Ben Greenfield, Rich Roll & Vinnie Tortorich Diet Debate

My name is Ben Greenfield. I'm a fitness coach, I'm a sports nutritionist. I used to be a bodybuilder, now I'm an ironman triathlete. I live up in Spokane, Washington and I run the website BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

As a bodybuilder, I used to follow a very high protein, low carbohydrate diet. I progressed from that into kind of a fairly stereotypical endurance athlete diet as I made the transition into triathlon. Kind of like the, the higher carbohydrates, definitely lower fat, lower protein approach. I shifted from there for about six months into a more vegan, vegetarian approach and then from there gradually progressed into eating higher amounts of healthy fat combined with moderate proteins and generally restricted or fairly low amounts of carbohydrate, with a little bit of experimentation with full on ketogenesis thrown in along the way. The way that my diet currently stands is I'm a big, big fan of.

Eating anything. I am not a fan of the paleo approach to restricting grains, restricting legumes, restricting plants, because even though I will agree that plants have natural defense mechanisms, I think that humans are smarter than plants and that in the same way that we wouldn't jump out of a tree onto the back of a deer's neck and sink our teeth into its hide without properly preparing it and cooking it, it's the same thing with plants. We have to properly soak, sprout, ferment, etc. If we want to eat those without affecting our digestive system. I am okay with eating animals. I do not overdo meat consumption. I think that protein toxicity is kind of an issue and I don't want to put that strain of ammonia production on my liver and on my kidneys. I generally limit protein intake, sometimes do a little bit more on the days where I'm really beating up my body. But my diet is what you would basically call now eating anything and kind of cyclic low carb. I limit my carbohydrate consumption. I do not like ketosis, I do not think it's healthy for athletes in most cases. But I am a fan of being careful with carbohydrate grain and sugar consumption to a certain extent, but partaking quite heavily in carbohydrates on some days, especially very active days, so as not to suppress hormones, testosterone, thyroid, et cetera, which I think is a big issue among athletes who try this whole very low carb food. So that's me, that's my story, and I'll shut up now and Let somebody else do their spiel.

You want to jump in, Vinny, or you want me to go? All right, so yeah, if you're on this freecast, you probably know who I am. My name is Rich Roll. And like Ben and like Vinny, I'm also an author and a podcast host. We have three podcasts here, which is great to kind of all get together.

And when I agreed to do this freecast, I thought we would be having a gentlemanly, nice, serene, intellectual conversation about diet and nutrition. And then Ben started tweeting about how we were going to have this throwdown match and he's showing you his boxing gloves and there's a lot of like, we're going to really roll up our sleeves and go at it. So, hey, I'm game for that if that's what you want to do. I don't know that any of us are going to convince any one of each of us at least to convert to one of our different kinds of approaches, but I'm here to share my perspective and what has worked for me. And I do feel like I might be getting ganged up on a bit here because we got Vinny and Ben, who both come from different perspectives than I do. I'm the sole vegan plant based guy in this equation. But I would say that I didn't expect that. Ben actually sounds like he's going to line up more on my side of this versus Vinny. I think Ben's closer to me than Vinny is. But anyway, I eat a 100% whole food plant based diet. What does that mean? That means that I don't eat anything with a face or a mother. So I don't eat any meat, I don't eat any dairy.

I don't eat any fish, no eggs. Anything that's an animal product is removed from my routine. I also do my best to avoid most processed foods. Although when I'm in a weak moment, you could probably find me eating potato chips late at night. As long as no one's looking. That's my weakness. But I do try to avoid processed foods. I try to avoid processed grains, all the white foods, and if I'm going to eat grains, I wouldn't consider myself a no grain guy. But I try to eat whole grains and even preferable to that, a sprouted grain. I'm not a huge. I don't eat like a super high carbohydrate diet. I'm not like an 10-10-10 guy, but I wouldn't consider myself low carb either. As for Fats. I'm a little bit different than if you're familiar with kind of the Engine 2 diet, the Caldwell Esselstyn.

These sort of people, if you watch the documentary Forks Over Knives, they're a big proponent of cutting out basically almost all fats from your diet. No oils, no avocados, no nuts. I don't subscribe to that, primarily because I find that I need those healthy fats in order to fuel my training. So I eat lots of avocados. I eat raw almonds, raw walnuts. I cook with coconut oil. I put some coconut oil in my blender in my Vitamix drinks, which are a big part of my routine. But I try to keep it moderate. I don't go crazy on the fat. I'm not a no grains guy. I do believe that, like Vinny, I believe that sugar is a huge problem. So I eat a lot of fruit, but I don't eat processed sugar. I don't eat anything with high fructose corn syrup in it. I try to reduce my intake of fruit juices and instead juice and Vitamix, my own fruits, rather than getting a pasteurized juice at the grocery store. I've been doing this for about six years. It's fueled me through a couple Ultraman races and Epic 5, and it still continues to work for me. I continue to be able to perform as an athlete. I'm 46 years old now, and I'm still continuing to. I still have a lot of improvement to go. And, yeah, that's kind of where I'm coming from. Now over to this guy. Vinny, your turn.

Okay, can you guys hear me? Because, Rich, you start to cut out a little bit towards the end. Can you hear me?

I can hear you fine.

Okay. Okay. Everything's good. Okay. I'm Vinny Todorich, and my podcast is Angriest Trainer. I'm not as angry as you might think. The whole idea is I'm angry because your good intentions have been stolen. My degree. I'm the grandfather here of all these guys. I guess I've been in the game longer than most. I've been doing it for well over 30 years.

