Dropping 50 Over 50 His & Hers Flipping 60 Story

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What are you waiting for? Good night. I'm about to shock your socks off. You're gonna hear from two of my good friends and colleagues today who are going on the adventure of a lifetime with each other, personally, professionally, and health-wise. We're talking about a significant loss of weight and lifestyle changes. We're not recommending or suggesting it. We're not doing a persuasive argument. What this is about is about an hour that might just open up your mind to possibilities for you and for your future, for how you might want to start something that you thought it was too late for you to do. Carl and Desiree, husband and wife empty nesters, reboot their lives selling everything and donating all but $10,000 to charity to hit the road and start from zero, applying what they've learned over the years to build a six-figure business in public, showing anyone at any age and with any experience can build a life of meaning, contribution, and joy. Their journey also includes major health changes for Carl and Desiree, both in their 60s, doing a one-meal-a-day routine. I'll check in to talk about that, how it started, what they're doing now, what he tried, what she tried, and how it's been to have both of them on board. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50, where I address your top struggles and concerns. But look, most of all, I hope to inspire you. So you expect and you demand to get exercise, to get recommendations that are made for you and women exactly like you. I share what to eat, how to move, and how to change your mindset so you can have the energy and the vitality that you want, you need, and you deserve in this second and better half. Buckle your seatbelts. Hello, you two. Hey, it is so good to have you here. So first of all, just everybody's heard Carl, Desiree, uh, really the news is you're aging backward, literally. And I know everybody tries to sell that, but there's no denying. I jumped in here and Carl, you look good, you look fantastic. But I gotta say, Desiree looks 21, so I— it's really working out for you both.

Yeah.

All right. But I want to talk a little bit about how, um, and let's talk numbers first because this is pretty impressive. And we all— we have to tell everybody, we all went to prom pretty much in the same time, same era, so we're all right around that 60-year mark, right? So for the two of you, what kind of progress have you made health-wise? Carl?

Well, great question, by the way, that you asked health-wise. Because it's not just about the number, right? Losing weight. Yeah. So when COVID happened, I actually had some bumps in the road and I actually got sick a few times and didn't respond well. Um, had some neurology issues pop up, had problems with brain fog, focus, and everything else. And you said I needed to make a change and, uh, was looking at the scale and the scale wasn't moving. It wasn't going up, but it wasn't going down. And I knew that I needed to do better. My, my body fat percentage wasn't where I wanted it, and that was kind of what I was really shooting for. So I went to Desiree and I said, let's try what you did before, because she'd been successful once before and I didn't follow. And we had some friends, uh, that did carnivore, and they were really inspirational. We saw them on the beach, or actually at a pool, and went to see them. And they, hey, do you want to have lunch?. And I looked at the husband of the couple and he was a ripped Adonis and she looked great too. And I said, I'll have what he's having. And I got the— and they came back and said, oh, we'll order you up a steak. I'm like, that's ridiculous. There's no way you're eating a big steak. And you know what? That's all we do. We're carnivore. So that was the entry point. So we started the carnivore diet and I went from, um, back in September of last year is when we started. And so it's, it's not been a crash diet. It hasn't been all crazy. And the goal for me was to maintain mass and protein and have good muscle. So I went from a high of 179 pounds with 26.5% body fat to today. I'm at— and I haven't been on the scale in 3 days, we've been traveling— but 145 with 16% body fat. My visceral fat went from 13% down to 9%.

That's a few extra years on your life.

It feels so much better. Brain fog cleared. Things are easier and breezier. And, yeah. So, that's my journey. She's got a better story.

Does Ray? Yeah, really. Let's hear the goods.

You have a fantastic story. That 16% body fat, visceral fat, those numbers are fantastic. But, yeah. So, my journey, yes, I did the burger a day just because there wasn't anybody that told me to do it. I just like, I like meat. I'm going to do that. But when this couple that we met, at first we thought, wow, that is really weird to just eat meat. How does that work? And you got to have your broccoli and your spinach, right? But literally, they— we saw them at dinner that night and they literally had a prime rib on a plate, on a white plate. And it was just this visual, this visual picture that said, okay, just carnivore, just the steak. And it has been the greatest journey because it just kind of clicked with us. We said, yeah, we're going to try that. And It's been— I have good numbers too. I was in September, we started, I was 165 pounds and 32% body fat. And I am now 119 and I am 23% body fat.

And a major smile in both cases.

That was so great. So happy about this. Well, what's incredible is that right away, the energy that I have, I literally, energy-wise, feel like I'm 20, which is saying something because I'm 60. And I had all the knee pains, the hip pains, the bursitis. My son had karate and he showed me, came home one day and said, Mom, here, let me show you this. And so had me hold a board so that he could crack the board. Well, he kept going and cracked my thumbs. Oh no. And 10 years my hands.

She's had bad pain in her hands for 10 years that it's gone.

And it's gone.

Wow.

Since the diet. All of it's gone. Wow. Knees, hips, hands, neck, all of it. Gone.

So talk to me about labs. Have you done labs? Like what's happened with cholesterol levels or like A1C? CT, CRP, any, any of that?

