How we're doing on the Lion Diet

Coach Nat decided to do the Lion Diet. Coach Bronson is going to support her by doing it with her. She is excited. He is not. Listen in as they discuss their first week eating nothing but beef, salt, and water.

1:00 Why we're doing the Lion Diet
4:45 All disease begins in the gut
6:50 Versions of the Lion Diet
9:24 Doing it for hormone health
14:54 Trying to improve Coach Nat's menstrual cycle
18:09 Healing the gut and fixing digestive issues
25:55 Other reasons to try the Lion Diet
27:25 Do the Lion Diet to help detach from crutches
30:33 How to know your crutches
33:48 Will the Carnivore diet help with addiction?
38:50 How many eggs does Coach Bronson eat?
42:10 What is Coach Bronson cutting out?
49:20 Carnivore isn't boring at all
53:15 Coach Bronson didn't want to do it 
55:42 You put meaning to your food
57:52 Morning routines without coffee
1:02:20 What happens when you reintroduce something and it's not a good result? 

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Transcript

Coach Nat: 0:14

Welcome to the Less Glove morphist podcast.

Coach Bronson: 0:17

With me, Coach Bronson, and me, Coach Nat, where we peel back the curtains and reveal the truth behind Hot Topics in health and fitness.

Coach Nat: 0:24

This is Keto fit life unfiltered.

Coach Bronson: 0:31

Hello, everybody. Welcome again to another episode of Less Love, More Fist. This is Coach Bronson and Coach Nat, and today we are going to talk about our experiment. That's really not our experiment. It's Coach Nat's experiment that has become our experiment of just eating beef for 40 days. What is this all about? Coach nat.

Coach Nat: 0:53

The lion diet. So your girl is turning 40 now in 31 days from now, February 15 and after the new year, I was thinking it was a few weeks after my show and kind of allowed myself some indulgences over the holiday.

Coach Bronson: 1:13

Indulgences? Okay, what kind of indulgences? Because this is something that I want people to understand that the definition of indulgences changes when you have established a healthy lifestyle.

Coach Nat: 1:27

Okay, but I mean, it would be the kind of things we had for Christmas at my family's house.

Coach Bronson: 1:34

Okay, so those indulgences were standard American diet indulgences. Yes, but that's not necessarily the stuff that we're focusing on taking out. Those were things that we allowed for those occasions. I'm talking about the indulgences of our normal, everyday life.

Coach Nat: 1:51

Okay, well, that's different. All right? But this experiment came to me because I wasn't feeling great after that, and it was like, okay, I want to get back to my norm, which I did. As soon as we got home for New Years, everything was back to the norm. And for those that don't know, a year ago, when I moved in with Bronson, I went full blown carnivore, and I had been really kind of straddling the line with Keto carnivore, keto bore for a while, but it was like, well, this is convenient. We live together. He doesn't buy anything but meat and eggs and coffee, and we'll talk about those things. So I bit the bullet, I went carnivore. And I had quite an experience. The first couple of months was a little bit of an adjustment on my gut, but I never went all meat. I did take eggs out for a little while at that point in time when I was really trying to figure things out. But I always drank coffee, and we pretty much always had some sort of protein powder around.

Coach Bronson: 3:03

Yeah, it was around.

Coach Nat: 3:05

We had egg white protein every day. We had some kind of protein powder. Yeah, we always have, like, an egg white protein or a beef isolate. So although these were carnivore friendly protein powders, they had flavorings, they had sweeteners, natural or unnatural process. Right.

Coach Bronson: 3:21

They're very processed, whole food.

Coach Nat: 3:23

Exactly. And it tastes like dessert. Let's be real. Right. So I don't know what actually prompted me to just actually go for the lion diet this time.

Coach Bronson: 3:35

I don't know. But you were all about it before I left. Before I left, you were like, Where.

Coach Nat: 3:41

Do you get back?

Coach Bronson: 3:42

We're doing this. Where did this come from?

Coach Nat: 3:45

You know what? I think it was because I'm turning 40, and I was like, okay, I'm turning 40. Not that long after the new year, and I want to go into 40 feeling better, feeling and looking my best, better than ever. And when I turned 30, when I was like 28, 29 was when I first committed to changing my lifestyle, when my whole transformation journey began. And it was because I was looking ahead a year and a half out to my 30th birthday. And at the time, I had a lot of chronic health conditions. And those are the things that I healed with a paleo diet and then a keto diet and all the healing diets I tried within that time. Gaps, AIP, whole 30, all of these different kinds of basically paleo, low carb healing diets. And I always had gut issues. That was like the root cause of everything else. Most of the time, you all if you didn't know if you're struggling with any kind of chronic condition, it starts in the gut. All disease begins in the gut. Hippocrates said that father of medicine. So something needs to be looked at with your gut. If you're experiencing any other health issues, you heal the gut. That is the foundation of everything else. So ultimately, it was wanting to do something as a challenge to myself in the new year leading up to my 40th, doing something where I knew I would feel my best. Going into my 40th, coming out of my show, I actually did the lion diet for a few days. Like two or three days.

Coach Bronson: 5:30

Yeah, three, maybe four days of pretty much nothing.

Coach Nat: 5:35

But I took the eggs. Coffee. I still like coffee, but I took out my additives to my coffee. So it was just coffee. I still was doing the MCT oil, but it was coffee and MCT oil and steak basically every day leading up to my show. And I felt freaking amazing. Just didn't have any issues. Digestive issues. Felt really good, clear minded. I wasn't exhausted. I wasn't dealing with what most competitors deal with in the midst of their peak week. I was in a good mood.

Coach Bronson: 6:09

Yeah, you weren't angry. You were not unpleasant to be around outside of the stress of the weekend, but outside of that and even then, you weren't unpleasant.

Coach Nat: 6:19

It was pretty smooth sailing. Yeah.

Coach Bronson: 6:23

So we're doing the lion diet now.

Coach Nat: 6:27

I decided to do 40 days. Okay. Brenton and I have been going back and forth about this.

Coach Bronson: 6:35

I want to do the coffee version.

Coach Nat: 6:36

Because I don't there are versions of the lion diet. There are no versions.

Coach Bronson: 6:43

I want my eggs back.

Coach Nat: 6:46

The thing with lion is that, unlike even carnivore, which is crazy to me to think that there are versions of the carnivore diet, it should be pretty.

Coach Bronson: 6:57

Cut and dry if it had a mother eat it. That's the carnivore diet.

Coach Nat: 7:00

And honestly, back when I went keto, there were not all these versions of keto either. Keto was pretty simple back then. We didn't have all these products on the shelves. We didn't have all these versions of keto that you could dirty keto and lazy keto and all these different ketos. It was just like, cut out the carbs, cut out the junk, eat real food. And it was like meat and vegetables, keto. And then carnivore should be pretty simple. Like, if it came from an animal.

Coach Bronson: 7:27

You would think that carnivore would be simple.

Coach Nat: 7:29

Right, but there are many versions that have emerged with carnivore. Yes, but the lion diet, I will argue, does not have any blurred lines. It is meat, salt and water. And when I say meat, they typically mean ruminant animals. So beef, lamb, you could do wild game meats like elk.

Coach Bronson: 7:54

Wild game, yeah, absolutely.

Coach Nat: 7:55

Yeah. So ruminant animals, multistomic animals. I was going to say, tell them to deal with animals.

Coach Bronson: 8:02

That's pretty much it.