And I'm from Tulane University. I have my degree from there, which is a medical university. And I've been practicing helping people lose weight for 31 years and for 21 of those years, almost 22 now. The rich and famous of Beverly Hills. So the people you see on the red carpet when they have a baby, and you see them a couple of months after a couple of weeks after they've had the baby and they look like they were never pregnant. And you wonder how that happened. It was me or someone just like me who was out there getting thin again.

You know, it's supposed to be a debate, and I think that that would be a problem and it would be a miscue if we made this such a debate that nothing would get done. Because in truth, I agree with Ben on almost everything and Rich on almost everything with one germ from both that I don't agree with as far as.

Healthy being healthy and longevity. It's an interesting thing in the diet industry, no matter what book you read.

Rich mentioned the Engine 2 diet, and he mentioned Fork Over Knives, a book and a movie. I'm very familiar with.

Those two.

The book and the movie do the same thing that everyone else does in the diet and fitness industry. They build themselves up by knocking everyone else down. And I really think that's a huge misstep. And, you know, I think the three of us, you know, I have a ton of respect for Ben, and I have a ton of respect for Rich, and I think it would be a total misstep for us to sit here and get nowhere when we could probably get a lot further.

By agreeing on different things. Now, to talk about what I believe in when it comes to what goes into my mouth and what comes out of my ass. Are we using language on this or are we keeping it clean? What are we doing here, guys? Because I work.

Do your thing. Do your thing. Vinny, I don't think we could keep you from swearing even if we tried. Anyway.

Keep your pants on, dude, and we'll be good.

They're on right now.

You know, I believe that you need a certain amount of dietary fat that dietary fat should come from.

Hopefully you guys don't lose me because my screen went away. I think that dietary fat should come from good fats. And Richard mentioned, you know, he mentioned that he puts the same thing in his shake that I put in mine. Things like coconut oil, you can use. You can use vegetable oils for all kinds of fats. But I also believe in eating meat. It's part of what we do.

So as far as what I subscribe to and get my clients and what I talk about on the podcast, I don't put people on a diet because as soon as you put someone on a diet, they're looking for ways to cheat that diet. So I just have people cut one and in some cases, two things out. I'm the no sugars, no grain guy. I Think sugars are a problem when you have too many of them. We get enough of them in our fruits and vegetables where they're supposed to be because they have non soluble fibers with them and your body knows how to handle that. The liver doesn't get a load, which is good.

That's the only way you should be getting sugars. I don't think it's a good idea to take in any extra sugars, meaning soft drinks, candies and what have you. Now you would say, well, geez, Vinny, you're telling me never to eat that stuff again. No, we say something. We sign off every week on my show with a little term. I say put life into living. Which means dessert should be just what dessert was meant to be, a treat once in a while, not something that you eat every day. But you know, we live in a world now where people. We don't measure Coke. When I was a kid, they were 8 ounces. Now a 20 ouncer is a normal Coke and people have them around the clock. I think that's a problem. And that's where I come from. The other side of it is grains. I really feel like the industry has taken grains and just taken anything nutritional out of a grain to where it's nothing but a soluble fiber, you know? You know, yeah, if you want to take soluble fiber, if you want to take psyllium husk, knock yourself out. But you could get all the fiber you need from fruits and vegetables, the non soluble type, which will do the same thing. So that's, that's where I'm coming from.

All right, do we take a question now, guys?

Nick is gonna, is gonna pick questions and he's gonna put anyone who has a question on screen.

If you see yourself selected to go on screen.

Run your hands through your hair and get ready, baby, because you're going to be in the long run.

There we go. And by the way, Nick, as you're choosing questions to put people on screen, you can actually put the actual person on screen or just their question on screen. So we'll take Chris's question, but in the future, Nick, you can actually put.

I can show you here. We could actually put Chris on screen if we wanted to, but I can't find Chris. So if you can, Nick, go for it.

All right, question from Chris. Would you talk about whether a low carb diet is good for endurance athletes? How many carbs do each one of you eat on any given day?

You want to go first, Rick?

Sure.

I personally think that low carb diets are overdone these days and kind of over sexified in the whole kind of Paleo low carb community. I've seen a lot of lab profiles, especially female endurance athletes, who really messed their hormones up by not giving themselves enough carbohydrates, meaning suppressed luteinizing hormone, suppressed progesterone, suppressed testosterone. Because the body does need a baseline level of carbohydrates when there is any combination of a low carbohydrate diet with calorie restriction or with extreme exercise, such as would be the case if you were exercising for anything more than about 60 minutes a day. I think that low carb has its values. I think that timing your carbohydrates so that they're not going to cause an insulin spike. So the closer to your exercise session has its value. But I think that you need to be very, very careful in the way that you do things. And I think that especially on any heavier training days, that you should eat basically as many carbs as you would like, assuming that they're from safe and healthy sources. From soaked, sprouted and fermented grains, from taro, from sweet potato or potato, from yam, from starchy vegetables, things of that nature.

As far as the other part of your question, how many carbs do each of you eat on a given day? I personally quit counting carbs long ago. To me, it's just another thing that stresses me out to have to count something like that. If I had to give you a ballpark, on most weekdays I'm generally about, hey, buddy, I'm generally about 50 to 100 grams or so of carbs. And on most weekends it's usually 100 to 150 grams of carbs. And that would be probably not counting the carbs that I'm getting from, like seeds and nuts and stuff like that. And by the way, now you know what the large cage in my office is for.

Yeah.

What kind of dog is that, Ben? It's a cute dog.

That's a Rhodesian Ridgeback.

Oh, I have a Vigila just walked out of the room, which is 1 1/4 Rhodesian Ridgeback, which is a good thing because I think you're more than 1/4 right with your diet.

