Fasting, Muscle, OMAD, High Protein Keto with Scientist & Inventor Dr. John Jaquish

Full Transcript

Vanessa Spina: Welcome to the Optimal Protein Podcast. I’m Vanessa Spina. Hello my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m your host Vanessa, and I am super excited to bring you today’s episode. We have Dr. John Jaquish joining us today. He is an inventor and an entrepreneur and someone who is extremely well-versed in the literature, the scientific literature and research on physiology and nutrition. And we had a great conversation today. We talk a lot about what really is central concepts to nutrition, protein, muscle protein synthesis, OMAD, fasting, carnivore, and so many great insights. I had such an enjoyable conversation with him. And we also talk about variable resistance, a concept that can really help you to put on more muscle. He put on about 30 pounds of muscle in one year after he discovered this concept and created the X3 bar. And it’s really amazing what he’s done with that, as well as his other invention, which helps people with osteopenia and osteoporosis to strengthen their bones. And I had a fantastic conversation with him. So now before we jump into today’s episode, I want to take a quick moment to tell you about today’s sponsor. Alright. You all know that I love my protein and I love to eat big protein meals. One thing that was critically important for me to understand is the importance of actually being able to digest, break down and absorb all of that protein so that I could make progress towards my body recomposition goals. And if I’m not really able to absorb all of the protein or the individual amino acids that are broken down with proteases, which are the enzymes that break down protein, then I wouldn’t be making the progress that I want to be. I would just be eating a lot of protein and not really absorbing all the protein that I was eating. I had to slowly work my way up to eating the high protein meals that I eat. And it took me time because I had lower stomach acid and less enzymes to break down protein from not eating it for so many years. So in order for your body to really fully take advantage of all the protein that you are consuming on an optimized protein diet, you really need to have a sufficient supply of the enzymes that digest the protein, the proteases, and that’s why it’s crucial to take a high quality enzyme. The ones that I trust and use myself every day is maims by BiOptimizers. Maims is a full spectrum enzyme formula with more protease than any other commercially available. So they have five different kinds of protease and it contains all the other key enzymes that you need for optimal digestion like lipases that break down lipids and fats. You can actually try it today, they have a 365 day full money back guarantee and is the gold standard in this industry. You can go to bioptimizers.com/vanessa and enter the coupon code, Vanessa to get 10% off your order. Again, that’s bioptimizers.com/vanessa and use the code Vanessa to receive 10% off your order. Alright, now without further ado, let’s get into today’s episode. Well, good morning, Dr. Jaquish. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us on the Optimal Protein Podcast. How are you doing this morning?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, thanks for having me. I’m doing fantastic. I just had a great weekend. Well wait. No, it’s midweek my day all blend together because we’re all very similar, but yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m good.

Vanessa Spina: Well, I’m so excited to talk to you about exercise science and nutrition science today. I know so well-versed in the literature, but first I have to ask, what are you drinking right now in your mug? I ask everyone this. It’s not because your mug happens to be a beerstein, which we also drink our tea from.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right? Well, if I drop it, it probably won’t break. It’s really thick glass. Exactly. So it’s a pre-workout called Imperium. It has a little bit of medium change triglyceride in it, so it kills your appetite. I pretty much, about 90% of days, I eat only one meal, and that’s towards the end of the day. So this will kill my appetite for the morning, and then I’ll do my workout, and then in the early evening I’ll have maybe two pounds of steak.

Vanessa Spina: I love that. We eat very similarly, so I love talking to you about your approach and everything and the fact that I also use a beerstein, my husband’s family has a Czech background, so they have tons of those beerstein at their house in Colorado. So whenever I’m there, I drink my morning coffee out of it and they think it’s hilarious, but I’m like, it’s great.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, the thicker the glass, the more temperature is retained in the glass. So your coffee doesn’t get cold.

Vanessa Spina: Exactly.

Dr. John Jaquish: I drink my imperium hot, by the way. You can probably see the steam rise off of it.

Vanessa Spina: I’ve never met anyone else who had their morning hot drinks out of a beer shine forest. So I love this. I can tell

Dr. John Jaquish: My family, well, we’re in a really cool club. Most people can’t come. Yeah, that’s right.