Coach Nat: 8:03

Why do they do ruminant animals?

Coach Bronson: 8:05

Because they are the most efficient animals at converting plant matter into nutrients. For human beings, that's the easiest way to say they are designed to break down plants, get rid of the toxins, convert all of that nutrition. That plants are great. Plants have a lot of nutrition. We're just not designed to access it. So the ruminant animals are designed to break that stuff down, extract all of that stuff into their bodies. That's how we do it and that's how we get it. That's why pigs are not as nutrient dense. That's why chicken absolutely is not nutrient dense, because they don't have that multi stomach, fermentation chewing their cud, eight levels of digestion and fermentation, and all the other stuff that they do to break down the cellulose and all the different parts of the plants to get at the nutrition.

Coach Nat: 9:00

Yeah. So basically, red meat is the healthiest food, the most nutrient dense food you can put in your body.

Coach Bronson: 9:08

Absolutely.

Coach Nat: 9:09

Okay, so let's talk about why we're doing this, right? For me, there are two main reasons. One, I'm trying to optimize my health in a couple of different ways. Two, in particular, hormones and gut health. I just got all my blood work done toward the end of my prep and a couple of markers. I waited until after my prep, and I did it like, a week or two later. And then I met with my doctor. And the only marker that's concerning at all is that my testosterone was low. Everything else was beautiful. All my lipids, my thyroid, all of it was fantastic.

Coach Bronson: 9:49

Mandy Max says eating chicken makes her hunger here.

Coach Nat: 9:52

Oh, yeah. And one of my clients recently said that, too. I got a message that said, Girl, what's up with chicken? Like, she ate a pound of chicken breast, and she was not safe.

Coach Bronson: 10:05

I need more food because there's no fat, guys. You got to combine some fat with your protein. That's what triggers satiation. That's what triggers the insulin response that you're looking for from your meals. Okay. You need fat and protein together. If you haven't heard us talk about that before, we'll probably end up talking about it again at some point, so just keep listening.

Coach Nat: 10:26

And another feather in the cap of ruminant meat animals. Is that like chicken, for instance? If you're doing the chicken breast and you're having to add fats, it's not going to have the same effect that it would have if you had a fatty meat that was made that way that came with the fat already incorporated into it. So like adding avocado or adding olive oil or adding something to your chicken or even butter or animal fats, it's not going to be the same effect as you would get from eating a steak.

Coach Bronson: 10:59

Absolutely.

Coach Nat: 11:01

Okay, so let's see back to the hormones. So I'm trying to optimize my testosterone, which let me just put a little aside here that I got my testosterone done. It like six weeks out to the show, so it's very possible that it's actually already improved. I'm going to get it tested again. In mid February, my doctor gave me some supplements I could take to help that process, but I decided I did not want to take the supplements, so I haven't ordered the supplements yet. I wanted to try the lion diet to see if it can just correct that on its own.

Coach Bronson: 11:36

What supplements did he give you?

Coach Nat: 11:38

DHA was one of them, and then the other was a blend of herbs and it had hornedy goat weed in it, hornet weed. I can't remember what else was in. I think there was actually a little DHA in it as well, possibly.

Coach Bronson: 11:58

Okay, what to talk about? So one of the things we will be doing an episode on after this is done, based on your tests, but I'm also looking at pumping my testosterone now, not that it's low. My testosterone is actually pretty good, especially.

Coach Nat: 12:15

For a 50 year old.

Coach Bronson: 12:16

Yeah, I'm in the high seven hundred s and free and twelve in the total. No, twelve in free and 700s in total. Something like that. Which of those numbers?

Coach Nat: 12:29

I think it was the other way because mine was like a three and it was like super low.

Coach Bronson: 12:32

Total.

Coach Nat: 12:33

It must have been total, I think.

Coach Bronson: 12:35

Yeah. Okay. I always figured which numbers? 712. I'm supposed to be like above 400 or 300 or something. So I'm well above and one and the max is 24 and I'm at twelve. So I'm about halfway to that not bad. I'm doing great. I can build muscle. I have no problems with anything. Sure it doesn't and but I want to see if I can just increase it and and see if that because my goal for this year we haven't talked about this. My goal for this year is to add £20 of muscle or get as close to that as possible.

Coach Nat: 13:10

That's quite a goal.

Coach Bronson: 13:11

That's a huge goal. It's going to be very unlikely that I actually get to 20, but I'm going to do everything I possibly can to do that. Then increasing my testosterone is part of.

Coach Nat: 13:19

That and I am in a lean gains phase. So my whole goal this year is to build muscle without putting excess body fat on my body.

Coach Bronson: 13:31

Isn't that always the goal? Yeah, pretty much always be the goal. Guys, don't you think putting on muscle without gaining fat, that shouldn't be a new thing, that should just be I want to gain weight. That should just be muscle weight.

Coach Nat: 13:44

Muscle weight.

Coach Bronson: 13:45

I'm thinking muscle weight.

Coach Nat: 13:46

Yeah. I mean, I've always the thing, the background there is that I've always unintentionally bulked and put on too much body fat more than I'm comfortable with in my off seasons, which really they're not off seasons, they're building seasons. But I have not been intentional about my building seasons. I've treated them like off seasons. And although I train really hard and I build muscle in those seasons, I have too much fat on my body, I don't feel comfortable face. I allow too many things and in the past I haven't been carnivore in my offseason either, so I'm sure that played in.

Coach Bronson: 14:26

Would you say that going carnivore is the biggest impact I've had on your life? Oh, man, random, out of the blue question, yo.

Coach Nat: 14:35

I can't say for sure because I think that you've had major impact on my life in other ways.

Coach Bronson: 14:40

Yeah. HealthWise, heartwise. All right, so you were the next thing.

Coach Nat: 14:54

Yeah. And for my ladies who struggle with your cycle, I still struggle with my cycle.

Coach Bronson: 15:01

You just had a breakthrough though.

Coach Nat: 15:03

Yeah, this is something I've dealt with since I got my period when I was eleven years old. And so almost 30 years that I've been dealing with this. And I was on from the time that I was probably, however young I was, when they allowed me to go on birth control, started birth control pretty early. I tried every different birth control there. There was like I went off and on all different ones and had all kinds of problems. And then eventually, when I was turning 30 and I had gotten off all of my other medications for all my chronic conditions, the last medication I got off was birth control. And I refused to ever put those chemicals in my body again. So when I got off of that I was doing a whole 30. I was doing my first whole 30 and I had the best cycle I'd ever had. And so it's pretty clear that when I'm eating really clean, even before I went keto, but when I was eating really clean on keto, when I eat really clean and I'm solid on carnivore, I have better cycles than when I'm indulging. But there are still some things I still deal with symptoms. I still have like, a day and a half of really bad pain is bad.

Coach Bronson: 16:20

I came in the other day and she was like, laying on the bed just out of it, like moaning with.

Coach Nat: 16:27

A heating hat on. Yeah, now this month and I can.

Coach Bronson: 16:31

Go back because there's nothing I can do, right? It's like, I want to rub your back. And you're like, don't touch me.

Coach Nat: 16:38

Pretty much, I do still get the mood changes. I get irritable. I get very irritable. It's almost like telltale, like, oh, I know what's happening here. I'm very different than on a normal basis. So it's the irritability, the mood stuff, it's the pain. I get body aches, like my hips, my legs. I couldn't do a leg day to save my life during that time, but it only lasts two days, tops, those kinds of things. And then I get one day of really heavy bleeding, super heavy bleeding, and then otherwise it's not too bad, but I get night sweats and I get insomnia pretty bad. So those are the kinds of things that I want to improve with my hormones and your cycle and then, yeah, my cycle.