I get pulled in with that low carb group because I tell people, no sugar, no grains. But people forget that when you fill a Vitamix full of leafy greens and broccoli, as I do, and cauliflower, you end up with a lot of carbs.

I don't believe in spiking my system with with potatoes and such, Although I do eat some potatoes. So how much car do I eat? I'm like you, Ben. How much carb per day? Hard to say because I have a lot of nuts in my diet. I have flaxseeds in there. I probably, I don't know, you know, and then sometimes, you know, Rich knows this. Sometimes I'll go into ketosis and I'll stay there for three weeks or a month. Currently, I'm not in ketosis. I'm out of ketosis, but just out of ketosis. It's hard to say what I eat in carbs a day. I would have to go, you know, I never count them. I would have to say I probably get somewhere between 100 and 120 carbs a day. I never really care. I generally stay, you know, fairly fat adapted. Even at that, when I'm in ketosis, I can get into ketosis at just over 50 carbs a day. Of course, when you're doing that, you have to kind of watch and count your carbs. So to go into ketosis, I could do it at 60 a day, but either way, whether I'm at 60 or whether I'm at 120, I'm still fat adapted. I can still get on a bike and ride six, seven hours, or I could go out for a run and run for a couple of hours and do it on basically, you know, I'll bring olive oil with me or a couple of nuts. I could do the whole thing on just that because my body does, you know, tend to utilize fat very well. Rich.

Right.

Well, just to kind of, you know, take a tip from Vinny, I mean, part of why you're able to go out and ride your bike for six or seven hours with what would appear to most people to be, you know, very few calories is also a factor of, you know, a function of the fact that you've been. You're so efficient in your cycling and you have such a huge endurance base from doing this for so many years. Like, the average person, whether they're in ketosis or eating a low carb diet or not, is not going to be able to go out and ride six hours because they haven't been doing it for 20 years the way that you have. So just sort of to the general audience out there, and I guess I would say, before even answering the question, I would back up and say, all right, well, there's a presumption in this question that this person wants to adopt a low carb diet. Chris. And my question would Be why, like, what is your objective? Is your objective to optimize a performance goal? Is your objective to adopt a sustainable, healthy lifestyle or is your objective to quickly lose weight? Those are all kind of different things. And for me.

I always look at this from a perspective of.

What is sustainable in the long term for me and what is healthiest. And performance goals and performance gains are secondary to that because I didn't change my diet and start doing all this stuff because I had a race I wanted to do well in. I did it because I was trying to repair my damaged health. And so for me, that's the most paramount thing that always enters my mind. So I guess I would ask you that question first. And, and you know, I can't speak to.

I can't speak to having a personal experience with trying to be an endurance athlete on a low carb diet because I've never tried that. But you know, I would say that my, and I, and I also don't count calories. You know, I'm trying to adopt a way of eating and living that is facile and works within my lifestyle so that I don't have to constantly think, you know, how many calories are in this? Is this too much? And what's the ratio of this to that? I really don't give those things too much thought. I just focus on eating, you know, lots of clean, burning whole foods close to their natural state. And the more I do that and kind of pay attention to what my body is telling me, then that tends to keep me on track. And much like Vinny and probably like Ben as well, I can go out for a two hour run or a five or six hour ride without that many calories because I'm fat adapted as well. And I've spent a lot of time doing zone two training and I have those sort of metabolic pathways embedded in a certain mitochondrial density that allows me to do that. And so on occasion I will go out and do the calorie deprivation ride or run where I'm trying to enhance my body's ability to utilize fat as an energy source in the aerobic zone. But you know, my kind of perspective on low carb again goes back to, you know, what is it that you're trying to do? And I know that eating a low carb diet is an effective way for weight loss. And there probably are some endurance athletes out there that are doing, you know, okay on it, but it just, it isn't the way. It isn't what I would personally suggest.

You need carbohydrates to.

Fuel your body.

You see, that's where.

Just if I can interject real quickly. I think I'm noticing the pattern that if we tend to talk for more than about three minutes or so, it seems to start to get choppy. Like, the bandwidth starts to get taken up. So I would say maybe if we can. If we can try and go machine gun style, it might work better. Because, like both. Both Rich and Vinny, you guys. You guys were super choppy towards the end. I don't know if other people are getting that. It's just me.

Okay.

Sorry, what were you saying, Vinnie?

What, did we freeze up here?

Vinny, you there?

Yeah, I'm here. I lost you guys. Are you there?

Yeah. Well, you were. You were starting to say something right before I started to say that.

Well, I lost you, Ben.

Yeah, I lost you too, Ben.

All right, let's take our next question.

Okay.

Joe.

That's an interesting question.

So the question is from Joe Aldridge. Hey, Joe, in ultra training, is it wise to create a bonk and train through it? If so, how often is feasible and how would you go about it? Is honey water and salt a good combination for long training since it's in easily and quickly digested? So I'll just jump in, I guess. That's two questions.

I just touched a second ago on the calorie deprivation workout, which I talk about in my book a little bit, which I think is something that is okay to do maybe once a week, but I wouldn't make that like a daily thing. It is good to try to restrict your calories occasionally on an endurance effort and try to trigger your body's ability to adapt to that. I don't know about you guys, but.

I don't know about trying to create a bonk and train through it. When I bonk, I'm done. It's over for me. When I set out to do a workout, whatever that workout is, one of the most important things for me is to be able to get through to the end of it and complete it intact and feeling good to finish strong. Once I bonk, that takes me out of a workout completely and I'm done. And, you know, I don't see what is. I mean, maybe Ben has studied this and Vinny, I don't know what your thoughts are, but I wouldn't recommend bonking on purpose.