Vanessa Spina: That’s awesome. Well, I’d love to know how you came to keto and even carnivore from knowing that you are so well versed in the nutrition literature and the science of exercise. How did you find your way to keto or carnivore, whichever one came first.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, it was definitely ketogenic nutrition first, and here’s how it went. And I think I probably have the most unbiased way of answering the question that you’ll probably ever hear. But what happened was I developed a strength training product called X3, and it was super successful. People loved it. They got way better results than they did with weights, but I noticed now it was really developed for the people who go into the gym and workout for years on end and see absolutely no progress. So like 99.9% of the population. So I tell most people when I’m on a news show, I don’t have as much time as a podcast. I’ll say to the host, so do you think you know about 50 people that work out regularly? They probably talk about it. That’s how. And they’re like, yeah, yeah, about 50. And I’m like, how many of those while they’re wearing clothes look like absolutely unbelievable athletes out of the 50? I’m guessing the number is zero. And they’re like, yeah, pretty much, right. The only reason your friends work out, it’s because they tell you they work out. It’s not because they look any different from the people sitting in Pizza Hut. Most of exercise does nothing to people, or there might be some beginner gains in the first two weeks and then they see nothing for years and years and years hoping to capture that magic. They got first couple weeks. So that was one of the places I was coming from when developing my strength training product X3 because X3 lets everybody grow like they’re an NFL player back when he was in high school. So really allows you to bypass the biomechanical efficiencies of the human body and trigger growth without screwing around with a bunch of things that are going to hurt you. As Peter Atia says, I love quoting the guy, he says, the problem with weightlifting is you overload joints and under load muscle, and that’s absolute fact. So I created this amazing product and for the people who were getting protein, and I said, I’ll be working on some nutrition information, I read, I don’t know, something convinced me keto 15 years ago. It was like the way to go, and it certainly seemed that way. It certainly got me leaner before developing X extreme. And then what I noticed was the people who pretty much didn’t follow that diet didn’t do very well, and it was just because they were at a lack of protein. And so I started really examining, well, how much protein do we need? This is the easiest question that’s ever answered in research. It’s really obvious. If you want gain muscle, which I would argue if you want proper protein synthesis metabolism, because it’s not just about growing muscle, it’s about regrowing cells in your body. There’s a minimum threshold for protein and it’s about one gram per pound of body weight. And if you do not have that, it’s dysfunction. And so once you realize how much protein that is, there’s just not a whole lot of room for eating anything else. And so that was part of it. So I was like, whoa, that’s kind of more in a carnivore direction. And I started promoting that. And of course I got a lot of hate for that. It was like, oh, well what about herding animals? And it’s just like, Hey, we’re the apex predator. Sorry, that’s just the way things are. But I love animals. I have pets, other animals are delicious. Again, sorry, we’re the apex predator. I can also entertain an argument about humane processing meat as opposed to some of the practices that have been horrible to animals in the past. So very, very excited to clean up the beef industry. I dunno if you saw my interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I talked a little bit about that with him. He’s actually a presidential candidate that understands nutrition, really like the first presidential candidate that understands nutrition ever. I don’t think he’s going to win, but I really like the guy guy, at least for his position on that. So ultimately, I started telling people these high protein diets and anybody who pushed back on me, I’m be like, okay, let me just do a deep dive who lives longer? That was really the question, because ultimately who gains more muscle? Does that mean you’re healthier? I mean, yeah, because I had read the Stronger You’re the Longer you live, but I wasn’t really sure. I mean just because you’ve seen one study once that said one thing doesn’t mean the whole landscape of the literature. So I did a deep dive and instead I took that one step back from nutrition because nutrition is full of survey studies, some of which have an obvious bias. So you can taint your sample. If you’re going to do a vegan study and you go to a Whole Foods and you interview people who are only buying vegetables on exit, well, you’re not taking into consideration a lot of variables like their socioeconomic status. They’re probably fairly wealthy if they’re shopping at Whole Foods, if they’re fairly wealthy, do they do other things that might make them healthier, that might also be variables that are key in their health? Yeah, obviously. And so when studies do that, it’s like they might be just making a mistake or they might be intentionally going after people that are going to have a predetermined outcome. So they’re more health conscious people. And then the other sample they interview is people who buy gas station hotdogs and are interviewing them at gas stations. Well, these people might be homeless, they might be intravenous drug users, they might be sleeping against the dumpster in the back of the gas station. And by the way, I’m not exaggerating. I’m describing an actual study that did exactly what I’m talking about. So yeah, it’s just like, okay, so you get some intravenous drug users and you study their meat consumption. Oh yeah. I think their mortality might something to do with being hard drug users maybe. I mean, not a narcotics expert, but what the fuck? That’s absolutely crazy. So I took a step back and I was like, okay, what do people have in common? And if anybody else runs this analysis, they will come to the exact conclusion that there’s only one food for humans and it’s meat. You take steps backwards and say, okay, what are the things that the people who live the longest have in common? So it’s two things, high levels of strength, low levels of body fat. That’s it. So okay, if you want to be as strong as possible and as lean as possible, should you eat a lot of carbohydrates? No. In fact, maybe none since carbohydrates play, absolutely no role in muscle protein synthesis whatsoever. So as I looked at that, it was crystal clear because, so I’m looking at outcomes and what gets that outcome. It’s high protein, maybe moderate fat and probably close to no carbohydrates are very low carbohydrates. The other thing then, so I started talking about that. I’m like, Hey guys, this is real simple. I just had to take a step back and look at outcomes instead of arguments. Like I said, nutrition studies, part of the reason so many are survey-based is because you can’t basically imprison people and feed them what you want to feed them and observe them for obvious reasons. Now they do that in China. I mean, you can volunteer for a study and they’ll put you in a dorm for six months and you just no communication with the outside world. I mean, in a way that’s kind of cool. I mean, they pay the participants of the study. It’s not like they kidnapped them, but that’s just something that an ethics board would not go for in the United States. In China, they’re like, yeah, why not? Why wouldn’t we do that? So just a different approach to people. I could argue either way. So from a scientific perspective, awesome. And the people get paid. So it seems like a win-win to me. Also not a human rights activist. So looking at that, I started explaining to the users of X3, and this was very early days. I mean, I probably had 50,000 users or 20,000 users of X3. I have 400,000 now. It was really apparent that the people who embraced this, they looked like they were using performance enhancing drugs. They looked awesome. They were lean, they were strong. It was easy. They didn’t have to eat bodybuilder diets. And I have an entire ass meal every two hours. That’s a waste of time, by the way. So many things fell into place. And then of course, the people who were eating like this, they saw a lot of inflammatory dysfunctions that had Crohn’s eczema. If it weren’t so early in the morning, I’m sure I could come up with 10 of them, all kinds of inflammatory dysfunctions just stop. And then, okay, that makes sense because we’re taking oxalates out of the diet and we’re taking carbohydrates out of the diet. High triglycerides, which is what happens to your blood when you have high carbohydrates, tends to inflame arteries. And so that’s where we get arterial stiffness. So okay, now that’s gone. Wow. It really seems like humans is another thing I got heavily criticized for. And I mean, it’s just sort of an obvious association. It’s not what I would call evidence, just an association. Most animals on earth eat one or two things like a shark. It eats seals and sea lions, which are arguably the same thing. I mean when you grind them up, they’re the same thing. So everything eats one or two things, except humans. We try and turn everything in food, all kinds of shit. Just from an anthropological standpoint, you’ve been in nature, I’m sure, Vanessa, you’ve been in nature. So you ever been to an eggplant forest? You ever seen one? I’ve never seen one. You ever been to a turnip meadow where all the natural turnips grow? You ever seen any vegetable anywhere growing? Naturally, they don’t. They’re all selectively bred engineered seed pods that just have kind of a thicker husk on them, and they’ve been bred that way. So we can call them food, but what they are is a cheap alternative. So I mean, we’re talking, I dunno, a couple thousand years ago, kings were like, we can’t afford to give everybody meat. And besides by the time we get meat into the city walls, so I mean this is during, there’s invasions happening all the time. You had to protect the kingdom. Most people other than the farmers live behind the castle wall. Well, there aren’t a lot of doors to said castle. And by the time you slaughter the animal and then bring the meat in, it’s spoiled before it can even get to everybody that’s in the whatever you want to call it, city village. And so they went to the farmers and they said, Hey, can you grow some plant that’s just got some thick husk around the seeds that maybe retained some water? We’ll tell the people it’s good for them because we just can’t, logistically can’t give everybody meat. And so that was the dawn of vegetables. They were all engineered and there’s none of them in nature. Fruit shows up typically a number of weeks before the very cold season. So fruit is designed to help mammals get as fat as possible right before the winter. In fact, bears switch from eating deer to honey and fruit right before the winter, they actually give themselves type two diabetes and it helps them survive. So it’s not a dysfunction of the metabolic system, it’s a function. They’re trying to make that happen so they get as fat as possible because that’s what carbohydrates do, get you as fat as possible so that you can not eat anything for the entire winter because they don’t hunt during the winter. They dig a hole and just sit in it for a couple months. So to me, the reason I don’t need carbohydrates is because I don’t hibernate.