Coach Bronson: 17:30

I had your first my 1st 28.

Coach Nat: 17:32

Day cycle in a long time, like at least a year. I think that this is truly a product of carnivore all throughout the last year and probably longer. I don't remember how long I was tracking it. It had been pretty short. It gotten down to like a 23 day, 24 day cycle. And yeah, this one went back to 28 days. So I'm hoping to keep this up, keep it regular 28 days, and then hopefully heal some of these symptoms on the hormonal side of things and then on the gut health side of things, the digestion. So I still deal with bloating, gassiness, stuff like that. That's the biggest thing, really, when it comes to gut health. I'm not having a lot of the issues that I had before, years ago. I don't have any heartburn anymore. All of that is gone. But my biggest thing that we wanted oh, now I remember what got me to do this.

Coach Bronson: 18:33

Okay, here we go.

Coach Nat: 18:37

I was doing a live on IG with Dr. Sarah Zaldivar.

Coach Bronson: 18:41

Oh, okay.

Coach Nat: 18:42

And she was asking me about my ailments. We talked about all the things I'd healed over the years and what I was still dealing with. And I told her I still take Btane, HCL and enzymes with digestive enzymes with all my meals. And she suggested Lion Diet.

Coach Bronson: 18:58

Shout out to Dr. Zaldivar.

Coach Nat: 19:00

So it was, Sarah, thank you for introducing me to this. So that's what planted the seed. And I thought, well, it really would be nice to not have to buy those supplements ever again. And it is inconvenient that I have to take them with every meal and.

Coach Bronson: 19:15

You'Re not taking them now.

Coach Nat: 19:17

I am.

Coach Bronson: 19:18

What did you stop taking?

Coach Nat: 19:20

I stopped the apple cider vinegar. Okay, so within where now you all if you didn't know, we're a week into this Lion Diet experiment. I ran out. I was running out of my apple cider vinegar. And typically I would do apple cider vinegar for those who can see me on Instagram in a she's holding up her bottle of water in my water bottle every day.

Coach Bronson: 19:43

Real quick, for you guys watching on my live on Instagram, can you hear her talking? Just out of curiosity and for people watching that on her Instagram Live, can you guys hear me talking?

Coach Nat: 19:55

Can you hear Coach Bronson on my IG live.

Coach Bronson: 19:59

Okay, so that would normally have apple cider beans.

Coach Nat: 20:02

This would typically have about I would put anywhere from one to three tablespoons in my big 72 ounce jug, and I drink that all day. So I pretty much never drank water without apple cider vinegar in it. And then with my meals, I would take a shot of apple cider vinegar with some electrolytes, with some salt, and I would take that with my Betane HCL and my digestive enzymes.

Coach Bronson: 20:31

Sorry. For some reason, every time I hear electrolytes, I just want to say bronze. It's got electrolytes. It's what the body needs. It's got what you need.

Coach Nat: 20:40

Do you all know that reference?

Coach Bronson: 20:42

Every single time.

Coach Nat: 20:43

Shout out to anyone who knows that reference. Celeste tells me, babe, that she can hear both of us on my Live.

Coach Bronson: 20:50

Okay, who said that?

Coach Nat: 20:51

Celeste.

Coach Bronson: 20:52

Okay. Thanks, Celeste. Oh, I got a bunch of people saying yes on mine, too. Cool.

Coach Nat: 20:58

Yes.

Coach Bronson: 20:58

All right, great.

Coach Nat: 20:59

I'm getting all the yeses now. Awesome.

Coach Bronson: 21:00

Okay, thanks everybody.

Coach Nat: 21:02

Great. So I'm glad you're not only hearing a one sided conversation, but you can imagine how inconvenient it would be. Pull out my apple cider vinegar and poor shot with every meal. And that was so that my body could break down the capsules that the BTN, HDL and the enzymes in. Because at one point in time, even just taking the capsules, I still would have the major symptom that I'm trying to alleviate is this feeling of not feeling full when I eat my meal. But three or 4 hours later, I'm stuffed, stuffed, stuffed. It just hits uncomfortably full. And it's because I have slow gastric emptying. And so if anybody has experienced something similar, it's likely this is what's happening with you. It's slow gastric emptying, and that means that the food is not leaving your stomach. And that is because you do not have enough stomach acid. And a lot of people experience stuff like this when they go carnivore and they realize they're having problems breaking down their meat. Because this typically is going to happen with proteins, because you need to have enough stomach acid to break down the protein.

Coach Bronson: 22:14

It doesn't mean that you're not designed to eat meat.

Coach Nat: 22:17

Exactly.

Coach Bronson: 22:18

Okay. It means there's something else going on. This is one of the most frustrating conversations I have with people. Well, I've tried eating meat before and it just doesn't work for me. That's because something's wrong. A normal functioning human being does not have a problem processing and digesting meat. So if you are having a problem digesting meat, you need to dig into the root cause of what that is. It's not normal for human function. So whether it's slow gastric, slow gas, say that ten times fast, slow gastric, emptying, whether that's low stomach acid, whether that's something else going on.

Coach Nat: 22:56

Well, and something I can say, too, is that majority of people actually have low stomach acid. And this is because the majority of people are not consuming enough protein or sodium, right? Yes. Sodium is the other piece of that.

Coach Bronson: 23:12

Sodium. Chloride is the precursor for hydrochloric acid. Chloride, hydrochloric acid. You need sodium to have good stomach.

Coach Nat: 23:20

Acid, which is another reason why I put the salt with the apple cider vinegar in the shot that I would take with my meals. And so when you notice if you've been eating low protein for years, which most people on a standard American diet are not eating enough protein, and then you try to eat more protein, it's going to be difficult for you, and it's likely because you don't have enough stomach acid. So we actually did a YouTube video a while back on our old channel that I think we have now. Put on this one. Right, babe. Less glove.

Coach Bronson: 23:54

Which one signing to Marnie again?

Coach Nat: 23:58

The one about stomach acid. The testing your stomach acid.

Coach Bronson: 24:02

That's on the less glove morphis YouTube channel. We did a video on how to test your stomach acid at home so.

Coach Nat: 24:08

You can do a simple baking soda test. So check us out on YouTube and.

Coach Bronson: 24:12

You can I'm good how to do that.

Coach Nat: 24:14

Yeah, it was very clear. We can do that test again at the end of the Lion Diet and see if they do better.

Coach Bronson: 24:20

See if it changes. Yeah.

Coach Nat: 24:21

So I have phased out the apple cider vinegar. I was running out of it and I was like, well, you know what? I'll just not buy more and we'll see how this goes. I also have a brand new bottle of Btane HCL, or the BPP by Thorne, which has Pepsin Pancreatin and Btane HCL in it. That's what I take with my meals. I haven't opened it yet. I have little bottles left of what I already had. So my plan is to start phasing that out next, because right now I feel great without the apple cider vinegar. I don't think I need it. But my whole goal and what the seed that Dr. Salvar planted in my head was trying to get off the supplements. So, truly, the last thing I think I need to heal my gut fully is to build back up my natural stomach acid so that I can digest without the help. And after a year on carnivore, I would think that it's probably healed quite a bit. When I first went carnivore, Bronson wanted me to get off all that stuff and I tried and it was not successful.

