Is 30 Bananas A Day Healthy? The Official Ben Greenfield DurianRider Interview

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield here and I am with Harley Johnstone, aka Dorian Ryder, aka the 30 bananas a day guy. And today we're going to talk all about Harley, about the 30 bananas a day diet and everything they're in. So, Dorian, thanks for coming on the call, man.

Thanks for having me, mate.

So now the audience. I think some people in the audience might be familiar with you and your story, but I'd love to hear your story and kind of your background. So tell me a little bit about yourself and your background and what kind of brought you to the point where you started eating. I guess what's basically like a low fat raw vegan diet. You know how you became to be known as the 30 bananas a day guy?

Yeah, basically started when I was a kid, just really sick with like asthma, Crohn's disease, bad mood, bad sleep and insomnia, chronic fatigue, just, just really failing to thrive as a kid. In and out of hospital, getting drugged up all the time, always digestive issues, just feeling really bad, but always wanting to be. Always admiring the kids at school who are fit and vital and had endless energy and always want to be one of those kids but just never could be because when you're sick you've got no energy and just got into teenage years, things got worse and then started getting the drugs and usual teenage stuff in my sort of hometown. And then when I moved out of home, just started riding a bike for transport because I had no other way of getting around. Couldn't afford the buses and didn't have enough money to buy a car. Then you started meeting cyclists and learning a bit about diet and things like that. I just sort of stumbled into the vegan lifestyle when I hit rock bottom and went, went from there.

Gotcha. Gotcha. So, so when you, when you kind of hit rock bottom, what was it that that kind of pulled you out of rock bottom? Like, what kind of changes did you make? Or did you, did you like read books or did you just, or did you just kind of start eating the way that you eat now?

I was just basically really poor student and all I could afford was like rice and tuna and cereal and I wouldn't even drink milk that much because fruit juice is a little bit cheaper. So I would have milk occasionally, but I sort of just started changing my diet just by default, not really by choice, and just started to feel a little bit better. And then I'd get more money and I'd buy more meat and stuff like that and I'd feel worse. I just started playing with diet a lot and just tweaking it and just eventually started to actually make the conclusion of what I put in my mouth is based on how I want to feel. And that was pretty. A lot of us can relate now, but back then that was like, I never understood that what you eat determines how you feel. And I didn't learn about glycogen or carbohydrates really. I just sort of stumbled across that. And then eventually some, some, you know, well known cyclists, I said, yeah, you got to get your carbs in, blah, blah, blah, went from there.

Yeah.

So basically, yeah, I just got really sick in year 2000, 2001, and I was like, well, I've got to do something, I've got to take some bigger changes. And that's where I went from. So.

So where'd you go from there?

That's when I went vegan was April 2001. I was really sick, had like glandular, sort of chronic fatigue. Just, just really. I would have a bit of fitness for a few months and then I'd get burned out and just getting fevers and I was just really like, just so frustrated. You know, I'd train really good on the bike and get sick and burn out. I'm just like, you know, I was just so frustrated, you know, especially in summertime, getting sick and weather's perfect, everyone's out riding. I just, I just got sick and tired of being sick and tired and then went vegan.

Yeah, so. So when you went vegan, what, what did you do first? Did you just start to eat plants and fruits and vegetables or did you have like a specific diet that you followed?

I was eating a lot of rice already because rice is just so cheap.

Right.

And all the cyclists locally that were better than me were just loading up on the rice. That was sort of back before gluten free was a bit of a trend, like it is now. I just cut out the tuna and chicken I was eating and switched from milk to sort of soy milk and 100% no dairy. And straight away my asthma just went away. And I remember the first day I went out riding, I was like, man, something just feels different today. And I'd ridden the same hill for hundreds of times and I said to my friend at the time, I can just breathe better today, man. Something's going on. It's this diet. He goes, it's nothing to do with your diet, mate. It's just, I don't know what it is, but it's nothing to do with diet. And I thought, yep, in my head I thought, you're wrong, man. It is because I've ridden this hill all the time and today was the easiest time ever. So I just started feeling better.

Yeah, yeah. It is pretty amazing like how quickly you can see diet changes make a difference in the way that you perform. Like one of my boys used to have exercise induced asthma playing soccer, you know, like three and four year old soccer league. And we actually cut like commercial dairy like milk out of his diet and within a week his exercise induced asthma symptoms went away because he wasn't dealing well with the protein allergens in commercial dairy. So it is pretty amazing the link there. So when did you. So 12 years ago at the time of this recording, you started to make those changes. So how did you, how did you make the conversion into kind of becoming known as the 30 bananas a day guy? Because at some point, I mean, you know, you've got a pretty big following on the Internet and you know, now you do a lot of videos. Like how did that, how did all that come about?

Just I got into in the raw foods lifestyle, fruits mainly. In 2002 we were coming back from a training ride and there's just mangoes on the table and I'm like, man, I'm just so hungry. I can't be bothered cooking any rice. I'm just going to eat these mangoes. And I ate like five or six mangoes. I just felt so good afterwards. And my girlfriend at times like, did you eat all the bloody mangoes? And I was like, yeah, I did man, I feel really good. And I just felt just. I was like, wow. Like, yeah, we're meant to eat a lot of fruit, you know, and then went from there. And then I read a book about raw foods and then just went more crazy into that. And then we got the social media thing, YouTube and all Facebook started up in 2008 for us. We're pretty sort of late in the train there, but let's just help get our message out there. And I like YouTube because it's a great community where you can share your opinions and experiences and it's awesome. Anyone can do YouTube videos now. The Technology is accessible. When I first started doing YouTube videos, I would upload it from the local library. I didn't even have enough money to own a computer. I was just uploading from my little $100 Pentax camera from the local library.

Basically, yeah. And your website literally is now30bananasaday.com right?

Correct. Yes, correct.

So do you actually eat 30 bananas in a day?

I just had about 22 bananas in for lunch.

So yeah, actually that, that, that's kind of like. Let's go here. Walk me through a typical day of eating for you.

Typical day. Let's go. Today, woke up, always have a quart of water. And then I went out for easy two hour ride just talking with friends on the same loop I normally do up north and summit. Came back, had a, another liter of water and then I should have had 10 dates with me on that ride. So up to 2 liters of water now, 10 dates. I had a banana smoothie. Just saying 22 bananas with a cup of organic coconut sugar.

Do you blend them or do you just eat them?

Yeah, blended with water and then you.

Put a cup of, a cup of.

Sugar on them, A couple of organic coconut sugar on top with that smoothie just make a bit sweeter because bananas in Australia, pretty low sugar content. They're not the sweetest things, are they.

Are they the, the little, the little baby bananas or like a, like a gen, like a normal sized banana?

Yeah, normal size. Cavendish.

Gotcha.

Okay, and then tonight I'll have probably 15 to 20 dates blended with water and maybe a head of lettuce for dinner. I've got a race tomorrow. So tonight today's like no sodium intake really. Just so I can stay a bit lighter for the hill climb tomorrow and that'll be it. And then go to bed. Trying to bed early. Eight, nine o'. Clock.

That's interesting. So you, so you go low sodium the day before the race. Do you, do you take electrolytes during the actual race or like sodium load during the race?

No, I never do that. I find I've tried doing that but for me like in 24 hour races and stuff, it just made me cramp up and I just hold too much water on my body and then hit the climbs and you're carrying extra, you know, five pounds per lap on the climb and a 20 race adds up.

What's your race?

That was tomorrow is the state Jurasson championships. Okay, so it's a 10k run, 40k ride, 5k run.

Nice, nice. So you actually and some people listening in might not be aware of this, but you go out and compete, right?

Yeah, I used to race in Europe many years ago. I do compete locally, compete more in Strava these days. It's getting pretty hot, right. In our state. Strava is like, you get some Olympic level riders coming out and hitting it.

So, right.

If you do on the Strava in Adelaide, you're doing all right.

So do you also, you know, based off of you walking me through what you eat on it on a typical day, do you also take supplements to cover up some of the holes in your dietary intake from eating like bananas, Bananas and coconut, sugar and dates? Like, are you using, you know, amino acids or like vitamin D or vitamin B12 or anything like that? Like, do you actually use supplements?

I used to use a lot of supplements when I worked in the gym industry back in the late 90s. I worked as a personal trainer and I was on the whey protein and the multivitamins and the creatine and carnitine, ornithine, leucine. I was on all the. All the aminos and stuff. When I went vegan, I stopped all that, though. The only supplement I took as a vegan has been vitamin B12, but I used to take that anyway as a meat eater. So I don't take any supplements that I didn't take as a meat eater, but as a vegan, I cut out all the supplements I did take as a meat eater. So I cut out the protein powders, I cut out the carnitine, tyrosine, leucine, ornithine, all those amino acids, cut them out, cut out the iron supplements I used to take. I cut out the vitamin C I used to take. I cut out the caffeine I used to take. So only supplement, strictly objectively, I take is vitamin B12. I've been taking that for a long, long time.

Interesting, interesting.

I did a period without taking it. My hemoglobin levels dropped a bit, so I started back on it again.