Vanessa Spina: It’s like in Europe they do fatty liver. It’s actually a big thing in France and Czech and they force feed them grain. But if eating fat would make them as fat as possible, they would probably be eating wagyu beef or high fat steak or something. But they know that’s not going to give them fatty liver. Right. But I love the way that you approach things and sink things through. I think it’s rare to have critical thinking, especially when it comes to nutrition science.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, it’s highly discouraged in schools.

Vanessa Spina: Yes, yes.

Dr. John Jaquish: Especially American schools. American schools are designed to make you a good little employee at Starbucks, not somebody who creates anything new.

Vanessa Spina: Yes, I agree. And I bet you were about as stoked as I was to see that new study, newish study that came out in December showing there’s no upper limit on muscle protein synthesis. And the way they did the study was so amazing because all the research that we saw before saying you’re maxing out muscle protein synthesis with 25 grams of protein, they were just not doing it for long enough because of the muscle biopsies. And this new study showed something that a lot of us who like doing OMAD and a lot of us who always probably believed that it didn’t really make sense that you would just absorb the first 25 grams of protein and then you would oxidize the rest. It just makes so much sense.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, that theory was absolutely idiotic. I’ve been a one meal a day guy for at least the past five years, and I said that five years ago, and I had a series of studies that proved different elements of that. And besides the whole 25 grams is the maximum amount, do you know why they picked that number? It’s because that’s what fits in a WHE protein shake. So it’s like, oh, you need to be drinking whey protein shake all day long, all you can digest. So it’s like perfect. We got the shake and it’s exactly the minimum amount you need to grow.

Vanessa Spina: I thought it was based on possibly some of Dr. Don Lehman’s work on 2.5 to three grams of leucine sort of maximizing the leucine threshold. But I need to ask him his opinion on this new study. I haven’t yet.

Dr. John Jaquish: I think that came out later. Yes, it did. And I mean, hey, you can back your truck into an awkward parking spot, but that doesn’t mean it belongs there. It’s like he’s looking at how people are behaving and he is like, can I scientifically justify this and maybe add strength to it because that’s probably what people want to hear. Because a lot of times when I see a study, I think like, wow, this is great for people like me, but it’s really going to piss off. I’m not going to win anybody over with this one. So sometimes they just keep it in my back pocket. I’m not even talk about this one.