Coach Bronson: 25:30

That didn't work quite very well.

Coach Nat: 25:32

Yeah, my other hope is that I can reintroduce dairy products and do better with that.

Coach Bronson: 25:40

I think that's a ways away, but yeah, it worked for me, so I don't see why it wouldn't work for you. Eventually down the road.

Coach Nat: 25:48

Eventually, yes.

Coach Bronson: 25:49

Okay, so your two main reasons, hormone and gut.

Coach Nat: 25:52

Well, those were the two main health reasons. The other reason and also a couple of other health things are that I want to improve my recovery from my workouts, from my training because my recovery has not been great. Granted, once again, I'm at the end of a prep. So I think part of that comes back when I just start eating more food. But the other part is I've just been tired in between. I had to take a day in between every training day. And so I want to be able to ramp up my training and be able to handle more volume without having to take so much rest. And then energy throughout the day. I want to have more energy in the morning and focused clarity, productive energy throughout the day.

Coach Bronson: 26:40

Let's go through before we talk about why I'm doing it and how I'm feeling about the whole process.

Coach Nat: 26:49

On the podcast you can't see the.

Coach Bronson: 26:51

Space I just made. Let's talk about what the difference is now versus what we were doing to give people an idea. Okay, what did our day look like we would normally eat versus what we eat online diet.

Coach Nat: 27:07

But there's a big huge piece of why I'm doing this that has nothing to do with health and it actually does have to do with health.

Coach Bronson: 27:15

Is this mindset stuff. We're going to talk about mindset stuff whenever do we do that?

Coach Nat: 27:21

What it's what we do best. Okay, so the main reason beyond the.

Coach Bronson: 27:27

Health optimization and I'm going to piggyback because there is an aspect of this that I'm doing this for too.

Coach Nat: 27:33

Exactly.

Coach Bronson: 27:35

UN, internally motivated, but still doing it.

Coach Nat: 27:40

Okay. It is one word, I can sum it up in one word. Detachment.

Coach Bronson: 27:49

Yes.

Coach Nat: 27:50

Whenever I feel I'm being too attached to anything in life, it needs to go, I just need to practice. It doesn't mean it has to leave my life forever, but I need to practice detachment from it so that I am not too attached. And so especially when it comes to I cannot with him, y'all, but especially when it comes to things that are not benefiting my health, benefiting my life. Right. So for instance, Netflix binging at night and losing sleep and waking up groggy and then not having an energetic day the next day. Okay. And that's kind of tied in with this too. Absolutely.

Coach Bronson: 28:34

We've changed that too.

Coach Nat: 28:35

Attachments to food. And many of you are probably dealing with attachments to sugar, right? For us, that's like protein ice cream that we make at home, like stuff like that, sweet treats. And I was doing a lot of that during my prep. I was doing all kinds of things because it was all about hitting my macros for a fat loss goal. My fat got lower than it is for me normally, and that was uncomfortable. So it was, where can I find how can I make this more enjoyable so I can make it all the way to the end of prep? And so I did everything I could. I made all kinds of treats and protein pancakes and all the things that just would make it a little more enjoyable, and that was for that purpose. But now I'm in a place where I don't want to be relying on these things that I call crutches. There are bridges and there are crutches, and I talk about bridge foods being something that gets you from here to there, but when you start leaning on it unnecessarily with your foot is now no longer broken and you're still leaning on it, you got to get rid of the crutch. So these things became too attached to them, and so I wanted to let them go so that I could be the owner. I always talk about owning your journey and being the CEO of your body, and so I want to take control over my journey.

Coach Bronson: 30:03

Yeah. And that's what it's really all about. We had a first call for our challenge last night for the ten week.

Coach Nat: 30:10

Challenge, for his challenge.

Coach Bronson: 30:12

I have a challenge as well for my challenge, better first call, group call last night. And one of the things I also did, I'm also working with Five Minute Body Arena, and she had a group that we had. So I had two calls last night, and in both of those calls, we talked about what are the guidelines for nutrition and trying to identify the things that we want to remove to see what happens. Again, we've talked about this all the time. You never know how something is going to benefit you until you take it out and see if you feel better or not. And here's the one rule of thumb or guideline to know if you should try taking something out or not. From a mental perspective, from the mental plateau or the mental stall or the mental reason why you're not making progress. If you don't want to take it out, that's your sign. If there's something that you know you are resisting, removing from your routine, removing from your lifestyle, that is an automatic red flag that's telling you it's going, hi, I'm over here. You probably should get rid of me for a little bit and see what happens.

Coach Nat: 31:17

100%.

Coach Bronson: 31:19

So that's what if you're feeling your.

Coach Nat: 31:22

Sign, if you're one of. Those people who says, oh, I could never do that. You probably need to.

Coach Bronson: 31:28

Right? I couldn't do keto. I have to have my Coke or I couldn't do that. I have to have that. Anything that you have to have is controlling you.

Coach Nat: 31:38

Yes.

Coach Bronson: 31:40

If you can't do without it, then you have absolutely given up control to an inanimate object. Control of your life, control of your health, control of your destiny, control of the quality of life that you have, the impact you have on your family, your friends, and everyone that you're around. You're giving that control. You're giving that diet soda control over your life. That thing could be the thing that keeps you out of the hospital in the next five years if you stop drinking it. But you couldn't do that. I bet you could do that when you're sitting in a hospital bed and.

Coach Nat: 32:15

You have no other choice, and you.

Coach Bronson: 32:17

Have no other choice, right? And you're being told that you're diabetic and all these other things, and you have peripheral neuropathy and you have damage to your eyes and damage to your feet, and your body is falling apart because you just wouldn't give up that one thing because it means too much to you. You've got to decide at some point what means more your health, your family, and your life or food.

Coach Nat: 32:43

Boom, y'all. My whole journey started with a Lenten sacrifice. At the time, I could not go on any kind of diet if it was not for a religious purpose. It had to be for a deeper purpose than just trying to lose weight or something. So for me, it was giving up dairy back in 2011 for Lent and experiencing all of these incredible benefits from it that I didn't even know it was attached to, like, my skin. Which is another reason why I'm doing this, to clear up things like hormonal acne. But at the time, it was all these happy side effects. I called them because I wasn't expecting that. But I gave it up for a religious purpose, a sacrifice. It was something I loved. I actually had to give up my coffee back then because I couldn't have coffee without cream and sugar. But these are the things that truly change our lives.

Coach Bronson: 33:43

Absolutely. Dirk, just ask. This is Dirk. Hey. This is Dirk. What's going on, man? Good question. He says, Is it safe to start carnivore while still smoking? Of course I want to quit, but it's hard, and I want to start carnivore, and I think it will be easier to break the addiction on carnivore.

Coach Nat: 33:59

There's an interesting concept.

Coach Bronson: 34:00

So you can start carnivore any time, okay? There's never a bad time. Anybody listening or watching, there is never a bad time to start carnivore. Okay? The addiction issue is something that we actually have been talking about between the two of us recently. All right, what's up, everybody? On Coach Nats IG the addiction issue we've been talking about this recently because we get this a lot and maybe it's just recently we've been getting this more people asking if going carnivore is going to help them with their addiction and in the nuance of how all of this stuff works. In one sense, yes. In another sense, no way at all. Right.

Coach Nat: 34:42

I know where you're going.

