Joe Rogan Experience #752 — Mark Sisson Transcript

Transcript

0:00 We're good already? Damn, I didn't even see a countdown. Jamie, you're so fast. You know, I've always wanted to be healthy from a really early And this became my mantra is how can I be strong, lean, fit, and healthy with the least amount of pain, suffering, sacrifice, discipline, calorie counting, portion control, and everything else. And where it led me

2:31 And what I arrived at was sort of a simple set of guidelines, these 10 primal blueprint lots of little things that sort of conspired to make us smaller and weaker and more susceptible to disease. You had to struggle more to achieve greatness or to win races. What we've discovered in the last five years is that it wound up depending on, and we all trained that way. And it was sort of,

6:02 Where did that come from? Like? What was the idea behind that? Well, you start to learn how to – I mean, Gatorade came out of this science. And about five years ago, he looked at the research, partly because he'd been a runner himself. and not rely so much on carbohydrate and not rely so much on glycogen or glucose. And the guy is Well, that's how it's supposed to be, right?

9:37 There's no absolutes. I mean, enough other scientists had started to look at this. were creating extra inflammation because of this food? I mean, when you're talking about simple carbohydrates, pastas and bread and such, they cause inflammation, correct? There's a long process where the localized temperature of the air is raised. inflammation, inflammatory response. Now, if you... And by the way, a lot of this happens as a result of genes within cells being turned on or off based on signals they get from their immediate environment.

13:28 So you're literally turning on genes that are causing a systemic inflammation. you burn off that much fat? They don't burn off that much fat. They lose that much water So when you say someone looks puffy, like people who drink a lot of alcohol, they start looking puffy. I had arthritis in my hands when I was—even after I'd cleaned most of my diet up,

16:59 And that – literally, that IBS had run my life. might be affected by this? no, you got your genes, so you don't got your genes. You either got red hair or you got big place. And the genes are basically not doing anything until they get a signal from the versus down this slippery slope of illness and disease and falling apart. They're not right or But there are certain foods you can eat that will cause you to become better at burning fat

21:36 Wow. I wake up at the same time every day. I don't do it first thing in the morning. And the reason I say that is because sun exposure, UVB light, that's the stimulus that causes cholesterol in the skin to convert to vitamin D. And vitamin D is one of the most important No, I did baby oil. I don't even know. Straight through in a BMW 2002. All the way down to Florida.

24:44 No. So if you raise that level high enough, you will have some issues. Whoa. In that case, we've moved on from sugar and glucose being a cause of inflammation to certain elements in, let's say, an immune response to it. So you get an initial form of inflammation where the body's just saying, do you think that a lot of what that is is the body responding to an excess of this glucose

28:53 Or soft drinks, which is a huge issue because soft drinks are a large part of the problem. sorry to be, that's just, there's like two parts to this equation and either part is kind of bad a day in the form of this sugar, you tend to store it as body fat. I had more energy. healthy fats from oils and nuts. That's a pretty nice plate of food that I mean, this, again, sort of the operative mantra here, no right or wrong, no black or white, no good or bad, just choices.

32:41 And that's sort of an interesting concept in and of itself, as Ronald Reagan said, you know, man's got to know his limitations. So I was reading this article yesterday, and I talked about this yesterday in the podcast, And she's been overweight her whole life, feeling fat and gross. athletics and like the amount of calories she's actually burning out versus putting

35:16 healthy and everything's fine i don't buy it i i look at that and i say this poor lady has been I mean, my tendency is to say to myself, holy shit, I could fix that person or I could help that person. with people about, you know, like, what's the ideal body composition, right? The ideal body And it's going to cost not in money, but it's going to cost in sacrifice and discipline and pain and hating life.

37:53 going to live longer, you're going to be happier, you won't get sick, you won't tap into your 401k So there's a lot of easy things that we can do. Well, you know, you went from you're a woman. And the fact that we live longer and we enjoy life, this is all wonderful and icing on the cake. identifying an appreciation for what you've done so far to get to where you are. Number two,

41:16 Is it almost like a distraction or is it the food that distracts them, the overconsuming of food to sort of nullify the effects of the abuse or whatever I try to explain to people that that is not an easy thing to do. You're not putting in enough intensity. body is to preserve itself, to pass the genetic material along to the next generation. Part of

43:10 But almost more importantly, if you don't train, and as you get older, So the bones go, hey, I don't need to build a structure because this clown isn't going to the gym and doing anything to require it. Same with the liver, same with the kidneys. And as you go down this path, then one night you get up to take a leak and you trip over the cat How dare you say that great Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Aniston movie?

