Robert Sikes Keto Bodybuilding | 7-Step Savage System for Fat Loss & Muscle Growth

We can talk about reverse dieting and building muscle, but I cannot talk about orgasmic pooping, so give it up to Sean there. All right, let's dive on in. All right, so seven steps to savagery, escape the diet confusion. So hopefully, throughout this presentation, we'll learn a few of these things, how to do all this without excessive fasting, wrecking your metabolic rate, screwing up your hormones, sacrificing energy, becoming a cardio bunny. I know a lot of people just do cardio, which is not optimal. We're probably all familiar with this diet cycle to some extent. Sorry, man, I'm one of those guys that's always walking from one to the other, so my apologies on the front end. So we have this desire to lose weight. We cut out all the processed food, maybe carbohydrates, we cut everything out, we have some increased hunger, and then we see some success maybe, but then we start feeling depleted, deprived, we binge, we purge, the whole cycle repeats itself. If you're a competitor, it's pretty much the same thing. You know, you get deeper and deeper into a caloric deficit for your competition. You have the show, but then you cross that finish line, the show is over, and then you kind of fall into this negative feedback loop of binging and purging, and the cycle repeats itself. Real quick, by a show of hands, are any of y'all bodybuilders in this room? We got one. All right, all right, that's good, that's good. So a lot of people think maybe they wouldn't work with keto because maybe they've got cholesterol concerns, bad breath, can't have to give up, you know, grandma's cooking, got family concerns, family issues, they're not, you know, supportive, you've got the risk of dropping your performance or having low energy without the carbohydrates. So this is a graphic I found online. I like the progression here, and then all of a sudden the drop off in our current day and age as society has kind of just created this environment for unhealth, you know, you've got the processed foods, and as you can see, we're no longer, we're having that slouch position. We're sitting at a computer all day, we're eating junk food, and we're getting worse. You got big food and you got big pharma working against you, and you've got all those companies in the bottom corner there that are profiting off of your unhealth and demise. So you've got the odds stacked against you, so to speak. And if you look into mainstream dieting culture and what the narrative suggests, it's all about calories in, calories out, you know, energy balance, eat less, move more. That kind of lent itself to the flexible dieting if it fits your macros approach, which basically suggests if you eat your macro goals, your caloric allotment for the day, you can comprise that of any foods you wish and fit those foods within your macros. And that way of thinking suggests that if you are overweight, you are obese, you aren't healthy, then you're clearly doing something wrong, it's all your fault. If it was that simple though, we probably wouldn't be plagued with this obesity epidemic chart you're seeing on the screen now. And this data was from 2014, so 10 years since then, it's only gotten worse, there's only more red on that map now. But as Sean pointed out, maybe you're not obese, maybe you're not visually overweight, but that doesn't necessarily mean you are metabolically healthy. So we have an increasing rate of metabolic dysfunction in people that are also not overweight. And I was sitting at a conference, I was speaking at a conference, I was on the food addiction panel at Hacker Health, and there was five of us, and we were talking about disordered eating tendencies, things of that nature, and most of them were taking the approach of pointing their finger at big food, at big pharma, at all these things that are working against us. But that just doesn't really sit well with me, I'm kind of like a Jocko extreme ownership type. And the reality is, it is all our fault, and I think it's important that we just accept that, own it, and move forward from it. That doesn't have to be your identity, you can know better and then do better. So there's two primary avatars that I think would benefit from the contents I'm about to go over. One is that you are currently an athlete, you're not familiar, or you are familiar with weight training, possibly track and macros, and you just kind of are well-versed in that, but maybe you're trying to transition from standard approach to more of a low-carb ketogenic approach, improve insulin sensitivity and overall health. The other avatar is those that are probably already following a low-carb ketogenic carnivore diet, maybe not so well-versed on the athletic side, but hopefully we can fix that as well. So again, my whole goal is to just basically teach y'all how to improve proper fat metabolism, and therefore increase your performance and tap into your full potential. A little bit about me though, I'm Robert Orion Sykes, WNBF Pro Natural Bodybuilder. I did five competitions last year, earned my pro status, and I became the leanest man alive at 3.9% body fat via DEXA. I've worked with over 600 clients over the years, and I've become very passionate about this way of eating. Didn't start out that way though, I was 115 pounds, soaking wet, and this was me when I very first started training. That's my uncle beside me. I was working for him during the summers, and he taught me how to do a bicep curl, and the rest was history. I used to fall into this mentality of eat big to get big, and I got really big. I'm 5'7", I say 5'8", my wife says 5'7", we'll call it 5'7 1⁄2". I fell into this eat big to get big mentality, so I bulked up, I was eating 6,000 calories a day, all processed carbohydrates. I'd go to the gas station and get those Macho Chimichangas, 800 calories a pop, throw them in the microwaves, and then you got diabetes afterwards, you know, it's great. So I got to 230 pounds, and again at 5'7 1⁄2", that's not really a good look, so I knew that something wasn't working there. I lost 80 pounds in 12 weeks for my very first competition back in 2012. Most of that was in a 10-week span, and I won the competition, I got lean, but I threw away my health in the process. That's when I developed a bunch of eating disorders, just was not good for a lot of different reasons. This is a picture of me