Yeah, I actually wanted to ask you a little bit about, like, your. Your blood work and how you test that and stuff. But first I wanted to. I wanted to ask you about kind of the big elephant in the room here. And that is how on earth does your digestive system, like, handle that much fiber every day? Are you just like, do you have to go to the bathroom all the time or what exactly happens?

It's pretty good because I used to have Crohn's disease, so I'm used to what loose stools feel like and digestive pain feels like with the fruit, it's incredible. You're basically just crapping out fruit sorbet. There's no strand, there's no busting a hemorrhoid or whatever. It's just you like you're crapping like a fruit bait. You're crapping like a bear in berry season. So basically two or three times a day, pop out some fruit smoothie, full fruit sorbet. It's great. I just, and that's as an athlete, it's great because I have less weight in my colon because the fruits passing through, you know, every 812 hours. But when I was eating, that standard diet sits in there a lot longer because it takes a few days to process all the meat and stuff. So then you carry an extra few pounds, which probably doesn't matter for most people. But when you're trying to be up the front, extra few pounds can definitely be a hindrance, especially as involved. So digestion's perfect. Two or three times a day, wake up clockwork, boom. It feels really good.

Well, that's what I'm curious about, because if you look at a gorilla or an ape or a chimp or whatever, they've got these colons that, that are enormous and that can absorb literally like 5, 10 times the amount of fiber as a human can in terms of being able to digest all that plant cellulose and turn it into these short chain fatty acids that can be used as a fuel. In the case of a human, a lot of that fiber ends up being indigestible just because it overloads the small colon of a human. And so that's what I'm curious about is how that actually jives from a digestive standp. You know, if you actually have had to get used to it over time or if the body adapted over time or what you kind of experienced personally without being able to digest, you know, technically as much fiber as like a gorilla or an ape or say like, you know, even like a ruminant with their four chamber stomachs and everything they have for fiber.

That's why I don't eat much greens, because all those animals you mentioned, gorillas, ruminants, cows, bison, they're mostly come from greens, which if you're trying to eat greens, you wouldn't get enough calories and all that. You're right. All that indigestible fiber, it's a bit too much. So we try and focus on the fruits and fruits is mainly soluble fiber and it just works a lot better. But if you Eat a lot of grains, it's going to be tough. You're right. You're going to be bloated as heck and you don't get enough carbohydrate calories, they'd be fading.

So you don't do a lot of kale, spinach, dark leafy greens, stuff like non hemi based forms of iron?

No, I really stay away from the kale. I mean if someone made me a cow and said he has a cup of this, I drink it. But I haven't bought kale for probably seven years and same with my girlfriend freely. So we will eat it if someone offers us a smoothie, but we will not purchase it. When I make smoothie, 99% of the time it's just fruit sugars occasionally put in romaine lettuce.

Right. What are your primary sources of iron and ferritin and stuff like that?

Fruits.

You just basically just, just load up with fruit.

Yeah. And if you get enough calories from fruit, you'll get enough. You get, you definitely get your iron in there. Yeah, I try and my body really stores iron really well based on my blood test. So I used to be iron deficient back in 2000 and now I'm a blood test I put up on YouTube. Iron's always good, so I'll keep an eye on it. Iron is very important if you're an endurance athlete.

Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So, so let's talk about, you know, talking about blood work and stuff like that. Let's talk about deficiencies that you typically see pop up over and over again. When we're talking about vegan or vegetarian diets, you've got things like B12 and then your fat soluble vitamins like vitamin A and vitamin D and then some of these ones that kind of fly under the radar like creatine or vitamin K2 or choline, stuff like that. I mean the list goes on and on. Your personal blood work, do you show deficiencies of any of those things?

No, that's why I put my blood tests up because I want people to understand. You know, I've been doing this for over a decade now and I can look at my blood test, they're legit, not from a naturopath but actually from a clinical laboratory. Standard gp doctor. Yeah, I, I have no deficiencies and the only supplement take is vitamin B12. All my friends I race with, they, you know, pretty standard Aussie diet meat and stuff, but they're all on the protein shake and the, someone take the choline supplements and the K2 and stuff like that, but I don't take any of that stuff.

What's your, you know, like, like vitamin D for example, like on the diet that you described to me with bananas and coconut sugar and dates. That's like pretty much like 0% of your daily vitamin D intake. What's your vitamin D at? Like do you look at 25 hydroxy vitamin D?

I don't take any of that. But if you look at my vitamin D on my blood test on YouTube, it's always good. If anyone googles up vegan blood tests, they'll see mine come up on YouTube and the D is always good there. I try and just get sun.

I'm just pulling it up so I can put it in the show notes. For those of you listening in, by the way, anytime Dorian and I are talking about something, I'll be sure and put links in the show notes. Do you know what your vitamin D was actually at or.

Let me have a look. If I can quickly see. Am I downloading? That's always good though because I'm always getting the sun pathology. Let me have a look. Now I don't have a test in front of me. Let me see if this one's on there. Yeah.

One of the main reasons I ask is like the sun typically needs higher levels of cholesterol in order to convert the vitamin D from the diet into the usable form of 25 hydroxy. So I was just curious if on your blood work you've noticed anything because they actually make vegan sources of vitamin D3. I know vitashine has one source of life has one. That's something that when I'm working with vegan athletes, I always have them use a vitamin D3 supplement.

Yeah, I've looked into vitamin D, but because my level's always so good, I was like, I don't need to take that.

Well, I'll put a. If we can't find it right now, that's fine. I'll put a link to the video in the show notes because I see it here. Is it the one that's titled 12 Year Vegan Blood Test Results?

Could be that one. I've boxed up about seven.

I'll find it. I'll find it. For those of you listening in, I'll put a link to it in the show notes for vitamin D. What about things along the lines of like other fat soluble vitamins like vitamin A and vitamin K? Like if you look at primarily like fruit based diets, those tend to be really low too. Have you had those blood tested or do you supplement with anything like that, like a fat based vitamin or are you concerned at all about levels of those?

Vitamin A is always good because I get my beta carotene in and the body makes the, the retinol from that vitamin K2. There's currently not a test in Australia for vitamin K2. Vitamin K is found in all your fruits and veg and your body makes K2 from that vitamin K. I've looked at the vitamin K supplements just out of curiosity what they're made out of. And most of them are made out of natto which is soybean. Yeah, they're actually a vegan supplement.

Yeah, that's pretty much the chief source of K2. That's actually what we do at our houses is we buy soybean and we ferment it. We just basically eat natto which is like snot essentially. But yeah, that's another one that I was really curious about. In terms of your blood levels. If you're able to maintain adequate blood levels of vitamin K2 just for, well primarily for athletes. The big concern is skeletal system like eventual wearing down a bone density if there's not adequate vitamin K2.

As well. But there's just not a test in Australia. Yeah, okay.

Too at the moment it's, it's, it's, it's actually kind of tough to test for. But it's definitely, it's, it's like up there with vitamin D3 like for, for vegan athletes, vegan source of vitamin D3. And then like getting natto into the diet obviously because that's a, that's a vegan source. You know you can, you can get it, it's, it's pretty abundant in like dark leafy greens. But then you get to that whole, you get to the whole issue with the gorilla deal. It's like our colons just simply aren't big enough a lot of times to deal with the amount of dark leafy greens we'd have to eat to get adequate vitamin K2. So you know, you gotta either eat natto and grass fed butter or else supplement with K2 in many cases to get it up there. So it's interesting stuff. So what about a couple of other things I wanted to ask you about was amino acids like you, you get a pretty decent level of amino acids. You know, if you put together like all the amounts of, of fruits and stuff that you're eating. But for an athlete they're kind of like borderline levels of amino acids. Like what do you, what do you do as far as like, you know, like muscle building blocks, amino acids, neurotransmitter building blocks, stuff like that. When it comes to adequate amino acid intake, it's crazy, isn't it?

Because like I'm the guy, I won over 30 running races last year in Australia, Thailand, New York, and I'm the kind of guy on the start line who takes in the least protein. So I'm, I'm bewildered. I don't even know how it works. I mean, I'm like eating 20, 30 grams, 40 grams of protein a day and just busting out these crazy times and hardly any training. It's, I think with protein that I try and go as little as possible because my goal as endurance athlete is to have a lower body mass index as possible because you're trying to keep.

Yourself just basically like as skinny and lean as possible.

Skinny as possible, yeah, as lean as possible.

So that was actually, that was one of my issues was I ate, I used to be a bodybuilder and I made the switch into endurance sports and I went raw vegan for about six months and call me vain or whatever, but I lost, you know, I lost my guns and, and you know, my, like, I lost like, like almost 20 pounds of muscle very quickly on that. So for you, you're basically kind of just, just like using that as like a power to weight ratio advantage?

Yeah, big time. I want my fasting insulin levels really low. I want my insulin growth factor levels really low, minimal, yet sufficient. Because what I found, I used to do protein powders as well back in the day, but they just, you wait, you put on so much mass so quickly and as a cyclist and runners it's detrimental. So I stay away. I try and keep low protein because the more protein, the little studies out there say that your insulin growth factor goes up. When that goes up, your mass goes up. When insulin goes up, your mass goes up. So you're going to weigh more. That's why all the bodybuilders, professional ones, they do, they shoot up insulin or they take insulin growth factor hormone as well, which we don't recommend obviously, but that's what they do.