Coach Bronson: 34:43

So there is an aspect of the food that you eat being healthy and giving yourself the nutrition that you need and allowing your body to naturally manage your hormone, your hormones and your satiety signals.

Coach Nat: 34:56

Carnivore makes everything better.

Coach Bronson: 34:58

Carnivore makes the physiological and the biological aspects of how your body responds to and signals you for food much better. That doesn't account for or replace the inner work that you still have to do to deal with the mindset and emotional connection. You have habit loops that you have developed over the years that lead you to do the same thing over and over again. That has nothing to do with the physiological or biological function of your body.

Coach Nat: 35:31

Say aloud or for the people in.

Coach Bronson: 35:33

The back if you have addiction issues, there is a level of mental and internal work and awareness that you have to build in order to help deal with your reasonings behind why you have addiction issues.

Coach Nat: 35:49

100%.

Coach Bronson: 35:50

Get therapy, get with the coach, get with the counselor. Do a lot of inner work. Work through your why. Work through your why not? Set some goals. There's a whole bunch of things that go into that. But if you don't start practicing and building awareness around why you're making those choices when you know you don't want to make those choices, then you're never going to move forward regardless of how you're eating.

Coach Nat: 36:14

Yes, 100%.

Coach Bronson: 36:16

So just something to keep in mind. Dirt. I think it will be great for you to start doing something positive and moving to a carnivore diet is absolutely something that's positive and can help move you forward. And it's a step that could potentially, if you use it, be the first step in a series of steps that builds habits of you moving forward and making good decisions for your health. So that's a small ball you could get rolling and make it bigger. But you need to, if you're not already, again, I don't know your story, what you're dealing with, but if you haven't gotten counseling, gotten a therapist, got in a community, gotten some kind of support to help you work through the mental stuff, you're going to run into a wall every single time. Okay, so absolutely. That's great. Good question.

Coach Nat: 37:03

And things like this, the snowball effect that you talked about, having an anchor is really important when you're trying to change habits. So if you can anchor carnivore to quitting smoking now whenever you have that steak, you're less likely to reach for a cigarette because you're connecting those two things. It can certainly help with the habitat.

Coach Bronson: 37:30

Yeah, I mean, I'd love to be able to come up you know how cool it would be if we could come up with a carnivore protocol to help people quit smoking?

Coach Nat: 37:35

Oh, yeah.

Coach Bronson: 37:36

Like, every time you want a cigarette, go eat be jerky. Right?

Coach Nat: 37:40

Carnivore snacks.

Coach Bronson: 37:42

We should totally get carnivore snacks. Snacks. Carnivore snacks. To sponsor smoking recovery program. That would be amazing.

Coach Nat: 37:52

Okay, carnivore snacks.

Coach Bronson: 37:54

Carnivorous snacks. If you okay. We got to remember it. And when we post these to tag cesara and to tag carnivore snacks.

Coach Nat: 38:00

Absolutely.

Coach Bronson: 38:02

We got to talk to carnival snacks about a reach out to people that are dealing with smoking addiction, because I'll.

Coach Nat: 38:07

Tell you what, that stuff is like crack. Oh, my God. I just went through, like, four out of five bags in a couple of days here. They don't last in this household.

Coach Bronson: 38:17

Marnie said what you're saying is almost word for word. I wrote in my journal yesterday. Awesome. Way to go, Marnie. Good job.

Coach Nat: 38:24

Journaling is a powerful first step, for sure of understanding yourself, taking that time.

Coach Bronson: 38:29

Okay, so let's talk about what's changed on the line diet. Then we'll talk about why I'm doing it and what my thoughts are. What my thoughts are. Okay, so for me, what I was eating normally was a lot of eggs and buy a lot of eggs. All the eggs buy a lot of eggs. We haven't ever tracked how many eggs we'd buy in a week.

Coach Nat: 38:51

Oh, my God. So many.

Coach Bronson: 38:53

Because I'll do at least a dozen a day.

Coach Nat: 38:55

I would go back to the store multiple times in a week to get this man more eggs.

Coach Bronson: 38:59

Eggs. Yeah. So my normal not lion diet diet is depending on carnivore. Yeah, my normal carnivore diet depending on what? Meats. I mean, it could be anywhere from six eggs in a day to 18 eggs in a day. If I'm feeling egg happy, a pound to a pound and a half of lamb or beef. If there's pork, if we've got pulled pork or we got something that we did in a crock pot, I'll leave that pretty much whatever meat we have, plus a bunch of eggs and butter. I mean, that's pretty much what and then sometimes coffee in the morning. Coffee in the morning with heavy cream. Most days, I put a scoop of equipment in the coffee protein icelet. So I'd make, like, a mocha, chocolate mocha, and that's pretty much it. And then in the evenings, not every night, but most nights, we make an equipped beef protein ice cream, milkshake smoothie.

Coach Nat: 39:59

Something or other pudding, something of that.

Coach Bronson: 40:02

Whatever. Yeah, something.

Coach Nat: 40:03

Because we didn't have three different ice cream makers.

Coach Bronson: 40:05

We didn't have a creamy until after Christmas, and now we have a creamy. We've got your ice cream maker.

Coach Nat: 40:11

Three different ones. We have the ninja. Yeah, no, we have the ninja blender. We have the ninja creamy. And now we have this new little.

Coach Bronson: 40:17

Ice cream, little personal ice cream maker.

Coach Nat: 40:20

And we're not using any of them right now.

Coach Bronson: 40:23

We're not.

Coach Nat: 40:24

And we have all the bags of coffee in the world right now.

Coach Bronson: 40:29

Coffee is definitely something that was a normal, everyday thing, and we have we never counted. I your flavored coffee is a whole another level, which we're going to get.

Coach Nat: 40:42

To my stuff in a minute.

Coach Bronson: 40:43

Okay.

Coach Nat: 40:43

But we also were gifted.

Coach Bronson: 40:45

We were gifted, like, six bags, seven.

Coach Nat: 40:47

Bags, I think, at least, from Rise Up.

Coach Bronson: 40:49

So rise up. Coffee in Maryland. Rise up coffee is a great coffee in the Maryland area. If you're in Maryland, check out Rise Up. They have a couple of shops on the Eastern Shore. You can get some of their coffees. We saw it in Giant. I got one from Giant in our area. Oh, yeah, I think it was yeah. As you can see, they're in some of the local stores in the Howard County area. There may be other places, but we did a tour of the Rise Up, the packaging, cooking, roasting.

Coach Nat: 41:17

Yeah, the roaster.

Coach Bronson: 41:18

Whatever area that they do all their bags, they make all their products at. And Joel gave us, like, six or seven noah.

Coach Nat: 41:26

Noah.

Coach Bronson: 41:27

Noah. Sorry, Noah. I totally sorry.

Coach Nat: 41:30

Noah. He totally missed your name.

Coach Bronson: 41:33

Gave us, like, six or seven bags.

Coach Nat: 41:35

Yeah. And we're going to have to break into those afterwards.

Coach Bronson: 41:39

Yeah.

Coach Nat: 41:39

Matter of fact, as he mentioned, my flavored coffees, it's one of my vices.

Coach Bronson: 41:46

Noah is going to break you, by the way.

Coach Nat: 41:49

I have decided that when I add coffee back in, I'm going to start with Rise Up, because it's really good quality coffee. He knows where it came from. He met the farmers out in the different countries where he gets it from. So I trust that coffee. I'll probably start there and see how I feel. But was there anything else with your what you're changing?

