#28 - Mark Sisson: Improving Health & Harnessing Metabolism

It's a fact, 91% of us have a dangerous amount of belly fat, and it isn't just unsightly. When you have too much belly fat, you lower your immunity and increase your chances of diabetes, stroke, cancer, and even poor respiratory health. The good news is that the New York Times has reported that really short interval movements are one of the most effective ways to get rid of belly fat. Hi, my name is Jorge Cruise, and I'm known as the 8 Minute in the Morning trainer to the world's busiest celebrities. I've been a fitness trainer for over 20 years, and you may have seen my work with Oprah Winfrey, Khloe Kardashian, Kelly Ripa, Tyra Banks, Wendy Williams, Kelly Clarkson, Dr. Oz, Tony Robbins, or even Steve Harvey. My passion to find the best science-backed fitness shortcuts has allowed me to write over 30 books and become a multiple New York Times bestselling author with over 9 million books in print. And I know I can help you too. Imagine getting the confidence you want during this COVID-19 world by having a fitness edge in your 40s, 50s, 60s, or beyond. Even if you don't think you have enough time, money, or the willpower to exercise, I know this podcast will show you how to finally get a total life reboot and flat belly. Welcome to the Jorge Cruise Podcast. Well, you made it. Uh, welcome. I'm just so honored to have you here listening to the show. Uh, today is an episode you are not gonna be disappointed by. I filmed it yesterday. It's a video. You can watch it on my Instagram @jorgecruise or Facebook, same name. YouTube as well. Uh, it's with a man that I've known now for almost 17 years. His name is Mark Sisson, and it really kicks off this new show format, I think, perfectly because Mark is truly a man who's known for fitness as well as nutrition. And we talk at the end of the show about his microbursts and his interval training. Uh, as you guys know, I've been doing interval training now for many years, and I wrote a book almost 20 years ago— it'll be 20 years, uh, next year— called 8 Minutes in the Morning. And I've been known in Hollywood to help busy celebrities with this method, and I've kind of refined it, and I'm re-releasing it next year, but we're doing it online now with groups of people on Zoom. I'm gonna be super excited to share more of this with you tomorrow in a different podcast, but for today, I just, I think this interview is literally one of my favorite. It's probably the best interview I've done in a long time. Mark was in Miami Beach. I'm here in San Diego, so we used Zoom, but the video's worth watching if you haven't seen it already on my social, but Listen to this conversation because it's going to give you a blueprint, I think, not just for fitness— and that's again at the end of the show— but for nutrition. And right now, with COVID-19 really being a key part of all our mindset, you know, knowing, uh, the diet that can give us the edge for immunity— and it's such a simple diet, it really goes back to ancestral health— you're going to love this. Uh, it got me to really shift my thinking in less than a week. I had a personal private call with him last week, and we just catch up every so often, about every month we say hi, and he shared with me book he was reading. You're going to hear about this book, um, and a new way of really thinking about nutrition. So, uh, if you want maximum immunity, guys, super immunity, you want to up it, this is the podcast for you. All right, and again, fitness tips at the end you're going to love, keeping it simple with microbursts. All right, enjoy the conversation with Mark Sisson. Here we go.

All right everyone, welcome to the show here. I'm so excited. This is a very special edition where we have video through Zoom here, and I'm in California and my buddy Mark Sisson, my mentor, truly my mentor in health and nutrition, is on the other end and he's in beautiful, is it Miami, Florida? Is that true, Mark?

True, Miami Beach, which is very specific to that part of the world.

Yes, how is that?

On the beach side.

Yeah, well, there you go. Yeah, how's Florida been treating you? Good during the pandemic here?

Love it. I mean, it's almost like a special place like summer camp Disney World. I mean, the streets are closed. So I ride my bike up the middle of the street, do long bike rides. The bike paths are open. I've got a friend who has a house in the islands. And so I, I do stand-up paddling. Yeah. And not, you know, not interfere with any of the prohibitions that the county's put up. Well, and I think I'm having a blast.

I think what I love about your perspective always, Mark, is that you've got this silver lining in everything. And, you know, I think that's the silver lining with this this pandemic, we have time to kind of do the things we haven't done and hopefully enjoy things, even though a lot of us are scared. And, you know, I feel so honored that, you know, I just, without getting into the details of what we talked about, but we had this incredible conversation last week that kind of changed my thinking, Mark. And you do that to me about every decade, right? I remember I sent you that picture, I texted it to you. Remember that picture? That was 17 years ago.

That's amazing. That's crazy. Yeah.

Yeah, that was in San Diego. I think we were at some Mexican restaurant and you were the one that taught me to use cucumbers in place of chips with my guac, remember?

That's right. That's right. Wow. That was ground zero for your low-carb, no-sugar experiment.

You know, I'm naturally a carb lover. You know, that's why I was fat. Then I wrote the book behind me, 8 Minutes in the Morning, literally 20 years ago this coming next year. Last year in 2021. Oprah had me on the show and it blew up and that changed my thinking. But back then, even back then, I was eating a lot of processed carbohydrates, you know, in moderation. You were the first though to get me into the plant-based world, doing the cucumbers, you know, in place of chips and all that. And then you got me to appreciate and not be scared of guacamole and avocados and healthy fats. And, you know, and I always liked meat, but, you know, I was scared about meat being, you know, cancerous and all this. And then last week, I mean, back then you said it wasn't, but last week you mentioned this book, The Carnivore Code, which I'm going to show to everyone here, by this Dr. Saladino. And you wrote the, uh, I believe the introduction or the foreword.

I mean, the foreword.

