Diets You Should AVOID For Building Muscle

Foreign. What's going on, everybody? And welcome back to the Filled With Science podcast. You're here with your hosts, as always, of course, me, myself and I, that is Max Coleman, AKA Coleman at all. And sitting in front of me as tradition, is Daniel Plotkin, AKA Deep Money, AKA Deep Pizzy. No longer allowed to say D. Pity. Danny Boy probably shouldn't talk about p. Diddy controversies. 30 seconds into a. Into a podcast about what a great segue to what we're talking about today. We're going to be talking about diets that you should probably avoid and a bunch of different fad diets in general. Basically going to be doing an overarching episode of diets that piss Danny Boy and I off. And we're going to eventually talk about how we think you should go about structuring your diet if fat loss and or muscle growth is the goal. Going to be a lot of repeaters here that we've talked about previously. We're talking about intermittent fasting, although we're also going to touch about touch on some other diets and bad diets that we haven't before. But first, before we get to any of that, let's talk about some different reasons why diets may be a bad choice in the first place. And I'll start here first talking about the probably the most important aspect of a diet outside of just adhering to certain principles that are necessary for proper fat loss and muscle gain, right? And those being sustainability, enjoyment and level of restriction. And there's really not a whole lot to say here outside of just the very obvious, right? Which is that I can give you the single greatest diet in the world with macros and calorie allotments that are perfectly tailored to your own genetic coding that will result you the best possible physique that money and your imagination can provide, right? However, if the diet requires you to do something that you just absolutely hate, something that is impossible or makes you feel as if you're doing a level of restriction that it's simply not sustainable. That best diet in the world, if you only do it for three days, one week, one month even, is going to get you, well, just about nowhere, right? So one of the most important things with a diet outside of it actually adhering to certain dietary principles is a diet that you'll actually do. As cliche as that is, as often as people in our space say it, the best diet at the end of the day is the one that you're actually going to be able to adhere to. Now, that being said, the Best diet that you adhere to has to still fall under certain principles that will allow for whatever goal it is that you're trying to adhere to achieve. So Danny boy, let's get your voice in on this podcast. What are some of those principles and why or what are some reasons why a diet can just be straight up a bad diet based on certain logical and empirical evidence.

Are we saying in terms of muscle building or generally?

Let's go, let's go with general hypertrophy. So that can either be muscle building while trying to bulk or muscle retention or maybe even muscle building while trying to diet.

Yeah, so I'd say probably the main things that you're trying to do here are get enough calories. So obviously energy allotment is going to be a huge factor when it comes to creating a diet. If you really sustainably enjoy eating 500 calories a day, it's not going to support your muscle building endeavors. So, you know, just because you enjoy it and you're a weirdo doesn't mean that it's gonna do wonders for you. And on the other side of things, more realistically, if you really enjoy eating 4,000 calories a day and you just love having, you know, all you can eat buffets, breakfast, lunch and dinner, that's not going to support you maintaining any semblance of a, you know, lean physique. So your bulks are going to last, you know, a month before you become very, very fat. So calories obviously a big, big thing here and then protein is the other big thing that you want covered. So getting adequate protein is very important for muscle building endeavors. If you don't. So let's say you have a perfect diet calorie wise, but you don't supply those essential amino acids, then you're not going to support your muscle building goals. So yeah, I think calories, protein is maybe just the main two that suck.

Podcast over. Yeah, go ahead.

I think being absurd with nutrients might get you into some trouble. So yeah, we'll talk about some of these where I mean, you might missed out on some essential micronutrients that could lead you to sickness. And therefore, regardless of what you're doing protein calorie wise, you're gonna not do yourself any services and may end up, you know, in the hospital. But for the most part, if you're eating a well balanced diet, it'll be protein and calories.

Yeah, there are obviously like extreme cases like theoretically, if you had zero vitamin D ever, like both from sun or from whatever food sources you get them from. It doesn't really matter how much protein you're eating. It's still, you're probably gonna see some unfavorable results. Right. Same with, I don't know, some other nutrient that some smarter person could make.

Well, vegans, for example, will speak about B12, though if you're getting no B12, you'll definitely have, you know, pretty bad outcomes. Anemia, like severe anemia, will obviously have, have negative impacts on your muscle building goals.

You can supplement B12 from vegan products. No.

Very easily. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So you decided not to supplement as you were following a vegan diet, then you know, that's some, like, gross deficiencies. Not that I, I'm not against supplementation or anything like that, obviously, but gross deficiencies can occur if you're not covering your bases on certain diets and so on.