Yeah. Um, I don't know if you have— I actually wound up recently getting COVID again, getting sick with something else, tolerated it, I think, a little better than I otherwise would. I know that my CRP is down. Um, cortisol was really high, but it was kind of a stressful time for me at the time being sick. I had a GI bug. Um, they did do, um, rapid CT scans and they were They said you have very, very light, hardly noticeable calcium score, you know. So the idea of having calcified plaque in the heart wasn't an issue. Blood sugar normal, cholesterol in the, in the right range. I don't remember the exact numbers, didn't come prepared. I'm getting an A1C. I'll let you know what it turns out. Okay. They didn't run that one. But overall, doctor is like, you do not look 60. You look like you're in really good shape. And, and it feels like the inflammation is dramatically down. Even my dentist, Dr. Sandit Moldovan, who I just saw the other day, she's like, man, your gum health looks great and you look good. And the comment we continually get is you seem like you're in better health than you've been in years. Not that you were in horrible health, but you look like a, you know, about to be 60-year-old. And now the comments are, you don't look like a 60-year-old and certainly have a little more energy than before.

So, yeah. What about— so I know just a little history. Hopefully I'm not telling tales out of school, but a little history of low back issues. Has that changed?

Yeah. So it's an interesting story. So full disclosure here, I was lifting heavy during this. So for us, the path was a combination of change in what we ate. So we went to a dominant protein diet, carnivore, and we got, you know, we ate healthy meat. It's important. We could tell the distinction between meats. We'll talk about that in a second. Yeah. And I was lifting really heavy, and so I really looked better than I've looked since high school, probably.

Define, define really heavy. So about how many reps to fatigue?

Yeah. So for me, what I would— where I got to was, say, incline dumbbell press. I would do 3 sets of 10 at 50 pounds a side, and I was able to navigate that. But when I started in September, I couldn't manage 20-pound dumbbells. Wow. So I went from 20s to 50s, and I would do 3 sets of 10 and with no more than, uh, 60 seconds between sets. So wasn't over-recovering, I don't think. And then, you know, to me, that was heavy. That was heavier than I'd done. And with the idea of a failure, if I— when I go back and I haven't lifted in a while, our weights got all sold recently and I'm restarting because we're moving. But I'd like to do lighter weights to higher reps. I feel like I took a risk and I actually got a mid-back pain issue that popped up in there. It wasn't a sudden horrible acute moment during the lift, but it was sort of like one of these things where you go, oh my gosh, that's not right, something's not right. And, as a result of that, I kind of backed down and letting everything kind of heal. I wound up getting some X-rays. They said I've got some disc compression and it's in degeneration. So, I'm going to do a little PT and see where that gets me. I want to get back into lifting more, but they're like, You can get as good a result, just don't lift as heavy. And so this is where I need to actually get into your cafe and find the right exercises to keep it going. Because here's the thing that really got us. We also started walking a lot.

And so define a lot.

Well, so before it was walking to the store from the car, right?

That would have been— Well, starting from zero.

Oh, right. Because everything is delivered. We don't do anything.

Yes. Instacart's our friend. And maybe we're going out, we go but it was, we'd drive to church, we'd walk to the pews, we'd kneel, we'd stand. That was a squat. You're done. And then we'd go back home. And I, even though I had a standing desk, but it didn't work. So I never got to actually use it. So, because it wouldn't go up and down. So I, we were both sedentary. It was true. And so it started with us just going for 15 minutes down to the end of the street and back. And then that 15 minutes, we just made the goal that we would either increase or decrease the time to go the same distance was the first game. So, it's like, okay, how long did it take to go there? Oh, we did it in 28 minutes. Let's do it in 25 tomorrow. Let's do it in 20 in a week. Let's do it in 15.

It just became a game. I love—

yeah, we just made it really simple, right? And we picked up our pace. But the thing that really got me, I have to tell you, is this baby, my Apple Watch. Yeah, because I saw in Health that you could actually, uh, they have a cardiac health output that it's essentially your VO2 max, right? It does your cardiac fitness level based on a derived VO2 max and how fast you recover. So I would get to the point where I'd go home and lay down and get through the recovery, and I'd say walk is done, and it would give me a score. And what was interesting, and part of what drove this, was that my score had dropped suddenly after COVID. And I also had a vax. I got my vax. I had one dose of Pfizer. And a lot of people said that either COVID or sometimes the vax would reduce cardiac function in certain people. And I had some symptoms and other issues. We don't need to go into the details, but that was a wake-up call. And I was getting flutters and arrhythmias. So I'm like, okay, let's watch this. And what was remarkable is that every single week, the cardiac fitness level went up, went up, went up, went up. It wasn't a lot, it was a little. I'm very competitive. I was like, I got to run faster, I got to go fast, whatever it's going to take, got to go fast, fast, fast. And, it was in the low fitness category. So, there's that low, mid, and high fitness on cardiac fitness on the watch. I'm super competitive. It's got to get up into the higher bracket. I'm going to lose my mind. And so, that's what we did is we just walked and then we started adding hills in our neighborhood. We could go really down and get almost 100 feet elevation change very easily and then 200 feet. And then, it became walk all the way to Vons and out. What started as a 15-minute walk to the end of the street and back has grown to a 50-minute, 48 if we're really having a great day where we have a lot of elevation change and we're doing 2.5, 3 miles. And so—

Just make it a priority.

