Modern WisdomStop Making These Mistakes When Intermittent Fasting - Thomas DeLauer
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,005 words- 0:00 – 0:29
Intro
- TDThomas DeLauer
The biggest benefit to me with intermittent fasting is not body composition changes, it's not cognitive awareness, it's the element of mastery that comes with it, and that's where people miss the boat because you cannot contest that. You can sit here and you could fight every single nook and cranny of intermittent fasting based upon where you stand in your views of nutrition, time-restricted feeding. You cannot argue with me that there is an element of mastery that comes into place with abstaining from something. (wind blowing)
- CWChris Williamson
For the people that don't know you, what's your background? What
- 0:29 – 5:30
Thomas’s Unique Upbringing
- CWChris Williamson
do you do?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Just a guy on the internet, man. I am just this, you know, uh, for, for me, I'm a translator of science. Um, not a biochemist. I don't pretend to be one. I, I take the research, I know how to read a paper very well, and I tend to get really overly excited about stuff like that, and then I translate it, and I try to put it into layman terms and do a decent job at articulating complex subject matter into a way that's digestible for people so that they can have a chance to really review the research and understand and put another brick in the wall for themselves towards being healthier, having more vitality, and just being better humans.
- CWChris Williamson
Why did you get interested in that?
- TDThomas DeLauer
I realized not that long ago that I'm not that great at many things. Uh, but I'm decent at a lot of things, and I've realized the one thing that I am really good at is articulating and communicating, and for a long time I tried to fight that. I always wanted to be the strongest guy in the room or the smartest guy in the room. I always wanted to kinda, you know, face adversity a- and I just wanna, I wanna be that guy. And then I realized that, you know what? It's actually really good to be a good, effective communicator, and I started leaning into that. And the moment that I leaned into that, and I fed the stallion and starved the pony, so to speak, I realized that I can take all these things that I'm halfway decent at, but really get people excited about them with my ability to communicate it.
- CWChris Williamson
Talk to me about childhood for you. You have a very interesting background. What was that like?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah, my childhood, you know, it, it's interesting. I don't talk about it much, and recently it's been coming up more, probably because people are trying to figure out what makes me tick. Um, I came from what looked like a pretty normal, conventional childhood on the surface. Uh, I had a loving mother, I had, you know, a very loving father. I ran my first, like, 10K when I was, like, five years old, right? So I, I, I was kind of got into running at a very young, young age, and then I ultimately, I'm flashing forward, I ran my first marathon when I was 11. And the reason that I'm starting with that is not to say, "Hey, I'm this amazing person. Look at me." It's because now as an adult and as a father myself, I look back at that, I'm like, "Wow, that's interesting. Like, what, what was my mom thinking?" And I love my mom and I'm close with my mom and, uh, everything, I did everything with my mom, like, I was always along by her side, right? And I realized that she did these things, and I wanted to be like her. I wanted to be with her, and my mom would run marathons, so I would run marathons too, and my mom sort of had this mentality of like, "Hey, well, you know what? If you wanna hang out with me, then you're gonna do the stuff that I'm gonna do," and there was n- no real worry about it. It was just the way that it is. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
Hang on, so we're talking age four in order to be able to get ready to run this at age five?
- TDThomas DeLauer
I don't even think I real... I mean, I was running, like, I remember running, like, two, three miles at age four or five, and it was-
- CWChris Williamson
With Mum?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah, with Mum. You know, and I remember people, 'cause we lived really close to these wineries, like, we lived in Sonoma, and I remember people, like, clapping. You know, like when I would go on runs, they'd be like, "Way to go," like, "Way to go, Mom." You know, way to... Like, it was cool. I enjoyed it. There was never a moment where I didn't like it. Like, I always loved it. Uh, that evolved into sort of loving the pain of it too, which, I mean, you talk to endurance athletes and that's a pretty common trait. They kinda almost have this masochistic type feeling with it.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah, so I mean, I was training at a very young age for that, and that just became part of my life. I was the skinny runner kid that was made fun of because it was weird to run. You know, you're in elementary school and you're the kid that wants to go out for a run. You're the kid that decides to, like, run home from school. Like, I, I was a weird kid. Don't get me wrong. I was like the hiking boots and shorts type of kid. So yeah, I was weird, but my mom exposed me to so many different crazy experiences to the point where other kids thought it was insane. Like, so I was the weird kid as a result of my mom always exposing us to very interesting things. When I was 11 years old, I backpacked the John Muir Trail from Yosemite to Mount Whitney. It was 230 miles. Took us 16 days, and no experience in backpacking, and then went back again the next year to do it again and did it in 11 days and ran out of food. You know, ran out of food for four days. We come back, CPS gets called on us because I'm emaciated, and my mom's like, "No, these kids wanted to do this." And we're like, "Yeah, we want... No, no. Mom is awesome. Like, trust me, we wanna do this stuff." It's, as a child it was just crazy, but at the time, nothing felt weird about it because it was normal to us, and nothing was ever... We were never put in a situation where we felt in danger or anything like that, but we, we were always subconsciously held to this very high standard, like, you should perform, a- and it made me a very results oriented person that unfortunately damaged me a little bit as an adult because being a results oriented person has resulted in me being, well, results oriented, which I don't necessarily know is the best way for me to go through life. Um, but yeah, there's a lot of nuance, a lot of detail that goes down, goes on there, but just interesting experiences that made people look at me funny.
- CWChris Williamson
Were you bothered by school?
- 5:30 – 16:20
Why Thomas Hated School
- CWChris Williamson
Were you interested in school?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Hated school. Hated it.
- CWChris Williamson
Why?