Yeah. So first and foremost, when you're choosing a diet, it better allow you to have a certain number of calories that are within a range that'll lead to a reasonable amount of fat loss, but not something that's way too fast because that can result in unfavorable outcomes or something that just straight up doesn't put you in a caloric deficit, obviously. So that's definitely number one if we're talking about either gaining or losing weight. Right. But then of course, protein, and there's data on this where they have individuals losing weight on similar caloric allotments, one with higher protein, one with less, and you see better lean mass retention. As if I needed to even cite a study to tell you that protein is important. Right. And that's with respect to fat loss. Right. That's not even for just eucaloric diets where people are trying to build muscle and training studies. Right. Okay. So those are the most important errors. And of course, outside of extreme scenarios like extreme deficiencies in certain macronutrients or micronutrients or even macronutrients, potentially to a certain extent, like you should be having some fat in your diet. But that's for another episode. But anyway, outside of that, there's a lot of wiggle room with respect to what diets you can choose. Right. So we're going to talk about some diets that are fine. They're fine diets and they're totally safe and effective for both fat loss and muscle growth. They just take a couple of extra considerations if you're choosing to do those. Right. We're going to start here with veganism. Right. Shout out to all my vegan Homies, My. My animal loving friends out there. Not that if you aren't a vegan, you're not an animal lover. Like Danny Boy and I are both as omnivorous as it gets and also as much of animal lovers as the next guy. Right. But with respect to veganism generally, this is probably something that's just been blown kind of out of proportion. Actually, it's gotten a lot better in the last couple years, I would say, thanks to people like Eric Trexler, who are kind of making veganism more popular within the. And also Clarence Kennedy, of course, the vegan freak, making veganism a much more viable option for those trying to build and maximize muscle growth. Right. But if you're doing a vegan diet, you just want to make sure that you are getting at least a wide variety of protein sources. You don't want all of the protein you're eating coming from soy products or from some other vegan. I don't think. Is pea protein a complete source? I don't think it is, no.

I think it's fairly high in leucine, but it's not a complete source.

But anyway, if you are on a vegan diet, you just want to make sure you're getting a very large variety of protein sources in your diet because the majority of protein sources that you will get on a vegan diet are incomplete. But assuming that you're eating a complimentary amount of them, you're going to be just fine in that regard. Do you have anything else you want to add about veganism?

Yeah, just the normal stuff. Make sure that you're eating a variety. If you're really worried about it, then try to bump that number. So typically the recommendation is about, you know, 1.4 to 1.6 grams per kilogram. But if physique is, you know, your main goal, then maybe bumping that up to like 1.8, maybe even 2.2.

So.

Gram per pound of body weight.

You said gram per kilogram at first. 1.4 to 1.6 grams per kilogram.

Yeah.

Of protein.

Yes.

What? What? Not 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight.

Oh, yeah, I'm doing like, I'm, I'm like on the conservative side of things where. Sorry, I think that you're still probably good to go at around like if you're eating all animal products because, because the studies that we have are mixed diets and it was, you know, 1.6 is what was pretty. Was very, very safe. I like to give people a little bit more leeway so especially if they're eating a majority animal products, I would be very surprised if, you know, around 1.4 wasn't actually covering your bases, but 1.6, very safe for an omnivorous diet. If you're a vegan, maybe 1.8 would be the safer bet there. So just a little bit more. If you're really trying to, you know, cross your T's, dot your eyes kind.

Of thing, and then it's not even necessary, obviously if. Because there are vegan protein options that are whole protein options. Especially now with the like vegan protein powder market that's out there, they usually have complementary. Complementary amino acid profiles in those. So if you're eating a lot of your protein from that, then you could stick within the 1.4 to 1.6 gram per kilogram that Danny boy was just saying. Sorry.

There's even one that is literally like a bacterially made whey protein that is like the amino acid profile. It actually has slightly more leucine than regular whey and everything else is the same. So, yeah, I mean, there's modern science, man, there's.

But did those bacteria consent to us eating the protein that they're making vegans? I think you have a little bit cognitive dissonance going on there. Yeah. So veganism's fine. If you want to play it really safe, bump up the protein a little bit. But honestly, it's probably not that big of a deal, assuming that you're eating a pretty wide variety of protein sources. Cool. Intermittent fasting. Really not a whole lot to say here because Danny Boy and I have an entire episode on. On the Built With Science podcast where we're talking about how to go about intermittent fasting if you're looking to maximize gains, but generally speaking, you just want to avoid going for extremely long periods of fasting. Definitely don't want to go above, like if you're the 8, 16 is probably the 16 8. Whatever it is, probably your best bet. You probably don't want to go 24 or 24, 24 or alternate day fasting or anything like that. And likely what's best is probably still supplementing protein in the periods that you're not fasting. One option that we actually didn't talk about, and I'm kind of curious as to your thoughts, Danny Boy, is if you're going to do an intermittent fasting diet and you don't want to break your fast at all, meaning you don't want to do what Danny Boy and I do is and have protein throughout the day and Then have big meals in the evening. You can supplement with like something like an EAA or a bcaa. I would say that, that if there's ever a time to supplement with the branched chain amino acids or essential amin, if you're like dogmatically adhering to wanting to do a fast, that's probably your best time to supplement with those. But even then, probably not a big deal. Assuming your fast isn't going on for too long and you want to make sure that you're getting in a substantial amount of protein. Same with all of these other diets that we're going to say. Do you have anything to say about that?

Yeah, I guess it depends on the reason why you're fasting. So I think pretty much everyone would say that if you're consuming a BCAA or eaa, you're breaking the fast. If you're truly doing a fast because you don't want any calories coming in, because there's obviously calories associated with those. But if you're fasting because you want to basically keep hunger at bay, which some people do, like that they're like, oh, if I have a protein shake or if I have a protein bar or pretty much anything substantive, but then for whatever reason, in like 30 minutes to an hour, I'm really ravenously hungry and so on, then I might. And this is based on just anecdotally, just me messing around with them. It doesn't do the same thing as like eating a small meal or having a protein shake or protein bar. So potentially reaching for the eaa, not the bcaa, but the EAA would, would make some sense in, in that context. And the reason I say yeah is because it has all of the essential amino acids as opposed to just three of the essential amino acids. So you're definitely covering your bases more there and not having any rate limiters.