Coach Bronson: 42:15

I think with what I'm doing, it's really just so with the lion diet, for me, I'm cutting out the eggs and cutting out the butter. I'm cutting up the coffee and the.

Coach Nat: 42:23

Protein butter and the heavy cream.

Coach Bronson: 42:25

And the heavy cream.

Coach Nat: 42:26

And from time to time, he would.

Coach Bronson: 42:28

Eat cheese every yeah, every once in a while, do cheese, but that wasn't a staple of, like, regularly during the week.

Coach Nat: 42:33

Pepperoni. You loved your pepperoni. From time to time with the cheese.

Coach Bronson: 42:37

Every once in a while, like once a month, maybe I get some pearoni or cheese.

Coach Nat: 42:40

And then we would keep different meats. We always had different meats. So we would have chicken. We would have seafood, fish. We would have shrimp, shrimp, pork loin or pork butt or something. So we had a pretty good variety of meats, so we're cutting all those out. For me, it was always my coffee with MCT oil and usually a collagen powder, which I certainly don't need right now because I think I'm getting plenty of that from the meat. But if I did use, like, a plain collagen powder, that would probably be okay online, I would imagine.

Coach Bronson: 43:22

It's not whole food. It's processed.

Coach Nat: 43:25

I don't know. But, I mean, I certainly don't need it. It doesn't taste like anything. It was just a supplement. So I would put that in my coffee. But I also would get, like, the flavored collagen powder sometimes. So either a flavored collagen powder or the equipped protein powder, I would sometimes put that in my coffee. Nut pods. I started to become really attached to my nut pods during prep. I hadn't had those in a long time. And then I started buying them all.

Coach Bronson: 43:54

Well, you know what it was? It was Christmas, and we were in Sprouts one time, and we were just walking along, and they had the holiday limited edition flavors. She her brain exploded.

Coach Nat: 44:08

She was like, oh, my God, the pods. Yeah.

Coach Bronson: 44:12

And then that was it.

Coach Nat: 44:12

I'm a sucker for limited edition.

Coach Bronson: 44:14

She's a sucker for packaging.

Coach Nat: 44:17

No, it's limited edition flavors.

Coach Bronson: 44:19

Okay.

Coach Nat: 44:20

Holiday flavors. In particular, it's the peppermint mocha and the eggnog. We're like my jam. So, yes, I was all over the nut pod and that stuff. I mean, if you're dairy free and you're on a ketogenic lifestyle, it's a great choice because the macros are not too bad. It's not super high fat, like heavy cream. If you can't handle dairy well, it's the perfect substitution.

Coach Bronson: 44:46

And if you're living at your goal and you're not having any issues where you think it's messing with you.

Coach Nat: 44:54

Right. But it does have, like, guar gum. I can't remember what else, but it has, like, a couple of those stabilizer things in it usually. And typically, any of the dairy free milks, they're adding those kinds of things to them. Even the heavy cream, we've had a hard time finding.

Coach Bronson: 45:12

So we went to half and half because we can't find heavy cream that doesn't have gel and gum in it.

Coach Nat: 45:17

Or guar gum or one of those. Yeah, so it's tough to find without that stuff. So for me, though, okay, it was definitely the coffee. I would make. Like, it was luxurious coffee, and it was almost like a dessert, like a Starbucks type. And then just the variety. I love variety, so I would have salmon almost every day. I would have chicken. Well, for a long time I didn't have chicken, but then prep life, and I had a high protein and lower fat, and I was buying all that. We were buying a lot of deli chicken, too, which does have, like it was really good.

Coach Bronson: 45:52

But it does our normal thing because that kind of became a normal what? The deli chicken and the Primal Kitchen mayo.

Coach Nat: 46:01

Oh, yeah. Which was another thing. The Primal Kitchen mayo, the mustard, and the deli chicken became staples for us.

Coach Bronson: 46:08

Because we found deli chicken for cheap that didn't have anything in it.

Coach Nat: 46:13

Just chicken except they all have something. So it has, like, a solution that does have less than 1% whatever, but it didn't have the garbage that most of them have. It didn't have corn, starch and dexterous or any of that, but it did have 1 gram of carbs. So you know that it's got some kind of sugar in the solution or something. So taking that out, and I think that disturbed my gut. I do think it did. The Primal Kitchen mayo has quite a few ingredients, and they do add things like the gums and stuff to it. And then, of course, mustard. Some people do fine with mustard. Other people who are sensitive. Mustard causes issues. It is a seed. Herbs and spices can cause problems for people. Sure. So that's that's the other thing we're taking out, right?

Coach Bronson: 47:07

The mayo and the mustard and the spices. We're not doing any spices. No pepper, no lemon. Pepper.

Coach Nat: 47:14

Garlic. Garlic was a major one.

Coach Bronson: 47:17

Why did you remind me about garlic? No garlic.

Coach Nat: 47:21

Missing the garlic a little.

Coach Bronson: 47:22

What am I doing?

Coach Nat: 47:23

And I did a lot of, like, the Middle Eastern spices. I love curry and all spices.

Coach Bronson: 47:29

And I just started doing yo mama. Slap your mama. Amazing stuff.

Coach Nat: 47:35

Yes. No spices. We're just doing salt now, so that's a big shift. Because if you're used to adding a bunch of spices to flavor up your meals, which is also another like when we think about this concept, using spices to flavor your meals is a huge step for some people who are coming from standard American diet, where you're dousing things in poofa oils, like in these sauces that are canola oil based. So using spices is a great step from doing something like that.

Coach Bronson: 48:13

Yeah. Getting that flavor, getting some taste. Absolutely.

Coach Nat: 48:15

And that's something we've done for a long time. So, yeah, that was just another step. So, for me, it's definitely the spices, definitely the coffee, and all the accoutrements to the coffee ecotrimal. And then what else? I could sneak in some super dark chocolate from time to time or make my own chocolate with cocoa powder, coconut oil, MCT oil, like I said in my coffee, which are all plant based items. Hot cocoa. We would do hot cocoa with our equipment, with our protein powder. And then what else? All the different meats and seafoods, the mayo, the mustard, the spices, and then, of course, the protein ice creams that just became way too regular. And I definitely noticed a huge impact to my gut after eating those ice creams.

Coach Bronson: 49:10

Yeah. What's up, Josh from North Carolina? Glad to have you here, man. So, in case you guys haven't figured out, there's a lot of variety and there's a lot of things you can throw into a carnivore diet.

Coach Nat: 49:25

I mean, look at how many things we just named off.

Coach Bronson: 49:28

So anybody that tells you carnivore is restrictive, you can tell them. I just listened to Coach Nat and Coach Bronson. It didn't sound very restrictive to me. They just named off, like, 25 different things that they had to cut out to go lion diet. If you want to talk about a restricted diet, the lion diet is a diet for you.

Coach Nat: 49:47

Okay? So let's talk about the purpose of a lion diet. The reason people go on a lion diet she's about to go off is that it is an elimination diet. Now, in my journey, I've been on many of these. I mentioned gaps, I mentioned whole. 30 is a form of elimination diet. So there's a lot of different AIP, all these different kind of diets. They're built to heal, so they have to take out the offenders. Lion diet is truly and I used to say this about carnivore, that carnivore is the ultimate elimination diet. But truly, lion diet is the ultimate elimination diet. You are taking out everything that could possibly be.