And, it was like every day, we did 2 things. And this is where I got to give Desiree credit. She made it fun to do lunch. So for me, I'm not a cook. I don't like to cook. I don't want to think. I just want to grab and go because I got a lot to do.

That's me too, though.

And not a cook. But she pulled it in. She goes, I got some great grass-fed, grass-finished, 85/15 beef, enough fat, and let's have fun and we'll make the burgers together. So we got two small pans. We each had our own pan. We did that. We'd buy a pound of beef every day, cut it in half. She got a half, I got a half, and we would make our— and season our meat and patty it down. And we're talking, we're in the kitchen together. She's doing hers, I'm doing mine, and finishing it with, you know, either ghee or grass-finished butter. Yeah. And we'd sit and eat together.

I have garlic, you heard, sriracha, right?

You'd have— she'd spice it up. Yeah. I might do Frank's hot sauce on a wild day. And that's all we ate was a grass-fed, grass-finished burger for 90% of this.

Yes. One meal.

One meal a day. Okay.

We graduated to that.

We didn't start out there.

Okay.

So, after, I would say, after probably about a month and a half, we got to one meal a day.

It was kill the starches first.

The first was—

yeah, well, the first was we dove into carnivore pretty quick, but it wasn't radical. It was day 1, we're doing meats, all meats, several meals, right? But we're still 3 meals a day. Then we went to 2, then we went to 1. We couldn't just take it all on all at once.

But now, what was cool, what was the best part of this whole thing was I was 165. I had a goal of 135. Like, if I can get to 135, I'll be happy. I've been pretty much that you know, most of where I felt good my whole life. And then, once I got to 135, I'm like, "I'm feeling pretty great." Why stop? I'm gonna go to 128. I'm gonna go to 125. And then, at 119, I'm thinking, "Okay, I'm, you know, I'm pretty good at 119." 119 is a really good number.

So, when you say, "Okay, I'm at 119," so do you change the way you're eating? Are you still eating the same way? What's different now?

No, that's the best part of this is that I just keep the same meal, but I just eat more meat.

Okay. Okay. We mix the meat.

We, yeah, you know, like when we do fish, you know, fish and we'll add, you know, we had some French fries the other day. And the other thing is that once you're on this great, this great food, Yeah. When you eat something that is not good, man, you're just like, you feel it.

Take me back right away.

Feel it right away. We're, you know, we, we were out, we're in Los Angeles. They go, you need to go to see this cool little restaurant. They've got the best truffle fries and it's going to be amazing and treat yourself. You haven't, you've gone so hard. It's been so great. And so we did. And we had, we split truffle fries and she had her burger and I had chicken this time. And we left and like, that tasted great. And about an hour later, it's like, that was horrible. I don't want to do that again.

Well, and I think our— my taste buds have changed where literally I would prefer to eat meat or fish.

Okay, everybody, everybody at Flipping 50 is going to ask me this, so if I don't interrupt and ask— we, we're really good friends, so we're about to get intimate. So everybody's going to ask about constipation.

Fiber. Oh, great question. Thank you for this. All right.

So I'll tell you. You're welcome.

Yes.

Prior to, well, let me tell you.

It is. For me, prior to, so. Yeah. I didn't realize this. I'm gonna have the test next week. They thought I actually, my doctor thinks I had SIBO because I'll tell you, I went off the diet and had, my daughter had strawberry preserves out and was putting it on toast. I'm like, oh, I miss that. So I just take a, I'll just have a spoon. The strawberry preserves, and I ate it and I immediately felt something. I was like, ooh, that's not hitting right. It doesn't feel good. And the next day I was so sick and I had all this gas and indigestion, everything. And my, my doc, Gabrielle Lyon, she's like, you probably have SIBO. And, you know, through a variety of other things. So I went back to the restrictive diet and everything got better. The key to not getting constipated on carnivore, especially with beef, is you have to get the fat content. So we learned that for the beef, the ground beef, 85/15 grass-fed, grass-finished. I gotta tell you, I've had Olympic-grade best poops of my life. Absolutely. They're walkaways. No paperwork is required. They're the— I want to take pictures and send them.

You heard it here, folks.

Yes, because we eat at the same time, I poop at the same time. It's eat a meal, poop a meal. Perfect. It's never been as good for me with the fat, right?

With the fat. We had a monster size slice of Kerrygold butter.

Okay. Which helps with the fat.

So that's like topping every burger or every burger gets Kerrygold on the top.

Okay.

You could do an avocado on the side if you wanted to for the That, but we didn't, we just did butter.

