get cut up and they were eating steak more steak and it was the cheap steak that’s coming from caged feed operations, which we can all probably criticize very well.
Brad: 00:52:03 But now as you get more refined and sophisticated, you’ve mentioned your big three where the pasture day eggs, um, the quality grass fed, uh, red meat and then the wild caught fish. So you’re getting rid of summit objections out of the gate when you’re talking about the best food you can find in that category.
William: 00:52:21 Oh man, we’re getting into some really interesting stuff now. Um, okay, so I got to remember that bodybuilding part cause I want to get back to that. But if we’re talking about food quality, you know, another thing people bring up is the environmental impact. There’s a lot of interesting work coming out about possible benefits to the environment through having these properly raised animals.
Brad: 00:52:40 So man, listen to this guy.
William: 00:52:43 Well a lot of those arguments on their head, but I don’t, I don’t want to delve into that because I’m the wrong guy, but I just want to bring that out and out there.
Brad: 00:52:50 Man floated out there into the space.
William: 00:52:53 Somebody smarter than me, we’ll explain it. Um, so we’re talking about food quality. I wanted to, I wrote down the foods that I eat just so people can have a real idea of what somebody’s doing carnivores actually eating. Um, so typical day of eating for me, you know, I, I eat like this basically 98% of the time. The other 2% is, uh, those random occasions where Chelsea and I go out. So what I’m eating most of the time is beef, eggs. I’ll do some bacon occasionally. Oysters, salmon, mussels, liver, I supplement whole bone calcium. Sometimes I’ll do eggshell powder, pretty easy to make. If you boil eggs. Um, I do some Collagen hydrolysate so I just put that in water. You just stir it up, drink that magnesium. So that’s magnesium citrate. I liked the natural calm brand.
William: 00:53:41 I do, um, pink salt. So I really like Redmond’s real salt. I’m just shouting out all the brands today. Um, I do occasionally incorporate herbs and spices cause I haven’t found that they really have a negative health impact on me. So I’m going off of my own experience with this and any, you know, religious carnivores out there who are about to pick me off the team. Um, go based on how you’re feeling. So this is your body adjust things according to the way you feel. Uh, as snacks are usually just do a hard boiled egg as snack. I’ll just put some salt on that and eat that. And then the only plants that I’m eating, I will occasionally rarely eat some berries. I don’t really touch any vegetables. And then I also do like to have some coffee. So that’s pretty much my menu right there.
Brad: 00:54:28 And that’s uh, evolved from the, your starting point at carnivore a couple of years ago?
William: 00:54:35 It has evolved from a starting point of carnivores, especially the inclusion of calcium. So there was no real calcium source and it’s, it’s interesting to see what balancing out phosphorus with calcium does. Um, and actually with this whole bone calcium, there’s a lot of boron in there, which there, there’s some evidence coming out that that might actually increase your testosterone. Uh, Doctor Saladino had some crazy blood work numbers when he got his testosterone checked after incorporating bone meal andI think his test shot up to like 900. Um, so that’s fantastic. So there’s that. I had no Collagen in the beginning. So unless I ate a New York strip every now and then, I wasn’t really getting in any Collagen. Now I like to include that Collagen to balance outMethionine Um, well you want to have your glycine taken care of so that it can balance out some of the Methionine in these muscle meats.
William: 00:55:24 It’s important to balance out the amino acids. You don’t want to be so focused on one and if you just think about it at ancestrally, you know, they weren’t throwing away the tendons, they weren’t throwing away these uh, collagenous bits, the skin and things like that. They were eating the whole animal. Um, so that’s a bit more ancestrally consistent. Magnesium. The reason for including that, that’s also a new thing is the idea that we had magnesium through streams back in the day, stream water, things like that. Nowadays, we’re all drinking super purified water that has zero electrolytes in it. So I like to include a bit of that. And I’m also getting some minerals and electrolytes from my pink salt. So those are kind of the only changes. Also oysters. I’m throwing oysters in there. That was new as well. I didn’t really have those early on.
William: 00:56:13 And I did experiment actually with um, this like dirty carnivore diet. So what I’m talking about now I think is a pretty quality carnivore diet. But one thing that a lot of the people on the Facebook groups will do is they’ll go to McDonald’s and just order Burger patties or they’ll go to Wendy’s and just straight up Burger patties. You’ll get a flying Dutchman In and Out. Um, for me, like if this is my health, I don’t want to take that risk. I’m not going to say it’s these people are, you know, they’re still experiencing benefits, dropping weight, all that stuff, good for them. But I wouldn’t want to take that risk because what if you find out 15 years later that you know, one of these chains said they’re not cooking it in vegetable oil, but they actually were, or it’s being cross-contaminated with something else. I don’t know about the food quality. The meats are definitely no going to be cage free meats, so I just don’t mess with that anymore. But I had done that for a few months when I was starting out on carnivore. And, um, I actually felt great, strangely enough. So maybe it takes a while for nutrient deficiencies to catch up with you. But I felt fine when I was doing it.