Now are you like, when we, when we look at things that go above and beyond muscle, like, like the fact that amino acids and especially fatty acids, which, which you've got, you know, a fairly low intake of and you know that again, like, like the human body just isn't really designed to convert that amount of fiber into short chain fatty acids. Do you get concerned about your nervous system? I mean, when you look at stuff like taurine, you know, like that's an amino acid that you only find in animal foods and used for brain development. Or you look at, you know, the other essential amino acids or you look at, you know, for example, like fatty acids. I mean you can get them from stuff like flax and things of that nature, but you've got like 3% conversion into the actual usable essential fatty acids by the body. Do you get concerned about long term effects on your brain or your nervous system?

I used to, I worked out that the body actually makes taurine. A lot of the essential, all the essential amino acids we need are found in whole plant foods. So all we have to do is just get enough calories each day from whole plant foods and you'll be covered with all the amino acids, all the essential ones anyway, and things like taurine, tyrosine and that your body makes them from other amino acids. So I actually used to supplement taurine as a meat eater when I worked in the gym and Red Bull's full of taurine and that's it. But again, I don't drink Red Bull, so Taurine one is just, that's produced by the human body. As a popular supplement though, I'd make sure I get a lot of sleep and get a lot of carbohydrate and I don't use caffeine because when I used to use caffeine it's easy to over train and by being 100 stimulant free, I like to just get in touch with my body. I use a power meter on my bike and always monitor my weight and make sure and my blood tests make sure everything's going good. And as soon as I get signs of overtraining, I just back it right off. Mm.

Yeah. Now as far as as like, like fatty acids are concerned, what do you do as far as those go?

Again, they're all friendly fruits and vegetables. So if you get enough fruit and veg, you get enough essential fatty acids like omega 3. Yeah.

The actual conversion though is really low. I mean they've done like radioisotope studies where they've looked at, at ala, like labeled with radioisotopes. And you know, when you look at the actual EPA and DHA that the ALA gets converted into from plant based foods, it's just, it's super duper low. And that's again like another concern that I have with especially like the vegan diet is the EPA and DHA are so, so essential for your brain and your nervous system. I get concerned about long term effects on, on the nervous system. I guess like the way that, that I've kind of, kind of hurdled this with the vegans that I've worked with is we'll do things like algae forms of essential amino acids which, which kind of sort of gives you a decent amount like doing seaweed and stuff like that. But do you ever, do you ever experiment with like algae nori, you know, like, like kelp, dse, you know, stuff like that. Spirulina, chlorella.

Occasionally I eat seaweed. Again, fatty acid conversion. Dhapa body does convert that from the omega 3s. Etc. 6 nines, 12s, 15s.

Yeah, it's just so incomplete though.

I mean it's, it is again like all the scientists out there say it's really important, but there's no actual clinical tests in Australia for EPA or dha.

Yeah, we should, we should look into, I, I could actually look into it for you. We should look into whether you could get like an omega 3. The omega 3 omega 6 index test is a really good one. There's also one that'll look into your fatty acid ratios. So what I, I do my testing with a company up here in the US called Wellness fx. So they have like a performance panel and I do that three to four times a year and they'll test fatty acids. So I, I know that we can get it here in the US I'm writing a note to myself because I'm gonna, I'll look into it for you and see if we could find it out because that'd be really interesting to see. And that'd be another thing. I'd love to find out what your fatty acids are like just because that's, you know, from a performance standpoint, like I think it's one of those deals where you can perform pretty well even if you've got low or borderline levels of fatty acids or even amino acids. The trick is though, like when it comes to neurotransmitter production from fatty acids or when it comes to brain and nervous system health or neurotransmitter production from amino acids and brain and nervous system health from fatty acids, it's like I get concerned about just long term health effects when it comes to that stuff. And short term performance I think is definitely doable on a diet like the one that you're on. But I think that you do have to be concerned about the potential long term effects on your nervous system.

What does it take for DHA in that?

So DHA and epa, there's some pretty good spirulina and chlorella sources out there. So one really good way to do it is there are chewable tablets you can use. There's one company called Energy Bits. I have no clue what the shipping cost to Australia or if they have like an Australian distributor or whatever, but they sell chlorella and spirulina in like.

DHA tablets in Australia pretty easily. But what do you take personally?

Yeah, I personally, I, I personally use, I use energy. I use energy bits and then I use recovery bits. And then of course, like, I'm. I'm not vegan, so I'll. I actually eat fish, which is a really, really good source to get your, your, your really, really usable epa. And I actually, I try and convince most of the vegans that I work with to go like Pesca for that reason. But algae is really the best way to do it. You cook it both. So I'll do like sushi and sashimi or else I'll also cook it. So.

Yeah, because you gotta be careful when you cook the long chain omega threes and that. Because the long chains means they're more susceptible to heat.

Yeah, yeah, we, we avoid high temp cooking with any of our really fragile fats for sure. So, yeah, you want, you want to avoid like, yeah, sauteing your fish at high temperatures, even broiling stuff like that you want to be careful with. It's a good point. So how much. Let's talk about exercise a little bit. So how much do you exercise? What's your typical day or typical week of physical activity look like for you?

Let me have a look. I'm on Strava. You know Strava?

Yeah, I do know Strava. I thought at one point about beginning to use Strava, and it was just like another, it was another piece of technology. So my deal is, like, I work as a, as a blogger, podcaster, et cetera. For me, at the end of the day, a lot of times I just want to, you know, like, like tonight we were talking just before this podcast, I went riding along the trail by the river, like, completely unplugged. Like, no watch, no phone, nothing. Sometimes I just like, like unplug at the end of the day. And that's often how I do the, the majority of my workouts. But you use Strava for, for like logging.

I don't actually have a mobile phone and I don't own a watch, but I do use my Garmin. And yes, I like Strava because you can just upload it whenever and you can sort of. It's like a trap. I like to keep a training diary so I can be objective with my training and, and look at what's working, what's not working. So I'm just getting it. So this year I've cycled. Where are we? I've ran 441km which is not much at all. Cycled 17,074km.

That's a lot of writing.

Average average distance a week, 219km which is, it's a lot for the average person. But anyone out there who's sort of half fit, 219k a week is pretty, pretty average.

Yeah.

And biggest ride 316k. Biggest climb on 91 meters. So that's a lot about Strava. So you average a bit over an hour a day riding most of that's really, really low intensity, around 2 watts per kilo or say 56 max. Heart rate, talk very easy, comfortable talking pace. Once a week I might do a 10 minute smash fest up a local climb or whatever.

Right.

So yeah, that's how much of training I do.

Right.

A bit over an hour a day. Very easy rolling around, talking to people. Occasionally push it a bit.

Yeah, yeah. So do you, you know, obviously, and I'm sure you've heard this before, that, that a lot of people get concerned about like you know, you, you talk about, you know, the amount of fructose that you're getting from, from the 30 bananas and, and the dates and things along those lines. Every single day you've, you've posted a video somewhere I heard about this where you're like dumping, you're dumping sugar on cereal. Is that correct? Like, yeah, correct.

Yeah, yeah.

What, what did you do?

I was just, I had a. I got back from New York City actually. No. So I got back from Thailand, back into adult Australia, just got off the plane, had a bike ride the next day. Wasn't much fruit around. It was probably about 8 o' clock at night. Shops were shut, but local sort of grocery station had a. They had some sugar. I should had sugar in the house. But they got. I got a box of cereal, low sodium, low protein, vegan cereal. It's called Catalog Sustain. It's a pretty low quality stuff but it's got the carbs I needed for the next day. So I smashed down the box of cereal which is about 1500 calories and then I put about maybe 200, 300 grams of sugar on top of that. So made my own frosted, Frosted Flakes there without the dairy and just poured a bit of organic soy milk on top of that and just a bit of water as well.

That doesn't aggravate Crohn's or anything for you to do cereal.

It's okay if I do it now and then. I couldn't, I couldn't live on starches like I do on fruits, but as a backup plant, it's not an issue.

Yeah. Most people I know with Crohn's, I would just, like, destroy them.

Yeah. And my autoimmune system now is a lot, a lot, a lot healthier because I'm not having the dairy and animal products. I don't have those sort of allergenic, you know, amino acids in my system all the time.

Yeah.

So that's all healed up. So, yeah, I can get away with eating grains now and then, but definitely the, the fruit is definitely a focus.

What do you think would happen to your body if you weren't exercising? Like, do you. Do you get concerned with the amount of fructose and sugar intake that you're eating? Like, if someone were to. Were to see that and they were to start kind of replicating that diet, do you think that they would need to be concerned about, like, fluctuations in blood sugar levels or, you know, potential for diabetes or something like that? You know, if like some, some 15 year old kid started eating 30 bananas a day and they were just, you know, whatever, maybe walk into school or something like that? Do you. Do you think that there's potential for metabolic damage with that amount of fructose intake in the absence of high levels of physical activity?