45:28 I'll come help you do the dishes. Get a new chick. Because everybody, I mean, the amount of people that stick to those things that they sustainable so i mean literally and figuratively the diet the eating strategy is a sustainable You know, like the peanut butter. Coconut butter. I'm telling you, man. So you could argue that I intermittently fast every day.

48:03 It could be intervals on a bike. It could be a leg day, could be, you know, because I've spent enough time in that sort of low-carb area. I've built the metabolic machinery And very quickly, you change the script. you know, five grams of sugar. So it's not copious amounts. And if it rises above that, So many of us grow up depending on this carbohydrate as a main source of fuel.

52:11 body goes, well, I've got to save some of my glucose for my brain because the brain runs on What does ATP sound for? the mitochondria. And how that happens, and this is the elegance of this again, is that certain talk about that in my new book, Primal Endurance. Well, I want to read your new book and I want you And that's just from restricting carbohydrates.

55:07 Uh, so you do 400 pounds and you might do it, um, four or five times and then rest a few minutes And maybe that winds up being 15 sets more mitochondria. I know. When you're talking about increasing mitochondria, More energy throughout the day because now you're so good at burning fat, 150 grams of sugar before you head out the door. a break in the break room. Donuts. Somebody brought donuts today. Jelly. All right. And then,

58:20 And if you can get away with not eating, and when I say don't eat, it's important that we have And I could eat more than anybody in the college I went to, including the football team. went right out of your butt, went right out the butt, out the butt, Bob. So, um, uh, it's pretty interesting. If you become good at burning fat, your appetite so self-regulates

1:00:50 It's impossible, yeah. You were in your 40s when you adjusted your diet? You're going to go to the gym every day and do two hours and whatever. But I try to get some Right. I've ever invented. What are you doing? or the goal line, that's a point. Yeah, so at any point in time... Yeah, there is a good layout right there, okay. And now you've got to get back on defense

1:04:26 A lot. I used to go to the track and do 16 times one half mile, you know, at race pace. And overtraining. And especially with fighters because in mixed martial arts, they're dealing with different and going almost exclusively to strength and conditioning programs hill and 77% going over the third hill because you hadn't trained that part in your regimen.

1:08:17 saying that the next breakthroughs in marathon running will come from somebody who has trained ketogenically, and we didn't talk some amount of success and you go dude uh we want to shift everything around it's going to cost you And what do you mean by that? The body, we evolved to use ketones very efficiently. And this ability to use the byproduct of the fat metabolism to fuel the brain.

1:11:25 nap. So it'll make you mentally exhausted because your body's running on glycogen and glucose you down. And Tim Noakes, the guy we talked about, Professor Tim Noakes, at the beginning of the show stored body fat and producing ketones, and you've built the metabolic machinery, particularly in the and low carb training who are breaking records like crazy. Um, Zach Bitter, uh, is a guy who

1:14:22 I mean, I think 30 or 40 years ago, we would have said, I mean, that alone should be motivation for people to at least attempt to pursue that. Now you're talking five, five, five minute. making weight. You know, if you're, look, especially in MMA, it's about power to weight ratios So once you've built the metabolic machinery to burn fat and to burn ketones, it doesn't go away when you start eating carbohydrates.

1:17:38 then you can craft a strategy where you say, well, tomorrow we're just going to do 100% glycolytic stuff. with with extra carb intake and you make sure it's not sugar but it's you know a good um you know a but I think what cracks me up is the number of people who say, They've got antioxidants in them, and I don't overdo them. And I'm not necessarily saying don't eat fruit. I'm just saying don't consider fruit the healthiest

1:20:31 So celery with coconut butter would be a much healthier alternative than a banana. designing supplements for other companies. And one of the supplements I made a bunch of years ago train hard every day and you want to replace glycogen, then that's a strategy and that's a Well, what happens when you fast is you don't replenish the glycogen, but you preserve the pulse of growth hormone and testosterone that happens as a result of the leg day, which you would otherwise blunt by taking in a sugary drink. Whoa. Okay. So again, it's complex, and yet it's pretty cool.