Vanessa Spina: And people will still accuse you of cherry picking,

Dr. John Jaquish: Right? Well, I mean, they say you don’t say the other side. I’m like, well, the other side is on every sort of liar’s news network like cnn. CNN will tell you vegetables and candy bars are good for you. I don’t need to say the argument for that. And besides, everyone knows that’s not true, but it’s what people want to hear. Because look, around 70% of Americans, and I don’t know what it’s like in Czech Republic, but 70% of Americans are overweight or obese. So clearly they’ve chosen, they’ve chosen Twinkies.

Vanessa Spina: Yes, it definitely shows what choices are being made for sure. And I a hundred percent agree with you. It’s what people want to hear. I found that study so exciting and just to see how much more of the amino acids consumed would make their way to that peripheral pool and then be available for your muscle to take up for hours and hours following the meal. It just makes so much more sense than your body just suddenly shutting it down and saying, okay, the rest, we’re going to burn off as fuel now.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, it doesn’t even make sense. And that’s not even how protein works. Proteins there for protein synthesis, it’s not really an energy source. Fat’s an energy source, and glucose is an energy source. I mean, that’s why when people, they’re like, I’m going to go carnivore, but I’m going to have zero fat and zero carbohydrates. You need the fat. Don’t do that. Oh, by the way, that study used a hundred grams as its example. But keep in mind, while that a hundred grams is being measured at the end, they determined it was still going through protein synthesis. So this is a direct quote from that study. It says The amount of protein absorbable in one meal is apparently unlimited.

Vanessa Spina: Yes. No upper limit. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So I mean, for me, I’ll have 250 grams of protein in one meal. If I get AER house, a 40 ounce quarter house, probably one my have for dinner tonight. No, I’ll absorb the entire thing. And I always knew that,

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, I can easily put away a lot of protein at a meal. And do you take digestive enzymes when you have a large protein bolus or not? No.

Dr. John Jaquish: No.

Vanessa Spina: Yeah. So I was really curious. One of the interviews I watched today with you was with Dave Re, and I was cracking up when you guys were talking about what he’s been doing with his diet lately, and he said he’s now eating 350 to 400 grams of carbs, and you were literally like, what the

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Well, so he’s not eating anything other than that, and he has a

Vanessa Spina: And the protein.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. And so I think he’s figured out, ingest them and then have the body make the rest of the amino acids to assemble complete proteins in the body. I’m kind of using that trick also. I have a protein supplement, essential amino acid supplement called Fortagen. I would worry what he’s doing is very muscle wasting because most essential amino acid products don’t give you absorbable essential amino acids because they’re made incorrectly. They have to be with fermentation. There’s plenty of manufacturers that have a product, but you can take it, but you might as well be eating sand. It’s not being used. So there’s a very short list. In fact, I think Fortagen, that’s the only item on the list that really does that correctly. A couple might master acid pattern. Of course you can find the real thing because a lot of that is fake. But the whole point of Fortagen, because that was developed as an anti-US wasting protocol for people in chemotherapy radiation. So it saved lives. It’s probably the only protein product that ever actually did anything. So that’s what we’re doing.

Vanessa Spina: That’s amazing. Yeah, because what they give them in the hospital is just an abomination.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh yeah. Well, yeah. I mean especially American hospitals

Vanessa Spina: And Sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Oh yeah. Ensure and Boost, they call it a protein drink. It has 16 grams of protein and 45 grams of carbohydrates, and the number one ingredient is high perose corn syrup. Number two ingredient is canola oil.

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, it’s similar to baby formula. It’s great.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. That’s another just horrible friend abomination.

Vanessa Spina: Yeah. So I was curious if after that conversation you tried his protocol with the sort of high carb, high protein, low fat?

Dr. John Jaquish: Hell no. No. I respect Dave for a lot of reasons. His nutrition choices is not one of them, but I think I know what he’s doing.

Vanessa Spina: Well, he said he was trying to put on some fat in his face.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, I think when he started his protein experiment, he just hardly ate anything. It was like, I’m just going to have my protein supplement. So he’s having probably less than 50 gram or less than 50 calories a day just having the supplement. So yeah, he probably started looking like a skin cadaver, so yeah. Yeah. Okay. I get it. I mean, I’ve never had that problem, but it’s because I’m trying to work on being as absolutely strong as possible at all times. And that’s not conducive to a starvation diet. Just like, okay, that’s what you’re doing. Cool. It doesn’t align with what I’m trying to do.