No, I agree with that. When I read. When I heard you read, bonked. Every time I've bonked, I've literally not been able to ride another pedal stroke.

Or run Another step, you're done.

You're done. As a matter of fact, Serena had to come out one time and drive 20 miles to pick me up because I was done. I was in a ditch. I couldn't go anymore. So a true bunk, you can't. A bunk means that your brain is shutting your body down chemically for you not to take another step. You do not have to train for that. I mean, there is no way to train for that. Once you're done, you're done. Now, as far as the honey, he says something about honey, salt and water.

To be honest with you, if you were using carbohydrates to train, which a lot of people do, that's not a bad idea. But why would you put salt without putting other. When you say salts, are we talking electrolytes or are we just talking putting salt in there? Because too much salt can actually cause more dehydration. So you want that in the right amount. So I wouldn't agree with the salt going there with your honey and water, but I would tell you that if you were going to go out and use goo and all that other crap anyway, honey is the same thing. Your body's going to operate just as well on honey as it would any of that other crap that you're going to pay a couple of bucks for. So there you have it.

And it doesn't have the artificial flavorings in it either. It's still. It's a whole food.

Yeah. It's a real.

Even though it's.

Yeah. It's all semantics.

And you're up.

All right. Can you see me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is all semantics. I think that it's a misunderstanding what a bonk actually is. You know, like Vinny said, you can't turn the pedal when you're bonking. Now, I think if he did mean, is it wise to create a calorie deficit where you're going out and you're kind of pushing through with full on fat utilization and no exogenous sugars coming in, it depends on your goals. That style of training for a few years was how I cannibalized almost 30 pounds of muscle off my body.

If your goal is to go catabolic, to lose a lot of weight, a combination of both muscle and fat, that would be a good way to do things because you're sending a message to your body that it has to dip into its own lean muscle tissue organs. I don't think it's all that healthy of a protocol to do all the time throwing in a Big session every once in a while, trying to train yourself to be metabolically efficient. That type of thing would be okay. But again, I think that in many, many cases it is overdone by people who have already reached their body composition goals, by people who are already metabolically efficient and then they dig themselves into a hormonal hole by trying to go out and do this long session, almost using training as this masochistic punishment and seeing how long they can go without fueling. Once you've reached your body composition, your weight goals, you become metabolically efficient. You don't get a ton of added benefit from going out every weekend and doing some long, no carb, fat only fuel type of session. That's why I'm a fan of. I think I've talked about this before. I'm a fan of using something like superstarch, the YouCan superstarch, which keeps you in that fatty acid utilizing state but gives you enough carbohydrates, especially if you combine it with amino acids where you're not sending that signal to your body that it has to go full on catabolic.

I totally agree with what Ben is saying right now. Even when I'm fat adapted and I'll go out in ketosis to do four, five, six hours, I'll do it. But I do have that product with me. I'll take UCAN with me, I'll take a, a bunch of it, because you can live on that stuff. And I know what people are going to say. My group is going to say, well, Vinny, that's a grain. But it's been micronized a certain way to where it doesn't act like a grain. You can stay in Ketosis. Ben, I know that you've talked to Peter Attia before on your show and he's done the same thing with you can.

It's a great product to use, I.

Would say, if I could. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Sure, go ahead.

I was just going to say one thing. I think a very common, It's a very common thing and a common mistake for a lot of endurance athletes who might be carrying around an extra, you know, 5, 10, 15 pounds to try to use those long, those long rides as a way to lose that weight by restricting their calories on the bike. And I think any sort of triathlon coach or cycling coach would tell you.

Don'T try to lose weight on the bike. Make better choices off the bike about your diet. But like Ben said, if you make a habit of overly restricting your calories during training, you're ultimately Undermining.

The sort of effect that you're trying to catalyze in your workouts by doing what Ben said, which is literally cannibalizing yourself.

Well, there's already another question on screen. Vinny, you want to start with this one?

Yeah. Can you read it to me? Because I don't have glasses on. Hang on, let me do this.

Okay. The question is, what do you guys fuel yourself on prior to a long training session?

Interesting. I get up, let's say it's a morning time workout. I'll get up and do four or five eggs. But I'm with Ben on the too much protein thing. If I do four or five eggs, it'll be two full eggs and the other three will just be egg yolks. Usually I'll cook that in either butter or I'll use coconut oil. Usually a couple of strips of bacon and I'm out the door. If I'm doing an intense ride, I'm usually good for, you know, three hours on that, sometimes four hours. As a matter of fact, I ate that that particular breakfast. Anyone that lives in LA and did the bulldog run on that and didn't fuel anything for the full three hours I was on that course. That's generally what I'll have before a long ride. Now, if it's midday.

There might be more vegetables because that's when I'll start eating all my veggies midday. But it'll be what we call on the show the vinny fat shake, where there'll be a lot of leafy greens, kale, chard, that sort of thing. I always put broccoli in. It's one of my favorite veggies. And then I'll just put in a ton of medium chain triglyceride oil along with coconut oil, which is just more medium chain triglyceride oil. Add flax to that. I'll add nuts to it. Just grind it up in a Vitamix and just go to it.

Dan.

It's really, really rare that I ever train long to the point where I would actually get to the extent where I had to worry about a pre workout meal. So usually it's just whatever happened to be my last meal.