- TDThomas DeLauer
I just... Well, for one I, I, I just always felt like I could go faster. Like, I, I felt, like, very restricted, and I don't mean that in some conceited way like, "Oh, I'm smarter than people." That's not even it. I just felt like, "Uh, this is not a good use of my time." Like, I, I felt like, "This is, this is terrible."
- CWChris Williamson
From what age?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Uh... Oh, shoot. I got e- Uh, this is a funny story. I got expelled from preschool. The only person in the history-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- TDThomas DeLauer
The only person at that time in the history of Sunshine Preschool in Sonoma, California... Probably can fact check this... To get expelled.... uh, I just wouldn't have it. I wanted to go home and it was... I tried to escape. (laughs) I did escape and I wanted to go home. I would just scream and cry until my mom came to pick me up and say, "I don't want to fucking be here." And, uh, kindergarten, I made it through kindergarten, but it was like every day after school, I would... I- I- it was like I would cry waiting for my mom to come home, uh, come pick me up 'cause I wanted to go home so bad. I just did not want to be there. I hated it and I don't know to this day, like, why. Kids weren't particularly mean to me. I actually had friends. I was weird, but it wasn't like I was bullied. Like, I mean, I was kinda picked on 'cause I was the skinny runner kid, but it was more just, like, people joshing me all the time.
- CWChris Williamson
Teasing you?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah. Uh, but I hated it. I hated being confined, I hated being restrained.
- CWChris Williamson
And what was home life like?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Home life was... You know, it was... As a young kid, it was pretty normal. My mom, uh, went to school, she was a microbiology major, so... But she never really used it professionally. She was, uh... She owned a landscaping business for a while and then she became a school bus driver randomly. It was very interesting. She randomly decided, "I'm- I'm just gonna drive the school bus because it's a way for me to have summers off with my kids and a way for me to have the same hours as my kids." And that was the root of me getting made fun of a lot, "Oh, Tom's mom's the school bus driver." Uh, my dad owned a bookstore in Oakland. This is very interesting because at the time, I'm like, "I'm a kid, I don't really care. My dad owns a bookstore, whoop-dee-doo." But as I grow older, I realized that this bookstore, Delauer Super NewsStand, 13th and Broadway in Oakland, was the only... It was the world's largest newsstand so it had newspapers and magazines from all over the world that would come there one to two days later after they were released in their respective countries. So as a result, my father's bookstore was like this massive cultural melting pot in Oakland where people from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Australia, whatever, would come there to pick up respective papers and whatever from their countries. So not only was it a cultural melting pot where people all came together and put aside their differences, which is very interesting, it was also the site of a lot of hate crime, uh, the site of a lot of... So, massive thing in history. So if you look up Delauer Super NewsStand, uh, you see that. It's been around, you know, the family business. So I never realized that until I was an adult and I was like, "Wow, how... That's very wild." Uh, my dad worked a lot, you know, but he, he was still a very present father. Um, so home life, home life was good. It was... You know, I could, I could pick apart little things. Everyone can. Uh, there were extreme situations, there were situations that I probably wouldn't talk about publicly, but nothing, nothing that was ever dangerous or bad.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. What about when you get into teen years, when you start to take life a little bit more seriously?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah, so by the time I was about nine or ten, I ended up with obsessive compulsive disorder. I was... Uh, I used to have to flip light switches, I was always, uh... I remember these... I had this, like, hardwood floor in my, uh, in one, like, transitional area of my house and it had, like, these squares. It kinda looked like, uh, uh, where the Celtics play, like that court outhouse, like, th- you know? Uh, and I used to c- I could only step on the ones that had the grains facing forward. If I stepped on the grains facing laterally, uh, it was terrible, and it was almost always surrounding, uh, something happening to my mom. Like, if I stepped on the wrong one, my mom would die. Uh, I literally took the "step on a crack, break your mother's back" thing, like, literally. So I was like, "I can't, like, I can't... It will break my mom's back." Like, I had this attachment to my mother. Um, so it was... So I suffered with that. By the time I was in middle school, I can't remember the term for it, uh, I was pulling my hair out, so I- I had bald spots in my hair 'cause I was pulling my hair out just from anxiety. Um, so I was put on, you know, benzodiazepines at a, a- like age 13, uh, but I didn't really take them. They were just-
- CWChris Williamson
How- how common is that, for a child to be prescribed benzos at that age?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Not very common. Uh, it's, like, it's not, not a healthy thing. It was, like, for an emergency case s- situation, right? So it was in one of those things where, like, it was not... Like, my mom was supposed to maintain control of them and things like that, and I don't even ever recall taking them, right? So it was one of those things where with that, I ran into all kinds of crazy situations. I mean, it was just... I felt constantly anxious. Like, my teen years were really, really tough. And, of course, pulling my hair out led to getting made fun of, and the only thing that I really found control in was running, like, I- I could be in control when I was running. So for me, running became even more a part of my identity. It was like, "This is..." And that carries through to me today. Like, I don't necessarily feel whole unless running is a part of my life, and I'm very self-aware of that, uh, because it goes all the way back to, you know, a coping mechanism for me. So teen years, early teen years were particularly rough for me.