Brad: 00:57:17 Well, you’re making progress in a forward manner. So even when someone says, I’m getting off this crazy junk food diet and I’m going to go Vegan, well guess what? They’re going to check like, uh, 11 of the 17 boxes and make great improvements from having slurpees and, uh, slushies and, and Twinkies and a bowl of cereal. Uh, but I think one, one concern I have is, uh, that, that longterm, uh, that longterm view as well. Where, I mean, this is, I, I shouldn’t be criticizing, but you know, you, you hear, uh, x Vegans, they, they’re a vocal, uh, they’re a vocal, uh, section of the crowd where they felt great for a year or, or two years, and then, uh, their teeth started falling out or they, they started to have, uh, concerns. And I think you were telling me over email that, um, there’s some science showing that like for 15 or 20% of the population that has the right genetic profile, uh, a Vegan type diet is going to work really well. They’re not going to have that anti nutrient concern and they’re going to, they’re gonna pull all they need. And so I think we probably have some genetic particulars where we might have to navigate to the, to the optimal diet. Do you think, uh, that carnivore gonna welcome this 33% of the population that’s going to do fantastic and another 33 is going to be okay. And a certain people might, uh, have some sort of trouble or vice versa with the, um, with the other diets,?
William: 00:58:46 it’s kind of, we’re going to welcome that? Probably not probably the shining lights of the carnival movement. We’ll be understanding of that. I know that Dr. Baker says, you know, people have to do what’s best for them. And that’s sort of the approach that I take as well. I don’t have any, um, political ideology around this. I don’t, you know, wag my finger at people that don’t do it. So I’ve always thought that’s weird that you know, people, people do that. But I think the important thing is for the public to know that carnivore is an option and it’s a potentially healthy option and that if they’re feeling bad, they can try to remove some of those plants for a while and they’re not gonna, you know, immediately their health isn’t gonna immediately take a turn for the worst they can. They can go 30 days and do a carnivore or elimination diet, do it smart, use the high quality animals, incorporate the nutrient dense foods, experiment with it.
William: 00:59:38 And then like we were talking about, you stick with it for 30 days and then you make changes at the end. You liked it, you didn’t like it, it was too expensive, you know it was perfect price or you just want to incorporate your vegetables back. And then through doing that, then you can actually start to figure out over time and you’ll, you’re basically collecting data about yourself. Most people I think don’t actually even get into that process of collecting data about what works best for their health. So that’s, that’s probably the most important thing. Um, but I, I have no issues with people you know, that thrive on a plant based diet. I think that’s fantastic. And if you look at centenarians and you look at people that live past a hundred, they tend to eat anything. So some of them will be eating canned soup every day.
William: 01:00:23 Um, one of the ladies had literally been doing just about a carnivore diet. Um, she was like 115 and I think she was eating a couple of raw eggs a day, a few cooked eggs a day, and then some chicken every day. And I don’t think I saw any plants in there. So she was carnivore and then there was another guy who smokes cigars every day and he’s eating, you know, a tomato soup and, and milk and things like that. So it, genetic variability is super important that anybody that thinks they can find the perfect diet and they’re going to be a centenarian. There’s more to it than that.
Brad: 01:00:57 Yeah, it’s really tough to, uh, to, to use those lines of argument because there’s so many other variables. So, you know, these centenarians are probably smiling and enjoying a nice social environment at their meals and taking their time rather than wolfing stuff down on the go. There’s no orthorexia probably in the centenarian community, right? The, the, the extra stress from a fixation on, on eating perfectly. Uh, and I, I guess it comes back to that personal experimentation because maybe I could report that I’m feeling great on this, this brown rice, uh, restriction diet with Tofu. Uh, but I don’t know any better. Maybe, maybe there’s more great beyond great. So I’m always looking to optimize and see if I can get an edge or a breakthrough or at least, uh, mitigate if there’s something that’s dragging me down and I got white flecks on my fingernails.
Brad: 01:01:48 Some people tell me that’s a zinc deficiency. Other people say, you must have hit something. I don’t know which one’s true, you know, but you gotta you gotta be on that quest all the time. I think that’s the thing that I appreciate from you. And other thought leaders where you’re just, you’re just pushing the edges. Now this carnivore thing is, uh, needs to be reckoned with and it’s because people went for it and you know, tried something that was, uh, new and extreme. And I wonder also if there’s, you feel some benefit from having a reduced choice, reduce decision fatigue from having this kind of Goto pattern, just like you’re getting up at four 30 in the morning
William: 01:02:28 Big time. It’s, it’s one less thing to think about, man. Um, to me that’s a huge benefit to know every single day. Okay, this is what I’m eating today. A lot of people love food diversity and variety and things like that. To me, I want to make it simple. I want my food to taste great. It’s going to energize me the next day. I don’t look at food as fuel. Like, yes, it is entertainment. I do enjoy it, but still it is fuel. You know, you do need energy for the next day. You want to be making sure that you’re making constant deposits to your health. So for me, yeah, it’s, it’s reduced decision fatigue all the way. I really, really like it. It’s just like another one of those anchors. It’s like, okay, I’ve got my diet portion figured out. Cool. I’ve got a morning routine figured out, cool. I’ve got an exercise plan that I can work on.