after that first show, going to IHOP, I ordered one of every single thing on the menu, I ate it all, and then I walked outside, puked in the parking lot, and then went and got brownies. So not good for my relationship with food. I tested every diet in the meantime, I fell into keto kind of by accident, I discovered carbohydrate back-loading developed by John Kiefer, and that's basically a bunch of, you know, ketogenic foods during the day, this was back in 2014, 2015, so keto wasn't really popularized at that point, and basically this diet calls for keto during the day, high glycemic index foods at night. So I would go through the day pretty well keto, then I would eat a whole bunch of brownies covered in peanut butter and syrup before going to bed, and it worked, but at some point I wisened up to the fact that, okay, this is probably not healthy long-term. So I found out that I just felt better without the carbs, so I was doing carb back-loading minus carbs. Started doing keto, you know, basically no carbs, but I was still stuck in all my bro-dieting bodybuilding wisdom days, so eating every two or three hours, eating seven meals a day, timing everything on the clock, and kind of just testing things out, because again, there was no information on keto, especially for bodybuilders at this time. Once I realized that carbs were just simply not serving me and I removed them entirely, I went all in on my brand, Keto Savage, this is some OG branding from when I very first started way back in the day, and I've just become all the more passionate since. That's kind of how I developed my seven-phase protocol, which we're going to dive into today. These are some pretty busy charts, but I'll make light of that as we go here. The resulting outcome of learning this seven-phase system and applying it is what allowed me to become the leanest man alive, coach so many people, get my pro card, and honestly just get healthier overall. But what I'm most proud of is how I've been able to do that with other people, like it's not just me. I'm not some special snowflake. All these apply, even if you are not to me. I mean, maybe you've never thought of stepping on stage, like some of these people are competitors, some are not. Jen, she was the one that Christina mentioned earlier, you know, she's a former client of mine. She's busy. She's got an executive job. She's got kids. She's doing everything that we all are doing. Sean there, he lost a bunch of weight, got shredded, became a coach. Joe up top there, he's a good friend and client of mine, strong man, powerlifter, bodybuilder. And then Peter, he's 61 years old. He just won a bodybuilding competition a few months back. He's reverse dieting now, but he's 61 years old. And I've realized in working with this many people over the years, there's basically three main reasons people tend to fail with any diet. But it all stems down, a lot of it's psychological, right? We've got the physiological, but a lot of it's psychological. They've got these internal beliefs or false beliefs. They've got external factors, and they've got a complete lack of overall structure and how they implement their protocol. So starting with the internal belief, a lot of people think I'm not disciplined. I'm not consistent. I'm not a bodybuilder like all of y'all except two said. And then Keto just simply doesn't work for them. So they think this would not be applicable. So let's just kind of dismantle some of those. As far as discipline goes, this is a picture of Steve Jobs, you may have known of him. He's a pretty successful businessman. And he wore the exact same thing every single day because that allowed him to focus on what his priority was, which was growing apples. He wore the same thing every day except in 2001, it looks like he liked brown shoes instead of white shoes. But for the most part, everything, same day, every day. That allowed him to focus on what the priority was at hand. And so many people don't do that. When it comes to food, an example of this would be simply meal prepping your food. If you know exactly what you're going to eat, if you have it ready to go in the refrigerator, you can remove that decision fatigue because willpower is a very finite resource. You may start off the day going strong, going hard, feeling good, feeling motivated. But as the day progresses, as you make more and more decisions, that willpower gets depleted and you are more likely to cave. When I'm in a competition, like I've got all my stuff prepped and ready to go, I don't have to allocate any bandwidth towards what I'm going to eat that day. I don't have to eat something and try to retroactively track it like it's just done, it's accounted for. Consistency is an interesting one because people struggle with this all the time. It's kind of crazy. But like honestly, how you think about it is key. When people think of consistency, they think of power of compounding, compounding interest. That topic typically brings up images of like retirement accounts. Hopefully, you all have retirement accounts or some sort of compounding wealth. If you start early and add to it a little bit over time, you grow into something impressive. You grow into something that sustains you. The same is true with our habits and routines, what we eat, how we move our body, it's all power of compounding. If you build the right habits in place now, have this longevity view to it. Don't think about trying to look a certain way in two weeks. Think about how you want to look and feel and function when you're in the latter stages of your life. That's all because of what you do today and compound over time. Unfortunately, the same is true in reverse. So this one kind of hits home because I've got, we've all got family members that have likely suffered from some type of neurological disease state, Alzheimer's, dementia. There's a reason they're calling that type three diabetes right now because basically what's happening when you have type two diabetes and you see people starting to get their toes amputated, they're going blind because of the glycation, their capillary cells, they're same things happening in their brain. That's why I call it type three diabetes. But that is because of what decisions they've made leading up to that point. I've got grandparents right now that are starting to slip and it's like every time I go visit them, they say the same story five times now, you know? And