1:23:35 get all of the benefits, the growth benefits that I'm looking for, refueling the glycogen levels actually depletes. Deplenishes? Thatpletes, blunts is the best word? Deplenishes. the game plan is for the week It's just a regular meal. Big deal. It's about managing literally pain and perceived pain and exertion over time. and you're able to dig deeper just because you know how to beat yourself up.

1:28:38 And he was. Like, do you have to beat yourself up in order to be mentally tough? You know, and you skip a day and you feel like a slacker and a poser and a loser. And if your heart rate is over a certain beats per minute, it's over what it's naturally normal, five plus beats per minute, Yeah. If you wake up and you've got 40 beats per minute, but they're all the same equal beats.

1:31:56 I've been doing this for 40 years. Actually, 50. I started running when I was 12. Again, I explain it in the book, but we spent years and years and years, decades, So the heart's pumping away and pumping away and pumping away. It just feeds whatever the demand is from the body. because of that? No. So you kind of more go on the way you feel? Yeah. And again, you know,

1:35:26 Well, I don't even care about that anymore. to keep me from getting injured, knock wood. And then I spend time on the, you know, I'll paddle And I don't think, oh, God, when is it going to be over? I'm like, this is like a legit workout. I just decided like, We're another boat. It's deltoids. Well, not even impact. that you can kind of do it full blast.

1:38:43 And my neck's bothering me. But if the diet's already good, then you're still putting the body through some unnatural torsions. And take me to the ground with a firm grip. I hate those fucks. and look at the labels of the ingredients because they're all over the place. The omega-6, by the way, omega-6 in and of themselves, they're not bad. Yeah. And I manufacture them too. I mean, it's part of my line of products.

1:42:10 And where do omega-6s come from? They're in any kind of fatty food. impact on your health. Yeah. I have conversations like that often with people that are vegan, And I know it's gross, How does the kale shake taste? I get this burst of nutrients. Yeah, it's very sweet. That gets me through a yoga class, because I feel like... I mean, I like a pear, but I...

1:45:06 No, no, no. then I'm not going to tell you to stop doing it. Yeah, I ate a bunch of shit. I ate a Madagascar hissing cockroach. It was all just in your head. Formagerie? I'd be like, oh! And keep it down. I've probably seen more people throw up than like a very small percentage of the population. But one day a week, I would watch at least two people just fucking hurl.

1:48:54 And I'm fascinated by the concept that, you know, a billion and a half, two billion people around the world eat insects all the time and think nothing of it. and very good for you. And they could also be an excellent source of protein for, That's really fascinating to me, It's powder. Not necessarily, no. I mean, if you can compact more into a—I mean, that's the beauty of, I think, insect protein powder is to be able to fortify foods that otherwise—rather than having 40 crickets on a stick, you know, to have the powder equivalent in a bar is kind of a neat way of doing it.

1:51:13 They're actually not bad at all. I wonder how many people that are vegan would be willing to eat bugs. And because it has honey in it as a sweetener, the vegans said, we can't eat because it has honey. It fucks. for six weeks on shoe leather and seaweed. I mean, the human body is pretty adaptable. So you, Hmm. What's lacking? Well, there's probably, if there's nothing lacking, it's great plants. I don't know. I wouldn't say they have a full amino acid profile. What's lacking?

1:54:14 two pounds of broccoli. Yeah. I don't think it's insane. I just think it's, because those same So I'm not going to criticize that choice. you know, we don't talk about, you know, amphibians, but imagine living on frogs and I just want the cup of coffee. You just my day going. I just want the cup of coffee. hungry, you'll just have regular coffee. Yeah. Black. A little bit of cream, but just enough

1:56:33 It might be salmon. And even if you're doing work in the gym, you know, you don't need 200 grams of protein a day. Who's Dave Draper? Yeah. Yeah. More recent, 2005. Look at him. So it might have been one gram per pound of body weight or 1.5 grams per pound of body weight. 50, 60. How much is an egg? So the rest of it turns into— A lot of that is, you know, they haven't, who knows what's going on with their gut bacteria, too.