William: 01:03:16 And yes, you’re always optimizing those. Now I want to differentiate between optimizing, driven by purpose and enjoyment of the process and loving what you’re doing versus optimizing all of the time, driven by obsession or driven by a feeling of not being enough. I think that there’s so many people that are just obsessive. Lee always trying to push to that next level basically because they just don’t feel satisfied with who they are already. So I think, I don’t know how to explain that to people, but what, when you’re pushing and when you’re optimizing, make sure that you enjoy that because you’re probably going to spend a lot of time doing it. And if you hate it all the time and you just wish you finally had a diet figured out, um, you might want to stop doing that and you might want to stick with something. I really enjoy learning about diet, but I don’t obsess over it. You know, I’ll, I’ll look at what the leaders are saying. I’ll look at the newest science coming out. I’ll change certain things, but I’m not like obsessed about it. There’s other things that you should be putting your focus towards. You have family, you have work, you have things that matter in life. So take care of this, but don’t let it take your whole life over.
Brad: 01:04:27 What about those celebration outings that you describe with Chelsea? Uh, are you going for these target foods that you still enjoy to this day, even though you don’t eat donuts or pizza or what’s, what’s it like? Has there been any, like, I’m thinking of this de habituation that occurred to me when I decided that I should start eating dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate. I never ate dark chocolate in my whole life, but here we are with the primal. we’re trying to cut carbs. And so I went to these, uh, weird tasting bars that didn’t have any sweetness. And now here, uh, 11, uh, let’s see, almost 12 years later, um, if I taste anything that’s less than 80% dark chocolate, I don’t like it because it’s too sweet. Literally, I’m not just making a story up and saying, Hey, it’s Brad here. I’m primal. It’s, it’s the, the actual truth is I prefer this level of cacao percentage of my dark chocolate because I’ve habituated my taste buds over a period of time.
William: 01:05:25 That’s a really good question. So I’m, I’m going to tell you exactly what I do, and this is where I’m probably going to get haters. And then there might be some people that appreciate the honesty for me. Um, food is a part of my experience of life and it contributes to my quality of life to be able to enjoy quote unquote normal foods every now and then. So for me, I like to minimize those incidents. So I think, you know, if you say, Oh, I’m gonna have, you know, maybe a little bit of bread every day, tiny amount, or you let those creep into your daily life.. Since I believe consistency is king, those tiny daily hits to your diet, I think those are far more detrimental than if you take a day and you decide to go out to dinner at some Italian restaurant and you enjoy the experience and you have a glass of wine and you enjoy quality time with someone you love and then the next day you’re back on. So you know, you took that one night, you had that dinner, you enjoyed it, it was great and it was an experience and then you’re back on the plan the next day. And that’s the way I like to do it.
Brad: 01:06:30 Yeah. I think if everything’s mindful and intentional, then you’re doing okay and you’re not going to slide down these slippery slopes. But I’m going to reference my evening popcorn binges. And oftentimes I’d make them because there was a gathering, I’m visiting family and there’s eight people and I make a huge bowl of popcorn. It’s so fun. We’re watching a good show and we’re gathering, we’re socializing. Hey, great stuff. But if you sort of head that direction to the air popping machine, uh, you know, 19 nights out of the next 20, then you’re kind of locked into yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s ruined the significance of, of a treat and a celebration. So I like that aspect of it and yeah, the leaky stuff, that’s what we all got to watch out for because then same with, um, opening up your chat message window when you’re supposed to be working on a project. It’s gonna, it’s going to lower you in like a, like a trap. And there you go down every slippery slope I guess. Same with setting the alarm man. Now you got Williams gotten into my head again, everybody. So now jeez Maybe I better to like just get up and do my thing instead of ascertain, do I need another 30 to 60 minutes sleep? Oh Man. Lots to think about.
William: 01:07:41 That’s what I’m saying. It’s self awareness. If what you’re doing is working for you and you’re happy, then don’t listen to what I’m saying. So all of this information is for the person that needs it. Basically. It’s like that story about you know when the, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. A lot of people listening to this right now or like, okay, I’m not going to incorporate anything that he’s talking about, but it sounds interesting. And then some people, this is the one thing that’s going to change the rest of their life because that’s what they needed to hear at the right time. So that’s all I’m saying, guys. None of what I’m saying is preaching or everybody should do this. This is what works for me and it might work for somebody else. Now what you were talking about, these social settings, I call them cheat days still just because I like to, I don’t really care, but really what it is is it’s like a social celebratory kind of meal.