I did, yes indeed. Yeah, no, Paul's a good friend of mine, very smart guy. I think he's on to something here, uh, very interesting information, um, and sort of, uh, mind-blowing information for people who assumed meat is bad and that, you know, all plants must be good for you.

Well, you— I mean, to say the least, it blew my mind. I finished reading it since last week, and so I followed through on what I promised, and I've been enjoying meat again. And I've been aware that, you know, when we do get that possibility of carcinogens, it comes from more overcooking the meat, as Paul talks about in here, not so much the meat itself. So I've been doing more of a medium heat when I cook my meat and all that. I've been using meat Towel, is that how you pronounce it? Like the fat of the meat, right? Yeah, I've been using that in addition to everything I've been doing. I've been of course breaking my fast with my favorite collagen, which I have to shout out to you because you were ahead of the game with collagen when people were scared of it. They thought only witches brew bones, but you got me to think about collagen, and now you've made it into this triple berry collagen peptide mix, which is the best way to, you know, instead of a glass of wine, I'll have this with my meal at night, you know?

No, it's great. In fact, I think collagen should be a fourth macronutrient.

Yes.

It's that important in everyone's diet, and yet we tend not to get much collagen in our diet, especially if we're vegan or vegetarian. But even if we're eating meat, if we don't eat the collagenous parts of the animal, the sort of nose-to-tail version, and we just eat the choice cuts of meat, we don't get enough collagen. It's pretty wise that people would supplement with collagen. And since I started doing this about 10 years ago, it changed my life. So I was such a fan of supplementing with collagen, I started a line of products within the Primal Kitchen. Right. And that Berry Quench is one of them. I actually like the unflavored. I use the unflavored collagen peptides a lot.

Yeah, no, I think it's great. Well, why don't we do this? I thought because of this pandemic and because of what you did with me, we could talk about, you know, the best of what we can eat these days. But maybe start with your story for a minute. We'll pretend we haven't done like 3 of these before, because we've done at least 3 podcasts. And I had you in Malibu, in my studio there, back when you were in Malibu and I was there. Now we've vacated Malibu. Don't tell that to Brooke Burke, right? I mean, I miss her. She's there in isolation, locked up. Poor Burke. Burke. But, uh, share with everyone this Primal Kitchen, because when I met you and we had the guac and the chips, or the, you know, the, the cucumbers you hadn't created Primal Kitchen and you were working on it, and you've created this food empire really that has given people the best of the best from collagen to healthy oils. But tell us, give us a minute or two of the story of the Mark Sisson story, because a lot of people think you're just this guy that has this food company, but you're a man who walks his talk. Not that I'm going to ask you to show off your abs, but you walk your talk. You keep your body at age 60. 66, is that right, Mark? Yes. In the best shape. I mean, I'm still catching up to you, you know, and I'm still in my 40s. Luckily, I got one more year till 50. But share with them what you started with as an endurance athlete, because you did a lot of stuff when you were young. You were always athletic. I don't think you were ever fat like I was, but you always had your mind on improving your game. And obviously, you've created this Primal Kitchen, and then we can get into the diet, you know, the new aspects of what to avoid, what to eat. I think let's focus in on what to eat first. Start off with a little bit of the Mark story because I always like to hear it, and I think a lot of people watching right now and hearing this may not have heard it.

Well, it's a very long story, so I'll try to keep it as short as possible. But I was a— as a skinny kid, I got into endurance running very early. I started competing in 5Ks, 10Ks, marathons, and got quite good at it. And in order to fuel all those miles that I needed to train, ate a lot of carbohydrates. And that was the conventional wisdom of the day. You ate a lot of carbs. You ran a lot of miles, you got faster, and everything was gonna be amazing and you were gonna live a long life. Well, it didn't quite turn out as I planned. I got faster and I got better and my performance improved, but I really got— I was falling apart on the inside. I had all kinds of issues with my digestion. I had irritable bowel syndrome, I had hemorrhoids, I had gastrointestinal issues, I had GERD, the reflux disease. I had arthritis, I had tendonitis. It literally was a wreck.

And you're in your 30s around this time, right?

It's early— my late 20s. And, uh, and so it was clear to me that something was wrong and I wasn't doing something right. And it turned out it was the diet that wasn't right.

Yeah.

Yes, I was training hard, I was training a lot of miles, but it was the diet that was really off. So I kind of refocused my life on just trying to figure out how I could be healthy and strong and lean, um, and not have to run as much and not have to do as was much work, and to find out if there were any shortcuts, if there were any sort of genetic switches that I could change, switch on and off through my diet and through my other routines that would improve my health in a way that I was seeking. I mean, I just didn't like being sick all the time. And that started me down a path that has been 35 years now of research into ways in which the food we eat, and the amount of exercise we do and the type of— and how much sleep we get and how much sun exposure we get. And all these things affect our genes, rebuild, renew, regenerate, recreate us on a daily basis. So I started my blog, Mark's Daily Apple, back in 2006, started writing about all the ways in which we can find these hidden genetic switches that we all have. Yeah. And use these behaviors and these foods to regain the health that we had lost. And it was working for me, it was working for thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of my followers. I wrote 10 books on the subject. And about 5 years ago, I started thinking, well, you know, I'm writing about a lot about food and how important food is. And really, you have to get rid of sugar, you have to get rid of processed food.

Amen.