Amazing. Now I'll tell you, if I go and get a lean filet and we've done this, I will be constipated. Wow. It will slow down. Or if I just have really lean chicken breast. But what I've learned is I eat the dark meat, I eat the fattier chicken and I, you know, I'll do the whole chicken and we won't fry it. You know, we'll get the baked rotisserie chickens and I've, I've just developed—

the air fryer is great.

Yeah. But I've developed a taste for the fattier meats, which before I didn't have. Yeah, I enjoy it more. And, and to be clear, it sounds like we're perfect and we have the greatest discipline in the world. We don't. We do have a cheat, and we recently found out that our cheat was not good for us, so we're, we're looking to revise it. But sometimes you get the—

wait, wait, you're being a little secretive. The cheat is—

the cheat is protein. It's not really— it's a protein bar with 1 gram of sugar.

It feels like a Okay.

But, but we use the One Bar, O-N-E. We like the flavor of, and we found out that it's layered with seed oils and probably inflammatory. So we should avoid that bar. So we've tried other bars. We're trying to find them.

But there's not another bar that I have found. Trader Joe's has Bear Bells.

So on those nights when it's like, oh, I wish I had dessert. It's a, it's a 200-calorie One Bar, but it's still all protein. And you get sugar, no sugars, no added sugar, no refined sugar. Most are sweetened with erythritol or, um, you know, stevia kind of stuff.

So that gets you your little dessert thing.

Yeah, that little, that little taste. So for how many months you just did one meal a day once you started that, kind of weaned yourself into it? You did the one meal a day for how long?

Most of it, I'd say September we started, we were one month December. By October, December, we were one meal a day. And then that stayed until just here in the last 30 days, maybe. Yeah. That we're now eating two-ish. It's more like a snack. And we use Chomps. I don't know if you've seen the Chomps.

Chomps has a grass-fed, grass-finished beef stick. Beef sticks.

That has zero sugar.

Okay. Really good. And they're there. So that's the convenience food that we have now.

Yeah.

So if you're on the run and, you know, you don't have time to stop and make a burger and you don't want to stop at in and out, you know, but we will ask restaurants like, oh yeah, at the last event that I saw you, we were, we were at the JW Marriott, I think, in Camelback, right? Yeah. And they look at you kind of funny, but I'll walk in. Hilarious. Yeah. We go into the restaurant. I'm like, I want a half a pound of beef, period, full stop. Like, and would you like fries with it?

Nope.

I just want the burger. Do you want a bun? Nope. Do you want a lettuce wrap? Nope. Do you want ketchup? Nope. Do you want mayo?

Nope.

Literally, you just say, I want a burger on a plate, patty on a plate with butter.

Love it, love it.

And they— it's hard for waitresses and waiters to wrap their head around it.

What do I do with that?

So they can't resist and put a piece of lettuce under it.

Okay, so I have to ask you this. So you're— you— a lot of our audience members know Dr. Gabrielle Lyon because we love her. We love her when we can get any, any amount of her time, and and of course she was on the What, When, and Why to Exercise for Women Over 40 Summit talking again about emphasis on the protein. So I— her rule of thumb is basically a pound of, or a gram of protein for every pound of body weight. You're not getting that, or haven't been. So how does, how does that play out for her or her recommendations? I mean, clearly it's worked, right?

So here's what— ideally it's, it's a gram, right? And what I learned is it's, it's when you get the bolus. So one of the things Gabrielle also talks about is the importance, especially after I think the age of 30 or 40, that you get a minimum of 30 grams of protein per, uh, for the first meal to actually promote, uh, protein synthesis, right? And so for us, you know, we got our walks in before we ate. We were in a fasted state and then we got, you know, better than 30 grams. And I think that that had a positive impact. But her recommendation at a pound assumes that you are eating to sustain or maintain or grow, right? So for us, it was if we didn't feel— we never felt— I mean, I would say it was easier to fall asleep, but I never felt tired early. I never felt like a lack of sustained energy.. It was just more like, it's 9 o'clock, that's bedtime, go to sleep. Whereas before we might be munching or snacking all the way up through 10:30 or 11, and then you struggled to get to bed. This felt more like a normal, okay, time to end, we're going to sleep. And we lost weight. Now, you know, I'm eating more, she's eating a little bit more, but we're not obsessing by it. The scale is the perfect measure because we get on the scale and there's been days where because of either sodium content or fat content, or we ate more burger and it ticked up, or we didn't feel well or something, and it ticked up. That's okay. We're just like, go back to the burger a day and it ticks back down a third of a pound a day and it gets there. And then we increase our eating. And so just by using our scale and I look at body fat and weight, I know how I'm doing. And by doing it daily and not skipping, I have a constant little feedback loop that doesn't stress me at all. Like, if it goes up 1 or 2, like, if I go up 2 pounds, I know I just got a dose of MSG in the burger that somebody made me or in the meat. I know that that's a sodium gain. There's no way I had 6,000 calories, you know, and I overdid. It just didn't happen.

Yeah.

And so for me, that's been the way to manage it. And, you know, the muscles speak for themselves, I think.

Exactly.