1:59:59 Yep. Most people who are overweight don't want to hear this, but putting on muscle is much more difficult than losing body fat. Yeah. And we're going to be able to carry a lot of heavy shit all the time. I'm having some tea here. How dare you? But I always hear it's really good. It's just something that I've always heard. Yeah. But it's all fatty. But Wagyu is a lot of corn-fed animal.

2:03:09 Yeah, yep. hormones and antibiotics. So when they raise corn-fed beef and they start from These are just choices, and if you can find a great tasting grass-fed steak, So it's like a marketing strategy to call it grass-fed whey protein isolate. And there's an example of... That's the exact opposite. Now they took all the protein out of Jamie, pull it up.

2:06:32 It's more of a fatty cut. So isn't that, I mean, just automatically problematic if you have a grain-fed cow? and again, they might've been grass finished. Sometimes they'll say grass fed and they won't That's when I'll have my big plate of broccoli or broccolini or brussel sprouts or whatever. I let my thirst mechanism, you know, just sort of tell me what to do.

2:08:43 that concept. You might want to do it once in a while I think so So don't drink unless you're thirsty. Resveratrol. But I was a two-glass-a-night wine drinker for So I went off it and I realized that I was benefiting from it. alcohol. Your body processes the alcohol. Or when the—I don't know what—I'm not a huge adherent of Chinese medicine. I'm not

2:11:55 circulate in the brain. Right, right, right. dinner uh at night maybe one and a half are these non-grain made no they're they're made with grains And that's the shit that causes you to get the hangover and feel bad from drinking the wine, particularly the red wines, I gave up drinking wine, and I love wines, but I gave them up because I didn't like what it was doing to me. And I found

2:14:36 and feel a little bit of taking the edge off use the term he uses um natural yeah um but but it the market to which he was catering at the time Well, none of this stuff existed in caveman's time. Right. I thought from the beginning. It allows them to process the wine? Wow. Yeah. He makes his own wine. The grower of the grapes who's got his own label will say, I want it to have these properties.

2:18:45 of the tannin. So for some people who have issues with the, you hear about the histamines in wine. on it. He was a lifetime wine drinker, grew up in wine country up in Sonoma, That is really interesting. I mean, the things that he's given me are all from other countries. That sounds so counterintuitive that we grow so much wine in California, but to get wine without any shit in it, you'd have to get it from Europe.

2:20:44 but most of these are from other... Dry. seeds. No. So what's the ethanol? Ethanol, that's the alcohol. That's the form of alcohol in the wines. So you know even like a glass of wine. And you give one of the cohorts two glasses of wine a night, and you give the other There is some, and it's a well-studied component of wine. In fact, there have been companies founded on just providing resveratrol as an anti-aging

2:25:41 There's no reason to take exogenous ketones. If you're fat-adapted and keto-adapted, there may be a reason to take exogenous ketones in an event instead of sugar. right now where it would work, other than in some elite event where somebody was Just radically cut back on sugar? of weeks. It takes about 21 days to do this. This sucks. Cut it way back.

2:28:56 A fat-burning beast. and it hasn't yet built the metabolic machinery to burn ketones, even though the body may be producing ketones. I don't know enough about the clinical trials that are going on right now, but my assumption would be that if you take exogenous ketones and you're not fat-adapted to keto-adapted, it's not going to necessarily prompt you to become that unless you've done

2:30:41 Right. But the strip says I'm doing great. I just take it real light and make this adjustment. And which book? body and creating more mitochondrial biogenesis and upregulating those mitochondria to become Yeah, I think within a year, maybe a little bit more than a year, you can, if you do everything I thought it was money. So the longevity part, one of the things that happens is you train less. There's less total training time to get the results that you wanted because you're doing it methodically,

2:35:01 from doing it. In fact, it'll take you down the toilet. So you learn to become less time, and presumably, if you do it right, better results anyway than the old paradigm. Honey, I only have 16,000 steps. Hey, Mark, you're so disciplined, man. It's a very addictive pursuit. You go through withdrawal. to get all of it and your book. So please tell us the book again,

2:38:49 And I'll keep everybody posted. We'll be back tomorrow with Hannibal Buress.