You have to get rid of grains. And when you do that, um, you come down to kind of a relatively small list of foods that you can eat that are good for you. And what makes the difference, what makes this lifestyle of eating good food and healthy food, um, palatable and exciting, are the ways you prepare it— the sauces, the dressings, the toppings, the condiments, the herbs, and the spices. And no company was making the sorts of salad dressings and the sorts of ketchups and mayonnaises that I wished existed so that I could use them on my food. So blindly and naively, in some regard, I set out in 2014 to start to build some of these foods with the intent of selling them to other people. And that's what started the whole Primal Kitchen business. And we launched a mayonnaise in 2015. It was our first product. It was an incredible success. It was based on avocado oil and organic eggs from cage-free hens and organic vinegar from non-GMO beets. I love that. And a little bit of rock salt. Yeah. Sea salt. And from there we expanded to salad dressings. We've got pasta sauces now. We just introduced a line of frozen foods, frozen meals. So I think we have like 65 or 70 products in our line right now, all of which are the best of the categories that we're in. So we have the best-selling salad dressings in the natural channel for the good reason that people understand that these are good for you. They're better-for-you dressings. They're made with avocado oil and healthy fats and things that when you put them on your meal, they not only make the meal taste better, but they take away the guilt of having used, "Oh my God, I used too much salad dressing," or "I used too much mayonnaise." We tell people, "Use this with as much as you want because you'll enjoy it." Yeah, no, and it turns off hunger.

And for people like that in my circle, my audience that do intermittent fasting, I think you're the one that told me, I remember we were at, is it Olo in Malibu? And I bumped into you and Andrew Lesserman and you guys were, I mean, we kind of chatted for a little bit, but you reminded me you started fasting, doing intermittent fasting in the '80s, right, Mark?

Yeah, I've been doing that for a long time.

So these healthy fats allow us to, how shall we say, you know, cheat the fast. In my opinion, they help turn off that hunger so you're not ravenous when you wake up, and you can fast till 12 or 1 o'clock and eat a nice meal that's balanced. We'll talk about what that meal includes, but I feel like you've been ahead of the game for 20 years, and I'm just so grateful that you've been a friend and a mentor to me and guided me and kind of been a compass to me. And I know you've got something coming out that we want to talk later about, about this Primal Health Code. Coach Institute you've created to teach people, kind of like you did informally with me, and you've mentored a lot of big people. I know my dear friend Melissa over there at Whole30, you've done similar kind of mentoring with her, and she's a phenomenal force to be reckoned with, and you kind of groom more people to be kind of like that, right, Mark? You teach people how to do what you did on your own, right?

Well, my mission has always been to change the way the world eats, and I can't do that alone, so part of my mission has been to educate other people. To enroll other people to become friendly with guys like you and people like you and, and Melissa and Brooke and, you know, all of the circle of friends that we have and sort of spread the word that we figured it out. We really kind of have figured out how to achieve metabolic flexibility. This is what we're all after. We're not after burning, necessarily burning fat for the sake of burning fat. We're not necessarily after cutting carbs for the sake of cutting carbs. What we want is we want to be metabolically flexible. We want our bodies to be able to generate energy from a number of different substrates, from carbohydrate on your plate of food, from the glucose in your bloodstream, from the glycogen in your muscles, from the fat stored in your muscles or on your belly, or in your— from the fat on your plate of food, from the ketones your liver makes. All of these are energy sources that we can call upon to get us through the day if we're metabolically flexible. If we're not metabolically flexible, which most people are not, it's because we've been so tied to this carbohydrate-based diet for so long that our bodies have not built the metabolic machinery they require to burn fat efficiently, to make ketones and burn those efficiently, and to basically get through the day without being hangry all the time, or to get through the day without trying to think, Oh my God, what's the next meal gonna be like? What do we have? That was a great lunch. What are we having for dinner?

Yeah, already thinking about the next meal.

Already thinking about the next meal. So we try to unburden people, we try to relieve people, we try to free people from the constraints, the leash that hunger puts around them, hunger, appetite, and cravings. And that's really what I'm really all about is developing this metabolic flexibility in people. And that's sort of what we teach at the Primal Health Coach Institute. Yeah, I love that. And just since you mentioned, the Primal Health Coach Institute is a certification program. We actually certify people to become health coaches.

That's amazing.

And I basically download from my brain to you what you need to know to work with clients or family members or whoever. Sure, sure. To assist them in getting to this this new level of consciousness and the new level of awareness about food and this escape from this hunger, appetite, and craving.

Well, we need places like that because, you know, I mean, I've been lucky to be surrounded by people like you, Dr. Andrew Weil, who created the Integrative Medicine Institute, you know, where he's at, and he was a forerunner 40 years ago. And I feel like it's only a few people that get it, like you said, and I'm so privileged. So more on that, guys. We'll give the website at the end of the show and all that. But, and I know you also have, I want to mention this, on May 17th, you have like with Thrive Kitchen or Thrive Market, right? You're launching new foods. So before we even get to that, I mean, these are frozen meals people can get, and we're going to talk about the optimal diet next, but why Thrive Market? Because I've not used them. I know a lot of people use Amazon. Why do you love them so much, Mark? Because I know you're doing a lot with them, right?

Yeah, yeah, no, Thrive Market, Thrive Market is basically Costco meets Whole Foods online. So you pay an annual membership fee. I love that. Fee. It's not very much.

Yeah.

And I think it's $59. And you get access to all the foods that you could normally buy at your favorite health food store, but you get them at wholesale prices. So you get them at 30% or 40% off. And as long as your order is more than, say, I think $50, the shipping is free. Nice. And so instead of having to go to a large big box store and buy a big giant gallon thing of mayonnaise, you can get a regular size mayonnaise., but at significant discounts. So it's thrivemarket.com. Good. They're very good friends of mine. I was an early investor in the company, full disclosure. I like their idea so much. This is 4 or 5 years ago.

Nice.