Well, I just want to say this one more thing too, that because I've been on a hundred different diets, and always it was like, can I eat this? What, you know, is this okay? Should I eat this now? You know, do I have to wait to eat this? And, oh freaking, I'm hungry, what can I eat? This has been the freaking easiest diet ever because it's just dead dumb simple. I have one question: is it meat?

Yes, no. And what about hunger? Has there been any? Are you sated?

You're, you're just good? Yeah, well, the Chomp bars are kind of a, of a lifesaver because if I get hungry, then I just eat a 90-calorie grass-fed, grass-finished beef stick. Okay. And that literally one beef stick evens it out enough to get me through to the next meal. It's crazy. If you'd tell me, I'd say it works.

For me, I do get cravings, but I find that it only happens either during periods of extreme stress. So, if I'm really stressed, I was a stress eater probably before, I will be jonesing like, oh man, I just— what I'd give right now for a pizza. Give me a pizza. I want a pizza so bad. And like Desiree, you know, I will actually even cook another burger on those days because they really do satiate me. Like, when I eat a half-pound burger, I am good for no less than 6 hours.

I'm even now constantly surprised that Wow, I'm really full now after just—

Desiree's really great. She's never jaunting from— I have to drag her out and make her eat practically.

It's like, we gotta go. This has become not important anymore. It's interesting. Yeah. My body has evened out. It's kind of like, you know, on this even keel.

There's less up and down. That's absolutely true. There's fewer peaks, fewer valleys. The range is tighter. For sure. Desiree sleeps amazing. She'll sleep in. I'm usually up around 5:00, 5:30, and I get going. And, the other thing that's interesting, Debra, and you probably know this, but I didn't understand that a lot of times when we feel that we're hungry, it's actually that we're dehydrated and we're thirsty. And, the body will actually send off a hunger signal sometimes. And so, many times I felt hungry and somebody, I guess it was Gabrielle, said, "Are you drinking enough water?" I'm like, "I'm hungry. I didn't say I'm thirsty. I'm not thirsty, I'm hungry." She goes, drink a liter of water and see how hungry you are. And so for me, managing water intake has been a difference maker as well. And I'm drinking more of it and I'm peeing a whole lot more, which I'm not thrilled about at 60, but I can't drink water. Yeah.

She drinks tea, but I drink tea.

I drink tea all day long. And now I'm glad you asked that. Cause I was going to come back to that. Um, so are you noticing now you're drinking more than you were before you started this? Consciously you're doing it and you're feeling better because you're doing it.

Yeah. I'm sure we're feeling better. And I noticed it like in the morning because we do, we still eat later in the day. Here's what I've noticed. If I start eating first thing in the morning, if I have breakfast, I'm also having lunch and dinner. But if my first meal is—

a lot of people say that.

Yeah. My first meal is at 11 to 1 o'clock after we've done a workout and it's satiating. Usually by— I won't start to feel any hunger until 7. It's close. Then it's like, ah, it's an hour away from bedtime. I'm just going to go to sleep. Yeah.

And that's how we deal. And what I've learned to train my mind in the morning is to say, "It's not no, it's just not now." That is so great.

The answer is yes. Yeah. Can I ask? I gotta ask this for every woman who's watching, because, I mean, obviously you've kind of laid the foundation of tried every diet in the book, and every woman listening feels probably much the same. Can I— I'm guessing you're post-menopause. How far?

Can you tell us?

Yeah.

Oh, uh, I was menopausal at 50. Yeah.

Okay.

Decade. Okay.

A year before. Okay, awesome. Yeah. Are either of you doing hormones, hormone replacement?

No, we're talking about it now. Now we're looking at peptides and hormones and How do we, how do we amp this whole thing up? That's, that's what I'm working with Gabrielle on is let's baseline where we're at now. And now we want to go superhuman because we got, we feel like we're back to normal.

Well, yeah. Now with more energy, it's like better than more energy.

Yeah. But not because, not because of a void. I mean, just because you want to go, what's next if we can do this, right?

It's so fast. Like, here's the thing. I was so concerned that there would be no way to get gains in muscles after 50. And I was, you know, a lot of people talk about— Bite your tongue. Yeah, exactly. But I didn't know.

And it's what you're told.

It's what you think. And here's the thing. The unlock for me, the unlock for me was this. I would lift and try to lift. I'd go to the gym, I'd do push-ups. I would do all kinds of exercises. And I never saw a gain, but it was because I wasn't getting at least 30 to 40 grams in that first meal after workout. And just by focusing on mTOR and doing a fasted post-workout meal with 40 grams of protein minimum, I started to see— it's like, whoa, what is that? Where'd that come from? And flexing a little in the mirror.. And then, as the fat came down, I started to see lines in the abdomen, like, what are those? That is so cool. And so, that created momentum and the idea that, well, if we can actually do this, and I want to see how far I could go. I'm 60. By the end of the year, I want to do a 60-mile bike. That's a goal that I'm working currently. So, I want to bike 60 miles in a day. And I also want to be able to, you know, see if I can maintain the six-pack for the whole period and how ripped I can get. And if hormones and peptides and diet allows that without causing other pain or goofing me up, I'm game. Why not?