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. If you're eating a lot of animal fat and protein with it, or even if you eat a lot of oil. So we always promote high carb, very, very low fat. No oils, no animal product.

What about if you're not eating a lot of fat? I mean, you're still looking at fructose getting converted by your liver to fructose 1 phosphate. I mean, that's the way it's metabolized. So your liver cells get rid of a ton of their phosphates and then you produce a bunch of uric acid. So that'll block nitric oxide production. And you get a lot of that fructose, basically, in the absence of physical activity, getting shuttled into triglyceride formation. And I mean, I know I'm preaching to the choir. I know that you understand fructose metabolism, but in somebody who's not exercising a lot, it almost simulates ethanol or alcohol metabolism in terms of what it does to your body. Like, I mean, how could some with. If someone weren't writing, you know, like, like an hour and a half a day or whatever, going out and doing duathlons and stuff, Wouldn't this create just like metabolic, like a metabolic nuclear bomb if they were to eat 30 bananas a day?

That's what I thought. I was like, hang on, like, fruit's healthy, but no more than two pieces a day or you can get obese. And that was. I used to think that back in 1999.

Well, a lot of people wouldn't get obese. Like, I can tell you right now, based on my genetics, like, I've got a skinny mom, skinny dad. I wouldn't get obese. But I'd be more concerned about like fatty liver disease and about like huge, huge amounts of triglycerides getting shoved out into the bloodstream and the potential there for, you know, everything from cardiovascular disease to like skeletal muscle insulin resistance and everything else that happens when you get that amount of free fatty acids exported from the liver from, from fructose metabolism.

That's why I put up my triglycerides, which, they're always very low. I put up my uric acid always very low.

But yeah, you, but you exercise a bunch.

I exercise a bunch, but not enough for the amount of fructose I eat. I mean, 219ks is, is a lot for the average sedentary chronic fatigue person. But that's not a lot compared to how much we're designed to move in nature, really.

So let's say, let's say somebody's just like, maybe they're not, not an athlete. Like, what would you, what would you recommend they do? Well, let's put it this way. I doubt you'd recommend they dump a bunch of sugar on their cereal if they were, if they were sedentary. Right?

I would, I would. The thing is, they're not going to last sedentary because that's not a healthy lifestyle. The body needs to move. Every hormone, every organ needs physical activity. Lymphatic system needs physical activity. So my tip is, for people who are listening, maybe the arsenia recently, here's an example. A guy was in a wheelchair, quadriplegic, following my advice and lost weight. He wanted to be leaner, so he followed our advice and lost weight. He did the fruit thing. So the thing with fruit, what's good about fruit is fruit is self regulating. It doesn't have all the excitotoxins and MSG and spices. So it's really, it's impossible to eat more fruit than you really need. You might eat too much in a sitting and feel sick. But in terms of long term weight gain, if fruit was good for weight gain, the NFL linebackers would be doing the fruitarian 30 bananas a day thing. But long term, 100%, all the people who do the 30 bananas a day gig, whether they can run a marathon in228 or can't even run around the block, they're always leaning long term. And the Woodstock Street Festival is a good example this year on stage. But I was looking at, saying a friend, look at all of us. We all look like we could bang out a fast marathon. But there's only two of us here that probably could. And the rest of them would struggle to run up the local hill. Yet they all look really lean. I was like, that's the only demographic in society you see who's always lean, unless they're heroin addicts. But so the average person, a 15 year old kid walking to school, they're going to be running the school, they're going to be riding the school after a few months in this lifestyle because they're going to be losing weight, they're going to be feeling better, they have more glucose, more daily glycogen tanks can be filled up, the immune system is going to work better, the phagocyte is going to be better. So immune system stronger, everything's going to work a lot better. And we see it time and time again dealing with thousands of people in the last decade, no exceptions. Everybody's lifestyle long term gets skinny and healthy.

Even if they jump into, into like high amounts of chronic repetitive motion activity because they're, they're eating a lot of fruit. I, I still question the potential for liver damage. Like have you actually had, have your, had your, your liver enzymes tested? Like have you looked at uric acid and stuff like that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean again that's, that's what I've got in front of me. Let me have a look here.

Like, like transferase and yeah, like alt ast, stuff like that.

That's, that's all my blood tests as well. If you just search vegan blood tests, Google come up on YouTube. Well, this one here. You're here.

Yeah. In your case actually, you know, I wouldn't be incredibly surprised because you're getting a lot of those free fatty acids that, from, from fructose conversion in the liver, like you're burning them up like crazy. I would just be concerned with, with that amount of fructose intake and somebody who wasn't touching the amount of exercise that you're doing. Just basically mirroring the effects of alcohol on the liver, really, with, with that high, high amount of fructose intake. It's just, it's. I think it's playing with fire, unless you're really doing a ton of physical activity. But I wanted to ask you too, about Candida fungus, stuff like that, and its effect, you know, in terms of, like, the effect of sugar and its ability to feed Candida, you know, the fungus, you know, essentially that, you know your ecological system in your gut. Have you, have you looked into that at all? Like H. Pylori. Bacterial balances? Do you do gut tests, things of that nature?

Again, the gut test in Australia, A lot of naturopaths do it, but I don't really vouch its reliability. The World Anti Doping Agency wouldn't use a naturopath to do any blood testing. Candida, though, interesting one. A lot of people come to this lifestyle because they want to get rid of Candida symptoms. Weight gain, bloating, fatigue, fogginess and that. When you take out the fat, especially the oil and animal products, and cut your nuts and seeds. Right, right, right down to maybe a handful a week, your Candida issues go away. Because Candida's role in the human body is to gobble up all the excess blood sugar. And people get excess blood sugar when there's too much fat coating the insulin receptor sites. So your blood sugar goes higher, Candida comes in to gobble it up, bring it back down and gives you a few symptoms to let you know you're on the wrong track. So with Candida not an issue long term, if you keep your fat intake under 10 total calories per day. So we, we keep our fat intake really low where we want to be so skinny.

Where have you seen information about fat coating insulin receptor sites? That's the first time I've heard something like that.

There's a good book. Dr. Neil Bernard, you heard of him? He works at PCRM. He's a clinical guy. He's published clinical data on reversing type 2 diabetes of a high sugar, low fat vegan diet. So Dr. Bernard's program for reversing diabetes. So he's got a good book out there, Amazon bestseller, clinically published. That's a good start. And we see all the time people reversing type 2 diabetes in this lifestyle. 100%. 100% success rate, type 1 diabetes. You can't reverse that on any diet, but you can definitely. We've got a few type 1 diabetics that have better symptoms, better health on this high carb, low fat diet. But Dr. Bernard, he's a, he's a pioneer. Yeah, diabetes.

I'm just interested in that. Just, just because the way that the insulin receptor actually sits on the, on the cell surface, it would be very, very difficult for, for, for like a lipophilic molecule, like a fat to actually block an insulin receptor site, you know, and that's, that's, you know, that's one of the reasons that, that, you know, I personally have been doing the, the high fat diet and primarily using, using ketones as a fuel, you know, because I do a ton of cycling and running and stuff like that. And it's, you know, primarily because that type of diet doesn't create the problematic insulin response. Just because, you know, when, when you're, when you're burning ketones as a fuel, that's, that's like the number one preferred fuel for skeletal muscle muscles and like, you know, for your heart, for your liver. So, you know, for me it's a complete opposite scenario where I'm actually controlling blood sugar surges and controlling the amount of insulin and the amount of stress on my pancreas by actually putting it in a state where it's not having to produce as much insulin and using a real slow burning source of fuel by taking in fats. And that for me has stabilized blood glucose levels and like hemoglobin A1C dramatically compared to higher carbohydrate intake. What are your thoughts on like, like ketosis and, and the use of higher fat intake?

I do a hemoglobin A1C test recently, Glycott or hemoglobin, and it come up really good. And that was after a period of a couple of months where I cut my training right down and just started pouring sugar and everything because I was curious. I was like, I want to see what this hemoglobin A1C is about, see how much hemoglobin glycate with sugar. But it didn't work. Hemoglobin was perfect. I actually said, the doctor said, I mean, I eat a lot of sugar. I want to see if I'm getting diabetes. And he's like, well, we can't test your hemoglobin A1C unless you're diabetic. Are you diabetic? I said, yeah, actually I'm diabetic. So they Tested me. Hemoglobin A1C, perfect. Blood sugar, perfect. Fasting insulin levels, perfect. I want actually my Insulin levels are a little bit low, which is what I want. I want urea, urate, insulin, creatine. No, sorry, not creatine, ast, alt. I want those things nice and low because I don't want to have excess influence inflammation as an athlete.

Yeah.

With ketosis.

