S6:E6 - Unlock the Secrets of the Ultimate Transformation: The Enterprise Diet Podcast Reveals All!

My name is James Kelly, the general manager of Enterprise Fitness, and I am joined on this podcast episode today by one Tyrone Fellaino, one of our master coaches, and also the owner and founder of Enterprise Fitness and the author of The Enterprise Diet, Mark Ottobre. And today we're just gonna ask Mark some questions about his newly released book that come out today? Yeah, legit, like, probably.

Let's go today.

Yeah, today.

Yeah, today, as they're watching it, that come out in real time. Yeah.

So Mark, my first question to you is, how did you find writing the book?

Uh, painful. Next question.

So just for all you watching, we've sat Mark in the middle. So basically, this is a rapid-fire question, and we've said we're just gonna— me and James is gonna spit roast Mark. That's why he's in the middle. So my question for you, Mark. All right, now I've just—

well, I didn't finish James's question. No. So I found it— I started writing in COVID when COVID hit, and it— yeah, I started it with— I had written an ebook in the past called Eat Your Way to Abs, which I'd updated a bunch of times. And I got through it and I started writing it, and 30,000 words later I realized I wasn't updating Eat Your Way to Abs, I was writing a book. And I had ideas for the book of how to put it together, but it was really quite an organic process where I started with an idea, started writing it, and then moving things around and going, wait, this fits here, this fits there, this is what I'm writing. And then the book took structure, and it took me 3 years to really put the whole thing together. It's probably like 2 and a bit years of solid writing. And I know you guys are sick of hearing me talk about it. And then another year or so of actually publishing it and getting it ready to release and printed and formatted right and ready to go. So A lot of work, a lot of— because it's not a book that I just slapped together and let's just sell something. It was a book that I really went in with the idea that this is going to change the industry, or at least it's going to change— it's for personal trainers and clients who want the roadmap to nutrition for body composition. So for clients who come in, what to eat, how to eat, how to put together from the mindset to the understanding of the philosophy to the science the hardcore science. And obviously the hardcore science aspect is very technical because there's a lot of references and research that I had to obviously dig up, and that's where a lot of my ideas were challenged as well. And what I really aimed for with the book was to marry the art, the science, and wrap it in a neat bow with philosophy and present it as this is how to put it all together. So it was incredibly painful in many ways, but the it was more painful to have it inside my head than to write, if that makes sense. Like, it's like kind of writing became like a relief because I had to get it out on paper, and that's what the book— so it was a very long process, but I'm very kind of relieved, proud that it's out because it did take me quite a lot of time to get. I did put 100% into it.

It brings my next question, because obviously James and I have been with you for a while, James longer than I have, and you've been with me in spirit.

That's creepy, Mark. That's creepy.

Which, in amongst all your research in writing the book, which one of your ideal ideals or your ideas or philosophies, ideologies, thoughts have changed? Because, well, yeah, and Gary's probably the first one that comes to mind.

Yeah, because you've—

yeah, you've— like, I can say from when you started writing the book, and if, you know, all I look at is the user manual and just go, you've changed a lot.