- CWChris Williamson
What is happening with your sense of your own body as you're growi- uh, have you got any body dysmorphia at this age?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Not as much now because I'm very aware of it. Um, definitely went through phases, even phases of self-sabotage. Like, when I became overweight, I- I ultimately had an eating disorder. I talked about this with Nick Bare. Uh, there was a point when I was like, you know, 13, 14 where I used to kind of, like, measure my, uh, my wrist with my fingers.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TDThomas DeLauer
And if I could have room to, like, rattle my wrist around and my fingers, that was like a win for me.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Like, no reason. I didn't want to be skinny, I didn't care, it was an element of control. All of this was-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, it was an arbitrary measure that you decided, especially given the fact that, like, the width of your wrist growing and the length of your fingers growing between the ages of 12 and 16 aren't going to happen-
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... in- in sync with each other.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Correct, correct. So there, there, I mean, there's nothing, nothing there, it's just-
- CWChris Williamson
It was an arbitrary choice.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah, it was the same kind of satisfaction that I would almost get out of... It was the same kind of satisfaction that I would almost get out of flipping light switches. It was just something, like... But I also felt very contr- in control with that.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TDThomas DeLauer
I felt like, "I can control when I don't eat, I can control when I don't eat." I didn't really have an obsession with body composition. I- I suppose if I reverse engineer it, I could think about it and say, "Yeah, like, I wanted to be lighter for running and it made more sense..." So I was very skinny, very frail, um... You know, and then when I was like 13, 14, I did discover the gym and I got really interested in the gym. And actually the gyms-... I would arguably say saved my life. Like, it was one of those, 'cause I was one of those people that had I gotten into the wrong drugs at that point in time, I think it could've been very bad. I've always been a very obsessive person. But to come back to your question, like, the body dysmorphia now, to a certain degree, yes, because my profession depends on me being lean in a lot of ways. So, do I have anxiety around not looking a certain way? I would be lying if I said no. Um, but it's in control and I'm self-aware of it. But when I became overweight, which we'll talk about in a little bit, eh, I reverse engineer that and I think about it, I was, like, it was almost a means of self-sabotage. It was like, it was me, in a way, like, I was aware that I was gaining weight and, like, gained a bunch of weight fast, and it was almost like this revolt against how I was before. And, uh, it's interesting. It's just a very wild thing. I'm a very self-aware, psychoanalytical person, so I try to look at these things. Uh, but yeah.
- 16:20 – 24:02
The Golden Teen Years
- TDThomas DeLauer
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. So, you're getting toward the end of your teens now. When do you start to gain weight?
- TDThomas DeLauer
So, gained weight at the, uh, probably like 19, 20.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, okay, so we've got a little bit of time in between.
- TDThomas DeLauer
So, yeah, so I mean, I had put on some muscle, and that was, uh, that was kind of the golden period of, of my, my teens, like, right? Like, from, like, 15 to 18 I was independent study, uh, and a lot of the reason I did that is after my mom and dad's divorce when I was 13, uh, I lived with my mother. My mother was dealing with a number of different things, um, both, you know, legally, mentally, just a lot of struggles that I don't necessarily need to go into detail, but, you know, she needed some help and stuff. So for me, it was independent study where it was like homeschool, but I was still part of the school and could still enroll in school sports. A really cool program, it worked well for someone like me, but then I also worked 40 or 50 hours a week to help support my mom and to help just kind of-
- CWChris Williamson
At what age?
- TDThomas DeLauer
... keep life going. So from 14, the time I could get my, my worker's permit. Uh, so-
- CWChris Williamson
What were you doing 40 or 50 hours a week?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Bagging, bagging groceries. So bagging groceries, and then I worked for a financial services company where I would just, like, file stuff. So I'd work as many hours as I could. So when you have your worker's permit, I think you could only, I could only work, like, 30 hours at a select role, and then I would go into, like, a different role and get paid under the table. You know? So it's, and it didn't-
- CWChris Williamson
Plus school?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Plus school. But I was independent. Honestly, I was never challenged by school. Like, independent study I could get all my work done in, like, two hours for the week. Like, it wasn't a big deal. And honestly, I held, like, a 3.98 GPA. Like, it wasn't hard for me. And, like, school just didn't challenge me. Of course, I wasn't trying to be challenged, like, I wasn't taking... I, I was, like, in AP English, you know, I was in high English. Um, I sucked at math, so I was, like, base- baseline math and just, like, you know, so I kind of skated through school.
- CWChris Williamson
Just getting by.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah, just getting by, but with good grades. And, uh, but I just was not challenged. And for me it was like I learned the value of a dollar really quick, because I'm like, "Okay, well, I know how to work." And, uh, that, that was what was important to me was, like, "How do I, how do I work? How do I get all this done?"
- CWChris Williamson
You realize how much of an outlier situation that is, right? To be working between 40 and 50 hours at the age of 14 or 15, plus-... doing self-directed homeschool whilst supporting Mum, whilst trying to learn about yourself and the world around you, whilst dealing with the aftereffects of OCD?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah. Probably is a lot. (laughs) But everything prior to that felt so normal, right? And it's, it's, it's wild. It-
- CWChris Williamson
Well, th- that's one of the interesting things about anybody's life experience, right? You're, you're never going to... Until Elon fully dials in Neuralink, you're never going to be able to feel what it's like to be in the texture of somebody else's mind. You're never going to know what life is like to live as somebody else. And with the advent of the internet and social media, which kind of does give us the view through the eyes of other people, at least, uh, uh, in a small dose. But as a kid, you know, when you're relatively sheltered, you're not exposed to as many people or things, and you don't have that ability to use theory of mind, the life that you have is the only one that you've ever known. So, it is normal. Very much is. Mine as well. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to have siblings. I was an only child, so I'm like, "Well, this is, this is just what life is, isn't it? It's you and Mum and Dad and the dogs." I got... You know, you don't know what it's like to have a house that's got cats. You don't know what it's like to have a house that's got blah, blah, blah. You know, like, I didn't know what is was like to have a house that had a... We always (laughs) , every house that we were in, Mum and Dad loved baths, so we always had, like, a bath. So, I'm like, the first time that I lived in a house with a shower was when I went to university. So, I'm like, your life experience, especially if you are a little bit more sheltered or... Not sheltered, but, like, uh, constrained sometimes, whether by availability or, or, or habit, um, can be difficult for you to, sort of, rip yourself out of that and work out what's going on.