But they're launching our first frozen meals, which we start— we have 3 skillet meals and 3 bowls that are just fantastic. They're full meals. Again, they fit all of the keto-friendly, paleo-friendly, organic, grass-fed meats, free-range chickens, things like that that people are, I think, getting more and more wise to. That's what they want to see in their food.

Well, let's focus in on that. Let's get them dialed in because I feel like for those that aren't getting as wise as they want or they want this minute, if we have 10 minutes right now, give me the Mark Sisson class, kind of like a little bit what you took me. I mean, I don't know if we get as deep as Dr. Saladino does because this is deep stuff, but let's start with— I mean, I loved what you said in the beginning here, the things to cut out briefly. You mentioned sugar, you mentioned grains. Start with those two bad boys. As you know, I wrote a book 10 years ago, The Belly Fat Cure. Those are the big things we cut down to, sugar and grains. But tell everyone why right now during this pandemic with immunity, what sugar does, right? It destroys immune, it feeds viruses.

eat right now. I mean, if you're trying to— look, taking a step back, if we're trying to deal with this, um, you know, this COVID-19 virus, it is an assault on your immune system. And some people who have weakened immune systems do not do well with this. So I would just say generally the best thing you can do is avoid sugar. Sugar is the most, uh, immune-suppressing food that I think we can eat. And so that would be number one. So that means, you know, not drinking sugar-sweetened beverages.

Remind us the sources that are hidden. Remind— the plain ones, obviously what you just said, but remind us this includes the sugary excessive fruit, right? I mean, what else?

Oh yeah, no, a lot of people say, "I'll make a fruit smoothie or something like that." No, I wouldn't go that route these days. The other thing that I would cut back on is the grains. Yes. Refined them, you know, so it's basically the breads, cakes, pies, candies, cookies, crackers, I mean, pasta, cereal, all these things tend to convert to sugar, sugar, and convert to glucose. So I would, I would cut back on the refined and added sugars and try to cut back as much as I could on even the whole grains and things like that.

Remind us what you're talking about, because a lot of people think, oh, brown rice is okay, couscous But right now, if you're going to maximize immunity for this time, and this time we live in is critical, I mean, it can be life or death. What do we want to cut back on?

Yeah, so those we want to cut back there. And then finally, and I think— Yep. You know, one thing that people don't talk a lot about, but it's become my new big peeve, is industrial seed oils. So this is the soybean oil, the corn oil, the canola oil that you find in just about all the processed foods. And these are insidious forms of fat. So when we talk about fats, and you and I talked in other conversations about good fats versus bad fats, and the good fats are avocado oil, olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, butter, lard, tallow, those are all good fats. Yeah, yeah. The bad ones are what we would call the industrial seed oils. Some people call them plant fats, but it's basically corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil, things like that, that are— they're highly inflammatory and they wreak havoc on our systems. They don't— the body doesn't like to combust them or burn them as energy. In many cases, it incorporates them into the membranes of the cells where they don't— where those— these fats don't function as intended. They can— they can rancidify, they can become corrupted and cause all sorts of havoc in our body. So I would— I would avoid those. So you go, well, geez, Mark, what does that leave me? Well, it leaves you— Protein, hopefully. Fish, fowl, eggs, nuts, seeds, vegetables, some fruit, some root tubers, you know, potatoes, sweet potatoes, things like that. There are a lot of things you can eat.

For sure.

For sure. But at this point in our adaptation to what's going on in the world right now, I would seize the moment and try to get as clean with my diet as I possibly could. Understanding that I want my immune system to be as strong as possible.

I agree with 100%, and I feel like what I've done in the last 1 week, and I already, I look at myself in the mirror and I already see the back fat, because I pretty much had no belly fat, but I was, you know, practicing a lot of what you taught me years ago with the fasting and everything. But I've cut out, for example, certain things like coffee. I'm not even doing coffee right now with my butter. I'm using tallow in my, in my coffee. Can you believe that? It actually is pretty good. It's crazy. And you know, I'll have my first meal around 12 o'clock. I had it with my sons today and you know, we had some bacon, but I also had some lettuce because Dr. Saladino says that's a low toxic one and I'll do that and kind of did an Egg McMuffin. We also had eggs. You know, I love eggs. Why are eggs so darn good for us? I've never heard a bad thing about an egg. People used to say it's the cholesterol. Maybe you can break that myth about eating dietary cholesterol with blood serum cholesterol because a lot of people are in their 50s and 60s I'm working with AARP now, Mark, a lot of those people are in their 70s and 80s. And you know, you're in an age group where you should be worried about your heart health, but you eat an egg every day or not, right?

Well, I love eggs. I don't eat an egg every day. I mean, some days I'll eat 5 of them and some days I don't eat any. Sure, sure. But eggs are one of my favorite food and I think eggs are one of nature's perfect foods.

Yeah.

So I'm a big fan of eggs. But you know, people talk about cholesterol. I've written entire sections of my books on how cholesterol is one of the most important molecules in the human body, and we should not be vilifying it. And, uh, the fear that we have around cholesterol as the cause of heart disease is an ill-founded fear. Cholesterol is not the proximate cause of heart disease. It's oxidation and inflammation. Um, and, uh, I, I feel like, uh, you know, some of the more recent studies I've read regarding COVID infectious rates are people with higher cholesterols deal with the infection much better than people with low cholesterol.