Vanessa Spina: Now based on the literature, what is your opinion on the, I guess, warning that some people give certain protein scientists, Dr. Don Leman being one of them, saying that if you fast that you’re going to lose muscle and you shouldn’t do it over the age of 40 because it’s so hard to put muscle on in the first place, hold onto it that you should avoid fasting. But he did clarify. I heard him recently say that he considers fasting over 48 hours, which I didn’t realize he had that distinction before. I thought it was just any fasting.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, I don’t know what people are doing in their fasting, but I never lose muscle. And all the studies I’ve read on fasting showed muscle preservation. Now maybe very extended fasting like three, four days, people are losing some muscle mass, but every time you lose muscle mass, we have something called muscle memory that’s actually used very different ways. I’m not sure how that ended up happening, but it’s sort of like somebody who used to be very muscular and they lost all their musculature, but they can go back to training and immediately go right back to where they were. So I mean, losing muscle, you don’t really lose it. As soon as you have a high protein day and that happens to line up with a training day, you’re right back there. So I mean, eye roll, they’re acting like it disappears forever. And it’s usually scientists or physicians that haven’t ever worked out a day in their life who are ringing the panic bell and saying, oh, look, you lose muscle with no, you don’t. And in fact, I have in my book, weightlifting is a waste of time, 15 pages on an anabolic hyper response to fasting. So I had a feeling that this existed. So what I told my co-author Henry one of Marcus, God than that, I said, look, I want you to look in our entire library of literature that we’ve collected over the years on fasting. I feel like after a fast, I grow a little bit more muscle real fast, and it seems odd. I talked to a couple other guys who fast on a regular basis and they feel like they’ve noticed that too. These are other X3 users. So I said, try and see if there’s anything about a response from fasting. The studies that look at one fast, they’re dumb because one, whatever three or four day period in your life is really not the story we’re interested in. Let’s say somebody loses 50 pounds of fasting, do they keep it off or do they regain it? Most of the simpletons who are just eating Pop tarts and Rice Krispy treat, man, I don’t think I’m going to find that. I’m just humor me. It’ll be in the discussion section. So he’s like, all right, this is going to take me days, but I’ll read it all. And I was like, okay, calls me back 15 minutes later, he goes, were you just fucking with me because I found exactly what you were describing in 15 minutes? How much? Seriously? No, I’m not fucking with you. I just felt like this would have to be recorded somewhere. So it’s not what the study is about when they have these fasting studies. So it never makes it into the abstract of the paper, which is like most people only read the title or the abstract. So when you go deeper into the study, it showed that the group that was doing intermittent fasting, it was sort, they were like they’d eat one day normal, and then they do a 48 hour fast and it’s two days normal, then a 48 hour fast, so equal amount of time. And then the other group was basically just cutting their calories in half and eating normal every day. Well, not normal, but out of 50% calorie deficit. So the calorie deficit people lost a lot of muscle. The fasting people gained muscle not lost. So I mean, if you want to lose muscle calorie restriction is what does that not fasting? And so the fasted group gained a significant amount of muscle. Now keep in mind, nobody exercised in either group. They weren’t allowed or they were not exercises. So they agreed they wouldn’t start an exercise program during when this data was being tracked. And so I determined that this is an anabolic rebound based on this data, and it was described very clearly. It was like the researchers did not expect a gain in musculature of the fasting group, especially when exercise was not part of the study. And the participants agreed that they would not be exercising. So it wasn’t exercise that four season, and I mean they gained, I don’t know, or six months, two kilos of muscle. It wasn’t crazy, but they fasted and they gained muscle. So when somebody says you lose muscle when you’re fasting, where are you reading this? That’s not what I’m reading. I’m reading the opposite of that. So it turns out when I very carefully track my body composition and I’ll do a bigger fast to make it more obvious, so I’ll do a three day dry fast, 72 hours, no food, no water. So very depleted at the end of that, take the measurements, rehydrate, take the measurements again with the DEXA scan, then start eating and training for three days and then take measurements again. Well, sure enough, there’s a lean mass response a couple days every fast. But I think some of the studies are just looking right at the end of the fast before they start rehydrating up loss mole, right? Because it’s like don’t do a three day study. Also, there’s a lot of fasting studies where they did what somebody’s letting them get away with this in peer review, fasting mimicking, God, don’t get me started, which isn’t fasting, don’t get me started. And there’s a bunch of studies that are like, see, the fasting didn’t work. And it’s like, okay, this is really a calorie restriction group and then an extreme calorie restriction group. There’s no fasting involved here. There have been like 15 different studies that were not about fasting where it says it’s in the title of the study, no fasting happened.

Vanessa Spina: Hi friends. Did you know that fat burning can actually be measured through our breath? Now this is something that I found absolutely fascinating. When our bodies start really ramping up fat burning, we actually breathe out some of those carbons that come from our stored body fat. And this is something called acetone. So it’s known as a breath ketone. And when we get into really high rates of fat burning, when we’re doing carb restriction or intermittent fasting or even prolonged fasting, our bodies really ramp up the amount of body fat that we burn. And as our bodies start to convert some of that body fat into ketones, those ketones go out into our bloodstream and 10 to 20% of those ketones are actually degraded and go out through our lungs so we can actually measure the amount of fat burning that our bodies are doing. Now, I’ve interviewed so many scientists and experts on this topic, and I’ve had some of them directly tell me that one of the best ways to measure fat burning if your goal is fat loss is to actually measure your breath ketones. And that’s why I have found the tone device to be an incredible tool to help me get to my fitness goals and also just provide some fun biohacking and biofeedback because I absolutely love getting data. So when we measure our breath on the tone device, it tells us what state of fat burning we’re in if we’re in light fat burning or the fat burning zone. And it provides a bit of context as well through the levels of ketones that our bodies are emitting. So you’ve probably heard of measuring your ketones with urine test strips or blood test strips. Now those methods I find to be a little bit less practical than just being able to measure the breath. So with the breath, you invest in one device, one tone device, and then you don’t have to buy expensive wasteful test strips. You don’t have to prick your finger to measure your blood, you don’t have to measure through urine. It’s just very simple and easy, and you can test an unlimited amount of times. Now the other thing with blood testing is that you don’t always get a full picture of what’s going on. So if you are active or do any amount of activity, you often will see low blood ketones, but you can see high breath ketones because the breath is a percentage of how much your body has produced from your stored fat and how much it has also put out into circulation. When you measure with the blood, you’re only seeing what’s left over. So sometimes you show low blood ketones and athletes tend to show low blood ketones and high breath acetone. So being someone active myself, I love using the tone device to be able to get some biofeedback on how much fat burning I am doing. It is so much fun to use and do different experiments with your fasting windows, your eating windows with your activity, with cold exposure, with anything that you’re doing really to see what makes your level of fat burning go up. And I just find it to be so insightful. So for the past couple of years, I’ve been working on this brand new second generation of the tone device, and it has officially launched, it is now fully shipping out when you order, and you can check it [email protected], and I will link that in the show notes for you all. It’s a new year. Why not invest in yourself, invest in your health and wellness and fitness and make 2024 the year that you hit your fitness and wellness goals, or if you’ve already been there, take them to the next level. You can check out the tone [email protected], and I would love to hear how you like it. I just went on a rant on another podcast that I co-host two days ago about fasting mimicking and what bs it is because of the lack of consensus on these terms like fasting, they get used. It’s a low calorie diet is what I was saying, very low calorie diet and very low