- TDThomas DeLauer
I could never understand why my sister, who is four years older, when she went off to the Air Force Academy, I never understood why she was so manically worried about me, because I was, you know, 14. I'm just like, "Liz, like, everything is fine." Like, "Why are you freaking out?" Like, just so stressed out worried about me all the time, like, "What's gonna happen to Thomas? What's gonna happen to Thomas?" And all I could think of is, like, "Oh, you're dealing with some serious issues there, girl."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- TDThomas DeLauer
And then I'm like... Man, I talk with her now, she's like, "You see why I was freaking the heck out."
- CWChris Williamson
Maybe it was me. Maybe I, maybe I was one of the potential issues. Okay, so you are now working full-time whilst doing your self-directed stuff for school, going to the gym, gaining a l- But you're saying that this is also the golden period?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Well, I felt great. There was noth-... Like, it was a period of time where I felt in complete control. Like, I've got infinite energy. I'm in my teens. You don't get tired.
- CWChris Williamson
Made of rubber and magic.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Like, whatever.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Like, I could work. I was making money helping support Mom, but I was also making my own money. And (coughs) so by the time I was, you know, 15, 16, things started to kind of mellow out a little bit. I didn't need to work as much. I was still working probably 30, 40 hours. Um, and then at that rate, uh, I was still running cross-country in the fall, so I was, I was, obviously I was a runner. Of course I'd run cross-country. Uh, I discovered rugby my junior year. So, so I played rugby. I was a winger. I really enjoyed rugby. It was a way for me to connect. I didn't really... On the surface, I didn't have any issues socially. Like, I had a, what would look like a normal social dynamic. But deep down, it was a struggle for me.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Deep down, it was really hard for me to, uh... I had to work to maintain friendships, uh, because I felt like it just, uh, it just didn't come natural. I was a very introverted person, and that probably just came over... It, I think that was a, a nurture versus nature thing. I think that was something that, like, was manufactured as a result of working and just probably I just-
- CWChris Williamson
Non-typical upbringing.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah, just not having the time. And, and my mom also did kind of, like, make it seem growing up as though anything conventional was not okay. Uh, she used to pull us out of school, my sister and I, pull us out of school sometimes to be like, "You know, screw school. Like, we're gonna go hike. We're gonna go do..." You know, pull us out of school. Like, no parents would do that. Like, but my mom really wanted to be around us. Did she want... Was she wanting to be around us? Was she wanting to groom us? I don't understand.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- 24:02 – 35:55
What Happened When Thomas Started to Gain Weight
- TDThomas DeLauer
- CWChris Williamson
What happens with the weight gain?
- TDThomas DeLauer
So, the weight gain came... I, I always joke about this, because I never... Out there on the internet, it makes it seem like I was this obese slob that was always that way and I struggled with my weight. The struggle was real, but what people don't understand is the mental-... issues that came from that and stemmed that. So a lot of it started as somewhat of a bulk gone wrong. It started out as, "I'm gonna put on some weight for muscle," right? "I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to gain some muscle." And then over time, I just kind of stopped working out, got obsessed with, uh, you know, I ended up going into, uh, a commission-only healthcare recruiting job. You know, all this high-stress stuff where I was just trying to make money. So, you know, the same stuff I was doing earlier, except now I am completely on my own, and I've got responsibilities. And my body just wasn't working the same way that it used to. So, it was very easy for me to put on muscle, but then I also put on a bunch of fat with it too. So, I always kind of joke. I was like, "This was a, uh, classic example of a bulk gone wrong." But it wasn't like I was bulking on six cups of brown rice per day. I was eating Jack in the Box tacos. I was eating everything under the sun. I remember my wife's brother being like, uh, looking at this, uh, baking sheet that I had full of tater tots, like just an entire giant baking sheet, and I remember him being like, "That's healthy." And I just remember that as such a snide little comment, and I was like, convinced myself, I'm like, "This is healthy. I'm bulking." I was totally like fucking Eric Cartman in Beefcake, like that... I was like, "Oh, weight gain 5,000," like, as long... So, fortunately, I wasn't overweight for a long period of time. It was like two and a half years where I was, but I tipped the scales close to 300 pounds at one point. And the fact that I gained the weight that fast, at the time, I didn't think of it, but now I think about it now, I'm like, "What the fuck was mentally going on with me?" This was like a, some weird element of self-sabotage. It was like, I'm a s- I'm not a stupid guy. Smart enough to know and self-aware enough to know that, like, if you eat 10,000 calorie... It was like I was stuffing my face trying to gain weight, and I remember my wife even making comments like, being like, you know, "I love you anyway. I don't know what you're doing." But it was like, it's crazy, it's like you see those My 600-lb Life, you see that stuff, where these people are laying in bed and they, they know what they're doing and they're doing it to themselves. And I was walking down that path, and then I think about like, oh my gosh, my sort of disordered eating past, of being somewhat anorexic, this was like the opposite of it. I'm like, "Holy crap, I've got, like, some serious eating disorder stuff that I gotta work with." Fortunately, I was able to get a grasp on it. Uh, I always joke about the moment when I saw someone that was an acquaintance of mine. They were driving down the road and they saw me eating Jack in the Box tacos. And maybe you've heard this story, 'cause it's floating around the internet all the time, but I... I went through Jack in the Box, pulled into a stall afterwards, and was eating my translucent Jack in the Box tacos, 'cause they're so full of grease you can see through them, and this person drives by and he's not a close friend, he's an acquaintance, but he just waves at me nonchalantly. And it was the fact that it was such a nonchalant wave that I'm like, "This dude," like he wasn't shocked by the fact that I'm sitting here stuffing my face. This was status quo normal to him. This is how people see me. The fact that he didn't, wasn't like, "Oh, my God!" The fact that he looked at me and was like, "Oh, what's up, Tom?" I was like, "Oh, fuck, I'm caught."