Hi, this is Jorge Cruise, and I wanted to interrupt the show just for a minute because I want to make sure that you're on my VIP mailing list, uh, for future podcasts and for insights and shortcuts on how to improve your health from everything on intermittent fasting to yoga to 8-minute workouts to how to just work better and how to have less stress and also how to manage pain. I mean, you name it, all my best shortcuts come out every Monday and it's totally free. You heard it right. So I'm gonna encourage you right now to take a second and jump onto your laptop and go to jorgecruise.com. You can do it on your mobile device, obviously. And sign up for the Jorge Cruise Report, and it's totally free. Tell your loved ones about it, join it. It's over a quarter of a million people that are getting this email, and it's going out every Monday, and I want you to be a part of it so you know what's coming up next every week. All right, guys, let's get back to the show.

So, you know, here's an ironic situation where you're trying to lower your cholesterol because you think that it's going to be protective in terms of heart disease. And who knows, it might be making you more susceptible to infection. Yeah. Uh, so I haven't worried about cholesterol for 20 years. I mean, I, I, I get my, you know, blood work done. My, my total cholesterol is anywhere from 250 to 290, but my HDL is 98.

Yeah.

I mean, that's the most protective of, of all. Um, you know, my triglycerides are low, my fasting insulin is low. I mean, all of my All of this is a result of my being metabolically flexible. And that's why, you know, my body— I burn a lot of fat. I get a lot of energy from my stored body fat. And I do have some stored body fat, not much, but enough to get me through the day. And I think that's what so many people are deficient in, their ability to access stored body fat. And so they tend to store the fat. And when they store body fat, that in addition to the cholesterol thing, having more body fat may cause, you know, we're reading that people who are overweight or obese— Yeah, absolutely.

I think I lost you for a minute there. Are you there, Mark? We lost the audio. We got you. Give me an A, B, C, D, E, F, G. We may have Mark back here in a minute.

I'm here.

You're back. All right, we got you back.

Yeah, I'm here.

All right, good. Well, Mark, so I mean, no, it's perfect. So I, I think we all agree that healthy fats are a key part of this diet. I know in The Carnivore Code, uh, it's a key part of his diet and coming from animal source. So let's move on to protein. Which proteins do we want to avoid and which ones do we want to embrace? And obviously cleaner sources when it comes to the animals, from the grass-fed, cage-free, free of antibiotics and all that, but Walk us through the protein world because I'm having more protein now and I'm feeling a little stronger, I'm feeling better, I have more energy. I mean, I was scared. I wasn't scared of bacon, but I did a diet debate once with Travis Stork on The Doctors at Paramount Studios and he had those guys from that Netflix film, you've heard about this film, right, saying that meat will kill you.

Oh my God.

So tell us how it won't kill us or will it?

You were on there with, forget it. Game Changers?

Yes, you remember that.

Oh, Jesus.

I know, I know. So share with everyone why meat is something our ancestors ate. It was the primary perfect food because it has all these things in it, from the fat, the proteins, the vitamins and minerals. They really didn't eat a lot of carbs. Share with us a little bit of this Carnivore Code in the sense of the protein, like why is meat so good for us? And why, you know, in your opinion, where did this come around? Because it's not even the cancer part, it's just that that meat was— it's going it's going to kill the environment. And I love that in the book, Dr. Paul, or Saladino, talks about how the emissions that beef creates, you know, versus even agriculture from crops is much smaller, you know, let alone what we do as humans.

Beef has gotten a bad rap for sure.

Take us through that.

No, I mean, look, protein is necessary. Protein's an important macronutrient. I think it's important that we get our protein from as you say, clean sources. So I'm not a fan of the way most, most of the beef is raised in this country, where it's what they call concentrated animal feedlot operations. I prefer grass-fed beef, I prefer small family farms, I prefer, you know, free-range chickens and eggs, wild salmon versus farmed salmon. I mean, to the extent that we can eat these animals that are raised in their own natural environment and without antibiotics and without, hormones, that's much— that's preferable to, to the alternative. On the other hand, um, sometimes even some of the offerings, uh, that are less desirable in the meat kingdom, uh, family are still more desirable than, say, a bowl of pasta or, uh, you know, a funnel cake for that matter. Yeah, yeah, you know, so everything— all these foods expect— exist on a spectrum of not so good to fabulous, and you have to kind of figure out where you want to be on that spectrum. So in terms of, uh, you know, meat being— having had a bad reputation—

talk to us—

the attachment to the assumption that saturated fat was bad for you. And, you know, meat has some saturated fat, but saturated fat turns out not to be bad for you. Um, it turns out to be actually, um, not only good for you, but that's how the body stores fat on you, is as saturated fat.

Yep.

So a lot of the myth surrounding meat has been dispelled in the last decade. Unfortunately, you have propaganda pieces like Game Changers, this documentary that come out and, and, you know, in favor of everyone going vegan. And it's, it's, you know, it's a huge philosophical issue for, for people, but it's almost like a religion, right? Oh, 100%.

Or politics. I mean, what do you say to someone— pretend I'm trying to talk to Ellen because she's a hardcore vegan and I may be visiting with her. And if I were and I had a moment, how do you gently tell someone, or maybe not so gently, but what do we say to a vegan that says, "No, it's going to hurt me or the planet"? How do we, in a nutshell, get them to open their thinking? Or how do we try? Let's try.

No, I don't. I don't. I only— I only address that if I'm asked.

Okay.

But I don't try to convince anybody that my way of eating is, is better, right? I think it is, and I, and I have the research to back mine. But, you know, trying to convince somebody who's a vegan to not be a vegan, it's hard. It's very difficult. Yeah. Most vegans who, who go back to eating meat do so because of health reasons. They realize that they've gotten— they've— I mean, there you see a lot of them on Instagram. There are a lot of former Instagram vegan influencers who have come back around to adding meat back to their diet because they realized it was a major part of their diet that was missing and it was actually negatively impacting their health.