William: 01:08:29 It’s, it’s time spent among people. It’s feasting, it’s enjoying the time that is very different than having a cheat day because you’re dealing with food addiction and you just barely hold on by the skin your teeth, and you’re doing as much as you can and then you finally get to your cheat day and you just let loose and you get a dozen donuts and you’re sitting in your room by yourself watching Netflix eating that alone. That’s very, very different than what we’re talking about, which is kind of a fun family experience where you don’t worry about what you’re eating for one night of the week or one night every two weeks depending on your goals. So, yeah, let’s differentiate those and make sure that if you are dealing with food addiction or let’s say you have a health condition or you have lots of weight to lose, it might do you better currently to actually focus on developing habits around healthy eating rather than restriction.
William: 01:09:21 So you don’t want to always restrict and then binge restrict, binge create the healthy habits. Stick with that for months until you feel like, okay, you know what, I got this, and then maybe you can venture out and enjoy that meal with your family. But if you’re just starting, don’t, don’t do the cheat meal though, you know, so don’t, don’t have that celebratory meal. You don’t wanna make it hard on yourself.
Brad: 01:09:42 Love it. Before you go, we want to talk about a carnivore shredding back to the six pack. Man. Uh, let’s, let’s hear about that program. It’s, uh, it’s, I hit the website and, and look at this dude, this guy’s, you know, he’s at the, the highest level of, uh, physique and peak performance and I’m very interested. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m trying my hardest to get, get to that point. But what do you take people through? How does it go with this program?
William: 01:10:08 Yeah, so enough of this health stuff, let’s, let’s get ripped. Um, so basically the Carnivore Shredding program is my attempt to consolidate all of the knowledge and experience and things that I’ve accumulated over the years into one program. It’s an eight week program that people follow that has eight weeks of what they eat, how they train supplementation as well as some lifestyle practices. Um, it’s got a grocery list. So I basically try to provide you the best training plan that I use and that I would put anybody else on if you want to lose fat and build muscle. And the idea is to lose fat as fast as possible in eight weeks in the healthiest manner possible while preserving the most muscle mass. Um, so I don’t want this to be like a crash diet where you go on a celery juice cleanse and then you lose all your muscle and you lose fat.
William: 01:11:01 This is trying to get you the best body composition in eight weeks. So basically you’ve got your macros. Um, those will be laid out for you. The kind of macronutrient breakdown. There’s a grocery list, there’s uh, examples of meals. There’s the intermittent fasting protocol that you can incorporate. Um, there’s also eight weeks of training. I’m a big believer in zone two cardio. I don’t think that you should be overdoing high intensity interval training to as crossfit type stuff when you’re Keto adapting and when you’re carnivore adapting, it’s too many stressors on the body at once. So, um, with that we’ve got the zone two cardio. And then the other thing is the resistance training and the weight training is all based around exercises that most people can do. And the idea is just to build muscle. It’s not to be the strongest guy in the gym and it’s also not super high volume where you’re becoming like an iron man athlete.
William: 01:11:54 Um, it’s just enough to build muscle to get stronger. And the last thing I want to say about that is if you don’t have access to a gym membership or if you don’t have access to exercise equipment, you’re living up in the mountains, whatever it happens to be. Um, anybody can email me and I can create a customized plan for you. I’ve been doing that for a lot of people that, you know, they’re their stay at home parents or, or they just don’t want to go to the gym or they already have some equipment. I can create a personalized workout for you. So yeah, that’s, that’s pretty much the carnivore shredding program. Uh, can I pitch the website of category? Um, so that’s the carnivore shredding program.com. And what I was just talking about was the eight-week fat loss plan.
Brad: 01:12:36 Go to what, people sign up. What are you waiting for? The guy gave you, gave you all your needs. We’re focused, man. Thank you, William. We’re going to check in on, on a regular basis as we start to feel ourselves slipping, right? Listeners, you can write in and say, Hey, I need another dose of William, get them back on and we will do so. But thank you so much for, for sharing the message. And let’s see if we have some open minded listeners out there. Go and try and some new dietary strategies, Williams’ Shewfelt carnivores. shredding.com
William: 01:13:06 thank you Brad.
Brad: 01:13:10 Thank you for listening to the show. We would love your feedback at getoveryourselfpodcast@gmail.com and we would also love if you could leave a rating and a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. I know it’s a hassle. You have to go to desktop iTunes, click on the tab that says ratings and reviews and then click to rate the show anywhere from five to five stars and it really helps spread the word so more people can find the show and get over themselves because they need to. Thanks for doing it.