Yeah, there's been evolution, and I think the great thing about the position that I'm in on a day-to-day basis is that I'm not spending one-on-one time with clients like you guys are, but I'm observing what you guys are doing one-on-one, and a change kind of made on a philosophical level in our environment then gets implemented downstream, and I get to see and get to be the benefactor of seeing and observing how those changes and the level of results that we get. So for a while at Enterprise, we did have a very much a Polyquen kind of base, very, you know, slash calories, and it was quite aggressive. And then you guys, some of you guys bought in macros and started doing a lot of macros with your clients. And then I did notice that clients would get very overwhelmed by macros. And then some, so, you know, so I noticed I was in this position where I noticed some clients, some trainers would get amazing results using macros. Some trainers would get amazing results being very aggressive in terms of restrictive with their diets. And there was like this gap that I observed for some time and I realized, wait a minute, there's a simpler way to do this. There's an easy way to do this. And it sounds so simple saying it now, but what are the main ways that we outline a diet and then discussing those outlines? So if you're this type of person, let's start here. If you're this type of person, let's start here. If you're this type of person, let's start here. And hey, you might start with a loose set of rules and that might be the thing that gets you over the line. But if you're the type of person who wants more flexibility, but also understanding that you're going to pay for that either way. So the example I give in the book, for example, is you can cut out food groups, sure, but you're paying for it by cutting out food groups, right? Or you can count macros, you're paying for it by counting macros. And it's not to say that one approach is better than the other, it's just understanding the cost of what you're doing. And you need to— so some people, they might really enjoy counting macros, and that is Perfect. And if you can, if you— that's the flexibility that you have and it feels like freedom, awesome, go do it. For other people, that's a jail. They don't want to count things, they don't want to weigh things. They want the flexibility of I can eat whatever I want to eat, I just have to follow these rules, and these rules are I'm going to cut out these foods, and that feels like freedom to them. So it's understanding. And then now from a philosophical level, for the guys here at Enterprise and trainers and our clients, it's understanding what type of client you're dealing with and implementing that approach for them so that it fits into their model of the world, not from, say, a scientific perspective, but from an overarching philosophical perspective. Because when you can implement the philosophy in with someone's life, they're much more likely to keep it. Like, this is the way I am. I, this— I measure these foods so I have freedom. That's the way you are. Or I just don't eat these foods because I have freedom, and it becomes a lot easier. The other one was dairy. I was extremely anti-dairy for a long time, and one of my big influences was Weston A. Price and the Weston A. Price Institute and Foundation, rather. And I remember I did a podcast with Sally Fallon, and we spoke about raw milk and the benefits of raw milk. And then there were some cases about raw milk outbreaks and causing illnesses and all this kind of stuff. And look, I am a pro— I've drunk my fair share of raw milk. But then when I started to go through the research about dairy, like, I started the chapter on dairy with the approach that I'm going to do a teardown on dairy and I'm going to find all this research that shows how bad it is for you. And in actual fact, I found the opposite. I didn't find anything really to substantiate my claims. And when I started to really look at it, I'm like, no, this is not factual. I've been basing this off opinion and research that wasn't done very well at all. What I did find, what I did confirm, is if you have acne, absolutely dairy is one of the worst things you can have. So that's true. And the other thing was, if there is a— the reason this is where dairy gets a bad rap is there is a high prevalence of lactose intolerance in specific ethnicities. So say for example, if you're Asian, 90-95% according to the Isocyn textbook you have some form of intolerance to dairy. So if you're Asian, probably shouldn't be having dairy for the lactose reason, whereas I think Northern Europeans or Central Europeans is a lot less, like 15%, right? So depending on where you— your ethnicity is going to influence your lactose intolerance. The other thing is milk proteins. The thing that I did find is that those who gravitate towards low-fat dairy— low-fat dairy does have higher protein, but if you have a pro— if you have a milk sensitivity, or rather a milk protein sensitivity, then you are going to be better off with full-fat dairy. Because when you pasteurize it and homogenize it, particularly when you homogenize dairy, the fat globules and the molecules of the food become smaller, which then can bypass the GI tract, and that can get into your immune system, and that's what causes the inflammation immune response. So yes, full-fat dairy does have a place. The other thing that I found in the, in the alternative health communities would probably hate me for saying this, and natural health communities, because it's all like, you know, have great fresh farm fresh milk, is the raw milk community doesn't distinguish between farm fresh milk and raw milk. And when I looked at that, that made all the difference, because farm fresh milk is where, you know, let's say you own a farm and you milk the cow and you know that cow is eating grass. That's a very different milk product than the cow who's in a commercial farm eating grains. And the reason it is because if you feed a cow grains, there's like a 1,000 increase in the E. coli from a cow that eats grass— that eats grains, that eats grass. So if I'm going to guarantee, say, raw milk to the general public, then I need to be 100% certain that cow eats grass. And the problem is most cows don't just— even organic— don't just eat grass because it's hard to get the nourishment in of just grass. There is a top— even organic farmer may use a little bit of a top-up of say 500 grams or so of 500 whatever it is of a top-up of grains to make sure the cow doesn't get sick because they can get underweight. But where you find cows like say for Wagyu and stuff, they're eating like the cow weighs 400 kilos. I think the absolute max for a cow to eat is about 2 to 4% of their body weight before they get acidosis. And they die. So which is, you know, for a 400-kilo animal, it's 8 kilos of grain that they could eat. And if we're talking like if they even eat a kilo of grain, that's nowhere near what it would— that's well below the allowed limits. But the point being is that what the cow eats, it changes the substrate of the milk. And yeah, looking and going really into detail of that and understanding that there should be a distinction made about dairy But certainly low-fat dairy does have a place, and homogenization isn't rocket fuel for cancer, as a lot of natural health alternative people will talk. There's nothing to substantiate that, and it can be quite beneficial under the right conditions.

