The Rationale for Initial Low-Carb Phases

One final thing before we start to wrap up, you mentioned there for most of your gen pop clients, you use a low carbohydrate to maybe very low carbohydrate phase, at least initially for a number of weeks. What is the rationale and reasoning you use? And how does that typically play out? Well, because most of the people that come to us are coming to us because they fuck themselves up, right? More body fat you have, the more inflammation you're going to have, and the less you're going to be able to appropriate energy in the right way. And there's a reason you're getting fat, like everything the body does does for a reason, and whether that's good or bad. So I assume when you come in, you've probably got some of this metabolic mayhem. And if I take your fasting blood sugar and I see that, okay, my range for that is I like people being somewhere between like maybe 4.1 to 4.8, right? If it's above that, it's not time to freak out. It's just time to probably do a little bit more and start thinking about other things we can do. But if you, I've got guys that come to me with 6.1, 6.5 and they're trainers and they've got an eight pack and they've got veins on their elbows and, but they're there. Yeah. But they're pre-diabetic, their hair's falling out. they have an intolerance to cold like they've got all the functions of metabolic syndrome and thyroid dysfunction and it's not any type of disease it's a dis-ease that they've done to themselves through inappropriately they're using the wrong tools at the wrong time and using a sledgehammer when you should probably just use a little tiny hammer you know and and so we use this stuff to say okay if i see all this stuff's all messed up you're you have fatigue you can't think you're not sleeping well okay all right so let's just go ahead and do a washout and let's put you in a, a, a caloric deficit right off the bat for just a small period of time by eliminating the carbohydrates. And then maybe not even putting them in a caloric deficit, maybe even putting the maintenance. We do everything based on how much they're training. So the more you train, the more we feed you. So I'll have guys that come to me that they need 5,000 calories because they're training 15 hours a week. Um, so yeah, maybe we'll pull those carbs out, replace it with a lot of protein and fat. And then after, you know, three or four weeks, now we'll start parlaying some of the fat into carbohydrates and that type and start slowly lowering the fat, raising the carbohydrates until they don't feel good. And then we'll back that out. And that's how we just, you, it's a constant battle of, of tweaking things here and there until you find what's right for them and then slowly modifying it as they change. Right. So essentially that, that low carb phase can be useful because on one hand you may have someone who is pre-diabetic and whilst not necessarily necessary it probably useful if you have less exogenous glucose if you in a pre state And then secondly maybe to kind of restore some metabolic flexibility If like you say they not used to being able to access some of this. Absolutely. And we use lactate as well. So, um, we talked earlier about the cell kicking glucose and the pyruvate kicking as lactate. So I have a lactate scout, so I can take their fasting lactate and see, and you'll see a lot of these people that they, if they went into an emergency room and the doctor saw what their lactate levels were, they would assume they were septic and they had some type of infection and they were going to die. Like I've seen people with 4.8 millimoles and it should, you really, it's like, you're looking at one, one, 1.0, 1.2. Um, what this is telling me is they probably don't have a disease. They're probably just misappropriating where they're putting things. So the, the thing you're going to make energy out of the fastest and most likely to have issues with is glucose. So for me, a lower carb diet at first may be a good idea, but I love carbs. The carbs are for performance and I want to get them eating as many carbs as they can as fast as possible up to, up to their tolerance. Right? So, you know, when you look at all the long-term studies on low carb versus low fat over a 12 month period, it doesn't really matter, right? For most people, but from a short term period, it might be good to give them two or three months of a lower carb diet and then raise them up into a moderate carb diet after that when they can now utilize that and they feel awesome and that's a whole discussion for for another day too i guess uh so before we wrap up where can people find you on the internet we do a lot of stuff on instagram and i i hate social media so i do we do what we can so it's uh muscle nerds underscore health and they can also find me if they like memes and jujitsu stuff at luke lehman lea man on instagram they can find us on YouTube. I think it's muscle nerds health or muscle nerds, something like that. Um, you can tell my wife does most of this stuff. Um, and then, you know, Facebook muscle nerds. And then if they need to contact us for any of the seminars we do or for training or any of that stuff, it's info at muscle nerds.net. Perfect. I'll link all that stuff in the show notes. So for everyone listening, go and check that out. Uh,