Do you? Calories from bcaas and from eaas, I would imagine, are limited. Lower than your traditional. Like, even if you do it on a gram basis, because there's no peptide bonds, I would imagine it's a lower calorie.

Yeah, last time I looked, it's a bit less. But regardless, still, like, if the fasting is zero, then obviously there's gonna be calories and amino acids. You know what I mean?

Yes, I do. But like, I don't know. This is something that I've, like, I'm so interested in with respect to essential amino acids. Like, someone please, please someone out there if you're listening to this podcast, because I know how many PhDs thinking about dissertation topics or listening. Do a study comparing whey nitrogenous matched whey to. I mean, essential amino acid study. Why the isn't that out there? Like why does that not exist yet? Why do we have all the studies on branch chain but not on essential amino acids anyway?

You're talking about a longitudinal.

Longitudinal on hypertrophy, obviously. Yeah, yeah, because they just don't care about your amino acid. I don't care about your MPS response to essential.

Oh, buddy, who do you think you are?

I don't know one. That's why I'm saying if someone smarter out there is listening, who is actually knows anything about nutrition wants to do a study on this? I'm thinking we'll do a whole podcast.

On why people misinterpret MPS research. Next time, guys, as long as Jeremy.

Signs off on it, we'll come back to it. I'm sure that something that relatively rank beginners would love listening to is us talking about misinterpreting of MPS research. Muscle protein, synthetic response research. For those of you who don't know what MPS stands for. Okay, so intermittent fasting. We have a whole episode on it. Go listen to it. But if you're gonna do it, try not to make the fast last longer than probably 16 hours. And don't be afraid of having a little bit of protein. And if you're afraid of that, don't be afraid of having a couple of scoops of branched chain amino acids or essential amino acids. And if you're afraid of that, why are you listening to this podcast?

All right, by the way, guys, if you're like me and want to maximize the time and effort you spend in the gym and with your diet, then you need to use a plan backed by the latest science. We have got an army of over a hundred thousand members who are getting into the best shape of their lives using our science based training and nutrition methods. To join today, just head over to builtwithscience.com and take my quiz to find the best program for you and your body.

Keto. I don't really have anything to say here. I don't even think that this diet is something that we have to have any special considerations for. Oh wait, Keto. No, that's different than Paleo. Sorry, Keto. I do have something to say. Sorry about that. Keto is fine. I think a lot of people can get carried away with fat consumption on keto and not realize that even if they're losing weight, which I think the majority of you listening to this Podcast probably know if you're losing weight on keto, you certainly can lose weight. Not only weight, you can lose fat tissue as well, but a lot, especially within the first couple of weeks of keto, which is why so many people love this. You lose weight relatively rapidly, and that's because you deplete your glycogen stores. And for every gram of glycogen you have, you hold onto about 4 grams of water. So you lose a ton of weight very rapidly when you do keto. Right. But a lot of people can get really carried away. Cause there's so many keto recipes out there that are like incredibly palatable, like very delicious foods that you can eat a tremendous amount of and not really find yourself in a caloric deficit at all. Protein's not super a big concern on keto because a lot of the foods you're going to be eating are going to have a substantial amount of protein in them. But just make sure that you're at least keeping an eye on the amount of calories that you're consuming. And then look with respect to carbohydrates for muscle building and for fueling your workouts and stuff. Do I think you should have carbs in an ideal sense? Probably. But this is more of a my anecdote as well as that of my clients and friends who've done keto diets. Not so much the research that we have. A lot of the research we have on muscle building and muscle growth in general, comparing ketogenic diets to diets that allow carbohydrates don't show much of a difference at all in muscle growth or muscle retention, I believe. Been a while since I've looked over this literature, but I think that maybe we've overplayed the importance of carbohydrates within the nutritional space and in terms of hypertrophy training. Right. So if keto's something that you just absolutely love and it works really, really well for you, by all means, be my, be my guest and keto yourself into ketoacidosis for all I care. But I wouldn't generally recommend it as a go to diet for individuals trying to maximize their body composition. Anything you want to say there?

Yeah, there's a. There's a decent amount to unpack with keto, I think I agree overall that, you know, sometimes the early water loss might be motivational for people and many times the diet, at least in the short term, can help people with actually just losing fat. So obviously cutting out a whole macronutrient limits the amounts of foods that you can eat. So you, you end up in a deficit many times subconsciously. But this is a point that I wanted to add to your good summary is that because of the fact that the ketogenic diet tends to have people spontaneously end up in a calorie deficit. If your goal is muscle building, it's actually sometimes fairly difficult to get in enough calories, especially if you haven't been doing it for a while because you have to find a decent amount of foods, especially if you're trying to do it in a healthy way and not just slab like literally 4 tablespoons of butter rib eyes.

Yeah.

And you see it very, very often where people do keto and they're trying to get their caloric allotment and they just have like the most egregious meals which is like a 4 inch thick piece of butter on not pieces or.