I think a lot of people would probably agree with me when saying that you have pretty strong views on certain topics in the industry that we're in, both inside the walls of Enterprise and outside the walls of Enterprise. Has writing the book and doing lots of research into all the topics that you've covered in here opened your mind to other ideas around certain topics?

I don't know, like when you say strong views, you'd have to tell me what I have strong views about.

I think the, the example that we've just gone through is a great example, right? You did have a very strong view on dairy of it is bad because of X, Y, and Z, and then you've gone through the studies and gone, actually maybe not the case. Is there any other areas of the book where you've maybe kind of changed your mind a little bit, or you've opened your mind to all the possibilities? Because I think one of the things that I see a lot is science— science is great, right? And it, it forms the foundation of a lot of things that we do. But I think also there's situations where you can't really put a scientific reason behind the outcome that you've got for somebody. It just got the outcome, and it might not necessarily be something that studies back whatever that thing is that you've done.

But if it works for the individual— Absolutely. I think there's a lot to be said. I do talk about this quite a bit in my book, which is context versus contents. You can give someone the right— technically the right advice, but out of the wrong context, you're not going to get the result that you're looking for. Context is as important as the content in which you're saying it in. And often what happens in nutrition is someone will give a soundbite and try and implement into their lifestyle. And the reason why it doesn't work is because the context surrounding correct content won't give you the result. And that's coming back to the example of the food systems that I see that we use. Really, it's either people are following a loose set of rules or a philosophy, they're counting macros, or they're counting their food or a food system, their meal plan kind of thing. So it's either like a macro meal plan or they're following a loose set of rules, right? A guiding principle philosophy. And they're the real main 3 systems that people are going to use. So this is where you can give someone macros, but if someone's OCD and it just blows, they, you know, they have to weigh to the gram, then that can be a very unhealthy behavior. Likewise, if you cut out certain foods for people and then they don't eat, and they don't eat the birthday cake because they're too obsessed about things and they don't eat anything and they can't go out anymore, then that's also unhealthy. So I think, I don't think that changed. I think it was very much context versus content and drove that way for a very long time. I think just generally writing the book has given me a deeper understanding of mechanisms of why things work and why things don't. I think, look, my stance on gluten is more or less the same, and I've always been this. If you can have it and still get results, then more power to you. I'm not black and white about it as But I think for me, my stance has always been the client that I sit in front of is paying me top dollar to deliver a result, and I'm going to use the tools that I know work to deliver that result. Once I deliver that result, we can be a bit looser, if that makes sense. Or maybe you might have a few deal breakers where you're not going to do this. We'll still try and get the result and see if we get there. So I think in those constructs, the lens that I'm always going to look at is what's going to give me the maximal advantage to get the result as fast as possible knowing what I know, and I'm going to eliminate constraints that may be issues. For example, gluten— it's not an issue for everyone. It's not. And there are some people who can perfectly eat it. But if you're paying, if you're coming to me, then I'm more likely going to recommend going gluten-free because it may be a constraint. And I want you to get the faster result as possible because that's what you're paying me for, if that makes sense. Now, if I could get the same result and you eat gluten and you're happier, then that's awesome too. And I'm open to that being a possibility. But at the same time, if I'm on a deadline— and again, it's looking at these things in terms of priority and looking at these things in terms of what are you willing to do for it as well, and how easy is it to implement. I personally don't think going grain-free is that hard. I think people make it hard. I think it's actually quite easy. It's just an adjustment. It's as easy to buy a gluten-free bread as it is to buy normal bread. Really. Okay, there's a cost comparison, sure, maybe taste-wise, but it's not that hard, if that makes sense.