Well, I remember I was at a dinner party, not to drop a name here, but with President Bill Clinton in New York. It was at One Sutton Place. It was this beautiful party, 12 people, and he was so excited that Mark Hyman, his doctor, helped him eat salmon again because he went— after he had the quadruple bypass back in the day and he went Oh, he just was scared of meat. But, you know, he was famous for eating— I mean, like the current president, McDonald's, you know. I mean, we do this sometimes, but the meat at McDonald's is not the meat that we're talking about, Mark. It's not what they have at Thrive Market, correct? This is a very different world, right?

No, it's— and, and by the way, it's, it's not, it's not the meat, it's the buns, and it's the other stuff. It's the high fructose corn syrup and the ketchup. It's the, it's the acrylamides and the fries, and it's all the things that you'll find and accompany the meat. So in many regards, the meat at McDonald's is probably the best part of that meal. It's probably the safest and healthiest part of the meal is the patty.

Yeah, but be lettuce-wrapped, obviously. But yeah, I agree with that. So with the meat, when we think of meat, it's a building tool. It helps us have this energy. Share with me what your thought is on this idea of incorporating a little bit every day into our diet, because I know Dr. Saladino makes it primarily— I mean, if you were to give his book in a nutshell, it's pretty much a carnivore type of aspect, right, Mark? Where he doesn't eat much grains or salad and things like that. How would you talk about that? Because having a piece of meat every day for me was scary at one point. I was having maybe 4 or 5 ounces and that was it. Now I'm having that twice a day and I feel great.

And why was it scary for you, Jorge?

You know, not that I was thinking I was going to get cancer. I mean, his book clarified how the cooking of meat can cause those carcinogenics to occur, right? When you overcook a meat or barbecue it, and he talks about in the book, as I'm sure you know, to not barbecue stuff, to use more of a medium heat. You would agree with that, right, Mark? Yeah.

Yeah. No, I mean, any of the issues that have been associated with meat over the years are more likely, as you say, a result of the acrylamides, the process by which meat and some of the fats and some of the— the way the fats are burned or seared can cause issues. I, you know, it's not an issue for me because I like rare to medium rare meat. So I like to, I like to have, you know, sort of slow cooked, medium cooked meat as a preference anyway. But that's, that's the only, that's been the only real issue. Now you talk about eating meat twice a day. Look, if you decide you want to give up sugar and grains, and in Paul's case, he's given up a number of cruciferous vegetables because he feels that there are some issues with Some of those like—

Remind us what those are, please.

Yeah. Well, broccoli and cauliflower.

Brussels sprouts.

And Brussels sprouts, things like that.

What's his take on that, Mark? Why does he do that, do you think?

His take, which is unique, and I'm not, I mean, I still eat those. I still like my vegetables, don't get me wrong, but I've cut back on my consumption. His take on it is that many of these vegetables have their own set of toxins that cause issues with some people. And they may be very minor but insidious over time. So you might have, you know, tomatoes, if you've read, I don't know if you know Stephen Gundry.

The Plant Paradox.

Yeah, so he's got The Plant Paradox and he talks about that. He talks about some of these plants have these lectins and toxins in them that some people can get away with eating, but many people have an issue with, uh, and, and the theory is that plants don't have— they can't run away from you, they don't have defense mechanisms like claws and teeth, they can fight back. So plants developed these toxins that they would put out that would prevent animals from eating them and allow them to continue to propagate. Now, over the years, we've assumed that plants are great for us and and wonderful. And we've looked at phytonutrients, phytochemicals. We've looked at, at some of the anthocyanins and some of these specific nutrients, polyphenols, within plants that we deem to be antioxidant in nature. But it may be that— I think Paul's assumption is we have our own regular antioxidants within our body. We have these amazing antioxidant systems that work perfectly well without having exogenous antioxidants from supplements or from plants. You know, we have superoxide dismutase and catalase and glutathione. Those are our 3 basic antioxidant systems, and they work perfectly fine in the absence of any plants consumed at all. And that's kind of how he lives his life. Yeah, so once you get rid of— once you eliminate so many of these foods, All you're left with is animal food. Now, that's fine. I mean, he eats, you know, a steak and some liver and some pâté and some oysters and eggs. And bacon.

Don't forget the bacon. I live for the bacon now.

And the bacon. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, he eats what we call nose to tail, which is if you're going to subscribe to that carnivore diet, it's probably wise that you eat as much of the animal as possible because different parts of the animal have different concentrations of vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin K, calcium, collagen. So some of these nutrients would be missing if all you ever ate was a T-bone steak, right? So that's why he's more into the nose-to-tail part.

I think that's important. I had dinner with my kids last week. We're going to do it tonight. We had a whole chicken. I got an organic one just from Costco. I see we're drinking water together here. I like that. Yeah, right here. Our green bottles here. The same. Oh, look at us. Cheers.

Cheers.

And my son Owen was freaking out. I was like, Owen, I'm going to eat the heart, because it came with the organs, the heart in there, you know? And I hadn't eaten a heart before, chicken heart, right? And I said, I'm going to eat the liver. My mom used to eat liver. I always thought she was crazy, but I'm doing this now, Mark, and I feel incredible. And I think, you know, to answer your question about why was I scared about meat, outside of the cancer part, because now I get it, it's about the cooking, I think I was scared that I wasn't going to poop, you know? That, oh, there's no fiber. Tell me why that is not true, right? Because it isn't. I'm fine.