Yeah. You know, so good. Okay. So for, for everybody listening, we're not necessarily saying this is right for everybody, but we are saying there is nothing that is right for everybody. I think that's the biggest lesson. And, you You know, keep an open mind and, you know, measure it. That's the most important thing. I think you're getting all the evidence that it's working. I'm maintaining my muscle, I'm feeling better, the energy is there, I'm sleeping better. I have not heard you complain or say any one negative thing. Is it all rainbows and unicorns?

It's, for me, it's all rainbows and unicorns. She's better than I am in this regard because I feel like I did, I You got the lottery.

And I love pizza.

Oh, I can't eat your pizza anymore.

I don't care. I mean, you know, full disclosure, I have had a slice. I've had my kids order a pizza and I make them get it gluten-free and I've had a slice and I feel bad afterwards. But in the moment, I still get the calling. I'm like, I just want to try it. Maybe it'll be better this time. But as an example, I mean, we quit drinking. We were never heavy drinkers. We weren't, you know, for us, drinking was we'd go to an event, like I'd be out with you and it'd be like, there'd be wine served. We'll have a glass of wine. Or it was very occasional. I don't think we drank even a drink a week, but when we did drink, we'd drink 2 or 3 drinks and then we'd feel bad. And we noticed it. And I think as we age, for me anyway, I'm just more sensitive. I understand the things that clearly my body doesn't like and want. And there's so much living that we want to get through and things I want to do. And I just don't want to be in a state where I can't do them.

Well, and on the drinking thing, what I— we went out and I, when I first got on the diet, I started realizing every single drink has sugar unless you're doing vodka shots. Even then it's potato and, you know, or rice.

Every single one.

Yeah, that you liked had sugar. Well, no, I mean, think of one. Can you think of anything, any drink that doesn't have sugar?

Straight up whiskey.

I don't know. No, but alcohol metabolizes as sugar anyway, so in the end it all comes back to the same space.

Yeah.

So when I was first starting to do this and I was first starting to see results, I'm like I'm not going to go backwards.

No. Here's the thing, Debra. I'm convinced without a doubt, like you could not prove otherwise. I watched all my friends, like I'm on Facebook. We've got a class of '81 group in our school, in our high school, and I'm watching everybody and I've been to the reunions and I watched them get bigger and bigger and bigger and feel worse and worse. And they start talking about the number of medications they're on. And, you know, this person's got diabetes now and this person— I hope they're not watching. I hope they are. Oh, okay. I want to jerk a knot in their tails and tell them it doesn't have to be that way. Part of this was a bit of a motivation to go, you know, if I can do it with back pain and, you know, I had mitral valve prolapse and I have had, you know, all the things, all the— I got the list. I can make a list like everybody can make a list. We all got our list.. But if I could say I'm prioritizing this and I want to see where it goes and prove that you can look like— I got in my high school track jersey that we found while we were getting ready to pack and move our house. And I put it on and I posted that in our Facebook group. And the reactions were like, what? How did that happen? Looking good, man. You're still fit. You got the body of an 18-year-old. I'm like, damn straight. Yeah, I do. And you can too. And it didn't happen overnight.

We started in September, but it was a commitment. That's pretty darn quick, though. I still got to say, that's not very long ago.

September to December, 165 to 135. And then, you know, from there on, it was just like, okay, and it was just—

the rate was, you know, it's an asymptotic curve. It's not as fast as it once was, but we feel good.

That's the bottom line. Yeah. And you said no. This is, uh, it's true. Every diet is not for everyone. I want to say of all the, of the people that we've told, at least a dozen people have done this because they're responsible for 1,000 pounds of loss. Every single one of them. There's no doubt that every single one of them that have done it, you know, because there are some that are like, there's no way I'm not doing that. Like, fine. That's fine for you, but it works for me. That's fine. But the ones who have done it all came back and said, oh my God, it is life-changing. How much did your sister weigh? My sister was 176, and right now she's 150, and she started in January. So she's going a little slower. She's, you know, she's—

she drinks, she likes wine. Yeah. Okay, so everybody listening is probably— this is one of the pushbacks on changing lifestyle in any way. It's, how do I deal with social situations, you know? And, and I like my wine, like, or I play golf, and, you know, our, our couples all get together and that's what we do. We're in a wine club. How— resistance like that, what do you say to that?

Well, they just won't have the rapid results. They'll still get results so long as they stay on the program. But I think if you have— if you add sugar to it, you're gonna have slow— like my sister, you know, she's going slower than I did. Yeah. Because she goes out with her friends and stuff, but she's been very good. Like, at first it was a slower start for her because she has a ton of friends and they always go out But she said that she started feeling better. And there are some friends who say there's no way that's going to work. Her daughter, my, my niece really gave her a lot of problems about it, said that's not healthy. You can't do that. Don't do that.

You're going to regret it.

A lot of social pressure there. Yeah. And she said, Katrina, it's okay. Just let me try this. And if I start to feel bad, then I'll go back. But if I continue to— but if it works and it feels good, then I need this.