Gluten-free precinct all the way.

Gluten-free precinct all the way.

Toast it, wax it, take it, wax and butter on that. You got a forward by Dan Garner. Yeah. Which is pretty incredible. Tell us, how did that come along? I know you've done a podcast with Dan before.

Yeah, so Dan, I've done a podcast with a lot of people.

Yeah.

And there's just something about Dan, and this is a shout out to Dan, because when I sat down with Dan and we had our conversation, we went to lunch later, we had a chat, it just— I don't know, there's just a different level of connection with me and Dan that I had than I've had with any other guest. Yeah, bromance. Yeah, we had a bromance for sure. If he was in Melbourne, for sure I would be dating by now. Fitness friend. Exactly. No, there's just a different— and someone who I tremendously have a lot of respect for and I feel is on the same path as I am and wants those 1%ers and philosophically aligned as well as in a position to challenge me on things. So I generally wanted his feedback. And then when we did the podcast, he let me know that I was a big influence in terms of he was listening to Maximus Mark Radio before anyone else was listening to it 10 years ago. So for me, and seeing what he's doing now with the pro athletes and celebrity and the level of respect that he's commanding, for me, he— when I was like, okay, who am I going to go forward for? He was number one. There was, you know, if you— the chair happened again. Every episode we've done, my chair has gone. It wouldn't be an episode without my chair going.

Maybe you should follow the Enterprise diet, Mark.

Yeah, I'm getting too fat, too much muscle mass. That's what it is, too much muscle mass. I am following Enterprise diet, just the muscle mass. No, but back to this. Shut up, we weigh about the same. What are you talking about? Yeah, so Dan, the reason for Dan is I just have a tremendous amount of respect for him, and he was definitely at the top of my list in in terms of who I wanted as a peer to kind of review my work and to tell me critically. And yeah, yeah, he's a great guy and a lot of respect for him, and he's doing great things. And I truly expect to see more amazing things. I know he's got his lab stuff that he's doing, and he's world-class at doing that as well.

Well, I think just on that, if you look at success leaves clues, that when the master coaches here have heard enough of your voice, then we just basically get told the same thing and listen to Dan Garner, and he just says what you said anyways. And it was like You're like, I told you that 3 years ago. Yeah, we know, man.

But you want to hear it from Dan as well, which is fine. But yeah, you guys, and I think it's a credit that you guys, you know, someone once tried to insult me and they were like, oh, your course was basically the same as Dan's. I'm like, I haven't done Dan's course, but thank you. I don't know if you meant that as an insult or, yeah, I'm like, yes, it should be the same because great minds think alike. Yeah, tremendous amount of respect for Dan.

What would you say was The chapter that challenged you the most? I know, obviously, vegetable oils. Vegetable oil.

Fuck. Okay, that was—

is that for unpacking?

Do we call you Paul Saladino or—

no, you don't call me Paul Saladino, please.

Why?