Yeah. And it's like when, when you're eating a high fructose diet, that stuff will stay super low as long as you're exercising a ton. But I mean, fructose undergoes, it's, it's called a Maillard reaction with proteins where basically what it does is. You've probably heard of like advanced glycation end products before. That's right, yeah. So, so you get all these superoxide free radicals that are made just because of the amount of. It's basically acetaldehyde, which is, it's a metabolite of ethanol formation that happens when you're having to metabolize huge amounts of fructose unless they're getting converted into ATP from high, high levels of physical activity. So you can actually form a ton of these advanced glycation end products that you do want to avoid. And that based off of your blood work, and I haven't, I haven't seen it, but you know, based off of what you're telling me, you know, you're going to avoid that as long as you're doing a ton of physical activity. But if you started to, to settle down, you know, once you kind of stop, you know, say like, you know, running from the lion every day or, you know, maybe you, you get injured and you got to adjust your diet, that's where, that's where I get concerned about the amount of fructose that would have to get metabolized by the liver. And, and that's, you know, that, that's why I tell people, you know, if you're, unless you're going to be exercising like a madman, which I think has, has downstream implications on you, on your joints and everything else. You got to be freaking careful with, with fructose intake and carbohydrate intake. And that's why I encourage the, the higher fat, slower burning fuel scenario.

Yeah, I mean, I used to think the same as well, Ben, but I just see sedentary people who eat this lifestyle losing so much weight and looking so much more healthier and their blood tests are better.

Have you ever, have you ever thought, I mean, you're obviously doing like awesome on a low fat, raw vegan diet. I mean, you're killing it in duathlons. You're, you're way healthier than you used to be. But have you ever, have you ever considered that it might be a case of exclusion? You know, like, like, you know, you're not doing drugs, you're not doing alcohol, like you're obviously not doing, aside from Kellogg's, like lots of grains and legumes and stuff like that. Like, have you ever considered that that might be more of what really helped you to become healthier versus just like eating massive amounts of fruit?

That's an excellent question and one I'd be curious of. But what I did is I changed my diet gradually so I'd cut out. I didn't do it overnight. I went vegan overnight. But my gradual dietary reform towards vegan happened over for about a period of five years. So I'd cut down on meat or cut down on chicken or increase the deer and just tweak with it over time and eventually just led me to vegan lifestyle because it worked out. The less animal products I ate, the better I feel would.

Now I'm gonna, I'd love to look at your blood work and I'll. If you want to shoot it to me or shoot me the URL or whatever, I'll post it in the show notes. But what I'll also do for folks listening in is I actually just got done with Ironman Hawaii, so I think my blood work probably looks like World War II right now. But in about two weeks or so I'm going to, I'm going to take my own blood work. I'm going to go do a wellness FX performance panel which will tell me like my, my thyroid and my hormones and everything like that. It would be interesting to compare our values and kind of see where they're at because we obviously follow like two totally different diets. I do high fat, low carb, you do high fructose, low fat. So that would be really interesting to see. If you shoot them to me. I totally promise I'll post them in the show notes or whatever and we can compare them and, and put them up there. So. Sure.

What would be good as? Well, maybe on the same day if you can organize it, get your blood test done from like a, a real deal lab.

Oh yeah, yeah. What happens is you go into the, you go into a lab corp and you, you give like it's about 40, 50 milliliters of blood. There's like eight tubes and yeah, they, they test just about everything there is to test. Now I know there's some, they test hscrp, they do your basic cholesterol panel. So like total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, triglycerides, thyroid glucose, hemoglobin, A1C, and then the liver and kidney stuff that we kind of talked about, like AST, alt uric acid, stuff like that. And then 25 hydroxy vitamin D. And again, I'm super curious what yours is at because, like, there's, there's zero intake in your diet and the only, the only way you get it from the sun is if the sun actually has adequate cholesterol circulating in your bloodstream to make that conversion. Yeah. So I'd be curious to see that. And then they. This one might be tougher for you to get in Australia, but. But they also do like testosterone, you know, like free testosterone. They're all online as well, dha, stuff like that. So. Yep, cool. But yeah, if you shoot them to me, I know I'm going to go out and grab my test here in like two weeks and I can put them up in the show notes for this because this at the time we're recording this, it probably honestly won't come out in the podcast for another couple of weeks anyways. But yeah, let's toss the values up there and see what they look like. So while I've got you on the call, anything else that you want to tell the Ben Greenfield fitness audience? Anything else you want to wrap on?

Basically, I'm coming from someone who was sedentary, had really crappy genetics. My mum's clinically obese, my dad's dead with cancer, my oldest brother's borderline obese. I'm like, I come from a real bad genetic stock. I'm not. I wasn't one of those super athlete kids at school. I got a bike when I was 21 years old, like a road bike. Started riding around more. So I was always very unfit. Wanted to be fit, though. And I made dietary reform changes and it got me to where I am. We've coached a lot, a lot of people around the world. We've seen morbidly obese people become athletes, drug free athletes with a high carb diet. I put my blood test up online after 10 years of eating this whey. I'm just actually looking at my hemoglobin in front of me now. Hemoglobin test once was 157, hematocrite was 49. That hematocrite was so high that was borderline getting me suspended from the Australian Cycling Federation for possible doping. There matter 49. I had a good race that weekend. I remember that one yeah. So all my blood tests are always good. Despite coming from a very poor health background, the only supplement I take is vitamin B12. I regularly race against dopers, guys who I know take testosterone, phenomen, dextroamphetamine, stuff like that. And I don't, I think it's great people do drugs in sport because it makes the racing a lot harder. And if my friends didn't do drugs I'd probably be training by myself a lot more often.

Yeah.

So a lot of people ask me what about your hormones and that. But my friends who eat meat, they take hormones, they take fish oil, they take stimulants. So the only thing I take is vitamin B12. I don't even use caffeine. Yeah, my blood test is great. I don't get to, I don't have to starve myself to stay this lean. One to be honest, one reason I don't people say why don't you just smash out big miles Harley all year long. Why do you only train hard in January? In the rest of the year you just tap away. One reason is I would get too lean on this lifestyle. I would get down to like less than Chris Froome's body weight and then people would see me and just think.

Oh you'd pretty much like catabolize all your skeletal muscle for amino acids.

So I could get a lot fit. I could run low 30s, maybe 31, 32 for 10k. Currently now about 39, 34, 19pb for 10k. I could get a lot leaner if I did more training. But where I'm at now, my body mass index around low 19s. High 19s. That's a sort of healthy. I could dip down a lot lower than that and go a lot faster but I'd rather sort of keep a little bit of weight on but still be as skinny as possible. That makes sense without getting the alien like Chris Froomess. Yeah, but yeah, so we, our focus is weight loss primarily and drug free energy and good health.

Yeah, I think that what you're doing is going to translate into performance, it's going to translate into leanness. But I think that the warning that I want to give to folks is you really got to be careful about ensuring that you take into consideration long term health effects that might go above and beyond acute performance or leanness. You have to look at stuff like long term brain health, long term nerve health, having adequate fatty acids so that you're actually able to have healthy nerves and a healthy brain. You have to look into what might happen. Should you maybe be forced to back off on your level of physical activity? What's going to happen to all that fructose once your liver has to metabolize it all rather than your skeletal muscles using it for fuel? So I think it's, it's potentially playing with fire. I think some of the stuff we talked about like supplementing with vitamin B12, using vitamin D, getting adequate vitamin K2, getting some algal sources of essential fatty acids, kind of trying to cover your bases, I think you can put a lot of patches over the program, but I do think that you have to be careful. And I mean if you ever have questions too, Harley, like feel free to ping me anytime because I actually, I do a lot of work with vegans and stuff to make sure that we're keeping things safe as we go. But yeah, either way, man, this has been a fascinating discussion, fascinating discussion. I'm sure that folks are going to have a lot of questions in the comments section too because they, people get all, all, all polarized about the whole vegan versus versus meat eating kind of thing. But. So I'm sure we'll see the comments blow up once we post this thing online. But I want to thank you for your time, man, and for coming on today.

I just ask a couple quick questions for sure.

Wrap it up. Yeah, man.

What do you think about the heart disease rates and what do you do to prevent heart disease? Eating a high fat diet? What's your thoughts on that? Do you think it's a myth that saturated fat's bad for you or why do people have heart disease so much?

So there's a couple reasons why people have heart disease. One is that they combine the intake of saturated fats with high amounts of fructose, glucose or sugar, which leads to that, you know, like that Maillard reaction that I was talking about earlier, the formation of advanced glycation end products. You can get a similar reaction when a sugar molecule adheres to low density lipoprotein, meaning that you, you get oxidation of the cholesterol which allows it to be able to dig into the arterial cell wall and cause that plaque formation that results in cardiovascular disease. So if you are, if you are eating slow burning fuels such as fats and you are at the same time doing something, you know, doing something like, like I absolutely hate but you know, have occasionally been forced to do, like when I bonk during a long, long effort taking in simple sugars, that's playing with fire. If you combine it with a natural diet of high fats so that's the number one biggest issue is the oxidation of cholesterols with sugar. So if you're eating like a higher fat intake or a diet that has animal fats in it and you are at the same time drinking Coca Cola, eating, you know, tons of bananas, you know, putting sugar on cereal, that kind of thing, that's when you start playing with fire, is the combination of those two, that's the dynamite.

So you said you bumped on a ride and you had sugars. Why don't you just have some, like some coconut oil or something?