Dr. John Jaquish: Protein. When you’re eating a low calorie diet, the argument has been you’re showing your body that you’re not able to get enough calories. So that’s why it would sacrifice lean mass because it’s determined that your sort of new lifestyle doesn’t allow you to get enough energy to maintain your muscle mass, therefore it must be sacrificed. So I mean, I don’t know, it just seems to be you’ve made a priority sacrificing lean mass when you’re eating calorie restriction. And here’s another thing, probably the biggest obstacle to intelligent conversation in nutrition is bodybuilders because they do things a certain way and they have a lot of influence because I mean, we all know, well, you and I know that the reason they look that way is because of performance enhancing drugs. Also like starvation diets, when they look their best, they feel their worst. And people don’t know that. I’m sure people look at, oh yeah, And they only look good for a day a year. And so people look at pictures of Chris Bumstead and they’re like, wow, I bet that guy feels so healthy. Yeah, he does. When he doesn’t look like that, when he looks like that, he feels horrible. Yeah, completely dehydrated, intentionally so depleted. From a food standpoint, it would be if you were in a situation like that that weren’t in your control, you’d be worried about death. So I mean, they know because they’ve done it. So many people have done it, and they teach this practice and see what they do for three contest dieting, and they’re like, wow, that sucks. Why don’t you guys, instead of torturing yourselves over 12 weeks and becoming some version of a psychopath, because it’s very mental, very much mentally damaging going through this process, they’re very upset during this. Why don’t you just get it all done in a week? Just don’t eat or drink anything for a week. There are studies that show people can lose 20 plus pounds of body fat in a five day dry fast.

Vanessa Spina: Yeah. Fasting is so much easier. Abstinence is so much easier than just having

Dr. John Jaquish: These

Vanessa Spina: Tiny, tiny, little small, low calorie meals. I would go insane. I mean, they’ve shown it in the, was it the Stanford, the starvation experiment that they did where the men started, one of them cut off one of his limbs or something, one of his appendages because he calorie restriction.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vanessa Spina: Starvation experiment. I can’t remember.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, I want to say it was University of Montana. I don’t know why I want to say that, but I know what you’re talking about. It’s old. It’s like 1940s.

Vanessa Spina: Yes, very old. Yeah, it’s always black and white pictures. Yeah, it’s really fascinating. I mean, there’s so many issues with those studies. They don’t also consider total body water, which I think is a big reason why they always show keto diets lose muscle mass because as you were talking about, you have all this muscle sparing effect from the ketones, you have growth hormone, all these issues. And I think it confuses a lot of people, especially people who like to do omad, who like to do fasting and who like to work out fasted. So they’re providing an anabolic signal during the fast as well, and I think it’s can be very, very effective. So let’s shift over and talk about variable resistance. And you’ve created a couple of amazing why is variable resistance so much more effective than just lifting weights for muscle stimulus and muscle growth?