Like in their coffee too. I don't remember if you remember like bulletproof coffee and stuff. Yeah, yeah.

They'll literally like freaking blend the. And it doesn't. I tried it, you know, because naturally you have to. And yeah, the emulsion lasts like literally 3 sec. Like it. It literally forms a disgusting like freaking fat to do on top giant layer. Yeah, exactly.

It's.

It's not.

Little pro tip for my, my bulletproof copy listeners. This is where my gastronomic, gastronomic side gets to meet my, my fitness side brain. But if you put a tiny, sometimes as little as 0.1% xanthan gum in your coffee when you're blending it with butter that can hold emulsions like the, the emulsifying power of xanthan gum is insane by weight. So like you can do 0.1% by weight of xanthan gum in your coffee and butter and that'll all be emulsion for the amount of time that it takes you to drink it. And you can do it hot.

That's how ice cream works too, right?

Some ice creams have xanthan gum but that's usually for like lower. Like, like yeah, like your halo top probably has some xanthan gum in it. But because actual ice creams have so much heavy cream in them and milk and sometimes egg yolks, those all have are emulsions and have really powerful emulsifying capabilities. So they don't usually need them. But for like. Yeah, exactly. For like you're talking about diet ice cream Y for your halo top ice cream for your like lower calorie margins and butter and stuff, they'll Almost always have some type of G gums in them, usually xanthan gum. Wow, what a massive tangent. We do not need to talk about the emulsifying power. It does. But that goes against keto, which is why I said xanthan gum. Ah, exactly. I guess egg yolks would work too, because they have soy lecithin in there. Sorry, not soy lecith, Lecentin them. And that can emulsify too. But talk about bulletproof coffee anymore. Anything else you want to say about keto with respect to both gaining muscle or body composition in general?

Yeah, I think you cover most of the bases for the, you know, for the average person. Is it going to make a huge difference for muscle building? Maybe not depending on the research or looking at the research, but you do even in the research and also working with clients, see that there's a non negligible amount of people who just suffer when they do keto. Their exercises tank. They just don't feel very good. And obviously some of that is the initial switch over to using the ketone bodies. But there are still people that continue to see decrements. And then sort of the obvious elephant in the room is that if you do things outside of weightlifting, like anything that needs a good performance benefit of you, you know, sprinting, playing a sport and so on, then it will have more noticeable, negligible. I mean, more noticeable detrimental effects in those.

Yeah, that research is much more clear, especially for like distance running and running in general. Like carbohydrates always beat out high fat diets with respect to. To performance. Right. With respect to. To carbohydrate intake. So definitely eat your carbs if you do something other than lifting. But what are you doing listening to this podcast if you do something other than lifting? Okay, yeah, keto, I think one thing.

To say is just like make sure you have a really good reason to be doing it. Like if it's the only diet that.

Allows child who has epilepsy and you don't respond well to drugs, be my guest.

Yeah, those two, those two categories, epilepsy, that's drug resistant and somebody who like literally can't lose fat on any amount of carbohydrate. Because when you just think about the physiology and the logic of it, it's like, why are you avoiding carbs kind of thing? Like most people can have more sustainable diets with them. Performance is a factor. Low glycogen might have some signaling revolving around animalism. If you look at the biochemistry, it seems like at some point carbs might be limiting. So there's just a bunch of mechanistic and real world reasons why you're like, all right, maybe it doesn't matter that much, but make sure it's a really good reason if you're gonna dip into the sort of keto waters.

Yeah. And to be clear, one really good reason is just that it's a diet that works for you and others don't. Like, and what I mean by, like, it's just sustainable. Like, for some people, it's just really easy. Like, oh, no, I just can't have carbs. Like, that's. And that's all I have to think about is the fact that I don't. I can't have carbs. Like, that's really easy for a lot of people. For me, that makes me want to like, scream. I can't dream. I can't imagine not being able to have R or pasta or sugar or whatever. But for some people, that's the way that they like to diet. And that is a good enough reason if, if. Just to be clear. Okay, really high protein diets. This is one of your standing. Boy. You want to say anything about why really high protein diets, they're fine. Probably not ideal for. For looking to maximize body composition. Yeah.

So I think this one comes down to what you mentioned right there, which is just sustainability. I think many times people think that really high protein diets are going to make them more and more jacked in a linear fashion. More protein, more muscle. The literal amino acids are going to go to the muscle. I can feel it after my workout. So therefore I'm just going to get big and with no fricking stopping point.

Muscle get more muscle. Explain to me how it's not that straightforward, Danny boy.

You are what you eat. Yeah. So unfortunately, there's a rate limiting effect there where you just can't get infinitely jacked. So more amino acids are not going to help after a certain point. And that point seems to be around 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight. So when you consume or over consume protein, you're by definition displacing other macronutrients. So displacing carbohydrates, displacing fats. And like we just talked about, for some people, carbs might be, you know, beneficial performance. And like we talked about previously, fats are going to be necessary to a certain extent in terms of supporting hormones and whatnot. But even if you're not dipping so low into fats and carbohydrates from a sustainability standpoint, lots of people like to eat mixed meals and end up in a more reasonable macronutrient breakdown where if you're going crazy on the protein now, you're limiting a lot of your food choices and making things just less sustainable and enjoyable for you. So definitely something that, especially when you initially get into lifting, you might want to overdose on, but it's really not necessary.