maybe it's a great story, but it's not that great of a story. So how you make your choices and decisions now impact you for better or worse. So I just hope that it's all for the better. Now that bodybuilder question, this is an AI generated image of bodybuilders. They're both bodybuilders, those on the left, those on the right. You are either building your body with the muscle that's going to act as that longevity organ, the habits and routines that lead to your betterment, or you're building your body with the habits and routines that lead to your disease, decay, and demise. You're a bodybuilder either way, whether you plan on stepping on stage and competing as one or not. But I need everyone to think of themselves as a bodybuilder. So I'm going to ask one more time, who in this room is a bodybuilder? That's a little better. All right, now what about the argument of keto just wouldn't work for me? There's a reason there's no cave paintings of salads or Hot Pockets or any of the things you see out there these days. We grew up and evolved as a species eating quality fats and proteins derived from animal sources. Like that was our lifeblood. That was what allowed us to grow into the people that we are today. So if you are a human being, which I'm pretty sure all of us are, the ketogenic diet would work for you. Now, when we talk about external belief systems, oftentimes that comes to your circle of influence, your career path. People have all kinds of excuses as to why their career won't allow them to eat a certain way. Talk about limiting factors around the cost of quality foods and just this fear of the gym in and of itself. So when it comes to friends and family, this is a tough one because we've all got the social events, the Thanksgivings, the Christmases, the birthdays. There's a reason to celebrate with food for every event these days, it seems like people gather around food. That's what our society has always done. And that can potentially cause some rift between people. I was not the desired most favorable person at Thanksgiving's when I first started this diet because I would turn away my Aunt Alice's rolls and cinnamon cookies and all that kind of stuff. But the reality of it is, if people are in your inner circle and they truly care about your betterment and well-being, that relationship should not be predicated on the food that's on your plate. And if it is, then that's probably not much relationship to begin with. So stick to your guns on this one. And if their desire for you to eat and just coddle food makes them feel better towards you, then they're in the relationship for the wrong reasons. And that's going to be easier said than done with certain people, obviously. But be firm in your beliefs. My parents frowned on me removing carbohydrates in the beginning. I've been doing it for 10 years and I haven't taken carbohydrates in 10 years. But now my mom's doing it and she's way healthier now. So be the example that you want to be and then they will recognize your success and they'll start asking questions. They'll start following suit. They'll start genuinely wanting to learn more because they recognize how much better you feel and function. When it comes to the lifestyle factors, the career component, a lot of people talk about traveling. Like I'm traveling all the time. I travel all the time. When I'm in a competition prep, I literally have a Yeti cooler bag full of all my prepped meals that I'll take through airport security. And every time they make me stop, take it off, they go through all the x-rays and I got to tell them what all this stuff is, but they always let me keep my food. If you don't want to do that, then simply get an Airbnb with a full functioning kitchen and all the utensils you need and hopefully it's nearby a grocery store and you can make sure all of your food needs are met. It's all about how much you want it. You can make anything work for you if you put in the work. What about the too expensive argument? So yes, quality food is expensive. Quality anything is expensive. That's why it's got to be an investment. But realistically, price is not a limiting factor for eating real food. I mean, eggs are definitely more expensive now than they were 10 years ago, five months ago. But yeah, but you can make that work. I literally just got, like I'm in a pretty small town and everybody knows everybody there. So I found out who the local beef guy was, the local poultry guy, the local lamb person. Now I've got hookups for all locally raised, grass fed, grass finished foods, pastured pork. I got a whole hog that I picked up from the processing plant last week, earlier this week at 350 a pound hanging weight. That's cheaper than I can get at a grocery store. I'm supporting local people. The quality is far superior. I hunt for a lot of my food. So like, that's not really a good argument. You can simply eat ground beef and eggs and spend much less than you are currently spending by buying like Funyun bags and just nonsense at the grocery store. People argue about the cost of food, then you look in their grocery cart and they got a flat screen TV in there and they're overweight. Like it makes no sense. So prioritize the things that are leading to your better health. The gym phobia thing. So a lot of people are hesitant to go to the gym because they're worried about what people think about them. The reality is people that go to a gym are going there to get better. They're trying to improve their own well-being. I've been to gyms all over the country. I have never once had somebody make fun of me, even when I very first started lifting and didn't know what I was doing. They're there to get better and if you need their help to get better, they're oftentimes more likely to help. If you need a spot, they'll come to your aid. If you need technique questions, they'll come to you there. What if you just can't go to a gym? Maybe you live out in the middle of nowhere like me. I've got a client that trained exclusively with bodyweight movements and resistance bands and he got shredded and won his bodybuilding show. You can make it work. Not knowing how to work out, there's YouTube. You can literally YouTube any movement out there. Not knowing or being fearful of the gym is not a good reason not to start training. So this is a big one. Lack of structure. People oftentimes have a pretty profound lack of structure. They kind of jump