- CWChris Williamson
"I'm that guy."
- TDThomas DeLauer
I'm that guy. And that was it. That was the moment. People were like, "What was your call to action? Did someone say you're gonna die?" No, but I did make myself type 2 diabetic. I did give m- myself hypertension. I l- clinically made myself type 2 diabetic, so, in a two-year period of time. And that-
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- TDThomas DeLauer
... let that be a testament to how a fucked-up diet can really mess you up, right? It can mess you up quick, and it took me like seven years to get that shit normal again. But anyway, that, all of that aside, that's, uh, you know, so this happens. By the time I'm like, you know, 22, 23, you know, given my background and kind of what I was doing, I mean there's a lot of stuff that's kind of happening in the background there with my healthcare career, healthcare administration, going into ancillary lab services in the private equity world for a short period of time, I really developed a really strong knack for biochemistry because I was essentially in medical sales. So, I knew, I had to be able to sell to physicians and be able to explain, uh, various lab services, salivary cortisol testing, explain these things. And I'm like, I, I knew I was a really good salesperson with that because I was able to, I knew so much about the body just because I was so in tune with myself, and I got super into biochemistry, just super into it, to the point where I'm like, "I wanna go back to school for biochemistry." I dropped out of, uh, dropped out of college, you know, and like, "I wanna go to school for, for biochemistry, I wanna go back." And then I realized, like, you know what? Like, I'm actually making good money doing what I'm doing without that, and I'm really good at what I do, and physicians respect me and the community respects me, and the scientific community was respecting me then. So, anyway, the point is is that I had a good breadth of knowledge, so all it took was like that catalyst for me to be like, "I gotta get my life in order." And, uh, you know, then there's this kind of whole interstitial period between when I launched my brand and everything like that, which is kind of there was some downtime, um-
- CWChris Williamson
What did you do to take yourself from di- like, what- what's, what's the type of diabetes that you gave yourself and what does that mean, the hypertension-
- TDThomas DeLauer
Well, I mean-
- CWChris Williamson
... all that shit, and then how do you go from where you were to even anything approaching health?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah, so, well, type 2 diabetes, I mean, clinically, if you're over, uh, 125, uh, nanograms per deciliter glucose, you're technically clinically diabetic and you're fasting glucose. Um, uh, or pre-diabetic and then once you start climbing over, what, 140, then you're kind of in that clinical range, so... I remember my glucose being like 144 fasting, repeatedly. Bad. Really bad. Knowing what I know now, I know why that happened. Knowing what I know now, I know how it was corrected. All I knew was that I needed to reverse it and I needed to fix this issue because I looked at my wife and I'm like, "This is stupid." Like, all this happened in a pursuit of building muscle, fucking up my body in a pursuit of building muscle, but also then losing sight of that and fucking up my body in a pursuit of making money. So, these two vanity things, muscle (laughs) and money-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TDThomas DeLauer
... like, could have completely fucked up my life. I did fuck up a lot of my life because it took me years to get my health back, and there's certain things I still struggle with to this day as a result of just, like, massive basic binging for a couple of years.
- CWChris Williamson
What like?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Well, I mean, for example, like, it's still like, my testosterone levels are still pretty tanked, right? I think that I did that damage at a very critical age. I think at a time when testosterone levels should have been peaking, I was ruining them.... right? Uh, so, you know, things like that, I deal with that, uh, the mental repercussions of it. So, there's a lot of attributes where, you know, maybe it's more difficult for my body to produce hormones naturally because at that point, it w- you know, obviously, I stay in shape, obviously, I- I'm, I'm lean, it doesn't affect me too much, like, on the surface. But maybe there's stuff deeper down. Did I take years off my life? Possibly. Was it a massive hormetic stressor that's gonna make me live to be 130? Maybe, I don't know.
- CWChris Williamson
That would be great, if the secret was Jack in the Box tacos for you to-
- TDThomas DeLauer
The whole time.
- CWChris Williamson
... centenarian. Yeah, it was staring us in the face the whole time. So, what you've mentioned there is these two things around money and vanity. But, as you said earlier on, you have this sense of obligation to be in shape now, because your business relies on the condition that you're in, at least in part, you know?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, so that dynamic is maybe much more integrated, maybe much more under your control, maybe much more holistic, transcended, and included, but it's definitely still there.