Yeah, I had a friend that was eating 3 grams per pound for a while, and he told me, he was like, dude, how do you eat as much protein you should do? And I was like, yeah, man, it's annoying. Like, it's hard, but, like, I have two protein shakes a day and then usually, like, if I just have some meals, like, it kind of like, adds up. He's like, what. What protein shakes are you drinking? And then I was like, how much protein? He's like 350 grams. What? Well, that's why it's hard for you to hit all your protein. Now, to be clear, for some people, those higher protein diets are really enjoyable for them and it does, like, kind of make them feel really full or like, it makes. It allows them to feel much. A much higher degree of satiety throughout the day. But I can't imagine chewing through that much chicken breast or sucking down that much whey protein throughout the day just to for theoretically no added benefit. Not to mention, protein is far and away the most expensive macronutrient compared to carbs and fat. So there's also like a economic standpoint for why you shouldn't. So save the money that you would spend on protein. Invest it into a growth stock mutual fund that gives a conservative, we'll call it 20% annual return and then give us 30% of the profits that you get in the long haul as a thank you for keeping you from spending all your money on chicken risks. Stuff's getting expensive these days, which, you know, soon, eventually there'll be the lab grown meat and we don't have to worry about that. Again, another tangent. Okay, Strict if it fits your macros, reasons why this diet probably isn't ideal. Okay. And some things that if you're doing a strict Iifym why it might not be a great. And remember that all of these basically come down to the two main tenants of what we've talked about, which is you want to make sure that your calories are in order and your protein is in order. Which sounds weird that if we're doing an if it fits your macros, either one of those could be off. That's technically true. Your calories are fine if you do a strict ifym. That's so hard to say. I don't really should have come up with a better acronym for that. But the protein thing is really what I want to talk about here. So one strict Iifym can be incredibly. A lot of people are like there's no restrictions but it's like it's one of the most restrictive diets because you're trying to hit such a specific target. It just depends on the type of person you are. For me it's less restrictive than doing like not allowing myself to have certain foods. But with respect to protein, you can Iifym yourself, you can my fitness pal yourself into getting an incomplete source of protein. So like for instance, this is the same exact point that I was making during the vegan conversation which was you can end up getting an incomplete kind of amino acid profile throughout the day if you're doing IFYM meaning like you can still get your protein number on MyFitnessPal can hit the goal you were looking for. But if you got it all from pasta or all from bone broth or something like that, probably not ideal. Another just side tangent about bone broth, they tend to have a lot of protein in them but a lot of that protein tends to be collagen or gelatin protein which is not a complete. Does not have a complete amino acid profile. I think it's missing, it's missing some. I don't remember which one.

Very. It's. It's actually not very anabolic at all.

So collagen or gelatin? Collagen. Yeah.

So it has glycine, proline and I believe isoproline. Those are like the main three amino acids and those aren't very anabolic and they're non essential. So yeah, I think there was MPS study comparing the, the muscle protein synthetic response from sort of like away an EAA and collagen source and yeah, so it's very, very, it's not very anabolic. There's some speculation about whatever tendon and other connective tissue related stuff and you know that's like a big question mark but the anabolic question mark is, is not really there pretty much question mark.

It's a statement. Exactly.

Nobody recommends it for muscle building.

Yeah. So point being for ifym, like just make sure that you're still just like if you're on a vegan diet just make sure that you're getting a somewhat complete pro and this is much less likely. I want to be very clear. This is much Less likely on and if it's your macros diet. But it's something that I see people do, especially with the rise of bone broth popularity. Like people are like, dude, I get all my protein and no problem, I just drink this bone broth. And like it was great. I'm glad you're doing that. But let's make sure that we're getting some other sources of protein as well, just to make sure that we're actually hitting the. Because like, I know that we say that you want to get a certain amount of protein in a day, but what we really mean is that you want to get a certain amount of amino acids in every day. And I don't want to like overcomplicate this, but not all protein is created equal. Right. And so we want to make sure that we're getting a nice complete source of protein throughout the day. Right. And then also with ifym, you can get into really bad traps of trying to make your dinners as delicious as possible. And you can kind of like avoid vegetables and fruits like I did for the first several years of dieting on if it fits your macros and stuff, which I definitely don't recommend. Okay. Those are all the diets I think, unless you have anything else you want to say about it fits your macros.

No, I think that's good. I think. I wouldn't worry too much about the protein thing, although the collagen is obviously a really obvious category where people do end up in some murky waters if they're supplementing especially. But I think another thing to add to if it's your macros is can be just sustainability wise.

Yeah.

I know for people in our community it might, you know, seem like it's a non issue, but weighing things. Just tracking in general can definitely be tedious. And I believe in randomized controlled trials. It actually doesn't pan out too well for the vast majority of normal people. Just like people were randomly sampled and so on. So it's something that can be a very good tool initially to sort of get your bearings. But tracking in perpetuity doesn't seem to be a super viable option for the vast majority of people. But that doesn't mean it can't be a viable option for many people.