Coach Bronson: 50:29

You're getting literally the only things that your body requires to survive. Meat or protein, fat, electrolytes, and water. That's it. Those are the only things that you, as a human being, need to function. And that's what the lion diet is. Boom.

Coach Nat: 50:47

So the goal with this is to do this. I said 40 days, because I was like, I'm turning 40, so I'll do it for 40 days. And that's a little bit longer, like, than the 21 days to form a habit or a little longer than a 30 day, which a lot of the time, elimination diets are done in 30 days, 60 day, 90 day increments. My goal and my plan with this is to then start slowly introducing one thing at a time so that I'm not introducing everything at once and confusing myself in terms of what could be causing the issue.

Coach Bronson: 51:19

Right. Okay. So she's doing this because she has some specific things. She's looking to see how it affects her body. I'm doing this because she asked me to.

Coach Nat: 51:32

Actually, I didn't. You offered.

Coach Bronson: 51:34

Well, because I knew you would. I knew you wanted me to. It would not be right.

Coach Nat: 51:39

He was being a loving, supportive part.

Coach Bronson: 51:42

I feel like it would not be right for me to be making coffee and protein ice cream while you're not doing that.

Coach Nat: 51:49

Okay. And let's be clear, too, those are the two big things that, for you, that would have been a struggle. I can handle watching him eat eggs, although his eggs always look and smell amazing, especially when he cooks them in butter. But I don't do dairy. So this entire time he's been eating butter, and it hasn't bothered me. But the coffee smelling the coffee in the morning would have been very painful.

Coach Bronson: 52:13

Yes. So we decided to do it together. So that being said, our experiences are very different. You're going through it, and you're feeling these changes. You're feeling amazing. You're looking at yourself like, I weigh what I'm at. My stage weight.

Coach Nat: 52:31

I am now at my peak week weight, I literally dropped because I had gone up to about one, I'll say 115 because I was like 116 on the day we started. But it was my cycle, so I was up a pound. So I was like I had been hanging out around 114, 115 on the scale, and as of today, I'm under 112 or no, as of the last three days, I've been sitting at 111 point something all week, and that's where I was for my peak week. So I'm like, this is incredible, how much water, how much inflammation there was in my body that has come out just by eliminating these last few things.

Coach Bronson: 53:09

Yeah. Marnie, no butter on the line diet. Sorry. That's why I'm so sad. No butter for me. Like I said, our experiences are different. You're seeing all these things, you're like, oh, my God, this is amazing. And I'm sitting here going, I really didn't want to do this. I'm doing this to support her. So my life sucks. It's not that bad, but it is definitely we talk about that mental aspect. There is definitely a realization, and I don't want to, but I kind of want to go through this process of cutting myself off from coffee, cutting myself off from the butter, cutting myself off from the eggs. And you got to ask yourself, like, why would you want to cut yourself off from butter and eggs? It's not so much that they're bad for you, because they're not. It's like, what's wrong with butter and eggs? Nothing. But the fact that I am missing eggs, missing butter, that's a signal to me that I have become attached to something, like we talked about earlier that I should be attached to. I don't need an emotional connection. I shouldn't be sad when I can't eat eggs. Wow. I shouldn't be I have been sad because I don't eat eggs, but I'm not eating eggs for the next few days because I made that decision. So that realization and going through that process is definitely something that I hate to say this, but it's possible that this may be like something we should do every year. Just take 30 days and just practice that process of just disconnecting and detaching temporarily from things that we're used to doing and saying, hey, look, I'm going to go for 30 days. And the idea, guys, it's not foreign. If anybody's got any experience in the church, in religion, fasting is not a foreign concept. It's something that we do on a regular basis in many religions to have that separation and to reconnect with the purpose and the reason and all the.

Coach Nat: 55:16

Different things, to not be attached to.

Coach Bronson: 55:18

The thing and to not get rid of the idols right. And all those other things. So the idea of idolatry works just as well in food as it does in religion.

Coach Nat: 55:28

What does this mean to me? Because nothing has any meaning except for the meaning that we give it.

Coach Bronson: 55:34

Have you seen that video on TikTok? I forget who's talking. Hispanic actress. I can't remember her name. She's talking about she says, if I curse you in Spanish and you can't understand me, the curse means nothing to you.

Coach Nat: 55:49

You're not a sacrifice.

Coach Bronson: 55:51

If I do the same thing in English, then you get upset because you put meaning to the words. But if I curse at you in a language you don't understand I know what I'm saying. And the words haven't changed. They just mean nothing to you.

Coach Nat: 56:06

Wow.

Coach Bronson: 56:08

Right.

Coach Nat: 56:09

So we can literally do that with anything. And I always like to say that about the way we handle confrontation with other people, the things that somebody says about us. Right. You don't have to receive that.

Coach Bronson: 56:23

Right. Absolutely.

Coach Nat: 56:25

We get to decide what things mean. That is so powerful. So yeah, exactly. If there's a food item, if there's anything in your life that is having too much power over you, you get to reclaim your power. So really, that's what this is really, truly all about, is reclaiming our power. For me, it's also attached to, like, my coffee was a whole morning ritual.

Coach Bronson: 56:49

Yeah.

Coach Nat: 56:50

And it was taking time out of my day that I could be devoting focused time I could be having for something else. It's super easy to just grab my water bottle and go now.

Coach Bronson: 57:00

So I'm not taking and for me, it was part of my so my routine. In the morning, I'm a get out of bed. As soon as I'm out of bed, I'm working. I don't have I'm not like her where she spends 20 minutes venting out and writing journaling. And she does all that stuff in the morning. Sometimes she does it in the evening as well. I do that kind of a thing during the day, kind of in between when I'm doing stuff. This is another we could probably do this whole thing. How do you journal? That's a whole nother thing. How do you work on that internal stuff? I work on that internal stuff. While I'm sitting here at my desk, there are times where I have a bunch of stuff open. I'll just sit down and stop and I'll take notes. I'll do some other stuff. I'll be reflective and think about other things and take myself in a different direction than the work that I'm currently working on. But that's a whole discussion for me.

Coach Nat: 57:50

I have to separate the environment. Yeah.

Coach Bronson: 57:52

So for me, I get up in the morning, I get my coffee, and I go into the office, and then I'm working. I'm done. That's it. That she knows that's where I'm at. She's still getting up, getting ready, whatever. Not having coffee threw me off for a couple of days because, like, okay, well, I don't have this hot thing in my hand and sip, and it just messed me up. It was really weird.

Coach Nat: 58:20

So tell them what you're doing now?

Coach Bronson: 58:21

What I found out to do, because now I can do that. I did this no coffee thing a while, but a few months ago.

Coach Nat: 58:29

You did?

Coach Bronson: 58:30

Yeah, I was going to go for a couple of months or whatever, and I think I lasted like three weeks because I didn't notice a difference. There was no big difference. I didn't see any changes. And I tried tea, then coffee with the tea. That didn't work. It just was not the same. But if anybody out there is looking to ditch coffee, even for a little bit broth, bone broth, meat, broth, whatever, any kind of broth we have. I don't know how big those jars are. Maybe a pint, like a pint size jar of broth that we all the stuff that we cook, we collect all the broth we put in the fridge. We have jars in the fridge.

Coach Nat: 59:08

We've been doing Crock Pot meats every night. And then we take the broth the next day. We're replenishing the broth every day.