from one that to the next, one program to the next. They're just always bouncing around. They've got misguided goals. They've got a poor baseline to begin with. They're not fully fat adapted. They don't know how to peak properly. They don't know how to do a sustainable reverse diet. So hopefully we'll just dive into that here. Have any of you ever worked with a coach before? Show of hands, got a few people. When they ask you, what is your goal in working with them? I'm going to venture a guess that most of you will say, I want to build muscle and lose fat. Everybody wants to do that. The problem is you can do both simultaneously, but you're not going to optimize for either because they're kind of competing for one another. In order to optimize lean tissue gain, you need to be eating more food because you've got to give your body more building blocks to create more tissue, more muscle. If you're trying to optimize fat loss, then you ideally need to be consuming less food to optimize the mobilization of that stored body fat. So building muscle, losing fat at the same time is not optimal. They oftentimes have very poor baselines to begin with. They've been chronically under eating, they don't have good metabolic markers, their hormones are in a state of dysfunction because they've been chronically under eating. So not having a good baseline is not a good candidate for going into a fat loss phase. Not properly fat adapted. So if you measure with a blood ketone strip and it shows 0.5 millimolar or greater, you are technically in ketosis. But that is a very different thing from being fat adapted. So this is a graphic here just to kind of show some of the biology behind what's going on. There's something called MCT transporters, monocarboxylic transporters. They help shuttle pyruvate and lactate through the body. Those same pathways also help shuttle ketone blocks. We're pretty much born in a ketonic state and then from there we pretty much start getting fed diets inundated with like purees and like junk food. So most people spend the vast majority of their life carb dependent. It's not going to shift immediately going from a carbohydrate dependent glucose source of fuel to fat and ketones. Ketones can cross the blood brain barrier, you can power your cells, you can use fat metabolism to replenish and replete muscle glycogen, but that does not happen instantaneously. So not being properly fat adapted is a major issue that people have not yet figured out. A lot of people think of this pie chart when they think of a ketogenic diet. They just have a set it and forget it philosophy, you know, 70% of my calories come from fat, 25% from protein, the remaining from carbohydrates. I don't ever keep my macros constant. Like I'm changing them on a weekly basis. So just having this set it, forget it mentality is not really going to bode well for optimization. This is a picture of me at Worlds competing at the most competitive bodybuilding show in the natural realm in the world. And that was peak week. Now again, most of you are not competitive bodybuilders, but peaking is what bodybuilders do when they're trying to like bring that last little bit of polish the day you step on stage. Reverse dieting is key because this, I see this common, this common issue more so than anything else. Most of my clients are not competitors. Actually, most people have chronically under eaten the majority of their life. And then there's a lot of similarities between that and a competitor that's dieted down for the show, down-regulated their metabolism, down-regulated their hormones. They can't maintain that look. They can't maintain that peaking, you know, physique for any significant period of time because it's not healthy. It's very similar to what people are doing when they're chronically under eating the vast majority of their life. Then they have to reverse diet up from that. Just as a competitor cannot stay at that lean physique indefinitely, somebody cannot stay at a chronically depleted, you know, metabolic, hormonal, or caloric state and thrive indefinitely. When you go into reverse diet, it's basically the reverse of dieting. Not having a plan is kind of akin to going to hike up to the peak of Mount Everest, reaching that peak, and then rather than descending gradually back to baseline, back to a normal homeostatic state, this is the equivalent of just jumping off the edge of Mount Everest. I don't want to encourage that for anybody. So those who know do, those who understand teach, so hopefully we can teach. This is my seven phase protocol broken down. It's kind of like, it's kind of small probably from y'all's standpoint, but it's got, you know, seven phases. And what I really want to point out here is that here in the beginning, the baseline, that green line represents my body weight. The blue line represents my body fat. The red line represents my calories consumed. So as I'm going through these phases, my body fat, my body weight, and my calories are at their lowest here, you know, when I'm competing, when I'm at my leanest, but then I reverse diet up to a healthy baseline. What I want to point out, what's so significant here is that my body weight here is still lower than it was at the onset. My calories, my body fat rather, is still lower than it was at the onset, yet my calories in red are higher than they were at the onset. So if you cycle through these seven phases correctly, whether you are a competitive bodybuilder or not, you have found the proverbial fountain of youth because you are now able to get better every single time you cycle, excuse me, you improve your starting position and your stopping position. This is how you get better over time instead of get worse. There is no such thing as maintenance. Maintenance is a myth. While the time is working against all of us here, we're all getting older every single day. You're either getting better or you're getting worse. This is the framework that allows you to get better over time. So breaking those down, phase one is all about establishing your baseline. This is when I have people get their blood work done, see what their lipid panels look like, see what their hormones are like, see what their calories consumed on average consist of. If they've been chronically under eating, they track that and I find out that they're only consuming a thousand calories a day, their baseline for going into a fat loss phase is