Yeah. Okay, well said. Because I think a lot of the people in our community are those left brain type of people that love numbers and love to see like to know the math behind what they're doing and they know that if they do this they're going to hit the goal that they're trying to achieve. Most people are not like that. Even though most people in our field are like that, most people are not like that in general. Right. So it's a. It's a very important point. Thank you. Okay, now let's get to the point of the podcast that everyone's been waiting for. Diets that should simply be avoided. And we'll save my favorite one for last. So let's start here with prolonged fast, because it's pretty straightforward. So we did. Danny Boy and I kind of already touched on this with the Intermittent Fasting podcast as well as the topic on this episode, that portion on this episode. But you just generally want to avoid very extended periods of not eating at all, mostly because of that protein synthetic response. Right. You don't store amino acids in your body. Really, to say that you do, to say that you don't is kind of not true, but to say that you do is also kind of not true. So it's just simpler to say that you don't. Right. So if you don't have them coming in at any point in time, you're going to have to find them somewhere else. And we kind of store a lot of them in our skeletal muscles, which is exactly the thing we're trying to grow. So we don't want to go in there and break them down so that we can use them for more important things than looking jacked, like breathing and thinking. So avoid periods of like maybe 20 hours, 24 hours. Obviously, alternate day fasting is probably not a good idea in the research. The majority of the research on intermittent fasting suggests that it's just fine for muscle growth. Right. Usually the studies don't reach statistical significance, but on average they tend to tend. They tend to trend towards favoring individuals that are not doing intermittent fasting. Right. Especially those training inside the fasting window. And I think, and this is speculative, and I could be very wrong here, but I think the longer the fast generally the more favorable you see towards not fasting in general. So avoid doing extended periods of fasting. If you have to do intermittent fasting, I would say the 16, 8 is probably your best bet, but in general, probably just avoid it. Anything you want to add to that?

Yeah, only like a weirdo scientist needs to say that, like not eating for a super prolonged period is potentially not anabolic. Like, yeah, fair, this guy. Don't be.

You know, it's important, it's important to pretend like I'm a scientist so that the listeners don't discredit the fact that it's the Built with Science podcast.

Even though we don't have a study on, although we do have some, you know, long term fasting studies. They're not lifting weights so as possible that you can gain muscle after a 365 day fast.

I was about to say. Yeah, there is that one.

There's actually a bunch. There's, I think there's like seven where all case studies. Yeah, like really, really long fasting. Yeah, like a hundred days or one of them is two weeks off, two weeks on and, and so on. So yeah, there's a, there's a crazy, crazy not eating.

I can't imagine going three hours without eating, let alone two weeks. So yeah, avoid prolonged fasts. They probably aren't very anabolic. I don't know jack shit about cleanses and juice only diets aside from don't do them. So Danny boy, you want to talk about that?

Yeah, I mean, so the problem with juices is that typically, you know, they're actually just like, they have to be fruits and vegetables, I believe. So they're not adding protein. So it's just gonna be super, super low in protein for the vast majority of individuals doing them. They tend to obviously not. So even if you do add in protein sources, you're not having any sort of like meat sources. And then these people think that since they're getting a whole lot of nutrients that they don't need to supplement. But it ends up in the same situation as veganism where there are certain nutrients like B12 and others that you want to consider when doing them so you can end up in really murky waters. Plus like why the juice? Like if you like actually eat the fruits and vegetables and you're probably be more satiated, not less so. Yeah, I mean a lot of it just doesn't make a whole lot of.

Sense Unless you're a specific case, you will be more satiated from eating the fruits than drinking. Like even in the, the studies that are comparing like eating fruit to drinking it, they're doing smoothies, it's not even juices, which means there's still all of the fiber and all of the cellulose in there. That gets kind of like adds mass and bulk to the food you're eating. With juice, son, you get water and sugar and like, well of course some other things that are small enough to pass through juice sibs. But I don't get it. I don't, I don't get it. Ladies and gentlemen, unless your doctor has told you otherwise, your kidneys. Oh My God, your liver. So good at their job. So good at their job. So much better than your $600 juicer from Ninja. Okay? I promise they're going to filter out all of the toxins that you don't want in your body just fine. You don't need to cleanse your body with anything at all. All right? I promise. And it doesn't even make sense to call it a cleanse because your fiber intake is usually shot when you do a juice cleanse. So, like, what's going on? You know what I mean? Avoid them. No protein, and it just makes you miserable. But don't do it. Okay. Raw veganism. For all of the same reasons that we've talked about veganism, especially the B12 issues, that you'll see deficiencies. You know what's really interesting for individuals that switch to veganism? I was watching a podcast. I was listening to a podcast about this not too long ago. Supposedly, if you have lived eating an omnivorous diet for your whole life, and then you switch to veganism, I could be wrong about this, and please correct me if I am, but I think it takes about a year for you to fully deplete endogenous B12 storages. Storage. Storage. And so for the first year, you won't notice any of that deficiency, potentially, especially if you're not supplementing with B12. But after a year or so, you start noticing all of the side effects that come with vitamin B12 deficiencies. So that's just something to keep in mind, like, if you're on a vegan diet and you're like, I feel totally fine. I don't know what these guys are talking about. But you've only been doing it for six, seven, eight months. That might be why. And it still probably is worth supplementing with some B12. Anything you want to say there? Well, anything you want to say in general about raw veganism as well?

Yeah, so that's new to me. So that's. That's pretty cool. I didn't.