Just because there was chapter on vegetable oils needed to encompass so much that technically it was very hard to get right. So there's the aspect of food laws that I had to do a tremendous amount of research on. There's the aspect of the history of the demonization of saturated fats, there's the formulation of how did vegetable oils come into existence and the whole history of vegetable oils that needed to be unpacked and why they got so much favoring when they did in the 1940s and how that all came to be. So there was just— and then the technical aspect of the consumption of vegetable oils and then recent changes in the law, say New York City, where they completely banned hydrogenated vegetable oils and the differences between hydrogenated vegetable oils and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils and then going into the science of the health implications of vegetable oils. And so that was a very technical chapter to write. It was hard. And then it was obviously the other challenge was how do I make this readable that you're actually interested in reading it, right? So it had to be— I wanted to tell it like a story. So there was a lot of aspects to that were just— it was very challenging to write. And that's probably the chapter that got me. The other chapter was pretty challenging, was gluten. Because I try to include a lot of what people are going to say. If I say this, what are you going to say to that? And a lot of the chapters I was thinking— actually, one of my, like, people I was thinking about when I was writing this book was Layne Norton. He's like, if he read this, because he's very science-driven, and like, what would he say? What would his rebuttal be to this book? And that's where, like, chapter 3, which is hormones versus calories, where I have a whole discussion of hormones versus calories and the approaches that people make and where they go wrong, and just pointing out that these are approaches to nutrition that people gravitate towards of mechanism. And who's right? Obviously calories in versus calories out absolutely is, you know, factual, scientific, all that kind of stuff. But then understanding where Gary Taubes is coming from, where he's going wrong with that. But yeah, the most challenging chapter was by far the vegetable oils.

We should send a copy to Lane.

We should.

He's in Sydney.

Yeah, I'll hit up Dane. Get my people to follow his people.

Carry rage.

All right, has your—

tell me about your— actually, two things, two other things that I know you— well, one is soy. Has your stance changed on soy? Um, and how do you still feel about vegan diets?