No, it's unbelievable. I mean, it's amazing that for the longest time we felt that you needed fiber in your diet in order to poop properly, in order to have a good bowel movement. And in fact, it's almost the exact opposite, that fiber has a negative impact on many people's guts. And, you know, the idea behind fiber was, if you could imagine a broom scouring the insides of your lightings of your bowels.

I mean, it sounds logical, right, Mark? I mean, it works. You and I bought into this for a while. You used to have that big-ass salad, right? I know this.

I bought into it. I bought into it. Yeah, yeah. But it turns out that fecal matter is really basically bacterial turnover. You have 100 trillion bacteria in your gut, and they only live for a couple of days at most, and they have to turn over. The dead cells have to leave your body, and that's kind of how they leave. So you don't need You don't need fiber for that. Also, the other assumption with fiber was that your gut bacteria, the healthy bacteria in your gut, required fiber as a substrate to make butyric acid, short-chain fatty acids, which they needed to live on to maintain their own health and also to provide nutrients for the line— the cells lining the gut. So there was this assumption that you needed fiber to pass through your digestive tract to make it down to your colon where the bacteria would digest the fiber or ferment the fiber and create these, uh, these, uh, butyric acids, these short-chain fatty acids. It turns out now that, um, collagen has the same effect. So collagen feeds these bacteria as well. If you're getting some collagen in your diet, which you are getting if you're eating meat and eating nose to tail, then, then the same amount of bacterial turnover and bacterial healthy bacteria thrive. And because you're not feeding your, your body sugar, then all of those, those harmful bacteria that rely on sugar, they die off, they leave, they go away. So it's pretty amazing what— how much the world of nutrition has changed even in the last several years, not just the last few decades, but the last several years with regard to our assumptions about eating meat, or assumptions about not eating 3 meals a day or 5 meals a day, or the assumptions about we must have fiber in our diet, or the assumptions that a plant-based diet is the only way to live. It's really, it's kind of, it's really cool that we're coming to this point in our exploration of nutrition that we're starting to understand exactly how the body works. And again, how so many of us are sick— some huge percent, 60, 70, 80% of the—

Over 80% obese, Mark. Yeah.

Overweight, and then some portion of them are obese. How is that possible with all the knowledge that we're supposed to have and all of the technology that we're supposed to have about food? Well, it's possible because the information that we've been given has been wrong for so long.

Yeah, no, I couldn't agree with you more. And I think everything you've been talking about is so vital. And when I think about nutrition, For me as a trainer, you know, I've been this trainer now for 20 years as a public trainer through my books and all that, and 25 years back when I was in a gym in La Jolla in San Diego, and still here in San Diego with my family. But I feel like I always remembered a quote that Jack Lalanne gave me years ago. I met him through Arnold Schwarzenegger when Arnold was in charge of the California Fitness Council in Sacramento, and I went down there, got to meet Arnold, got to meet Jack Lalanne, the Godfather of Fitness, and he said, Jorge, your waistline is your lifeline. Could we end on that, Mark? Why is it important to have— I know you have a six-pack, and it looks good, but it actually is more than that because all the research that I've been reading, especially nowadays with immunity and all that, that if you have a small waist circumference, you're going to have better immunity, you're going to feel better, you're going to have less susceptible to diabetes, cancer, type 2 diabetes, all this stuff. And, you know, for me, having a flat belly, shall we say, is important, And you've never had belly fat. I can't— are there any pictures of you with any belly fat that exist?

I've never seen them.

No, I hope not. So why is this important outside of vanity? We get it, it looks pretty, but why is it important for our health to keep that waist low?

Well, I mean, it's just one indicator that you're doing everything right. Yeah. Because the first place we tend to store fat is on our bellies. Yep. So if we don't have any belly fat, it's quite likely we don't have fat stored excess fat stored anywhere else on the body. So as a— what the one metric would be, if you can reduce belly fat, and then if you can reduce visceral fat, which is, you know, that fat that lines the— that's inside us, that's, that's around the liver and around the intestines and the mesenteric fat underneath the abdominal wall, right?

The subcutaneous is the kind that jiggles, and the visceral is underneath that.

Yeah, exactly. So the subcutaneous is under the skin, but on top of the muscle. And when you get rid of that, you show the muscle. But then the visceral is behind the muscle, it's underneath the muscle. It's again, that's surrounding the organs. And that's what, that's a real dangerous, we talk about non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is where people who aren't alcoholics, they still have liver disease because there's so much fat surrounding their liver. So these are things that tend to go away when we become metabolically flexible and learn how to burn body fat. We not only burn off the stored body fat, you know, on our bellies, but we tend to burn off that fat that is now subcutaneous, or not just subcutaneous, but visceral.

Visceral.

And that's a good thing.

Yeah, that improves our immunity and everything.

So, like, you know, there's a couple of markers of good health. One, my wife was reminding me today that if you're 65 years old and you can cover a mile in 14 minutes, that's a good indicator of your aerobic health, right? Well, she and her girlfriend, went for an 8-mile walk today. Wow. And they're like, and we tried to do it at 14 minutes the whole time. I'm like, no, no, no, you only have to do 1 mile at 14 minutes. You don't have to do 18 miles at 14-minute miles. Wow. So she's there, so they're in good shape. But so, so the, so the, you know, the waist circumference is a great metric. Yeah. Uh, your waistline is your lifeline, as Lelaine said. And then your aerobic, um, capacity measured as, uh, some— your ability to complete a mile in X amount of time based on your age is another one. And another one is grip strength. I think you've heard that, that grips— that grip strength is indicative of overall health because it sort of— grip strength sort of follows your general body mass and general muscle mass and lean body mass. So as you get— as you're stronger around your whole body, your grip improves. As you lose strength across all your muscles, your grip decreases as well.