- TDThomas DeLauer
It's definitely still there. And if it wasn't for having my first s- my first kid, my son, I think I might have been chasing this for all the wrong reasons. You know, I- I thoroughly enjoy helping people. But I was starting to notice that I enjoyed the validation of helping people. I didn't just enjoy helping people. And it was- it wasn't like I'm doing this for me, but at the same time, I was like, "I'm doing this for, once again, a dopamine hit." Like, this dopamine hit that I get out of, this was, you know, five, seven years ago, creating content, I was like, before my son was born, I'm just like, "I'm good at this. The brand is growing," but it felt so fucking empty.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TDThomas DeLauer
It felt so good. I, or it felt f- felt, felt so wrong, right? Like, nothing felt good. And when I had my son, you know, five and a half years ago, or at least when I found out we were pregnant, so six years ago, six and a half years ago, things changed, man. Like, life just has to change. And all of a sudden, like, when my son came into this world, and actually, you know, right before my son, we found out we were pregnant, a few days later, my dad passed away. So, there was a lot of very interesting stuff that happened that sort of shifted mine, like m- rocked my world, man. And w- what probably needs to be said to be able to explain the full story is, you know, you notice I haven't said much about my dad. And I realized that, like, my mom, in an effort to, like, keep us with her all the time, sort of kept us away from our dad. And I don't think she was meaning to do it. Maybe she was, I don't know. I never wanna speak ill of my mom. I love my mom so much. And- but it's weird, because I felt like I didn't really establish a relationship with my dad until I was an adult, and then pretty much as soon as I established a relationship with him, he got a cancer diagnosis, and I didn't get it. So, I never got the relationship with my dad. And like, to this age, day now, with like, my age, like, I crave a dad so fucking much, right? Like, I m- I miss, like... And we found out we were pregnant on Valentine's Day of 2017. And my wife gives me a Valentine's Day card, and it's got the pregnancy test in it, and she had just found out that day too. So like, we're like, "This is..." I almost passed out, like I, you know, think my wife videoed it, the sneaky bastard, like, she videoed it. I turned fucking pale, and I kind of, like, put a fake smile on, you know, for a second (clears throat) . And then, you know, 30 seconds, a minute goes by, and I'm like, "Wow. Okay, this is gonna be cool." Like, there's no turning back, so, like, this is gonna be awesome. And, uh, then we get... My dad was in hospice, but then, like, the next day, we get the call that, uh, "Hey, like, he's going down." Like, "This is, you gotta come up to the Bay Area and come see him." And like four days prior to this, we lose our dog that had been with my wife and I since we were together in high school, you know, right? So, it was like, lost the dog, found out we're pregnant, and then we gotta, okay, let's make a beeline up to see my dad. So, we go, I see my dad, hold my dad's hand, and, uh, tell him he's totally incoherent, you know, he's out. And, uh, I said, "Dad, you know, uh, you're gonna be a grandpa." And, like, he hadn't, he hadn't made any signs of life whatsoever. Like, he was just breathing, like, and cracked a smile, and hour and a half later, he died, you know? And I was like, he waited, and it was like... So, just talk about just powerful stuff all happening at once, where it was like, I got this, like, a little bit of closure, but also this sense of like, I don't wanna go super deep, but, like, right before, the night before my son was born, I had a dream where my son was born. I was walking down my childhood hallway. My brother, who's 15 years older, half-brother, uh, was there, and just giving me, like, a nod of approval. I walk past, like, the bathroom. My sister's standing there, giving me a nod of approval. And then I walk and I turn the corner in my hallway, and my dad, I just remember his big Italian hands, of this dream, just like, reached out. I didn't see his face. I could just see his hands, and I, like, handed the baby over to him. And then I woke up from the dream, and my wife was going into labor. This is the weirdest, crazy thing, man. And like, with all of that, like, dude, something just clicked, man. It was like, "I gotta, like, change. Like, something needs to change." And I don't, I can't tell you what actually changed, man. But it, like, how I looked at how I created content, how I looked at how I wanted to help people, how I looked at how I wanted to, like, make the world a better place for my son, how I wanted to be a father that was present for my son, that my dad didn't unfortunately have the ability to really do for me. Yeah. Long-winded explanation.
- 35:55 – 38:55
Insights on Fatherhood
- TDThomas DeLauer
- CWChris Williamson
Given the fact that you're now a father of two, you have the opportunity to reflect on your experience both with Mom and Dad. Has this given you a new insight that you didn't see before? Has it thrown into harsh light some things that you thought that were totally normal? Has it, uh, motivated you to be a particular way as a father?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yes, 1 million%. Yes, it's, uh, I try to look at things, there- there's things that are maybe unconventional, but not necessarily bad, that I look at with my childhood. I try to, I, I do try to look at the world through rose-colored glasses as much as I can. Like, I try to find the positive in things. You know, so all these things have made me who I am today.But the fact, you know, I see a lot of times, especially in divorced families, where parents pit children against one another. And it happened in my wife's family, and unfortunately, I think it happened in mine. And I don't think that it was necessarily intentional. I think sometimes it's human nature to kind of like take, you know, like, "Oh, I wanna reach, I wanna grab, I wanna hold this." Uh, and those are the kinds of things where my wife and I talk about all the time, like, "If we ever go our separate ways, like if something ever happened, like, we can't be like that." (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Don't use the kids as leverage.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Like, never ever. Uh, that happened a lot. And I think that I look back at when I was dealing with the most anxiety, when I was pulling the hair out, that was right at the peak of the divorce, you know. And I'm like, "What was I feeling as a kid?" So like for me, it's like, man, just to be able to shower my children with love, but be able to just make them feel like they can, they can do anything in the world as long as they put in the work, and that they're always gonna have a safe place. Whereas I grew up thinking that like, no, like, you are only really loved if you perform. And I'm like, up until having children, I kinda thought that was the way it was supposed to be. You're supposed to give this tough love, like, you perform, you perform, you perform-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TDThomas DeLauer
... and you equals love. Let's keep a spreadsheet.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TDThomas DeLauer
You know, whereas now, it's like, "Fuck, man, you can do whatever you want, kiddo." Like, if you are sincerely happy, and you are accomplishing, and you are doing good in the world, I got your back. And, uh, that has definitely transcended into how I create content, because now I'm like, I used to live in this echo chamber with what works for me. Intermittent fasting worked for me. I lost a lot of weight with it. It fucking worked for me, 100%. Keto worked for me, so that means it's gonna work for you, man, and here's why. And let me give you all the justification as to why, and let me create all this content surrounding why, why, why, justifying, justifying, justifying. Suddenly, I'm like, "Holy crap, I'm using my gift for all the wrong shit." Like, I'm using my gift to justify what worked for me, and it motivated and inspired a lot of people, but I'm like, "Man, I can reach millions more people if I stop leaning into my gift as being my transformation, and being my gift as my ability to articulate complex subject matter that gets people passionate and excited-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TDThomas DeLauer
... to be the best they can be, sincerely."
- CWChris Williamson
Less dogmatic, less rigid with the way you're talking about stuff.