Sometimes it's salad with sardines on it and a little bit of goat cheese. Sometimes it's super greens and coconut milk. Sometimes it's a handful of nuts. I really am not all that picky. If I do go out for a really long session. Again, I don't care that much about the pre workout meal because I always have access to food anyways. Um, and you know, if I'm out on a bike, I can always pull over to a convenience store or grocery store if I need something. Or I've usually got a, you know, a few like coca chia bars or hammer bars or whatever in my back pocket. So I really like. I have zero system for what I eat before a long workout at all. The only thing is, you know, sometimes like a, for me, a long run would be 90 minutes. And I don't usually eat like meat before something like that because I find that it takes a little bit longer time to digest and I burp it back up a little bit. But that's fine. That's my non sciency answer.

Right. I'm sort of similar to Ben. I don't have any one particular thing that I, that I go to prior to a long training session. If I'm doing a long training session, it usually means that I'm heading out in the morning and I don't like to eat that much in the morning. I know it's important to eat a little bit, but.

If it's a long ride, maybe I'll have some sprouted grain toast with almond butter or gluten free toast with almond butter or a bowl of quinoa with berries and maybe a little bit of black soil in there or a glass of smoothie similar to the one that Vinny described. Sometimes it's just a Vitamix smoothie. I don't overdo it. That tends to run through your system pretty quick. So if my long training session happens to be a run, that means I'm probably gonna have to be running off into the bushes to relieve myself at some point during the run because it goes right through me. But I don't overeat. And if it's a long ride, I don't worry about it that much because I'm going to be taking calories in while I'm. While I'm riding. So it's not like I need that breakfast to fuel my.

Throughout the workout.

Can I add one more thing to this? We all three have something in common here that I think is very important.

We all three don't really pay that much attention to what we eat before we go out on a long ride. And I think that needs to be mentioned because I get so many Facebook messages and Twitter messages where especially triathletes, for some reason they're the millimeter people, as I call them, because they always want to know, what can I have right now? Tell me exactly what to eat. I want to know what you guys eat. And we both, all three of us describe that we all, you know, we don't really pay that much attention to it. And I think a lot of times the age group need to put a little fun back into their workouts and what they're eating and just the whole thing because it's very important to keep the fun in it. You don't want to get to that point. You're not a pro, you're not going to become a pro. Don't worry about winning your version of the world championship or anything else. Keep the fun in it and you'll be in it for a long time.

All right, it looks like the next question is down there. It's from Fred. Fred, it looks like you were on screen for a second to ask your question live and then you disappeared. So I guess, yeah.

What happened?

Read your question. Maybe he got camera shy. It says, Fred says I eat a really high fat diet and my Breakfast is about 1,000 calories and 81% fat. Sure it's not 81.5? Fred, is it possible to have too much fat in a high fat low carb diet if you are training every day?

I guess I'll start with that and my answer would be an unequivocal yes.

It is called, not to put too fine a point on it, anal leakage. You will know if you've had too much fat because you do start to have some serious mess ups on the backside. I would say that once you exceed right about 65, 70% fat, in my experience, that's when bad stuff starts to happen. It's not necessarily issues with body composition if it's good fat that you're eating. It's more an issue of you only being able to absorb and digest X amount of fat. If you look at a book like Paul Geminet's Perfect Health Diet where he gives the composition of breast milk, for example, I think that tops out right around in there at 60 to 70% fat. I believe that's about the most that our GI tract can actually handle before it really starts to pass a lot of fat into the large intestine and create that oily poo that we all know and love. Unless our name is Rich Roll.

Is it possible to have too much fat in a high fat low carb diet if you're training every day? Yeah, absolutely. It's not, not necessarily too much fat in a single meal, but it's the amount of fat that you consume by the end of the day.

It sounds like too much of a good thing that you're trying to do there, Fred.

If a little is good, a lot is better is not the right thing here. So I would have to agree with Ben on this, because, yeah, having that much fat is just not a good thing you need to have. And it's not about fat versus carbs versus anything else.

You need other nutrients.

You need to have your phytonutrients, and you're not going to get that from fat. You have to have vegetables in there. By virtue of having vegetables and fruit, you're not going to. How do you do that? How do you have enough of that at 81% fat? If that's 81% of everything you're eating every day, does that make sense?

I don't have that much. I don't have too much to add to this because this isn't my routine. I guess my only question would be, why are you eating so much fat, period? Like, what is. You know what? Why are you in this trajectory where eating this much fat for breakfast or eating this much fat at all is something you've decided to do? So it wouldn't be something that I would do. That's all. And also, I wanted to point out that, Ryan, if you're still out there and with us, I saw your comment that I look like Corey Feldman's loser brother, and I take that personally.

Not that it might not be true.

Can I tell you something, everyone?

They're asking us to take our shirts off, too.

Oh, no.

We've got a wild audience.

Freecast might knock us off the.

They might.

Yeah, they might. They might pull us down if we do that.

By the way, Rich, you may or may not know this. Every woman in Calabasas thinks you're the hottest guy here. You're the hottest.

Because I am. Vinny, come on, man.

You are. Look at you.

All right, Rich, you want to read the next question? I think you're up. All right.

Hey, Rodolfo, thanks for joining this recast. Rodolfo's got a question. We hear a lot of pros and benefits on ketogenic, low carb, etc. Are there any cons on this approach?

I can speak to this only as a layperson and only as somebody who doesn't have personal experience with doing this.

And generally, I like to restrict my opinions to things that I have firsthand knowledge about. I think that my sort of. My most general perspective on ketosis and ketogenic diets is that they're very effective for losing Weight, there's no question about that, but I would question whether they are healthy.

On a long term basis. In other words, if you are consistently in ketosis, my understanding is that this puts additional strain on your kidneys and it's not the most healthy way to kind of move throughout life in a kind of long term sustainable way. So again, very, very good at losing weight. And I know Vinny has firsthand experience with this and has a different opinion on it, but it wouldn't be something that, that I would recommend anybody do in a long term way.