not optimal. So we have to start with the reverse of that. If they're at a healthy baseline, then they're a much better candidate for optimizing fat loss and they can actually do so in a sustainable, healthy manner. There's a bunch of online macro calculators and everybody's got one, I've got one, and they're great, but they don't take into account your dieting history, they don't take into account a lot of things. They don't take into account your hormones, your metabolism, any of that stuff. So just simply tracking to see what you're consuming and how your body's responding to that is going to be much more insightful than any online calculator. Phase two is all about establishing a protein threshold. So it's interesting, I've been in the keto space long enough now to see the transition of how the space views protein. In the early days, it was like people were fearful of protein and they were worried about gluconeogenesis that would keep protein very low, optimize ketone production. Now protein is in its limelight and everybody's saying, eat more protein, eat more protein, eat more protein. You can't have an upper cap to it, but you can because if you've only got so many calories to work with and you're consuming far too much protein relative to dietary fat, your body is not going to function optimally because as we were saying earlier today, protein is not a great substrate for energy. It's going to inefficiently create glucose via gluconeogenesis and you're not going to be metabolizing fat optimally for fuel. So what I'll typically do in phase two is start my clients at a relatively high fat ratio, so about 80% of their calories coming from fat, and then I'll start titrating their protein up while I titrate their fat down until I find their own unique protein threshold. Now a lot of people look at this and I'm like, well, what if I've got a lot of fat to lose? Do I need to be consuming much dietary fat? And the reality is, if you are not yet deeply fat adapted, you can have a whole bunch of stored fat, but if your body does not know how to efficiently leverage that, then you're going to feel terrible, your performance is going to suffer, you're going to lose length tissue and you're going to fall off the bandwagon. So having that time to figure out what your unique protein threshold is, is key. Now we've talked about the calories in, calories out equation here, but there's a whole bunch of other intangibles. That's going to boil down to your hormones, your excitement for the diet, the quality of nutrition you're consuming, and how sustainable it is. So yes, people can lose weight by eating Twinkies, they've done studies that show them, but their hormones are in a wreck when they do, it's not sustainable, they lose length tissue, they get worse and worse and worse, they become hangry. Once you become hangry, it's going to be very hard to maintain any type of diet. So making sure that you optimize the drop in calories via the most nutrient-dense foods you possibly can, the better this whole experience becomes. If you're able to function with the calories you're consuming, if you've only got so many calories to work with, it only makes sense to consume the most nutrient-dense sources of foods, in my opinion. Like if I've only got so many calories to work with, I'd rather be filling that void with foods that my body can metabolize and use and perform with, as opposed to those macho chimichangas from the grocery store. Now this is an AI-generated picture of refeeds. So refeeds are interesting because a lot of people think refeed, they just think like a free-for-all, all-you-can-eat food fest. And that's not really what you want to think of when you think of refeeds. Refeeds are great in the context of a decrease in caloric intake because they allow a temporary bump in food, which is going to have a corresponding increase in metabolic rate. From a psychological standpoint, it makes dealing with that decreased intake much more sustainable. But I typically only increase fats and proteins, I only increase fats and proteins. Like a lot of competitors will have these carb-up days. And again, I haven't had carbs in 10 years. So you can benefit from strategic periods of refeeding via a bolus dose of fat and protein. This is a picture of me during one of my peak weeks. This is peak week if you're a competitor, again, when you're getting ready to step on stage, or typically on Saturday. And I'll manipulate my electrolytes slightly, I'll manipulate the distribution of fats and proteins in my diet. I'll have that refeed and I'll peak healthfully. A lot of competitors will have these carb loads, they'll cut water, they'll dehydrate, they'll have a sodium load. I've stepped on stage with competitors who trained for months and then literally could not compete on show day because they were cramping so bad due to improper electrolyte and fluid manipulations. You don't want to do that. All those variables get removed from the equation when you have no carbs coming in to provide noise to the equation. Now, if you're not a competitor, how does having a peak week apply to you? Think of a peak week as if you want to lose weight for a wedding, if you want to get dialed in for a photo shoot, if you want to look the best you can for a vacation. You have to have a finite end to your strategized fat loss phase or else you are going to become victim of constantly, chronically dieting. So whether you are a competitor that steps on stage or not, think of this as your peak week. Figure out that date on the calendar where you will decide, okay, I'm transitioning from a fat loss phase to a building phase and then hold yourself to it. Reverse dieting. So this is when people really go off the rails here. I gained 24 pounds in 24 hours after my first competition because I went to Red Lobster and ate a lot of food and it totally wrecked me and that's kind of where all those eating disorders came in. A lot of people don't reverse diet properly because they don't know how to do it. You know, if you've been chronically under eating the majority of your life and in doing so have down-regulated your metabolic rate, you have hindered your training stability, which in turn is going to mean you are losing lean tissue, you become catabolic. You have to reverse diet out of that. You have to improve your hormone function and you do that by eating more food. There's like this negative connotation