- TDThomas DeLauer
For sure. 100%.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I mean, dude, I, I talk about this so much, the fact that you
- 38:55 – 43:03
The Real Price of Success
- CWChris Williamson
cannot understand the price that certain people pay to be in a position that you think you want to be in. You know, so from the outside, the three-and-a-half million person YouTube channel, and respected by scientists all over the world, and walking around at 5 to 6% body fat, and jacked, and wife and kids and money, and so on and so forth. We go, okay, let's just take a small inventory of all of the things that have had to happen in order to contribute to this, right, you know, the entire childhood, the working from the age of 14, the pulling the hair out, the social awkwardness, like all of that, all of that. Um, that is the price that you need to pay to be Thomas DeLauer, and it is, uh, I think it's very important for people to see the human behind the success. I think it's one of the most important things, it's one of the most useful things about having conversations like this, because all of the people that I respect who have achieved success have done it in spite of a thing, not because of a thing. And, you know, for all that success looks fantastic from the outside, a lot of the time, people are running away from something that they fear as well as running towards something that they want. Uh, and the vast majority of people, Michael Gervais, the guy that does-
- TDThomas DeLauer
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, what is it? Seeking Greatness, I think, or, or Chasing Elite Performance, the podcast. Um, I asked him, he's worked with, like, every high performer on the planet. He helped Felix Baumgartner jump from the edge of space for the Red Bull Stratos mission. And I said, "On average, do you think that high performers are happier or more miserable than the normal person?" He's like, "By a million miles, more miserable." He's like, "People that perform, people that are successful, on average, are more miserable, more miserable." And you go, "Okay, well, what does it mean that the people that are the most successful are the ones with the least admirable internal states?" Like, what does that mean? What d- how should we frame success? How should we consider what we think of as being admirable, desirable? Uh, it's very difficult. It's very difficult to work out w- you want the outward success, but do you really want to go through the pain and the mental texture that comes along with it?
- TDThomas DeLauer
100%, man. It's, it's, uh, Lewis Howes asked me, "What's your level of self-love on a scale of one to ten?" And I was like, "Dude, maybe at like a six, five, six."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TDThomas DeLauer
I was like, "Some days I wake up and I'm an eight, but other days I wake up and I'm a four." I was like, "So maybe it averages out to like a five or six." And he was like, "Really?" And then I flipped it around and I asked him sort of the same thing. I was like, "You, come on, man, you talk to a lot of successful people." And he's like, "Yeah, they all kinda fall around the same as you." (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- TDThomas DeLauer
You know, there's a level of... Like I don't, I don't loathe myself, but I don't love myself. Uh, but as I try to get a grasp on this, you know, being self-aware of what drives me forward, what makes me, what makes me tick, I really, I try to be aware of that. And, and I try to be aware of like, okay, just because my self-love is a six, that's, doesn't mean it's actualized into me performing at a six. So I still try to say like, "I'm still gonna perform like a ten."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TDThomas DeLauer
"I'm still gonna eat like a ten. I'm still gonna, like, live my life like a ten." And maybe it'll fake it till it makes it a little bit, but so far, it's not.
- CWChris Williamson
I think that that's the way to do it, man. I, I believe that we lead with action, uh, and I think that small steps are much more difficult for your psyche to deny, even if you are a glass-half-empty kind of person. If you continue to show up, if you continue to do the things that are good for you, if you continue to succeed in spite of your...... uh, absolute certainty that you're not going to succeed, after a while, y- you just have this crushing weight of evidence that shows you that you are able to do this thing, or you can achieve in the way that you are, uh, th- that you're intending. So one of the things that you mentioned there was that intermittent fasting was, like, a- a bit of a godsend
- 43:03 – 49:49
Best Structure for Intermittent Fasting
- CWChris Williamson
for you. Uh, it has been highly contested on the internet.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
What is, in your opinion, as someone that has spent a lot of time researching, practicing, and coaching intermittent fasting, what is the optimal structure and the most important foundations to understand about intermittent fasting?
- TDThomas DeLauer
The best structure is the structure that works best for you as the individual. It's not the sexiest answer, but it comes with practice, and it comes with determining, am I someone that likes to eat in an eight-hour window? Am I someone that likes to eat in a four-hour window or a six-hour window? The best form of intermittent fasting is the one that you don't get addicted to, the one that you can still use as an effective tool without using it as a crutch. The best form of intermittent fasting for the individual is gonna be the one that you feel the best on, the one that you get the heightened mental alertness, that clarity that you seek out. The moment that you start to do it because of an arbitrary number is the moment that you've already lost the battle. The biggest benefit to me with intermittent fasting is not body composition changes, it's not cognitive awareness. It's not this. It's the element of mastery that comes with it, and that's where people miss the boat, because you cannot contest that. You can sit here, and you could fight every single nook and cranny of intermittent fasting based upon where you stand in your views of nutrition, time-restricted feeding. Say, "Oh, well, caloric restriction is just as good." Well, yeah, intermittent fasting is kind of caloric restriction. Y- you know, this, that, whatever. You cannot argue with me that there is an element of mastery that comes into place with abstaining from something. We talked about this with caffeine. We talked about this with alcohol. Food is a drug that we are constantly exposed to, which means that it's incredibly difficult to abstain from it in a proper way, and we are bombarded with social cues to tell us that it's okay to eat whenever we want. Is that the truth? Like, should we eat whatever we want? Should we eat ad libitum? I don't know. I mean, it's certainly real world 'cause that's the world we live in today, but is it accurate? Is it fair, is it fair to assume that that's how we should eat? Regardless of your beliefs there, being able to abstain from food and having the control to do so seemingly gives me control in much, much many other, or gives me control in a lot of other elements of my life. And maybe that reflects back to my childhood and wanting to have some control.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TDThomas DeLauer
But there are a hell of a lot of people that respond in a very similar fashion that I do.