My feeling about it is if you, if you have other problems, type 2 diabetes being one of them, which that's something you brought upon yourself because of sugar. One of the best diets you could probably be on is a ketogenic diet. Other than that, it's really not necessary to lose weight if you want to lose a lot of weight really fast. Ketogenic diets, they'll do that. The downside of a ketogenic diet is they're very, very difficult, very limiting to stay on. So being on one long term, it's tough. That's why I preach no sugars, no grains, because you can still have beans and you can still have legumes, you can still have vegetables. It's hard to eat a lot of vegetables and stay calorgenic. And that's why I don't stay on it long term, because, you know, I'm a guy who loves his veggies.

But people who have problems going all the way back to the 1930s, people who have problems with seizures, one of the ways, one of the best ways, you know, besides any, including any medicine, not beside any medicine, one of the best ways to handle.

Seizures is to be in ketosis. The brain seems to like it. Does this make it right? Does this make it the best diet out there? I've been on it a lot over the years. I talk about it on my show. I know a lot of athletes are on it. I've done athletic competitions on it, but I also do competitions off of it. It's not for everyone, I can tell you that. Rich asked me on his podcast a while back why I stay on it so often and why I go back to it. I almost died of leukemia a couple of years ago. And one of the things that I know is that sugar, cancer, loves sugar. And I want to live as long as I can possibly be live. So that's the reason I tend to go back to it and stay on it more than that. So I really have a medical reason to be on it. But other than that.

Ben, before you jump in, I just wanted to say one more thing too. Is that my sort of layperson's observation of people that have experimented with ketosis is that, again, they tend to lose a lot of weight very quickly. But I also protracted over a couple years, I see a lot of yo yoing, like, people go off it, they gain the weight back, then they have to go back on it, and they lose it, and then they gain more than they had before. And there's this rubber banding that goes on, which goes again to adopting a sustainable lifestyle approach that will keep you balanced and on a path that is consistent over time.

By the way, Atkins is pretty much that diet. People go through the first phase of Atkins, which is a ketogenic thing, they see they're losing weight. Basically what they're losing is all of that extra sugar in their body and they're carrying out a lot of water and they stay on it too long. I'm sorry, Ben, I didn't mean it to go, but yeah, you're right. There is a ton of yo yoing that goes back and forth with ketogenic diets, and you have to be careful of that.

Yeah. Well, first of all, we need to realize here that we're talking about, in many cases, the benefits of ketosis having been discovered as efficacious for disease management. You mentioned epilepsy, Vinnie. You mentioned about cancer and how sugar can be a fuel for undifferentiated tumor growth. And that's another issue where we're limiting carbohydrate consumption and actually putting yourself above 1.0 millimolar in terms of blood ketones would be effective. Now, Rich, when you're talking about ketosis being hard on the kidney, on the organs, what you're talking about is being above 10 millimolar ketone bodies, which is full on ketoacidosis, which is pretty damn hard to get yourself into unless you are combining very low carbohydrate diet with a lot of exercise. And some people do put themselves into that state, and I don't think it's healthy at all. In my opinion, ketosis is really only that great of an idea, especially when we're talking about an athlete for somebody who is managing one of these diseases that we're talking about in particular, like diabetes, epilepsy, cancer, that type of thing. Someone who needs to go through a phase of their life where they need to teach themselves how to be very metabolically efficient, very fat efficient, with the understanding that they're not going to maintain that throughout all their training and especially not maintain it going into their racing. Those are really the two primary folks who this is useful for, unless you're totally sedentary, in which case I think ketosis can also be pulled off. Now, low carb is way different than ketosis. It's closer to what I do. Again, I already mentioned this. I'm pretty much cyclic low carb. I eat a low carbohydrate diet almost every day of the week in the off season, and then about five, five days of the week once racing season rolls around. And I'm revving up my engine on the weekends racing. So that's my take on ketosis. And I think it depends on who you are and what your goals are, basically.

All right, well, we have Paul here. I could take this question. Can I take this question? All right, Paul wants to know, hey, Paul, do you think carbs make you fat? If yes, then what are your thoughts on Durian Rider Harley, a guy on YouTube who eats in excess of 700 grams of carbs per day? By carbs, I also mean whole. Whole plant food sources, not junk.

Harley is a guy on YouTube and on Facebook who goes by Durian Rider, and.

I've talked about him on the podcast. Many of you might have seen his YouTube videos. The guy puts out videos like, I don't know, every other day or something like that. He's got tons of videos. Very outspoken. He's very controversial. He sort of relishes the controversy in talking about diet. And his whole thing is that he is essentially a fruitarian, which means he's kind of on the Douglas Graham 80, 1010 program, which means he's getting.

Most of his nutrition through fruit. He's got a website called 30 bananas a day, and he always talks about how he can eat 30 bananas a day and how he can power himself through fruit. And this seems to work incredibly well for him and for his girlfriend, who are both extremely fit. They live in Australia. The guy just won the Strava Base Mile Challenge by riding some ungodly number of kilometers in the month of January. He wins all sorts of running races from 5k up to half marathon. So he is able to do this very, very well. And I also know there was a guy who did EPIC 5 this past year who essentially did the whole thing on bananas and coconut water, from what I understand. So there are people and also athletes who are doing very well with this. So when the question being, do you think carbs make you Fat. I think you have to take a step back and look at it from a bigger picture of, well, what kind of carbs and what else is the person eating? If you're eating like Harley and you're essentially eating fruit all day long and you're adopting this fruitarian program, you're probably not going to get fat, provided that you're also exercising a fair amount like Harley does. If you're eating. If the carbs that you're eating are pasta and white bread and all this kind of thing, that's a very different picture and a different story. So I think you also have to look at what is your protein content and what is your fat coming from as well, and have a holistic approach on that. So, yes, carbs can indeed make you fat if you're eating the wrong kind and too much, and especially when they're processed.