Coach Bronson: 59:14

Yeah, I heat one up. I put it in the microwave for like two minutes. Or you can put it on the stove if you're not a microwave person, that's really fine. And I put it in my coffee mug, come in here, and I work, and then I sip on my hot broth. It's fantastic. It's actually to the point where I don't know if I may go back to coffee as consistently.

Coach Nat: 59:36

I was thinking the same thing, actually.

Coach Bronson: 59:38

You know what I may do, though? Because here's the thing. I would also do hot chocolates in the evening because I like to or tea in the evening, have that kind.

Coach Nat: 59:46

Of relax or whatever.

Coach Bronson: 59:48

I may go back to coffee in the morning, but do the hot broth in the evening as part of my nighttime routine instead of the protein.

Coach Nat: 59:55

See how this kind of just makes you think about, oh, I could do this another way, right? So when you embark on any kind of challenge, by the way, a sacrifice, like a religious sacrifice or something like this, where it's a challenge for yourself, where you join a challenge, you should always be looking at it as, what can I take away from this to then apply to my life? This is not just a we're not just doing this for 40 days and then going back to everything the way it was. It's because there were things like, for me, there were things I wanted to change about the way I was showing up in the world, the way I'm showing up in my own life. And so if I'm vegging out watching Netflix and eating protein ice cream every night, that's just not the vibe I want. I want vibrancy. I want energy. I want alertness. I want presence in my life. I want us to have sit down conversations at night rather than always turning on the TV and we've kind of. Gotten into that habit and so it's just a way to kind of totally shake things up and make you think about doing things differently. And yeah, we had a movie night last night, which was nice to now have something to look forward to, to put on the TV and do that together versus like it just being an autopilot kind of a thing.

Coach Bronson: 1:01:15

And then also, too, I mean, how much time when we were doing it every night, how much time was initially spent trying to find something to watch.

Coach Nat: 1:01:22

Because I watched and then we would end up on our phones while we're watching, we're not engaging with each other. We're not engaging with what we're watching. It's just zone out time. And I do believe that there's a part of us that needs a little bit of that chill out, wind down, but there are lots of different ways to do it. And zoning out of your life, numbing out, as people call it, which is a reason why so many people turn to food, because when you're shuffling food in your face, you're not present. That is not a good way to live. So you can wind down without numbing out.

Coach Bronson: 1:02:01

Absolutely. So when we talk about the lion diet, what do you think? Have you thought about this yet? What happens in a month when you reintroduce coffee and all your gut issues come back?

Coach Nat: 1:02:19

I am still afraid of that happening because I really love coffee. I'm really hoping that that is not the case, but I have to be honest with myself. Like I said, the protein ice creams when I'm saying this, for anybody who's new listening, pretty sure that's going to cause problems. We make those at home with just the equipment. It could have been the nut milks, too, like the almond milk, the coconut milk. Yeah, I haven't thought about that, but yeah, any combination of things. So I have to be cognizant and be prepared that certain things I may discover just don't work well in my body and cause those problems to come back. And if so, then I have to decide, is it worth it to me to put something in my body that's going to do that to my body? And if it is, then how often are we talking? It shouldn't be an everyday thing.

Coach Bronson: 1:03:18

Right. And here's the thing though. But now it's changed from this is just what's happening and I'm having these problems and I don't know why to now you have the knowledge and the control of what happens next.

Coach Nat: 1:03:32

It's a perfect example, is dairy, right? It's not that I never ever eat dairy, but it's very few and far between. It's very strategic and it's when I'm like, okay, if I know what's probably going to happen after this and I have to be prepared for it.

Coach Bronson: 1:03:51

Right.

Coach Nat: 1:03:51

So it would probably be like that. And I have been thinking too about the concept of caffeine right. And when you're drinking coffee all the time, it's not giving you those effects that your body is not responding to it the same way because your body's gotten used to that level of caffeine.

Coach Bronson: 1:04:10

Right.

Coach Nat: 1:04:11

Whereas if somebody takes coffee out for a while and then puts it back in, they notice that jolt of energy that they get from it. So if I put coffee back in and I realize I'm having gut issues again or whatever might happen to me, I'm thinking maybe that'll be a Sunday special thing I could do. Or on a day where I have more time, leisure time in the morning, once or twice a week tops. But it's all going to depend on how I feel. Maybe it's just once a month. I decided to do that, but that remains to be seen. We will see. But that goes for anything. Like anything that I discover is causing problems, I can certainly say it will not become a staple in my life, and it will have to be something that I'll just have to consider the consequences. Right? This whole thing is about consequences.

Coach Bronson: 1:05:04

And you're doing updates on your YouTube or IG so YouTube.

Coach Nat: 1:05:09

I'm doing a whole series. I'm going to do a weekly. I'm actually filming the first week.

Coach Bronson: 1:05:15

What's up, dawn? Dawn of the Underground is on.

Coach Nat: 1:05:17

What's up? I'm filming the first episode tomorrow after week one to share all the details. And then every week I'll do an update there on my YouTube. But I'll probably also be posting that stuff on Instagram as well.

Coach Bronson: 1:05:30

Okay, cool. And I'm doing a random post here and there. Like, I did one this morning kind of talking about the same stuff we talked about. And then Don said she waved. She actually waved. Hi, I'm waving back. And I'll be doing updates probably not as frequently as you because this is kind of your thing. I'm just riding your coattails on this. But I will be doing updates a little bit here and there so people know how it's going for me. The other thing I am interested, I probably will do a testosterone test at the end sometime in February. Just kind of see if it's made any changes. But then also as the beginning to the next phase, because after this, I want to specifically focus on increasing my testosterone. So I want to know where it is from there.

Coach Nat: 1:06:13

Yes, I'll be doing all those tests again. Well, whatever tests my doctor wants me to do again. Definitely the hormone panel.

Coach Bronson: 1:06:19

Okay, cool. All right. We got anything we want to throw in? Are we good? We're at an hour and five minutes, so I think we should probably cut it.

Coach Nat: 1:06:29

Yeah, that's good for me. I'm doing a whole episode tomorrow on my journey, so I can slide anything in there.

Coach Bronson: 1:06:36

Check out Coach Nat's YouTube tomorrow. Are you posting it tomorrow? Are you doing it live? What are you doing?

Coach Nat: 1:06:41

No, I'm recording it tomorrow, so it'll probably be it'll be sometime this week.

Coach Bronson: 1:06:46

We're saying tomorrow. This probably this episode is probably not going to come out for a week.

Coach Nat: 1:06:49

But they'll both be out by then.

Coach Bronson: 1:06:53

And what's your YouTube channel?

Coach Nat: 1:06:54

My YouTube is Keto bikini secrets. You can search it on YouTube. Or probably if you search my name, Natalie Grasso. It'll probably come up that way as well.

Coach Bronson: 1:07:04

Awesome sauce. All right, guys, take it easy. Thanks for coming to this episode of Less Love, More Fist. Remember, if you have any topics or things that you want to hear us talk about, please let us know. You know how to get us at Coach underscore Bronson, underscore Keto on Instagram.

Coach Nat: 1:07:21

And you are at the Keto Bikini Pro on IG.

Coach Bronson: 1:07:24

And just let us know what you guys want to hear. We'll talk about whatever that you want to talk about that has to do with mindset, fitness, or nutrition. Take it easy, guys. Don't forget to lift, eat meat, sleep, repeat.

Coach Nat: 1:07:39

Peace out.