Okay, so after writing the book, let's start with soy. Soy was interesting because I interviewed Kailey D. Daniels. She wrote the book The Whole Soy Story. I got to chat to her about it. And yeah, you can listen to the podcast I did with her. It was actually while I was writing the book because there was questions that I had. And then I did another podcast with a guy named Bob Phelps from the— it was more about like, yeah, genetically modified food and stuff. Yeah, you remember that one because that was the best save you've ever heard on a podcast is in that podcast. Check it out. Doing, doing that and going through it, I did approach soy. I was trying to figure out what makes soy bad. Now, one of the things people always talk about soy is that it has a lot of phytoestrogens. So I wanted to substantiate that claim. And there is what I think is substantial evidence that shows that there is phytoestrogen, certainly there is a high amount of phytoestrogens in soy. So there's a study in Canada, they studied over 124 foods and they looked at phytoestrogen basically in foods. And they found that, say chickpeas have 9 phytoestrogen units. Name something, I was like, 2. Hardly. Anyway, soy, over 100,000. So it's like by far more phytoestrogen than any other thing they studied. It's a huge amount of phytoestrogen components. And then the question is, so it's not— and why does soy have phytoestrogens? It's to essentially protect itself against invaders. That's its pesticide, right? But then the question becomes, does a food that has phytoestrogens in it lower testosterone? And that's where it gets a little bit dicey. So someone like Layne, he's done videos on this and says that no, it doesn't. And there's studies that have shown that it doesn't lower testosterone. That study was paid for by the Soy Institute. Now if you dig a bit deeper, it's owned by Bayer, Monsanto, et cetera. So the Soy Institute absolutely has a vested interest in marketing and selling you food. So I look at that research and I take it with a grain of salt because the fact is there are gonna be vested interests in food marketing. Manufacturers showing that this food has a certain component and is beneficial, then I think it is— it's hard for me to dismiss because on one hand you do have a lot of evidence that shows that these phytoestrogens certainly do something in the body. Because by the same token, people are pointing out, and there's research that points out, the benefits that phytoestrogens have in the body. So if like menopause, eating soy can help, I think some of those symptoms— they talk about prostate cancer, which I think a lot of the research there is dubious at best. But on one hand, how can you have a compound that's beneficial with no negatives? So at least, at very least, you'd have to consider that dose needs to be somewhat dependent. And as with everything, everything in physiology is explained on a bell curve. So maybe like in Japanese, for example, they probably, if you look at their diet, it's around 2 to 6, 2 to 8 grams of soy, whereas you look at the Western diet, it's 25 to 35 grams. So there is a lot more soy consumption in Western than in— and also in Eastern, you're using it as a condiment, not as a main source of food, and you're certainly not using it as a substitute to food. So for example, in the West, we have soy milk, we have soy sausages, we have soy burgers. In the East, using it as a condiment, you're eating the bean, you're not eating a prepackaged milk that contains a far higher amount of phytoestrogens than you would in the food. Then you add into that and you dig deeper into the processing of soy. So this is what really gets me about soy, is that a lot of people who eat soy are vegans, and concerned with the environment. Soy manufacturing and soy production is probably one of the worst things environmentally that we're doing to the planet at the moment. So in the biggest, the biggest manufacturers, I suppose growers of soy is now it's Brazil, right? They, they've taken over or they're taking over. And there's the Amazon is being filled with soy farms, which they're the lungs of the earth. And soy is not a sustainable farm method. It's a monocrop. So to grow a monocrop, you have to destroy the land. You plant the seed, did nothing grows. So you have to put NPK, which is nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium fertilizer onto the ground. That is a derivative of fossil fuels. So we're using more energy. Then it's grown in Brazil, then it's processed. Then we have the glyphosate issue, which we haven't even touched on, which is water soluble. Glyphosate is water soluble, which kind of freaks me out a bit because water soluble pesticides means that when it rains, wind, dust, it gets into our water supply. So it means they're using all these tons and tons of glyphosate in Brazil. It's definitely gonna wash into the other areas of the world, affects plant life and destroying environments. So the argument for glyphosate is that humans don't have the shikimate pathway, which is safe. But the thing about glyphosate, it was proved in, what was it, the Supreme Court in America that it causes cancers and they had to pay out. Like Bayer paid out millions to groundkeepers for the exposure of and not saying that this can be harmful. So it is established that glyphosate is dangerous. It is dangerous, and it's definitely established. So this is where, like, my rules to soy— I'm not like completely anti, don't ever eat it in your life, and if you eat it, you're a bad person. But certainly in the book, I talk about that you do want to control your soy. You do want to buy it organic. Now, organic's not perfect. You certainly still have the issues of it growing, but at least you're not using synthetic pesticides, and you do want to portion control. And if you're going out there going, I'm going to substitute all these other foods for soy, I think that's definitely a bad move. And then the other thing on top of that is being in the, again, fortunate position I am here at Enterprise Fitness. I've had clients, hundreds of clients now, who've come in eating a soy-based diet. We remove the soy out of their diet, we keep them vegan, we remove the soy out of their diet, their body composition changes Every time their sex drive improves, every time. I had Nathan come back and he trained a lot of vegans, and even on his online coaching stuff, he did a lot of vegans. And he said to me, that was probably one of the biggest things, is when he'd always, with all these vegan clients, is he would switch out the soy and like, they just drop weight. So I know that's anecdotal and people will say you don't have a study on that. Fair enough, I don't have a study on that, but I'm telling you from a clinical pearl of what I see, body composition always improve when you remove the soy, or at least Decrease it. That answers that question. Now, a lot to unpack. I didn't even scratch the surface on the glyphosate. We can get into that later. But then the other one was the vegetarian diet. I think my stance on vegetarian diet is pretty simple. It's the hardest thing about a vegetarian diet is eating enough protein. Fundamentally, that's the hardest thing. If you want to be vegan, if you want to be a vegetarian, awesome. I think you should make food a political issue. I think you should make it and that's awesome that you do that. It's not healthier, and that's not an arguable point. I'm not saying that it's like an argument. It's not healthier. Uh, you can have a healthy diet eating meat, and you can have a healthy diet not eating meat. So that's not a reason to not eat meat, because you can certainly get better cuts of meat, eat game meat. But certainly the challenge that vegans and vegetarians are going to face is getting all the nutrients and hitting a macro protein goal, because, you know, how much lupin flakes and protein can you consume in a day to hit 200 grams of protein? The answer is an awful lot. You need to eat an awful lot compared to that. Meat eaters are going to be able to eat chicken and meat and fish and whatever. So I'm not hardcore on it, it's just, yeah, how you're going to hit your macros.