You know, it's interesting because I've seen that idiot and I've seen his videos, and.

To suggest that anyone should eat the number of bananas he eats is just absolutely ludicrous. And also, on top of that, he's a great athlete. So, yeah. Is he getting away with it? Sure. But that's like saying, hey, if I eat Michael Jordan's diet, I'll be able to play basketball like Michael Jordan. No, only Michael Jordan can eat Michael Jordan's diet. Yeah, it didn't matter what Michael Jordan ate. It didn't matter what Larry Bird ate. Those guys can knock the bottom out of it all day. You can't. And you're not going to be like this idiot in Australia or his girlfriend eating 700 grams. That's as ludicrous as the guy earlier who was eating 81% fat. He's in the opposite direction. You know, I think, you know, you have three guys here that, you know, we have three different views on diets, yet we're all the same. We're all saying the same thing over and over and over. And it should be the big takeaway here. We're all saying, moderation, dude, moderation. You're not going to. I mean, that's crazy for anyone to eat 700 grams of carbohydrates a day and think that they're going to get away with being healthier. Of course you're going to get fat. Is that guy not fat? Yeah, he's not fat because genetically, somehow, his body can handle that, but most people's bodies won't handle that. And guess what? Most people's bodies can't do what he does in athletics either.

There you have it. Ben, you have anything to say about this?

Yeah. Honestly, when it comes to how many carbohydrates that you eat, I really don't give a shit about your body composition or about how fat or unfat you are. What it comes down to is the same reason that I personally quit eating the whole 55 to 65% typical endurance athlete diet. I can go fast, I can go nine and a half hours in Ironman on a high carb diet and feel great. But what you don't see is the nerve inflammation, the blood vessel inflammation, the lack of DHA in brain tissue, the fact that folks who are following high carb, low fat diets tend to have higher levels of depression. Depression than people following it. Like a standard American diet durian rider isn't even that fast, in my opinion. Has like a 130 half marathon which I personally don't think is smoking. Basically what we're talking about is the whole health versus performance trade off. The whole idea that this high carbohydrate approach causes inflammation, that 20 years down the road affects your joints, affects your brain, affects your gluten glucose levels and your glucose sensitivity, affects your blood vessels and your nerves. What it comes down to is the other thing is fructose processing by the liver. With that many bananas per day, I would love to see his alanine aminotransferase, his aspartate aminotransferase levels. I would love to see what a biopsy of his liver looks like because I'll bet there's some fatty liver disease going on.

Oh, he's got to have fatty liver disease. Yes.

There's a ton of stuff that we're talking about here that goes way above and beyond whether or not you're fast as a runner, as a triathlete. That's what it comes down to for me and the nutrition choices I make and the performance choices I make for myself and for my athletes is unless you're doing this to pay the bills and to make money, you need to place more emphasis on how your body is going to look and how your brain is going to be in terms of the amount of fatty acids that it has in it. 10, 20 years down the road because I want to be playing with my grandchildren, have a high IQ, be having great sex and look good when I'm 60, 70 years old and not be sitting around with a torn out hip and oxidized blood vessels.

Ben, can I add something? I'm glad you brought up fatty liver disease.

You know, it's usually associated with alcoholism. And, you know, you can really be thin, you can be lean, you can be ripped and still have fatty liver disease. And that happens a lot to people who their body allows them to utilize, you know, sugars and carbohydrates so that they can, you know, look lean and look fit their whole life. We all know that person who eats french fries at every meal, yet they go to the beach and they have a beach perfect body, yet they can have fatty liver disease. And it's not just for alcoholics anymore because of all the sugars we have and all the high fructose corn syrup we have in our diets. That can happen, you know, to anyone. And they can still be lean.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right, cool. I think we probably kicked that question to death. I'm thinking, guys, I don't know what, I don't know where you're at for time, but since we got started kind of late, you guys want. You guys want to go like 10, 15 more minutes on this or.

I can go about 10 more.

I got.

I can go about 10 more minutes and then I got, I got a. I got a jet. Cool.

Sounds good. So here's Esther. What do you think of food production in the US? Few examples, taking iodine out of salt, emphasis on soy, wheat, corn, farm raised fish, etc.

I'll be quick on this. I think that we as consumers have to take matters into our own hands and make local decisions, support our local community supported agriculture, shop at our local farms and farmers markets.

All the power is in our hands to shut down Big Ag and to do things like quit buying subsidized wheat and corn and things of that nature. Keep things local, keep things fresh. Sure, I buy bananas and coconut milk from the grocery store just because I can't get that stuff locally. And I like the way it tastes. But I'm not supporting Big Ag with those decisions. My whole take on food production is keep it local for the most part. You're going to make the biggest dent on that.

Yeah, I mean, I would say it's a huge problem, you know, and it's a problem that is getting worse. I question whether it's even possible to eat corn that's not genetically modified with the way Monsanto is controlling the seed supply and the way the seeds blow, you know, you know, the wind takes the seeds into other farms and there's so much cross pollination that, you know, it's very, very difficult to.

Even if you're eating locally, to even know where everything is coming from. So I Think that, like Ben said, and I talk about this on my podcast all the time, is you really have to vote with your dollar. The only way that we're going to ultimately be able to create.