with eating more and higher calories, but think of that as fuel. You only got so much fuel in your tank and if you are constantly limiting what your body has coming in, you can't possibly function at your highest self. So reverse dieting and bringing that food intake back up to a healthy sustainable level is key. Baseline to beyond is basically where you transition to a caloric surplus. Again, kind of going back to what I said earlier, in order to optimize lean tissue building, you need to be eating more than you're expending and that's going to come at the cost of some body fat. That's okay. I could not maintain 3.9% body fat indefinitely. I'm typically at about 16-17%, about what I am right now. This is my typical walking around weight and body fat. I am way healthier now than when I was at 3.9% body fat. My hormones are significantly better. When I got down to 3.9% body fat, all with the ketogenic approach, I'm 30, I was 32 years old at the time. My total testosterone, 83, 83. I don't know why my wife stayed with me. But it's not healthy. Cholesterol is a precursor for testosterone and if you don't have enough food coming, if you don't have enough fuel coming in, if you don't have a healthy amount of adipose tissue on your brain, your hormones, your metabolism, your caloric baseline all takes a hit. And the vast majority of my clients are middle-aged women who never plan on competing but have been chronically under eating for the past 30 years of their life. And that, ladies and gents, is a recipe for disaster. So when you transition to a surplus, it is hard psychologically to see the scale weight going up, to see your, you know, abs diminished, to see things start to get a little bit more curvature than you're comfortable with. But if you are looking at performance metrics, if you are seeing your resistance training improve, if you are seeing the numbers that you're pushing in the gym get better, then that kind of like eases that bloat because you know you're getting better. However, I spend more time in a building phase than I do in a fat loss phase because it takes longer to build muscle than it takes to lose fat. Again, muscle is our longevity organ. So if you can see improvements taking place there with the building phase, then you're going to be in a much better spot to transition to a fat loss phase at some point in the future and you're going to have more calories to work with. So I've kind of dabbled a little bit in AI, not much at all. To me, it's just a bunch of aliens. But I had a team that I signed up with and basically I started looking at all the issues that I see with people, problems they have, not wanting to hit certain macro goals. So I made this AI that's based off of all of my ketogenic content, my 700 plus podcasts, my book, my YouTube videos, everything that I've done and all of the prompts of the AI help people answer those common questions. It provides a dashboard for people to track things. Some people are incredibly hesitant to look at data, to track macros, to enter their weight, to step on the scale. And I get it. It sometimes can be very concerning. That is all just data. Don't look at data as either good or bad, just simply look at it as a number of data. But if you can graph that out, if you can see and understand trend lines, then you can make actionable decisions based off of what that data is telling you. And that is coming from a much better place of confidence and security and knowledge. So I would encourage all of you to start tracking these metrics. And if you're eating a standard American diet now, which I don't think any of us are, but you can totally improve your health eating intuitively, like somebody spoke about earlier today, eating a ketogenic carnivore, primarily fat and protein diet. But if you're wanting to take it to the next level and bust through a plateau, what can be measured can be managed. Another thing is this community. So I built out a community on my site that basically allows people to come together that have similar goals, that want to work together, that want to get better and be there as a support point. Because like I said, with those family slides, if you've got people that are constantly inundating you with negativity, your likelihood of adhering to anything long term is significantly reduced. So having the people in your corner that care for you for the right reasons is key, which is why I'm so excited about this community that we built. And then I built this course that literally just launched about a month ago, that takes all of the tactics that I've kind of alluded to today, and put it out into 150, almost 200 videos, a very, you know, descriptive how to. So I've just told you the strategy of the seven phases. This is all about the tactics, like how to implement those. And again, this is like almost 200 videos. All of that's on KetoBodybuilding.com. That's where you can find me, KetoSavage, KetoBodybuilding.com, but I've intentionally tried to be really quick with this so I can open it up for Q&A because I want to have dedicated Q&A time, especially when it comes to reverse dieting, because again, y'all are my primary demographic of people that need and would benefit from reverse dieting. So with that said, let me open up some questions. Anybody got any questions? I'm sorry. Arkansas. Yep. I actually was born in Minnesota, but my dad couldn't stand the thought of me being born a Yankee. So when I was born, he went to my family farm in Arkansas, shoveled up a bunch of dirt, brought that back to Minnesota. So when I was born, I was literally placed on a pillow of southern soil. Yeah. Pretty crazy. Don't forget, we have Q&A at the end too, a lot of our speakers, but who else has a question so I can give you the mic? No questions. Come on. There we go. What you got? So with the reverse dieting, so speaking from my personal experience and having tracked calories for a gazillion years, in the recent past, I've decided to not track anymore and eat more. Good. But I don't know now at what level I am. I know the last time I tracked before I stopped tracking, I was, you know, getting like 1800 to 2000 calories and I panicked because I was like, oh my God, 2000 calories is, you know, maintenance and now I'm never going to lose weight again. And I haven't lost any weight in a long time. So now I'm terrified of even the concept of reverse dieting. Okay, so I like to see all of