The problem is that once you actually take your body into an unnatural state. So once you do something totally non ancestral. So for me that's good. You know, when I go out and do an Ironman triathlon, that's one of the unhealthiest things that I think you can do for your body is to make it run from a lion for, you know, in my case, you know, 10 hours or so. For me, when I try to go glycolytic anaerobic after running from a lion for eight or nine hours, the human body simply shuts down. So if you want to take it out, out into an unnatural scenario where you've completely depleted your body of all energy and you still are telling it to run from a lion, then you have to, you have to, to go farther down into that unhealthy rabbit hole and you know, do something like dump fast burning simple sugars down the fat or down, down the hatch, you know, eat fruit, drink coke, whatever. Not healthy and not, not natural, but it's, it's an unnecessary evil once you get to that, once you get to that case. And, and honestly, you know, not that hot for the heart either, you know, when we're talking about cardiovascular disease. So yeah, it's. Harley, I don't really think Iron man is, is healthy. I do it because it's, it's kind of like a personal Mount Everest. It's, you know, it's, it's a, it's, it's a cool feat of physical performance, but I, I think that it definitely takes a few days slash weeks slash months off the life potentially.

Yeah. Cool. So when you want to perform, you.

Have carbs, then if, if I need to perform after complete, complete glycogen depletion, which for me if I've been fueling and we're getting into to kind of like a rare scenario where if I've been out exercising for eight to nine hours and I decide like at the end of an Ironman triathlon I want to go completely glycolytic at the end of eight to nine hours of exercise. Then for me, in the couple times I've been able to experiment in that scenario, then I've found that you need either huge amounts of amino acids or huge amounts of simple sugars. Now for me, on a typical day to day basis, I smash it. I do heavy weightlifting, sprint intervals on the treadmill, hill repeats, kettlebell swings, everything. And that's typically on about 75 to 100 grams of carbs max on a daily basis because I've trained myself in terms of mitochondrial density, fat utilization and glycogen sparing to be able to generate ATP at a fast enough rate for those types of physical activity to be able to do it on a higher fat intake. So for me like a pre workout meal is like half a can of coconut milk with a scoop or so of like I'll use like a rice or a pea protein powder and that does it.

So you only have about 400 calories a day from carbs.

400 calories a day from carbs would be average for me. And, and that's enough to support levels of physical activity while still allowing for adequate production of like mucan glycoproteins for joint cartilage, things along those lines. So yeah.

Do you train with a power meter at all?

I don't use a power meter for the, for the past two years I haven't used one. My, you know, if you do the conversion, you know, like I rode Ironman Canada which was a, that was 112 mile ride, about 5,000ft of climbing on that one. I wrote about a 5 hour 10 for that. I weigh 175 for the power calculation on that. That it comes out to about 275 watts for those 5 hours and 10 minutes. That was all on MCT Oil and Amino acids. So yeah, like I like but, but it takes a while. You know, a lot of people hear that and they're like, oh, I'm gonna go do it. But the issue is that your body has to make that metabolic switch into being able to utilize fats as a fuel at that level of intensity. So for example, like babies drinking breast milk, like breast milk is just a bunch of ketones and fatty acids. So little babies are in a state of ketosis. You know, they're lit up on ketones, they're burning fatty acids as a fuel and then we take them and for 10 years we feed them sugar and cereal and juice and energy bars and all this Crap. And we turn kids into carb adapted individuals who rely upon surges in blood sugar for energy. And then you take somebody like that and you tell them, oh, we'll go out and eat fats as a fuel, limit carbohydrate production. They feel like crap because they've trained themselves to not use fatty acids and to rely upon sugars as a fuel. So it can take a lot of times in individuals who are 25, 30, 35, 40 years old, one to two years to make that switch back to being metabolically efficient on a higher fat intake, lower carbohydrate diet. But once you do it, you feel like a million bucks. So that's the way that I've brought my body into a state of metabolic efficiency and into a state where I can get away with eating low, low amounts of that fast burning kindling, that carb, take care of my body and my liver and my pancreas from an insulin production standpoint, and then rely upon slow burning fat as a fuel.

That's interesting. What was your cholesterol like?

My cholesterol is, it's about 220, 230, extremely high. My HDL is above 100, LDL is low. Triglycerides are rock bottom. I'm happy about that just because of the research that's been done that show neural deficits once cholesterol drops significantly below 200. All the research that shows cardiovascular disease to be imminent with high levels of cholesterol show that to be present when it's associated with high levels of apob LP oxidized cholesterol. What's called very low density lipoprotein cholesterol. But as long as you've got the big, healthy, fluffy cholesterol particles that aren't chock full of triglycerides circulating in your bloodstream, you're good to go. So my goal is to keep it just a touch above 200 and then I'm careful to make sure HDL is high. And I do that by eating, you know, eating fish, eating lots of kale, stuff like that, and then also limiting, limiting my amount of omega 6 fatty acid sugar intake, stuff like that.

So you think high, higher cholesterol is.

Better in the body in the absence of circ of, of high levels of fluctuating blood sugar and high levels of omega 6 fatty acids? Yeah, absolutely.

So if your cholesterol is like 500 and you didn't eat sugar, that'd be good.

There's a lot of diminishing returns. If your cholesterol is as high as 500. It's pretty unlikely that there's not going to be. What happens is when cholesterol spends a long time in your bloodstream, it gets exposed to sugars that are circulating in your bloodstream, it gets more and more prone to becoming oxidized. And so if you've got huge, huge levels of circulating cholesterols, then that's an issue. So you've got like a small subset of the population that has like familial hypercholesteremia. Those are the type of people that need to be careful if they have extremely high levels of cholesterol that they a, are very, very careful with like sugar, inflammatory fat intake, heated fat intake, stuff like that. And then also that they're really, really careful to do things like prioritize antioxidant intake, prioritize anti inflammatory intake from stuff like curcumin, turmeric, ginger, garlic, stuff like that. Just because you can get to a case where cholesterol gets too high. So it's kind of what, it's one of those things where some is good but more isn't necessarily better, you get to a law of diminishing returns.

What do you think of all the clinical studies that Dr. Esselstein have done with reversing heart disease? And has anyone done it with a high fat diet before?

Yeah, as far as reversing heart disease with Dr. Esseltine's studies or Esselstyn studies, the issue there is, I highly suspect it returns to that case of exclusion that we talked about where if you get somebody off of what we call over here in America, like the standard American diet or the SAD diet, and you shift them into any type of elimination of like, you know, high intake of oxidized animal fats from McDonald's hamburgers along with like all the gluten and the vegetable oils that comes along with that, or you, you shift them away from, from an intake of commercial dairy or the, the hormone and omega 6 laden meats that we have from, from big farms and stuff over here, you're going to see a really nice shift. You know, you're going to see a really positive benefit. The question is, you know, can you, can you achieve that same level while still including things like wild caught fish, grass fed beef, you know, limiting, limiting sugar intake, things along those lines? So that's the issue is it's still kind of a big question of whether or not that's really, you know, the positive results that you see there, which are really great, are exclusion rather than inclusion.

So why do you think they found like heart disease and the Eskimos and that they were frozen for a few hundred years?

I'm not familiar with heart disease in the Eskimos. Frozen for a few hundred years.

I found heart disease, cancer and osteoporosis. This is before Western food came in.

Right, right.

Egyptians as well.

Yeah. Oh, definitely.

I'm more.

They did find it in the Egyptians and with the Egyptians, I, I suspect a big, big part of it may have been that at that point we were shifting into kind of like a, like a agricultural kind of non Paleolithic area where, where grain consumption as well as like standard of living was going up. So total calorie consumption was going up, grain consumption was going up, Alcohol consumption, I'm guessing in the, in the, the, the wealthy pharaoh population was probably going up as well. And so you tended to, you know, the heart disease there doesn't surprise me much at all. As far as the Eskimos go, I'm actually not aware of these Eskimo studies, but I would be happy to take a look at them. You know, if you shoot me a link over to them or whatever, I'll check them out. But that's, that's news to me that the heart disease issue, issue in Eskimos. I do know that with Eskimos, one of the bigger issues with them because of their basically like their location geographically, and this is something that Chris Master John and Chris Kresser talked about in a podcast once was their issue with thyroid. Because you do need a certain amount of carbohydrate for the conversion of T4 to T3. So I talked about those 400 calories of carbohydrate that I make sure that I get in. Once you start to dip super duper low in carbohydrate intake, your thyroid gland can take a hit and hormone conversion can take a hit. So that's why you'll find in a lot of the healthier Northern European or Inuit populations, they go out of their way to eat organ meats. They'll do liver and thyroid gland and stuff like that to allow for their body to actually get enough hormone in the, in a relative absence of carbohydrate intake. So again, you can. You kind of like with cholesterol, like, you also get to the law of diminishing returns. Or once you shove carbohydrate too low, you lose out on thyroid conversion, like mucum production. Like there's kind of an issue I talk about like ketosis and low carb. I'VE especially talked to some, some women especially. It seems like in the, in the endurance athlete community, they take it to too great a level. They start to lose the ability to create tears and create muck information in their intestine. And so, yeah, I mean, you can kind of play with fire both ways. No doubt. And I'm definitely not a proponent of a zero carb diet either. And I know that that is what I'm familiar with with the Eskimo Inuit population is more of the hormone deficits that they risk. But I haven't seen, seen much of the, much of the, the heart disease studies. So I'd be interested to take a look at those.