Populist change is if people like yourselves and ourselves take responsibility, responsibility for our food choices and really invest in local agriculture and be a lot more conscious in the choices that we're making.

I don't know what else to say about that. We're up against giant behemoths. They're so large and they spend so much money that they were able to defeat Prop 37 in California, which I never thought would have happened, which basically just said that, that people are entitled to have to labeling to information that food manufacturers, if there's going to be GMOs in the food product, that there has to be a label on the food product. And I don't know why.

That proposition didn't pass, but it didn't because there's a lot of money being invested in keeping us ignorant about what's really going on. So it's incumbent upon all of us to be as educated as we can can and make informed choices.

I'm going to reflect exactly what the two of you guys have just said. Rich, I'm with you on Prop 37. I bored my audience for weeks and weeks on my podcast about Prop 37 and GMOs, but every time I turned that mic off, I would turn to my co host, Anna and I said, anna, there is no way we're going to beat Big Food on this. We the people will not beat Big Food. I mean, every time I turned on the television, there was, you know, it was just too much stacked against California. And California had the chance to go out and do something really special that would have probably leaked across the country. Now, that aside, getting back to your question, of course, since I don't eat grains and sugar, I don't have to worry much about that. But I do eat beans and I legumes and I do eat vegetables and I do eat meat. I can't sit here and be so Pollyanna as to say, go out and buy. All of your beef should be grass fed and all of your eggs should be having, your chickens should be having a wonderful life because it's not possible for us to eat that way anymore. Serena and I, we always, we have this big dream of one day having our own sustainable farm and our own cattle that we can slaughter and have all of our fruits and vegetables and everything we eat right there. But we both kind of Know that that's a pipe dream.

Again, trying to stay away from me and Pollyanna. It's very expensive to eat right, as you guys know. And to get the good grass fed beef and to get the good free range organic eggs and to get the locally grown fruit and vegetables is tough to do all the time. I would tell people who don't have the money to do it, do it as often as you can without hurting your pocketbook. I realize people times are tough, people have kids and it would be crazy to say, oh, you just have to eat that way. I would say try to stay out of McDonald's more, stay out of the fast food places more and try to spend a little money when you can on the good quality locally grown fruits and vegetables and try to get grass fed beef and milk when you can. Your kids lives depend on it.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Well, I would hate for us to be kind of rushed in closing. So I think maybe those are really nice, warm fuzzy question to end on.

So maybe we should call it there. And I know we had a bunch of questions in queue, so if I could say real quick before I shut up, thank you all for coming. And I'm sure that we may do this or some semblance of this at some point in the future. I think that we all.

Definitely showed you, as Vinnie pointed out, that there are a lot of similar themes that you tend to see in our diets and in our philosophies. And even though we each have our different approach.

We all managed to get through this without actually biting anyone's head off. That's great.

I was just kidding with my boxing gloves, but that was fun. And I'm sure if we do this again at some point, I think that the audience drives how controversial the talk is, really. So if the audience asks controversial questions, they may get controversial answers. And if not.

But anyways, Rich, Vinnie, thank you guys for coming, donating your Wednesday evening.

And I want to thank the audience for attending and I'll hand it over to you guys to give your closing remarks.

I'll go now because I know Vinnie always likes to get the last word in. Right, Vinny?

So, no, it's. I just likewise, like, I wanted to thank everybody for taking an hour out of your busy day to join in. It looks like we had quite a few people on this freecast and that's great. And I'm kind of sitting here scrolling through all of these questions and all the comments in the margin here and realizing, man, we barely scratched the surface on countless topics that people Want.

Want to know about.

Which on one level, is fantastic. There's a lot of curiosity. There's a desire to do things better and a desire for better knowledge and for us to discuss all this stuff. So I apologize that we could only get to a few questions. You realize how limiting just an hour is. So Ben and Vinny and I, when we finish this, we'll talk about probably doing this again, I would imagine. And so I hope that you guys got some. Something out of this. And if you're interested in having us do more of these, let us know, and hopefully we can get to more of these questions. And I think just in closing, before turning it over to Vinny, I think if you got anything out of this, you realize that despite the differences in the way Ben, myself, and Vinny eat, we share a lot of similarities. And one of the biggest similarities is take personal responsibility for your choices, listen to your body experiment, find what works for you, what resonates with you, and own that. But educate yourself and again, vote with your dollar.

I really enjoy doing this, guys, and I want to do it again if we can. So let me know when you guys want to do it again. I want to say that both of the guys that are pointing at me right now have books out there that need to be bought and read. And as a matter of fact, my name is in one of those guys books. So what page is my name on, Rich?

What, you don't have that memorized? Come on.

I should, but I don't. I had it on the wall, but I took it down. It's 200. You don't have to read the whole book. Just go to my name. But you have to buy the book to get to that. It's called Finding Ultra. Ben, you have a book out there also, right?

Yeah, but my. My big epic book isn't coming out till October, so. But I'm publishing it on my website as I write it.

My book is the next one out. Is that what we're saying?

I think yours is. And you've been sitting in this, the very same sound booth that I sat in to record my audiobook as you.

Record your own, right? We use the same guy. He did say. The guy did say that I was much more interesting than Rich as a human being. But that's like. I don't want to get Zach in trouble. I'm just saying that's what he said. I truly enjoyed this. My podcast is angriest trainer Rich calls his. What do you call your podcast, Rich?

I call it the second angriest trainer.

He's the second angriest trainer. And Ben as a pacifist, that's the name of this podcast. But I want to thank you guys for doing this. This is great. I want to do it again whenever you guys want to.

All right.

We got to do it when your book is coming out, too.

All right.

Thanks, you guys.

Later, guys.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.