If I can just go back to one of the points that you made on soy there, and you said eating a little bit isn't going to make you a bad person.

Yeah.

In the context of this book, obviously we know it's going to bring a lot of value to what we do in the walls of Enterprise and more importantly with, with our clients that we train. Now, if a client is to read this book and say, come in and say, oh, I can't eat soy anymore, I can't avoid vegetable oils anymore, would you say that's not necessarily the case? And explaining, um, I suppose the moderation aspect of those things is the most important to be aware of?

Yeah, absolutely, because it's certainly not the message of the book, you know. Actually the fact that the start of chapter 6, I talk about how foods that you want to eliminate, replace, and reduce, and I put vegetable oil specifically in the reduce, not in the eliminate. And soy I put in the reduce as well. For the most part, I talk about the only foods that you're really going to ever have to eliminate are the foods that you're sensitive to. So if you're a celiac, for example, then you're going to need to eliminate gluten. But in most cases, and also if you're super overweight, if you're like 140 kilos and you're super inflamed and your joints hurt all the time, then yeah, vegetable oils at the beginning would be a great idea to completely eliminate for some time until we bring down that omega-6 and bring up your omega-3. So it's certainly not the message of the book that you can never ever eat soy again or gluten again or dairy or any of these foods, but it is the message of the book to say, if you have these problems, if you have joint problems, if you have cognitive function, if you have unexplained bowel symptoms, here are some places to look that you may have not considered and here is some research that clearly points out that these things can be an issue. And not necessarily it's going to be like I talk about gut issues. I don't— it's hard to even scratch the surface of gut issues in that book. But these are some things that are easy to look at. And obviously then looking at a stool test, seeing people like Dan Gardner or Christine to then analyze that stool test, to dig deeper underneath the hood and understand exactly what's going on, whether it's a parasite, whether it's bacteria overgrowth, or whether it is actually an offending food. That is causing you those issues.

So would I be right in saying it's essentially connecting the dots of the symptoms that present themselves and taking the right approach?

Absolutely. So like, for example, not a lot of people are aware that skin conditions link to gut and gut links to skin. So a lot of people just assume that I've got a skin issue and therefore that's it, I'm going to treat the skin. But if you treat the gut, you're going to have a lot more success with your skin issue than just treating the skin. And looking at the foods that you eat, for example, gluten. A lot of things like the problem with gluten, for example, is there's really in medical research, there's really 5 reasons to avoid gluten. There's celiac disease, there's wheat allergy, which are pretty straightforward, right? If you're a celiac or if you have wheat allergy, then you're going to eliminate gluten. Then there's gluten ataxia. Then there's dermatitis epiformis, which is skin issues. Gluten ataxia is neural issues. And then the fifth one, which there's a lot of debate about, is non-celiac gluten sensitivity. And that's the one where all the research goes to shit. Because let's say you have 200 people in a study, 100 people on one side, 100 people on the other side. It's all self-reported. So this side says, I ate the gluten and I feel fine. There's no difference. This side said, I eliminated the gluten and I felt amazing. But there's no biomarkers to that. There's nothing that constitutes and says either one of you are right because we're self-reporting, and in self-reported you can make shit up. And maybe it was mechanism-wise, maybe it was the decrease in calories that made you feel better, maybe it wasn't the gluten at all. But then I also discuss that if you look at research, specific research on say Alzheimer's, thyroid, joints, and one of the pieces that I was quite surprised on is that a gluten-free diet for joints, for examples on arthritis, has worked better as an implementation than medication. So again, I come back to this. If you have these issues, perhaps these foods may— eliminating these foods may go a long way. But again, if you can include it and you have no problem, you're thriving in life and you're happy, then include it. Absolutely include it. You don't need to take it out. But for those of you who are struggling, here are some other places to look, is how I want those chapters to be received.