Yeah, that's good, man. So you recommend everyone should eat 100 grams of carbs max a day or.

Athletes. Athletes. For sure. You'll get some sedentary people who can get away with eating less than that. But I think that athletes for adequate formation of again, like glycoproteins for their knee joints and, and their cartilage for mucan production for the conversion of, of T4 to T3. Yeah, you, you, you should be getting in right around 100 grams or so. And there's some people, there's even people doing ketosis. Like you look at like Peter Adia and there's some days where I think he's getting as high as like 250 grams or so of carbohydrates on like his super duper active days. And he's still staying in a, in a state of ketosis, but he's kind of a lab rat. He's doing all sorts of kind of interesting guinea pig type of stuff. So, you know, he's kind of a unique specimen.

He is pretty unique. Peter is. I challenged him to a $50,000 hill climb competition up Mount Washington, but he never got back to me.

Dude, email me. I've got Peter Adia's ear and I, I could probably try and try and make that happen. So Mount Washington, really? $50,000.

$50,000. We, what we do, we do a 200 mile bike ride beforehand.

Right.

Condition is Peter has to be in ketosis at the start of the 200 mile bike ride.

So. So he'd have to, he'd have to do like a blood ketone test.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

And then we, me and him just ride together. I'm allowed to eat carbs. He's led to eat coconut oil or bacon rashes and then go. And we go up. After 200 mile bike ride, we go hit Mount, hit Mount Washington first on the top, 50 grand US.

That'd be interesting because actually, Peter, does he. If you go to his website, he saw. He does a bunch of amino acids. He throws in. He throws in bars here and there. Like, he does, like, trace amounts of carbs and stuff like that. I think if he were. Yeah, like this, like the slow release superstarch, which I've done some of as well. I think if he were allowed to do that protocol.

No carbs. Gotta be. It's gotta be ketogenic.

If. If you totally. If you totally stripped away the superstarch and there was no. There was no slow bleed of that for the. For like, you know, especially if you guys get towards the top, I'm sure you'd be starting to really hammer and go. Extremely glycolytic, I think. I think that'd be tough if you. If you were to. Well, let's put it this way. If he could stay in a state of ketosis and somehow figure out how to measure ketosis during the event to ensure that he stayed in ketosis every half.

Every hour and just.

Yeah, I would. I would say he would. He would probably bite on doing it. If you. If he was allowed to stay in ketosis, like, but if he ever went out of ketosis, like, you'd automatically win.

That's right.

Yeah, that's right. You guys should do it. If you email me, I will get a hold of him and try and make it happen. And I would. You know, I'd have to think about it. I would. I've got breath ketone monitors that you can actually. You can do a breath ketone. They're made by. What's the company metron. They make a breath ketone where you literally can, like, shake. It's almost like an alcohol test because you're measuring. You're measuring acetoacetate ketone levels in the breath. So you can actually blow into a tube. And that's one that you can do while you're riding and everything as well. So you could almost use something like that. And that's just a color. It's like, if it turns purple, you're in ketosis. If not, you're not. And it'll only turn purple if you're above 1.0 millimolar for ketones. That'd be like. You could just shove a bunch of those in the jersey and use those as a testing parameter.

When you're in ketosis. You're bonking, aren't you?

You're not bonking when you're in ketosis. You can actually, and this is super interesting because this is what the US Military has been experimenting with. You can use supplemental ketones. They're called beta hydroxybutyrate salts. And you can actually, you can get all of the neural benefits, the focus benefits. So the diaphragm and the heart will use ketones as a primary source of fuel. You can actually eat ketones and it's actually a liquid. You can drink ketones and you can even be eating carbohydrates at the same time. Like, you could eat 300, 400 calories of carbohydrates an hour if you wanted to. You could take liquid ketones. You could technically still keep yourself in a state of ketosis and you could do both if you wanted to. So technically all ketosis is. It means high levels of blood ketones. And their. Most people don't know this, but there are ways to get there without necessarily stripping your body of carbohydrates. And that's, that's what like the, like the US Defense Department is experimenting with this for soldiers because they can, like, they can shoot better and stuff when they're, when their blood ketones levels, their blood ketone levels are higher because it's actually, it's an actual like neural biohack. So yeah, you, you actually don't need to be bonking to be in a state of ketosis.

But without the GMO military, CIA liquid thing.

It'S not gmo. It's basically. You can also do it with caprylic acid, which is just like super, super dense centrifuge isolated from coconut oil. That's another way to do it. You can do like MCT oil is a little bit more difficult to do it with. But yeah, there are ways to actually hack your way into ketosis without, without even limiting carbohydrates.

So you're saying that elite athletes can produce more power or the same power in ketosis than with fully carved up glycogen stores?

Yeah, yeah. There's. What's the pro cyclist? Mark Sisson is working with the pro cyclist right now who's killing it doing ketosis combined with, with high intensity weightlifting and cycling. It's. Why am I blanking on the name of this guy? It's Dave. Yes, exactly. That's the guy who Mark Sisson is working with.

He's retired though.

Yeah. But he, you know, he's still racing. He's still, he's still doing competition and stuff.

He got, he got a doping ban.

Yeah. At some point he, he got, he got pinged for doping. But there are ways that you can produce tons of power. Well, I would know. I did Ironman Canada. Until the 8 and a half hour mark. I was in pure ketosis. And I mean, you can kill it while you're still in a state of ketosis without actually bonking again. The issue though is that a lot of people will hear this and they'll be like, oh, I'm going to go out and do ketosis. I'm going to go out and do the high fat thing. You have to train your body. You have to make your body metabolically efficient and that occurs through a process called mitochondrial biogenesis where you actually have to increase the density of your mitochondria. And that occurs over a period of time of fatty acid intake and higher fat, lower carb intake combined with long efforts and training your body how to utilize fatty acids efficiently. Efficiently as a fuel. It's really interesting. I'm actually going to go over to a laboratory in New York in January and we're going to do muscle biopsies. We're going to take a bunch of fat adapted athletes and a bunch of carbohydrate fueled athletes and do muscle biopsies, ketone measurements, blood measurements, everything, while we all run on a treadmill for like three hours and just see what happens in terms of glycogen depletion, the utilization, like beta oxidation utilization of fats as a fuel during exercise. That's at. I think it's going to be at Jeff Volek's laboratory. He's kind of the big low carb professional guy. So. So yeah, that, that should be interesting to. We're gonna shove a bunch of us as guinea pigs into the lab and see what happens.

So, yeah, I'm interested too, because I'm in. I've never ever met anyone who. Any athlete at, you know, sort of decent level or any level really, who does, you know, Kona or the Western states 100 or whatever. On drinking coconut oil or bacon rashes, everyone seems to talk about low carb, but then they have the superstarch or the coke or the brownies.

Yeah, yeah. So Kona for me for the first half of the race out to the 60 mile mark of the bike was MCT oil, amino acids and Superstarch and Superstarch. Superstarch keeps you in a state of ketosis because it's released so slowly. It's a high molecular weight starch. So. So you actually don't get any blood sugar surges or insulin surges.

That's like a refined corn product, isn't it?

It's a, it's a non GMO corn that they put through a laboratory cycle. And what it does is it converts it into this high, high molecular weight that empties super duper slowly from your stomach and ends up transitioning from your small intestine in your bloodstream incredibly slowly. And so you can stay in a state of ketosis or you essentially can eat about one third to one quarter as much carbohydrate as you'd normally need to. So the advantage to that would be that you would get less potential for like cholesterol oxidation and inflammation, stuff like that. You know, it's, it's not like you, you'd go faster on it. It's just the fact that you would be able to stay in a higher state of fatty acid oxidation. So it's, it's again kind of like that performance versus health trade off. So I actually made a huge tactical error during Ironman Hawaii though. So Canada worked out fine for me because it was nice and cool. I didn't put my, my, my bottle of MCT oil on ice in special needs transition. So it sat out in the Hawaii sun for like, you know, like 90 degrees for six hours. Out of special needs. Tasted like complete crap. So coming back for. From the, you climb up to a town called Hawi. So all the way back down into Kona, I was basically eating what are called bonk breaker bars, which is like a, like a soy free, gluten free, lactose free bar. Not my preferred. So I, I had to totally, I had to totally switch my nutritional scenario and wasn't happy about it at all. So live and learn. You got to take coolers to hot races if you're gonna, if you're gonna fuel with, with, you know, fats and amino acids. So yeah.

Bunk breaker. What's the, what's in those bunk breaker?

It's, I think it's a, I think it's a rice that they use. I got to get the ingredients pulled up. I was actually pretty happy that they ended up sponsoring Iron man because I'm really not into the gluten and the lactose and the soy that you find in most of the bars that are out there. I, I traditionally will use a bar called a Coco Chia bar, which is like coconut flakes and chia seeds. Let me pull up the, the bunk bricker bar ingredients. It's, they use fruits. Okay. Yeah. They use brown rice, gluten free oats, honey, blueberries, coconut, flaxseed and sea salt.