Dr. John Jaquish: So let me first explain why standard weightlifting does almost nothing to almost everyone. When I’m doing a bench press. So let’s say I’m holding a bar, I’m coming back and whatever I pick, whatever weight I picked has got to be a weight I can handle back here in the stretched position. So it’s going to be a lot lighter than the weight I can handle out here about seven times lighter. So once you know that, why would you ever lift a weight? It makes absolutely no sense. If I’m seven times stronger in that extended position, what I need is a weight that changes as I move to provide a uniform difficulty in all positions. That’s really the objective of variable resistance. Unfortunately, it’s hard to set up if you’re in a gym and you’re trying to set it up yourself, you don’t know how many bands you need, you don’t know where the bands are going to hook to. You could use chains also. So picking up a chain off the floor, I’m talking heavy, thick links, something that would be used as an anchor chain on a battleship, something really heavy. So as you’re picking these links up off the ground, let’s say you’re doing a squat, you got a bar and then you got the chains on it except it’s on the ground. So as you’re lifting the chain, more weight goes on, the higher you go, that makes sense. But you’d really have to do some experimentation and probably buy a lot of chains to figure out exactly what would be right for a squat type exercise. And that’s just one exercise. So it’s never been very easy to set up, and I think that’s why variable resistance never really caught on, but I’m not the one to discover that variable resistance is the most powerful stimulus. What I did is I developed a medical device called Osteostrong, which is, it’s a franchise clinic based device, and we have 300 clinics in 15 different countries now. So it was designed to hyper load the bone mass to trigger a response from the bone mass. That’s how I learned that you’re seven times more powerful in the optimized position. So when looking at that, it was like, wow, the human body is capable of so much that we do not have at all with standard fitness. So that was what got me going down the road. And then I looked at what West Side Barbell was doing. The west side is one small gym in Cleveland, Ohio. They hold more world records, by the way, it’s a museum now. It’s not even a gym anymore. They hold more world records than any country on earth, including the United States. It’s one gym. And what did they do differently? Variable resistance is what they did differently. They were trending exactly the same way everybody else was, but the idea was when you’re trying to get stronger, when you’re developing your body in the weaker position, you’re going to have less weight. And in the stronger position, you’re going to have much more weight. And of course, whether the weight comes from bands or chains or actual weights and you have a lever arm on it or something like that, which they had some solutions like that, the central nervous system in your body has no idea what you’re doing. It just knows when the muscle goes to fatigue and where it goes to fatigue. So if you can fatigue in the way that I apply this so that we get the maximum amount of muscle growth is first you fatigue in the stronger range of motion. So you do however many repetitions you can do until you can’t get there anymore. So when I do a chest press, it’s 550 pounds here, and then I’m going to hit that five 50 until I can’t anymore. And then as I come back, it’s 300 pounds here, so I’m going to do repetitions with 300 pounds, and then each rep gets a little bit shorter and a little bit shorter and a little bit shorter. So I go to fatigue in maybe 10 different places, including the stretched range of motion back here, the weaker range of motion. So I’m fatiguing every range in one set of the exercise, but with weights, you only go to fatigue in one place where you’re firing the least amount of muscle and putting the greatest amount of stress on the joint in the weak range. And in fact, there’s kind of like a fad right now, training in the stretch range only. It’s like, okay, the premise behind that is what we notice more growth when people go to fatigue there, people only go to fatigue there with regular weights. I think it’s ridiculous that they’re acting like this is like, wow, that’s profound. No, that’s where everyone goes to fatigue with every weight, unless you’re using variable resistance, that’s all you got. And I suppose there are some people who do a bench press and they unw the weight and then they just go down a little bit and do it like this. So obviously they’re not getting that same stimulus, but I don’t think anybody who was doing that thought they were getting the same stimulus. So it’s kind of some funny talking points going on. But basically we doubled down on that whole stretched exhaustion. Therefore, and like I said, x-ray is designed to give you a uniform difficulty throughout, so you can take all ranges of motion in one set and you get a greater, much greater muscular benefit, and people grow muscle much faster. It has to do with where the tendon attach, and we defeat this biomechanical problem that almost every human has by using variable resistance.

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, it’s really fascinating and it’s amazing what you’ve created. I loved your TED Talk. It was very

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, thanks.

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, very inspiring. And as an inventor, the fact that you created a device to help your mother with her diagnosis, I think it’s a phenomenal invention. Now, just as we wrap up, what are three tips that you could leave our listeners with on how to be as fit as possible? Because I know you’re on a mission to help people become as fit as possible.

Dr. John Jaquish: When it comes to tips, I try and change people’s mindsets. So keep in mind what I said earlier. Most animals just eat one or two things. I don’t think we’re that different. There’s really one or two things we should be eating. And by one or two things, I mean like beef, chicken, and fish. Those are the things. Those are three, right? Maybe eggs too. Most of what we try to turn into food is just not food, like grains, not food, vegetables, not food. Scam food, fruit, great food. If you plan on hibernating, if you’re going to sleep in three or four months, knock yourself out. I won’t have any of that stuff, and I’m so much better for it. And I struggle a little bit with how to present myself because most of the year I just don’t really count anything. And my favorite cut is rib eyes because it has higher fat. So I’ll just have a platter of eyes every night and not even think about it. Now, of course, the fat’s really high on a rib eye and I will put on body fat from that. So the idea that when you’re on carnivore or keto, that you can eat all the protein and fat you want, that’s not true. It’s a myth. In fact, if you know who Daniel Magda is, you might want to have him on your show because he’s trained thousands of people and they come to him because he’s just carnivore nutrition. And they’re like, yeah, I went carnivore, put on 50 pounds of body fat. And he’s like, oh, like eating sticks of butter, right? Yeah, yeah, right. Don’t do that. That’s really, really bad advice. But I suppose what I’m saying is the luxury of if you just eat meat, if don’t even really need to pay attention, you are going to be lean and strong or you’ll have the opportunity to be strong, trained correctly. So that in itself is very powerful. And I think for some reason people like looking at how did we survive over the last couple million years? What were people eating? Because it is kind of amazing. The human race thrived somehow without medicine. Medicine, pharmaceutical companies would have us believe that the human body is flawed and it needs medications. No, it doesn’t. It needs sunlight, proper food, which is all out there in nature and sleep, clean water if it’s available. And in some places, even water’s not even that clean and people still thrive. So just keeping in mind that most things are just not food and you need to see them as not food. When somebody offers me a pizza, I say, that’s not food. You can eat it and it’s going to you all up. And if you don’t notice, it’s you all up. It’s because you’re already up. Did I hit the F word threshold?