Yeah, I think you You touched on gut health a little bit there.

Yeah.

Was there much things that you researched that suggested that when you improve gut health that there may no longer be symptoms to those foods? I know there's some research around gluten that suggests that you may have a sensitivity if you have certain gut problems, but then if you can improve the environment—

I've got a nice triangle. I talk about this in the gluten section. Where it's like stress trigger the gut. And which one came first? Was it the trigger? The— was it the thing that you ate? Was it the stress in your lifestyle? Or was it you just always like this? Which one of those? So it's really hard to say. And I know this also goes back to Pomp and Louis Pasteur's debate, which is, was it the— is it the bacteria that causes disease, or is it the terrain that causes the disease? Which I also discussed in the book. Book, and it's a really interesting argument. And I think the answer with most of these things is somewhere in the middle, because certainly if I gave you a cup of E. coli milk and said drink it, and you said your terrain is 100%, I think you're an idiot, right? I think you're going to get E. coli 100%. So I don't think the terrain on its own, the terrain theory, is 100%, but I also think that the over-sterilization of food is too far the other way. So we need— obviously we're more bacteria than we are anything else, right? We have quite a lot of bacteria in our body, so there has to be a respect and understanding that the bacteria in our body needs to be respected. But gut health is so complex, and it's very hard to say, and I think we're still scratching the surface. And it's just because, because of the sheer fact there is so much bacteria in our body, we don't really know which one is the beneficial, what are the exact right ratios, what are we— I mean, you know, you've got the— what is it, the feces transplant that they spray up the bum. Yeah, and that can change some people's lives, putting feces up your bum.

I actually, I actually saw an Instagram post the other day. Yeah, somebody we— yeah, yeah, and it changed their life.

And it changed their lives. And South Park did an episode on it as well. I don't know if you saw it, but so I mean, it's, it's popular enough in culture. It shows that it can change the microbiome significantly for the better. And then there's the argument that people would make, is it all psychosomatic? It's very hard to say.

Who knows?

Who knows?

I've got one last question for you then. Where can people buy the book if they want to know more?

They can buy it at Enterprise Diet. So if you're in Australia, you can buy it at enterprise-diet.com. Actually, anywhere international, enterprise-diet.com, and you can place your order there. It is on Kindle, so you can go on Amazon and buy it on Kindle, and it is going to be— probably by the time you watch this, it will be on paperback. And then the other place it will be on Kindle is you can order the paperback on Kindle. As well very, very soon. Probably by the time you watch this, it'll be on paperback, and the audio will come eventually.

Is it with your voice?

It will be with my voice, but I have no idea when it's coming out because it's going to be an awful lot of work. I've got to adapt the whole text to talk it.

And obviously we stock them here at Enterprise Fitness, and we stock them here.

So you come into the studio if you're in Melbourne, come to the studio, I'll give you a signed copy. And, uh, signed copy.

Well, thanks guys. If you enjoyed this podcast, feel free— or actually, first off, Mark, where can everybody find you?

You find me at Mark Ottobre on Instagram, @markottobre, and on TikTok which we do a lot on TikTok.

Yeah, and James, where can everyone find you?

James Kelly PT on Instagram, and then through the Enterprise website, Enterprise Instagram as well, and obviously in here in the studio.

My name is Tyron Folino. You can find me on Instagram at coach_folino or 381 Swan Street at Enterprise Fitness. Thanks for joining us. Make sure if you enjoyed it, you leave a review, 5-star preferably. Hit the like button and remember to hit that bell and press subscribe. James, you want to say it?

Until next time, eat well, train hard, supplement smart.