Well, total transparency, I would also say at first judge, at first glance, I would say, well, that's probably not going to be healthy forever. I would have said that. And you're just proving me wrong.

So There you go. There's data out there that says that there, let's just talk about carnivore for a second. And then I'll anchor this with a data point. That'll be really fascinating as it relates to carnivore specifically. There are people that have autoimmune conditions. You look at people like Mikhaila Peterson, Jordan Peterson's daughter, others that have gone very public and they had ridiculous debilitating autoimmune disease. And to the point where they're literally bedridden, who've gone 100% pure carnivore, and they're now healthier than they've been their whole life. And so we know that protein assimilation, especially if you, if you've got leaky gut, if you've got digestive issues, your body can mount autoimmune responses to various proteins and other things that can cause— that can just wreak havoc on the body. It's a complex system. It's not just as simple as reduce your calories and you're going to lose weight. You know, a lot of people that reduce calories, they never lose weight. And so I think one of the things I love about JJ Virgin is she talks about this idea in her books, you know, The Virgin Diet, that identifying the things that could be tripping you up, the things that could be causing inflammation, or that could be a problem for you, is essential to any program. And what we do know is that if you eat healthy protein, specifically like a grass-fed, grass-finished beef, that the likelihood that you're going to have an autoimmune or reaction to that is very, very low. It's extremely low. There's probably somebody that is not going to do well on beef like we did, but it's the rare, rare, rare instance. And so this gives your body a chance to reset and for you to see what's possible and you really to reevaluate what's going on. Now, when you talk about the social pressures and the lifestyle issues, and I don't want to feel depraved or deprived, deprived, more specifically. Some people think that we're depraved for doing carnivore, but I will say this. There's an interesting study, uh, Alex Hormozy talked about this recently, and I thought it was so telling. 25% of the soldiers that went to Vietnam actually tried cocaine, and less than 90— and 95% of them came back to the United States and never used again. The majority of those people never used cocaine again. In the United States, however, individuals who get addicted to cocaine and go to a treatment facility and they change their environment and they get out of that, they get off the cocaine and they get happy and they get adjusted and they find new things in their life that they love and they get excited and they go back to their homes and the majority of them are back on cocaine. And what they learned from that data, that analysis, is that Changing your environment reduces the triggers and the stimulation and everything else that causes us to backslide and get into these situations. So for the person that goes, hey, it's— I got a wine club, this is my social group, I will say consider another group. Yeah, like we're 60 years old and I realized— and we got up and we're embarking on this big journey where we have just sold everything we own, everything that didn't fit into a 6x8 box, and what goes in a single carry-on and a check-on, and we're mounting a truck and her trailer and horse, and we're going to go travel the country and explore the world and restart at 60 with nothing. We're starting with $10,000 and nothing to go on a grand adventure, to literally break the cycle, to get out of the house, out of the office, out of the rhythms, out of the habits. Because if you look outside, we all do it. We look at TikTok, we get on YouTube and Instagram, and we see people living lives that are ridiculous. They're like, oh my gosh, I would love to go to Italy and Tuscany, or I'd love to visit Rome, or I'd love to travel the country. I'd like to make an impact. You can start over at any time. There's nothing that says you have to be the same person your whole life. That's the problem, is we get into these ruts and we think that we're victims, but we're not. We're just volunteers. And so let's stop being a volunteer to everybody else's agenda and realize that there are plenty of people out there. Like, we're making friends every day. We're meeting people we've never met.

We're having experiences we've never had.

Daisy is my new friend here at the hotel. At the hotel we just checked into, we got a new friend named Daisy who let us use this room to have this podcast with you.

So why settle? She told the restaurant staff to stay out.

But why do you want to settle? Like, I get it. Family's important and traditions are important. And but we get into these cycles, I think, where we're more anchored around stability. And as we get older, it's really easy to go, oh my gosh, like, I got to be white-knuckled and hold on to my financial security and my health security. And I got to do this and I got to let the doctor— what pills do I need to take for what ills? And how do I spend the rest of my life trying to avoid death? Where instead, what if you were to spend the rest of your life finding new life, finding ways to actually do new and exciting adventures? To me, that's done more for our health than anything and for our relationship and our marriage. And we're showing up differently for our kids and everything else. So, I would challenge that thinking and I would just say, you don't know how good it could be. And it's good that you don't know because the joy, just like in a new relationship, when you When we first met, it was endorphins and serotonin and oxytocin, and the hormone cascades were crazy because, I mean, look at her. She's stunning. Just gorgeous. And all the newness and everything that goes with that. And, you know, over time, people talk about that. How do you keep it interesting? What do you do? Well, you change it up. Change up your diet. Give up the alcohol. Try different things. You know, try— why can't you become fit at 60? If I can go from almost 180 lbs to 145 lbs between the ages of 59 and 60 and look like I did when I was in high school from a body perspective, anyone can do it. I'm the least disciplined guy I know. So I would just say mix it up.