Assuming you're correct, that's an Adam or Guccio quote. So take it with him. If I'm. If I'm incorrect.

Yeah, probably look into it just for fun, but it makes sense. What was I gonna say? Oh, yeah. Raw veganism. So it makes no sense. But one of the coolest reasons is that you can actually mobilize a bunch of nutrients from cooking. And part of the reason. Part of the reason why humans can be humans is because of cooking and fire. So, yeah, like neglecting just something that's like a core tenant of mobilizing nutrients is. Seems kind of absurd to me. So, yeah, a lot of the time the arguments they make is that like you're breaking down nutrients and stuff like that, but it's actually the exact opposite. You're.

Well, it's true though, to an extent. No, I mean like nutrients that you can cook into oblivion, but on the net, you're doing disservice by never cooking, obviously, especially those things like, you know.

Beans and like, you'll be net for sure way higher in nutrients if you cook versus not cook. But yeah, I mean, sort of. Obviously you'll get some breakdown. Yep.

But obvious like, so don't give a big middle finger to Prometheus, okay? The man is being tortured right now because of our ability to use fire. Okay? So please do yourself and him a service by cooking your food to allow for better absorption of certain nutrients. Right now there is the argument obviously that like, raw will increase satiety. Like, if you're only eating raw foods, you're probably going to be more full. Right. And you can also do raw, by the way, raw is not exclusive to veganism. There are some quacky people out there who do raw diets that are omnivorous, a little wild, but I mean, look, Rocky's been chugging raw eggs since the 70s or 80s. I don't remember when Rocky was made, but probably better to avoid that diet in general. Right? And then of course, my favorite diet to. On my favorite diet to dispel the myths and benefits of perhaps the most controversial thing we'll say today, the carnivore diet. Look, if a diet, if a, if a client came up to me about any of the diets that we've talked about so far, literally any of them aside meat, maybe not juice, cleanses, I would say like, go ahead, look, if it works for you, I'm happy for you. Do it. Even like prolonged fasts. Like, most people aren't interested in building the most amount of muscle up that they possibly can. Right. So I'd be like, go ahead, me, my guest. It works for you. Awesome. Let's do it. Carnivore is the only exception that I have to that in that I'm like, look, man or gal or non binary pal, probably not a good idea for us to run a carnivore diet for a litany of reasons. And here's just a good general rule of thumb, ladies and gentlemen. If a diet tells you that you're not allowed to have fruits or veggies, probably not A diet you should follow just as bar none, right? So not only are you not taking any fiber in. Let's go. Can I get one of these too? For those of you listening, my apple, my apple AI is taking up on my thumbs up in my hearts and animating the screens for those of you watching. And Danny Boy is too poor for his computer to do it, unfortunately. But there's a litany of reasons why Carnivore is a bad diet. One, no fiber. If ever there was a superfood in life, it's fiber, okay? And Carnivore does not allow you to have any of it. No fruits and veggies, which is really beneficial for satiety. Not to mention the potential environmental impacts that you would have if everyone was following a carnivorous diet. Right? As we know, especially because Carnivore isn't explicitly about eating red meat. But that's kind of like what the movement has turned into is, is like the benefits of red meat consumption specifically, which is not only not great for environmental reasons, but and also potentially ethical reasons. But we don't have to get into that. But it's also probably just not great for your health either to eat a preponderance of your food from saturated fat sources and just red meat in general. Like red meat. Look, probably a little bit overplayed the detriments to your health of eating red meat, especially unprocessed red meats. But if the majority of the food that you're consuming has a high degree of saturated fat in it, that's probably not good for cardiovascular health. Right? It's just pro. It just has been leaked to. Higher consumptions of red meat and saturated fat have just been linked to higher instances of cardiovascular disease. Right? And all cause mortality, I believe, especially. And not to mention lower fiber intake has also been linked to higher risk of all cause mortality. Right. That being said, all of that being said, they also don't allow you to have any seed oils. The devil himself seed oils, Right. Which by the way, polyunsaturated fats, even monounsaturated fats in general. Probably something that you should be consuming if you want to increase your chances of living a long, happy and healthy life. This is all to say the whole point of this podcast, by the way, was so that I could have an opportunity to shit on Carnivore because it was my least favorite diet that has. My least favorite fad diet that has ever existed by far. I cannot stand it. I don't understand the movement. It's like here we Go getting into a bunch of stuff that I don't want to talk about, but it's like toxic masculinity incarnate. I swear, it's like the dumbest diet on planet Earth. But, Danny boy, is there anything you want to say about Carnivore?

Yeah, my first contention is why are you so soft? My second, my second is, have you heard that you do not need sunblock when you eat a carnivore diet?

No, bro. Get out of here, you.

There is. There is a legitimate community that claims with tremendous conf. I have no idea what their. What. What the mechanism of action is. And I believe that they are, I don't know what the word for is. Humble enough to say that they don't know the mechanism of action, but they are extremely confident based on their case study of, I don't know, five people who look very red at all times, by the way, but their case study of five people saying that you do not need sunblock when you are on a carnivore diet. And not only that, people worry about vitamin C and you also do not need to worry about vitamin C on a carnivore diet.

But do people not remember the Revolutionary War? There's a reason that British people are called limes or limers, I can never remember, because they didn't contract scurvy because they all ate limes on the high seas. High seas vitamin C. And that's why they were an incredible naval force. Please. Sorry.