my female clients being able to maintain a healthy weight in competition north of 2000 calories. I've got one female client right now that's eating 3500 calories a day and maintaining like 20% body fat and looks phenomenal. I'll use myself as an example. So my maintenance is about 3000 calories. When I cut down for competition, I get as low as about 1700. If I was to try and stay at 1700 for a length of time, my metabolism would down regulate to that amount and for me to get any leaner, I have to go into even lower and then at that point my hormones are tanked. I don't want to be at 83 total testosterone for long. So now I've bumped that back up and I had a period of time after my competitions where I got as high as like 6000, 8000 calorie days for a few times. But my body handles that fairly well. I did get higher in weight than I am right now. I kind of peaked at about 200 pounds and I'm kind of settling down at around 185 or so. But for females, the same thing applies again whether you're male or female. You have to have a period of surplus. So for you, try and push it up to like 2500 calories. But if you're doing that in tandem with weight training, then you're going to basically partition how those calories are being used. Rather than adding a bunch of unnecessary body fat tissue, you're going to primarily be going towards lean tissue. And that's what you want. If your strength markers are improving, if you're able to implement progressive overload with your training, give your body more stimulus and reason to add more tissue, it will. The more muscle you have, the more metabolic rate you have to work with. So then when you transition to a fat loss phase at some point in the future, you shouldn't have to take your calories as low to allow you to get even leaner. So don't chronically restrict. So many people are constantly in a fat loss phase or maintenance. But again, maintenance is a myth. People need to spend more time in a surplus than a fat loss phase. I did five shows last year. I won't compete again until probably four or five years from now because I need to spend more time building lean tissue so that when I do lean down, I look and feel and function better than I did the last time. So don't get stuck in this constant restrict, restrict, restrict type that's only going to come back and bite you in the butt. What you got? I'm coming over. I have a question. You said something about protein, eating too much protein at one time. Or can you explain that a little bit? Yeah. So again, I've kind of got myself in trouble in some circles because they're just all giving protein a halo right now. And protein is incredibly important. I would not ever recommend people eat deficient amounts of protein. But if you're trying to optimize for fat metabolism and you've only got so many calories to work with, and that's pretty much going to have to either come from fat or protein. And if you're taking in too much protein relative to dietary fat, then you're not going to have efficient energy sources to fuel your training, which is going to preserve your lean tissue and therefore your metabolic rate. So that's why I typically start people with a higher fat ratio, lower protein, get them more deeply fat adapted because our bodies are very smart. They're going to make the most use of the substrates we provide them. So if we're giving our body carbohydrates, they're going to become glucose dependent. If we're giving our bodies just a ton of protein at the expense of an ample dietary fat, then it will inefficiently create glucose through gluconeogenesis. If you give your body ample dietary fat, then your body is going to prioritize fat metabolism and ketone production. So I'll start people high fat ratio, lower protein, not unnecessarily low, but lower, and then I'll increase their protein until they start to exhibit signs of GI distress, brain fog, massive reductions in ketone production, increased blood glucose, things of that nature that would suggest to me that they've reached their personal threshold. And then from there, I taper both fat and protein further. What else we got? Anything else? Yes, sir. Coming. For those of us who don't aspire to be on a stage, do you still recommend some kind of cycling? I mean, you're in a hundred percent, a four year building phase, but we're not, nobody's going to cut down to the level that you are, but some kind of a cycle. Yeah. The thing is like I'm taking it to the nth degree as an extremist trying to become the cleanest man on planet earth. And I did that, but that's not what the vast majority of people are trying to do, but I'm still a human being. And these principles apply to all human beings, whether you step on stage or not, you don't have to take it as low as that body fat percentage, but whether you are male or female, you will benefit tremendously by giving your body time in a caloric surplus and prioritizing lean mass gain during that cycle, that cycle, and then transitioning to a fat loss phase in which you were at a deficit. There's so much benefit to be had in, in having this modulation approach. Body benefits for certain things when it's in surplus and benefits from certain things when it's in deficit. Maintenance is a myth. So do both and do so at like a healthy revolution between the two, ideally more time in a surplus than a deficit, because again, it's harder to build more muscle than it is to lose fat. But if you prioritize that, your ability to lose fat is going to be significantly improved. The problem is people don't ever give themselves time in a surplus. They're just kind of playing around at zero. And then when they drop into a deficit, their body is hesitant to improve, hesitant to lose fat, hesitant to preserve muscle, because you haven't spent that time in the surplus. There's a perfect yin-yang relationship there. The better you are in one, the more the other will improve and vice versa. Anything else? One more, we got it. What you got? You were talking about lifting or, you know, building muscle and stuff. So you briefly mentioned cardio, which is what we're all told to do. And I personally don't like cardio just because I don't like repetitive movement. But I do, for example, really enjoy my water aerobics class. I don't know which one that qualifies as. And do I need to then also do lifting or does something like that work? Everybody would benefit from lifting. Everybody would