And I know for me, you know, I've been embracing more interval training because of the research to burn visceral fat. And I know you're the guy that is every day, you move every day. Give us— end on that and let's— we'll wrap it up because I feel like movement is so important. And you're the guy that never stops moving. How do you embrace— if you do interval training, how do you embrace that, Mark, every day?

So, well, usually when there's not a pandemic around, I play Ultimate frisbee with a group of guys at least once a week, and that's 2 hours of sprinting. So that's my— it's, you know, you sprint and then you stop and—

that's interval training. Yeah, I love that.

Are you covering it? You're, you're basically playing a game, uh, chasing a frisbee up back and forth.

It's not quite like golf, I'm afraid. There's no interval in that. It's just a slow interval the whole time, right?

By the way, by the way, uh, you know my buddy Brad Kearns?

Yeah.

So Brad holds the world record for one hole of golf. He shot, played a 500-yard hole of golf in 1 minute and 36 seconds.

Wow.

So that's an interval.

So that's an exception. If you're playing golf like your friend, buddy, your buddy Brad there.

He plays speed golf.

What's some simple stuff people can do for interval training? Like what your wife does, does she do that for the most part or how do you do it?

Well, you know, depending on on your current level of fitness. Like what I do now that Ocean Drive is closed in Miami here to most traffic, I've been running sprints down the main drag. Wow. In Miami Beach once a week where I walk a block, sprint a block, walk a block, sprint a block. But you can do sprints, interval training on a bike if you have a stationary bike. Certainly people who have Pelotons and things like that are doing interval training, that whole workout is interval training. You can do interval training on, if you have a treadmill, You just put it up to, say, an elevation of 11% or 12% or 13% and just walk fast, and you are doing full-on interval, high-heart rate stuff for anywhere from, I'd say, 15 seconds to 30 seconds.

Go up and down, right? I usually do a minute of high and 30 seconds of low, something like that.

Yeah.

Just keep that interval going. I think it's so important. So Mark, not to end this talk here, but I know it's getting late here. I want to make sure people know to go to Primal Health. Institute, is that right?

Dot com? Yep, Primal Health Coach Institute. Just, you know, look it up and you'll get the link there.

To join the inner circle here, shall we say, become like a Jedi Master of health?

We've already trained 5,000 coaches already. Wow. This is a new area of expertise for a lot of people. It's going to be a big thing coming out of this pandemic situation. People are going to really want to get fit again, want to get, you know, lose weight.

How many weeks does it take, Mark? How does it— because I did it unofficially with you, just being friends.

It's online, so you sign up and it's an online learning experience. Normally it takes about 3 months. It's a very detailed course. I mean, we have doctors take it, we have chiropractors take it, we have nurses take it. It's a very in-depth— a lot of it is science, then there's a lot of actually coaching strategies and techniques.

Do you teach a lot of the classes as well, or some?

Do I what?

How many of the courses do you teach?

Well, so it's, it's written, it's, it's written, and then, uh, every— there's like 13 science modules, and so they're all written out. It's like 150,000 words of text. It's a, it's an in-depth, detailed course. And then every module, I speak for like 10 minutes on some of the nuances of it. And then some of the coaching training sessions, I'm speaking. So I'm involved, you know, throughout, but there's a lot of study. There's a lot of homework and study. And yes, there's an exam at the end of every module. You have to pass the exam before you move on to the next module. So it's a serious course for people who are serious about really understanding how the body works and what we can do to achieve the ideal health situation and how we can impart that wisdom to clients.

I love that, I love that. Uh, I think that's so important. So check that out, guys, and tell everyone if they want to find you on social, your handle and your website, Mark. Let's end on that.

Social, I'm Mark Sisson Primal. Um, mostly just a lot of naked shots of me there, shirtless shots with those abs, that famous flat belly of yours. Yeah, the ab thing. Yeah, yeah. Um, and, uh, and then, um, you know, I'm, um, Mark's Daily Apple.com is the blog that I've been writing basically every day for 14 years now.

I bet you don't have too many more apples anymore. Now it's more of an avocado, right?

Right. That's funny. I could change that. Mark Staley avocado.

Oh man. Well, Mark, I can't thank you enough for your friendship and your mentoring from all these years. I can't believe we almost, almost have known each other 20 years, but I think the best is yet to come. You make me excited to turn 50, let alone 60. Let alone— I mean, are you excited for 70, Mark? What are your goals for 70?

I've said for 30 years, but I can't wait to show you what 70 is supposed to look like.

Nice, nice.

So that— there's that. Now it's like ready to jump on my ass, so I don't know, I gotta be ready for it. But I am, I'm ready.

No, I think you're ready for it. And, you know, stay well during this pandemic. I know you're not traveling much, but I hope to see you soon one of these days. Days, whether it's in Florida, one of these, maybe next year. I don't know, when do you think we're going to be lifted from this pandemic? Do you have any predictions? Not that we have to end on that, but—

I don't like to make predictions with our governor and our government leaders.

I know, it's scary. But I think the good thing is we can do so much of this as we're doing here remotely. And I love that your Primal Health Coach can be done remotely.

Yeah, I mean, I would say to your listeners, use the time that you're being quarantined, to get your act together, to get your diet dialed in, and to do the work, and to get out and walk a little bit, and do some micro workouts.

I love that. I'm in. I'm in on the micro workouts, 8 minutes in the morning, hopefully, right, Mark?

That's it, right?

There you go. All right, buddy. Well, peace and purpose. Thank you so much, Mark, for your wisdom, and give my best to your family, please.

Likewise.

All right, talk soon. Bye-bye.

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Peace and purpose. Take good care.