Speaker 3: I think you just hit it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, probably did. Yeah.

Speaker 3: I definitely have to play this as

Dr. John Jaquish: Explicit. Yeah, it’s okay. I think profanity is great for emphasis. Definitely. I don’t use it all the time, but when you need to pay attention, people pay attention. So just that mindset of just realizing we are no different than most animals. There’s only a couple things we should be eating and we should just eat those things. You’ve seen videos of where they take beets and kind of chop ’em up and make ’em look a little like meat and then try and give it to a lion, and the lion will just look in the ball and look at the person, what is this? They don’t look at it like it’s food. Are you showing me what you’re going to use to stain the wood fence or what is this? It’s like taking a bite is not even something that would be on their radar. They’re just like, what? So that’s how we need to be. We need to look at anything that’s not an animal protein product and just go, okay, not going to eat it. I suppose that’s one tip said three. I think whether you’re really passionate about having an incredible body, that doesn’t matter. Some people are, some people aren’t. A lot of criticism is given, especially by vegans. Oh, they’re so narcissistic. No, we want to be healthy. And I mean, I also realize part of the reason my wife looked at me the day she saw me and we started talking was she noticed, wow, that guy’s really strong. She was very attracted to that. She’s very beautiful woman. She’s lightweight, she’s tall, but very thin, and she wants to be with a strong guy because she’s beautiful. Creepy guys follow her home. She wants to be with a strong guy. So the creepos look at me and they’re like, oh, I’m not going to ever talk to that girl. I got to pull my head off, which I would. So it’s one of those situations where that’s the way things are supposed to be. Strong women are supposed be strong, and in fact, woman is the more wish women would. Frail and skinny is not what we’re going for. That’s not what fitness ever went for. Some people just end up looking sort of frail and skinny, but if they’re strong, don’t make fun of them. They might just be taller. So my wife, she’s just under five eight and might weigh 110 pounds. So very tall, thin, but she’s strong as hell. She dead lifts with the dark gray band. And as a taller woman, most women see that and they’re like, oh my God, I haven’t even taken that one out of the box yet. And she’s just incredibly powerful. So I think that whether you are focused on looking great or you just want to be strong, just wanting to be strong is fine. Not everybody’s going to be focused on the aesthetics, but it’s so important to be as strong as possible. It makes you live longer. So Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, I’ve been on her podcast before. She wrote a book Promoting Strength. She says, muscle is the longevity organ. The more muscle you have, the more demand is placed on all of the organs and the higher they perform. So your pancreas doesn’t have a whole lot to do if you’ve lost most of your muscle. So frailty of what’s also called sarcopenia, things that happen when you’re older and they are contributing factors to an early death, but it really means you died because you were weak. Why would you do that? It’s a choice. Be strong. I only got two pieces of advice. Is that good?

Vanessa Spina: That’s

Dr. John Jaquish: Great. I really can’t think of anything else. Yeah,

Vanessa Spina: I know you talked about fasting a little bit, and I think it’s definitely a great tool for people who are wanting to lean out and being strong and being lean. I mean, those are really, like you said, two of the things that are the most key for longevity and living well, having a long health span. So really appreciate you taking the time to be here with us on the podcast. Today was an honor to have you on and you’ve really done tremendous work and contributions, I think, to society in general. So thank you for all that you’re doing.

Dr. John Jaquish: Absolutely. It’s fun.

Vanessa Spina: Awesome. Alright, my friends, I hope that you enjoyed the episode today with Dr. Jake. Wish I enjoyed chatting with him so much about all of these topics, some of my very favorite topics, protein, bassing, OMAD, muscle growth, and I hope that you enjoyed it as well. I hope you got some good takeaways from the episode or enjoyed the conversation. We also talked about keto. I myself, personally, get into ketosis every single day by doing a lower carb reapproach and doing intermittent fasting. Sometimes I do OMAD, sometimes I do too mad. Usually on my OMADays, I get into a state of ketosis even if I am doing a little bit higher on the carbs than I usually do before I have my first meal today. And I love using the tone device to see how high my ketones are, how deep into fat burning I am. It is so much fun to use, and you can check it out yourself just at ketogenicgirl dot com. All you have to do is breathe into the device and it’ll give you biofeedback on your rate of fat burning without having to painfully prick your finger or buy all those expensive, wasteful test strips. So you can check that out at ketogenicgirl dot com and everything mentioned will be in the show notes for today’s episode. So thank you all so much for being here. I’m sending you all so much love, and until the next episode, I’m wishing you a fat fueled rest of your day. Thanks for listening, and bye for now. A few disclaimers by listening to this podcast. Do you agree not to use this podcast as medical advice as I’m not a qualified healthcare provider? The information presented on this podcast is for educational purposes only. Ketogenic is not qualified to provide medical advice, consult your own physician for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guests or contributors to this podcast. Prior to beginning a ketogenic diet, you should undergo a full health screening with your physician to confirm that a keto diet is suitable for you and to rule out any conditions or contraindications that may pose risks or that are incompatible with a ketogenic diet. A keto diet may or may not be appropriate for you if you have any kind of health condition, whether known to you or unknown. So you must consult your physician to find this out. Anyone under the age of 18 can consult with their physician and their parents or legal guardian.