benefit from resistance training. You know, and that can look different for different people. Like maybe resistance training to you is going to the farm and picking up 50 pound bags of dog food and doing whatever. But like everybody would benefit from resistance training. Resistance training provides a stimulus to the body that gives it reason to build and preserve boiling tissue. As far as cardio goes, I like to treat cardio as a minimum viable dose. When I'm trying to change my body's composition, lose body fat, build muscle, I'll manipulate cardio as kind of like one lever to pull, especially if most of my manipulations are coming from nutritional changes and my body starts to plateau a little bit, I'll increase cardio slightly to kind of just urge it to, you know, lose more fat. But I treat it as a minimum viable dose. I got down to 3.9% body fat doing one or two 20-minute sessions of cardio a week on the stairmaster. I never do more than 20 minutes at a time, 25 tops. And it's never more than just one or twice, once or twice during the week. I'll do cardio more so just because it's like a psychological form of meditation for me. Like that is where I'm using my cardio. It does improve cardiovascular health and fitness, so you don't want to be doing a set of squats and be so out of breath because you're so cardiovascularly unhealthy that you can't optimize for that set of squats from a resistance standpoint. But always prioritize resistance training over cardio from any type of body composition change standpoint. You're going to burn more calories, build more muscle, improve your metabolic rate, improve your hormone function, increase testosterone, all those things much more so from resistance training than you ever will cardio. But I'm 47 and we're looking at the long, the big picture. And like I said, I raised my hand for things that I've done when I was younger. So my question is, a little bit of information sometimes is overwhelming too much, but your resting heart rate, what is your resting heart rate if you don't do a lot of cardio? And then how does that fall into the big picture of longevity because my understanding is the better resting heart rate you have because you're making your heart work, the better it is for longevity if you're not doing a lot of, not cardio per se, but like the gentleman before you said that he's sprinting, right? So that's cardio. So what is your resting heart rate and where do two people that are keto people, how would you two argue that out or would it be the same argument? So my resting heart rate is typically like, I think I've clocked it as low as like 35. That's crazy if you're not doing cardio. Yeah. Like I'll go to the doctor to get like a checkup on occasion and they'll put the thing in my heart and they're like, are you still alive right now? You know? So yeah, it's typically like 45 to 50, but like I've seen it as low as 35. So my resting heart rate is good and I still will do a little bit of cardio. Like I like trail runs. I'll do like a mile trail run from time to time. I want to be cardiovascularly fit, but I'm not leaning on cardio to change my composition per se. That all comes from the weight training. And if you're doing, you know, sets of 10 with barbell lunges across the gym with weight, like that's kind of cardio too. Like you get, you get, you get working pretty good with that. So I would definitely do some cardio and that could simply be taking the dogs for a walk and walk around the neighborhood or going on a trail run or whatever the case may be like make cardio the enjoyable thing you look forward to. I would never recommend people go on a treadmill and walk for three hours. What's that? Yeah. Something's been bothering me for years. Can you describe the difference between just being in prolonged nutritional ketosis and being fat adapted? Because I figure I don't eat really extra carbs at all and I'm in ketosis a lot of the time. So when I am burning energy, exercising or just living, what's the difference between being fat adapted and just being in ketosis once in a while or prolonged? So there are times, especially when I'm eating more food, when I'm eating at a caloric surplus, my ketone production drops down quite a bit because I am burning less endogenous stored adipose tissue. As you burn more body fat, that's going to increase ketone production. You're going to see higher circulating blood ketone levels. So when I'm in a surplus, my ketones oftentimes drop below 0.5 millimolar. However, I feel amazing and I'm not eating carbohydrates. So it's obvious to me that my body is still metabolizing fat, whether dietary or stored fat or fuel. If you are not eating carbs and you feel great and you've been following this way of living for quite some time, then you are fat adapted. You don't have to worry and fixate so much on what the ketone reading says. So there are some people, I think Ben's going to talk about cycling. I'm not sure. I don't know exactly what his presentation is, but I'm kind of one that is, you know, your body is going to make the most of what you give it. And I've been strict keto for 10 years because I believe that my performance, my health, my overall well-being improves with the greater amount of time that I spend doing something that I optimize for. So there are some people that are jack of all trades, master of none. And some people that are specialists that are mastering their craft. And I believe that from a physiological standpoint, if you are giving your body fats and proteins without, you know, carbohydrates or other fuel substrates, your body's ability to metabolize fat becomes improved over time. So just speaking from anecdotal experience, in the 10 years I've been doing strict keto, my performance has only improved in that time. And if I was to worry, be worried about metabolic flexibility, which is a question I get often, hey, if you've been strict keto for 10 years, your body's probably not going to be metabolically flexible and you wouldn't be able to metabolize glucose if it came in. The reality is if I was to eat a bunch of cookies right now, not Maria's cookies, but normal cookies, then my body would be able to metabolize that glucose. Like I would have some reverse keto flu symptoms for maybe 24 hours, but your body doesn't forget how to metabolize glucose. I'm out of time, ladies and gents. Appreciate y'all. Yeah. Give Robert a round of applause.