Yeah, I Think the first ingredient here I've got it is a rice nectar which is basically rice rice syrup.

Yeah. Yeah. You know they're, they're, they're, they're glorified, they're glorified sugar but without the, without like the wheat and the GMO we, you know, wheat and all the stuff that power bar has in them. So it was, I, I wasn't super happy about it because I, you know, I, when you get ripped out of, out of, you know, that, that took me out of ketosis within like you know, 15, 20 minutes. So I lost a lot of that, that focus and neural drive and everything that I had during Canada and ended up not having as hot of a race. And you know, I still came in under 10 hours, but just, it kind of, kind of disrupted my race a little bit. But live and learn. Take, take ice and coolers if you're going to use oils during the race.

So, so what'd you ate in Canada?

Canada was superstarch mct oil and amino acids. And then once, once I got to the point where I went glycolytic and, and got to about. That was about eight and a half hour mark or so. Just basically switched to, to pure sugar and caffeine from Coca Cola. So yeah, not, not healthy but necessary once you get into that, that unnatural scenario to push you to the finish line.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd love to see an athlete, someone just do like a Kona or a Western states 100 mile just on 100 fat and protein. Have bacon, eggs for breakfast. Eat bacon on the run. Yeah, some eggs back your jersey.

I like to. I dude, I was, I personally wouldn't do bacon. I'd like. I, I actually did just because I'd. Dude, I would be. It's, it's, it's good healthy fats like a good pasture raised bacon. But solid foods I don't do well with. I do better with, with the liquid based fuels when I'm, especially when I'm running. But the issue with that, the issue with, with fine with, with getting somebody to do that is what we run into with what I mentioned with like kids and kids initially when they're first babies being in that state of high fatty acid utilization, you know, drinking mother's breast milk with all these fatty acids and ketones, you rip them out of that, you make them metabolically inefficient with a standard westernized diet and then it takes a good couple of years to put somebody back into a state of metabolic efficiency. Most athletes aren't patient enough to do that. And so what you have to get into is the ultimate scenario where you take some whatever, like 16, 17 year old genetically gifted kid who wants to go into a dietary program, you train them to become a world champion, you make sure that you get them on a diet like that, and then you put them into that scenario. And even then, even then you're not guaranteed that they're going to outperform the people who are eating the carbs and the simple sugars. Because the issue at that point becomes whether or not they are simply healthier, whether or not they might live longer because they've got less reactive oxygen species or advanced glycation end products, or because their livers haven't had to work as hard, you know, metabolizing fructose, or their pancreas hasn't had to churn out as much insulin. You know, it comes down to that lens through which you see the world. You know, you're looking for the ultimate combination of performance and health and longevity and not necessarily just performance. So I would, I would suspect that that person could perform just as well as someone who is shoving carbohydrates down the hatch. But what would impress me more is if we looked at it from a long term standpoint and said, okay, are they going to live longer with a healthier heart and healthier skin and connective tissue and healthier joints, less inflammation, that type of thing. And that's kind of my wheelhouse, Harley, is I want to live as long as possible, be there to see my grandkids and have that and ultimate performance. And so that's kind of, kind of the lens through which I see the world for sure.

What do you think? Dr. Atkins went wrong because he was on the low carb, but he had heart disease and was obese. Where could you improve?

I don't think he paid much attention to the quality of the fats or the proteins, from what I understand. I don't think he looked at the source. So this will probably gross you out as a vegan, but, you know, this Sunday, you know, I'll go up on some land that I have up here in Washington state and I'll shoot a deer with my rifle, take my boys up there and teach them how to hunt. We'll get a deer for the winter for our meat. It will have, you know, been raised out in the wild on the wild grasses and everything all year long. It'll have a nice healthy liver. That's one of the first things that I look at when I, you know, When I, when I cut it open and I, I got it and I respect the animal highly, you know, when, when I, when I kill it, but that animal and the meat that I get from that animal and the bone broth that we make from it and you know, the sausages and the steaks that we'll end up fueling with during the winter, that's a high quality meat. It hasn't spent its life in a, in, in a barn or in, you know, shoved in with a bunch of other animals under high stress situations. I won't shoot it if it's running, so it's not even stressed out when it gets killed. And you know, when you look at the meats and the fats that you eat from that standpoint and the source from which they came, I think that that's probably where Dr. Atkins went wrong, is he's recommending a diet where, yeah, you're eating a lot of proteins, probably too much protein really, and a lot of fats too, but maybe not considering the source from which they came, you know, and were they, were they raised in a stress free environment? You know, was the animal, you know, killed in a, in a humane manner? You know, was, was it fed grain or did it eat just like natural grasses and things of that nature? And I suspect that that's kind of where, where the whole Atkins philosophy went wrong is looking at the actual quality and source, because you are what you eat, ate in a way. And they've done studies that have looked at the amount of omega 6 fatty acids that an animal is fed and have found that those same amounts of inflammatory omega 6 fatty acids Wind up in bloodstream of the person who ate that meat. And the person who eats the higher omega 3 pasture raised, grass fed type of beef doesn't end up with that same level of inflammation and omega 6 fatty acid. So I think that's the big issue with the, with the Atkins deal.

So what about the Western A. Price? Familiar with that Western A. Price?

Yeah, yeah, with Sally Fallon.

Oh, Sally, she's overweight, but yeah, the Western A. Price guy, the actual dentist dude, he died of heart attacks.

Did he?

Yeah. And Stephen Burns, who was like, he was like the mouthpiece for West. No Price for years. He died of stroke at age 42.

Yeah, I'd be curious, I'd be curious to see what, what, what Weston A. Price's heart attack was caused by. That'd be interesting. I mean, obviously some people have, have a genetic propensity towards heart attack, but that would be interesting to see. I think that some people get carried away with the diet component. And again, this is one of those deals where you got to have balance in everything. You know, like, the whole time we've been. We've been talking, I've been standing up at my standing workstation. You know, I'm not wearing my shirt. The house is a little cold. My body is under mild amounts of stress. It's burning calories. You know, it's kind of getting exposed to like a, you know, hunter, gatherer, farmer type of. Type of scenario. Like, I try and keep my body in that state. I think a lot of people like a lot of these food researchers and stuff. They, you know, whether. Whether they're vegan or whether they're, you know, like a. Like a Robert Lustig or whatever, you know, who's. Who's another guy who talks about fructose. You know, you do look at a lot of these people, and some of them aren't the. The perfect model of. Of human health and, you know, muscle and, you know, they don't. They don't strike. Strike a very. A very impressive figure when it comes to their. Their. Their aesthetic, body appearance and possibly even what's going on internally from an organ perspective. And I think part of that is because they've maybe focused a little bit too much on the research and the writing and the speaking and the traveling and the stress and not enough on just kind of. Kind of letting the body be ancestral, you know, and you look at a guy like Art Devaney who's like a. The perfect picture of health, and he's, you know, he's one of the fathers of kind of like the ancestral primal movement. And the guy looks like a million bucks, and he's like 83 years old.

Testosterone. Growth hormone. He said.

Yeah, yeah. And. And, you know, that. That wouldn't surprise me if he didn't. And honestly, like, I. I can. To me, if I wasn't competing in. In Anti Doping association, saying, you know, like. Like WADA events and stuff like that and having to be a clean athlete, I'd consider doing that because, frankly, I think that could potentially be better living through science if you're doing it in a controlled manner and not overdoing stuff like that. But I think that the issue, when you look at the Sally Fallon or I don't know what Weston A. Price's exercise or movement protocol or whatever look like, I think part of it returns to no matter what diet you're eating, if you're living a sedentary lifestyle, it's that's going to catch up with you either way.

Bingo. Bingo. Yeah, Bingo.

Yeah.

Agree on that one. Definitely.

Well, we've gone like an hour and a half, man, and I'm sure that we could, we could, we could keep on going because this is, this is a fascinating discussion, but around two or something. What's that?

We could maybe do a version two down the track.

We could, we could because I'm sure we'll open up a ton of comments. So. Yeah, he should do a version, too. And I'm, I'm honestly, I'm not kidding. Email me and I will, I'm going to try and get in Peter Adia's ear and see if he'll do that throwdown with you because even though I know he's busy with, with all of his research and everything, he's also, he's also a cyclist and we're all competitive at heart, right? Yeah.

And even if he doesn't want to put 50 grand the table or whatever, he could just maybe put a power meter on his bike and show us his watts per kilo, you know, local climb or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. And I bet he'd do it. So email me and I'll connect, I'll connect you guys via email and let's, let's get you guys talking. So in the meantime, folks, for all you listening in, Durian's website is 30bananasaday.com. He's also got a YouTube channel that I'll link to in the show notes and I'll put a link to the other stuff that we've talked about in the show notes. And until next time, this is Ben Greenfield and Harley. Thanks so much for your time tonight.

It's good, man. It's good chatting. Always good chat.

We're signing out here from BenGreenfieldFitness.com thanks for listening in.

Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.