Yeah, so I think to sort of round it out and this is, you know, speculation. I saw it on X slash Twitter, but it looked like one of the, you know, proponents of the carnivore diet did get scurvy, which is kind of absurd. But this is, that is, that is speculation. I do not know for sure, but somebody with, you know, a good amount of credibility did post what looked to be, you know, lab values that indicated that the individual had a scurvy in today's age, which is, you know, sad but a little entertaining. So, yeah, do I have nothing.

I have nothing to add to be fair. Like, okay, look, I'm. I'm really, really coming down hard on Carnivore because it is a terrible diet and you probably should avoid, especially for health reasons. But to say that it's like, any worse than, like keto or. Well, I guess, I don't know, keto allows some vegetables in there. But to say it's even worse than keto is a stretch, I guess. I mean, it's really not when you're Talking about worse. What I'm talking about in respect to a specifically body composition, not like for health, of course, I would say it's much worse, but specifically with respect to body, because this is about this, this podcast is ultimately about like building muscle and losing fat. Right? And body composition. But Carnivore is probably not any worse than any of the other diets we've talked about for that. Right. You're still getting in a substantial amount of protein, but if you only live for 30 more years, you're not going to build the total amount of muscle that you would be able to if you live for 64 years. And again, I'm, I'm being hyperbolic. You're. If you follow a Carnivore diet, you're probably not going to die at 50 or whatever. But avoid it. It's stupid, it makes no sense. And I hope that this is one of the short living fad diets and not one that kind of holds out for a long, long time.

Yeah, to be fair, actually it would probably do better than the vast majority of the stuff we listed just because it's, you know, sort of the fact.

Such a high protein diet.

So whatever, maybe we're, maybe that, that.

Is to say, that is to say that it just meets the recommended amount of 1.6 to 2.2 grams kilogram or 0.7 grams per, to, to 1 gram per pound of body weight. Right. It's not like it's, it's any better than any of these other ones because it allows for more protein than that, just to be abundantly clear. So yeah, I agree. But again, I'll take any and every excuse I can to, to kind of on the Carnivore diet. Right. Okay, well, very briefly, because we're kind of been going for a minute here now we'll very briefly go over and we kind of already have done this throughout the whole podcast and we started with it, but we'll go over the things that your diet should probably have if you want it to be sustainable and beneficial. If you're looking to maximize body composition, either that be muscle growth or fat loss. Right. So one, first and foremost adequate calories. Right. That either means a reasonable rate of loss or a reasonable rate of gain depending on your goals. Generally speaking, we looking for a 0.5, I would say anywhere from 0.5 to 1% loss per week. Any contention there from you and potentially a little higher if you're a little bit larger. But again that's just a good rule of thumb is around 0.5 to 1% per week. Right. And then of course, I won't bring up that study. Never mind. Of course, if you're gaining probably even lower, you probably don't want to be going above 1% per month of gain, 2% at the most. But that's even a little fast, especially for our more well trained friends out there listening. And then of course, after calories, the most important thing is protein. I want to make sure that you're getting in 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram, anywhere from 0.7 to 1 gram per pound body weight. Can you get away with less? Most likely. Especially if a lot of the calories or a lot of the protein you're eating is coming from high quality sources like animal products or something which is an animal product, but like a complete protein, like a whey or something like that. But there's also vegan protein drinks out there that are also completely. And if you're drinking a majority of your protein from those, you can probably get away with a little bit less. And yeah, the last consideration with protein is just that you can't ifym yourself to meeting your protein goal. So you wanna make sure that those sources are complete amino acid profiles or at the very least, you have a very large variety of protein sources that you're getting in throughout the day. Probably want to be eating fruits, veggies, and consequently fiber on your diet. Not for really any reason other than of course, satiety while dieting, but also health reasons. If I live for a certain number of years longer than I did if I didn't eat fiber, that's more time that I can spend building muscle and losing fat. Right. Ultimately achieving a better physique. Yeah, that's really. And of course the base of the pyramid, the thing surrounding the entire pyramid, is a diet that actually allows you to adhere to it. Right. The best diet in the world is a terrible diet if it's one that you can only sustain for a week. Anything else you want to say about components that need to be in the diet, regardless of the diet that you're on?

I think that's good. Hit your calories, hit your protein, fill in the rest with whatever works for you from a fat and carbohydrate standpoint and eat your fruits and veggies. Those are the main tens there.

Sweet. All right, anything else you want to say before I wrap us up?

I don't think I'm good.

All right, I'm not even going to go over recap because I basically just did a recap. Whatever diet you're following, make sure you're getting a good, complete source of protein, make sure you're eating adequate calories, and make sure that there's some fruits and veggies in there. Hopefully. I think Team 3 DMJ has a really good rule of thumb. They're like one to two servings of fruits and veggies per 1000 calories. I think that's like, for those of you that like numbers and heuristics, that's one that I actually really enjoy and kind of try to adhere to. But more is obviously not going to hurt you. Okay, thank you all so much for listening to the Built With Science podcast. If there's a topic that you want us to cover that we have not yet covered, please feel free to reach out to us on Instagram at Built With Science. And as always, thank you for listening. Peace.