Go have fun. And look what Debra— I mean, Debra, oh my gosh, you started this whole program for people over 50. I, I was—

it's inspiring. I, I have two new poster children right here. Okay, we're big believers. You pointed at something that we kind of addressed and we also skipped over, and I don't want to do that because I think every woman, not just the big social thing like this is something I do or I have this club, But it's also maybe internal resistance in the household. So the two of you did it together, which I think I'm a little envious actually. But what do you think would've been different had one of you been in and the other one not?

Well, if I could speak to this, my sister, again, the same sister who has the daughter who poo-pooed it, her husband was not in. And at first he gave resistance to her too. But she just looked at him and she said, Bill, if you love me, you're going to let me do this. I want to do this. And he said, yes, absolutely. If this is what you want to do, then I will support you. I'm not going to do it myself. I won't give you any problems about that. So hopefully the people out here can present this in a way to the people that are around them that they love to say, I really, really would like you to support me in this.

You don't have to join me. It could be anybody. Like, look, you can get support. Your support doesn't need to come from the person that you happen to share. The same person. Yes. Yeah. Right. And there's other ways, like our kids did not do what we do. We were a family of 4. We're all under the same roof. And, you know, Michael's like, I'm getting pizza, Dad, or I'm running down to this place or that place for toasted ravioli. And I'd watch it. I'd, oh dear Lord. Like, but what I learned was what we would do in those instances is we quickly get in, pull out our 2 pans, get our burgers done if we hadn't ate yet. And we're full. And that's it. And, you know, yeah, there was a time I put the fork in to taste the tomato sauce and I'd be like, "Ah, I'm good. That's it." But we don't do— you know, the desserts are no longer appealing. Like, as an example, many of the social constructs in eating just are not at all of interest. Like, you could pull out the most beautiful dessert. It could be something I've craved, cheesecake, carrot cake, whatever. Now it's nauseating to us.

Like, we have zero desire. Yeah, I don't know that it's a big—

for me, nauseating.

It is for me. But you can literally set a carrot cake in front of me right now and I was like, thanks. I remember what that tastes like. I remember that I love that, but I don't need it.

That is so great. So great.

I would never have thought that I would be like that.

Here's the other thing you can do is like you can ask the question every time you're facing the choice. What's more important? Is this moment more important than me hitting my goal? And when you're weighing daily and you're going to be accountable and you know you're going to face the scale ticking up. Yeah. Like when we hit the holidays, we got to Christmas and Desiree makes pumpkin pies. That's her Christmas thing. Right?

Or Thanksgiving.

And I did do it again. And she made the pumpkin pies and she had a little pumpkin pies and she got a little pumpkin thighs. And she was like, not really. That's—

no, she didn't get any thighs. But I had some. I had that. But where normally I could eat over a week, a whole pie, I think I had 2 slices over the whole week. And I was like, I'm good. I remember what this tastes like and I'm good.

It doesn't need to be all or nothing. Here's some— here's, I think, where I would anchor this. Don't make it about all or nothing. Be clear about what you want and what's most important. And for us, what was most important is that we have the energy and the ability to focus and to go have great experiences, not be sick. And look what's going on in the world. COVID was a big wake-up call for everybody. And the people who were hospitalized and had the worst outcomes were those that were most metabolically challenged, that had the greatest weight. So, hey, do you want to hedge? You want to hedge your health, be lean, work out, be fit. Muscle is the organ of longevity. Doing it right is essential so that you have what you need.

And, that's what we focused on. And, what's so fun is we have our son who's with us until he goes to school to Boulder. He's with us and we're running around here and the two of us are running up every other step with him. It's like, you know how you skip a step to go up the stairs?

Oh, we have contests now. Who can get to the fastest to the room? Who goes to the top? And my 19-year-old is struggling against his 60-year-old father. Just saying.

Just saying. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, he'll be, he'll be acclimated to altitude though, and you may not be.

So, he'll get a little advantage, except we're probably going to relocate to Boulder. Are you really? We're seriously thinking of Colorado, maybe Fort Collins.

Maybe that would be fun. That would be fun. Awesome. All right, you two, where can everybody follow you and your adventures? Is there a place where you're sharing stories or on social or website?

We're gonna stand up a website, carlinndesiree.com, uh, and we're going to actually Travel the country. We'll have Instagram and TikTok too. Links will be there.

So follow us on social.

YouTube is where we'll do a lot of videos. 60-year-old vloggers. That's got to be a dumpster fire, right? What is that going to be? Van life for old folks.

That's what we're doing. So good. This has been so much fun. Thank you so much for sharing your story.

We're so grateful and honored that you asked us to be here today.

Thank you, Debra.

Thanks for the inspiration.

We love you so much. Yeah, watching you was a big part of it. I thought for sure I'd hurt myself lifting weights and it would be, you know, I was just begging for it because that's what all my friends said. So you played, you played a big role.

We're grateful for you. Well, thank you so much. Okay, listeners, now it's up to you. What did I miss? What should have I asked? You can leave it below the show notes, and you can do that at flipping50.com/dropping50. What are you waiting for? Let's start flipping 50 today.