- CWChris Williamson
That's very interesting, the fact that it's about the story that you tell yourself to do with the intermittent fast as much as it is to do with some magic that comes along for the ride.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I had, uh, Peter Attia on the show yesterday, and- and he said the exact same thing. Every study that he has found so far hasn't suggested that there is any secret sauce hiding in time-restricted eating beyond caloric restriction, that there is no, um... Uh, i- it just doesn't seem, it seems to be a very easy-to-follow route for caloric restriction. Is that your reading of the literature as well?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah, yeah, and I think, I think there is a little bit of nuance there. I think the people that are severely metabolicl- I think the people that are severely metabolically deranged and have severe metabolic disorder, uh, probably get different benefit, slightly different benefit because there's something that needs to be unraveled there. And I think Peter's actually even talked about that. It's like people that, uh, when you're in a severe situation where you are very, very unhealthy, then abstaining from food, in particular time fashions, could have other advantages. Uh-
- CWChris Williamson
That autophagy and stuff like that?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Well, autophagy is one of these things, like, it's a word that's thrown around, right? It's- it's-
- CWChris Williamson
Is it bullshit? Is autophagy bullshit?
- TDThomas DeLauer
It's not bullshit, but it's definitely not this magic. Like, it's happening all the time, right? It's h- if I go into a caloric deficit, or if I take some time in between meals, or- you know what the biggest driver of autophagy is, is exercise, right? Nobody talks about that. That's not sexy. You can't say like, "Oh, like, exercise is gonna induce autophagy." It's gonna induce it three times more than fasting will. Now, there are different types of autophagy. There's m- macroautophagy, microautophagy. There's lipophagy, which is where you're actually o- uh, sort of recycling fat cells. All different varying forms that happen at varying levels based upon what someone is doing. Fasting, exercise, general caloric restriction. And autophagy is dictated a lot of times by many things, but at the very simple level, AMPK phosphorylation, which is a dimmer switch, not a light switch. So yes, the more aggressive the caloric restriction, the more aggressive the exercise-induced deficit, the more aggressive the autophagic flux. Now, with that being said, it's like you can turn that to a certain degree, and it's probably gonna reach a maximum before you start, like, degrading tissue and having a negative outcome. So it's not a light switch where it's like as soon as you go into a deficit, you flip a switch, and you're- you have maximal autophagy. The argument with that is like, okay, well, intermittent fasting, you're abstaining from food, and you're ending up in that caloric-restricted phase significantly faster because you're just not eating. So one could argue that you flip that dimmer switch a little bit faster, and if you combine that with exercise, maybe you get more autophagy. That's certainly a valid argument, but it does not, does not warrant us to say that, like, intermittent fasting is the best way to get autophagy. Not by any means.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. What about building muscle while fasting?
- TDThomas DeLauer
So I think it sounds almost insane to say, like, while you are literally fasting, you're going to build muscle. Uh, it's funny enough, I think Peter Attia had actually mentioned at some point in the past, like, muscle protein breakdown and muscle protein synthesis are always a balance of each other. And when you are in a fasted state, you have a high degree of muscle protein breakdown. That does not mean that you're necessarily catabolizing muscle. What it implies is that you could be breaking down tissue from one area of your body, and then after the fast is complete, when muscle protein synthesis increases-... you reestablish formation in another area of your body, or in that same area, right? So as long as basic protein needs are met within your eating period, you absolutely can build muscle with intermittent fasting. But I think there's a line. I usually kind of draw an arbitrary line at, like, 24 hours. I feel like if you're doing consistent 24-hour fasts, like, every other day, perhaps it's harder to build muscle. But if someone's doing, like, an 18:6 three or four days per week, of course you can build muscle. I talked about this recently. Look at your calories over the course of a seven-day period, not daily. Like, if you wanna be in a surplus, be in a slight surplus at the end of the week. If you wanna be in a deficit, be in a slight deficit at the end of the week. Maybe Monday you eat 4,000 calories, maybe Tuesday you eat 1,000. Maybe Wednesday you eat 4,000, maybe Thursday you eat 1,500. It's like that constant undulation might be good for the human metabolism because it doesn't reset every night at midnight to zero.
- CWChris Williamson
What about
- 49:49 – 1:00:19
The Non-Negotiable’s of Fat Loss
- CWChris Williamson
looking at a, a fat loss plan overall? If you were to design the non-negotiables that should go into it, regardless of time restricted, regardless of how someone is coming into this, what are the non-negotiables for a fat loss plan?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah. For me, I still have to side with just about everybody and say thermodynamics are probably the most important thing. Are we gonna discover that to possibly be different later in l- life? We might. Who knows? We always have to be open to that. But I think right now, the evidence is just too strong to ignore that, that thermodynamics matter. Too many camps trying to, like, oppose that, so let's just all agree on that. That's-
- CWChris Williamson
When you say that, you mean CAICO, right? You mean Calories In, Calories Out.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah, which is a very complicated matter. It's not as simple as people think, but people try to make it simple for the sake of content. But it is very complex 'cause there's all kinds of influential factors that determine that, right? How much calories we're actually burning, how much we're actually consuming. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
Did you juice this fiber, et cetera, et cetera?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah. Yeah, i- all kinds of stuff that comes into play. Um, the other piece that I think is a non-negotiable is having adequate breaks between meals. I feel, for me at least, that's a non-negotiable. And the reason, uh, that comes under fire a lot is because that implies that you're suggesting that insulin has to always be low. Not at all. I'm suggesting that we have periods of time between meals that we do allow insulin to be low. Maybe that's an 18-hour fast. Maybe it's just having adequate three hours between meals. I think for maximum f-
- CWChris Williamson
What, what, what would be the problem with just grazing every hour and a half?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Personal... Well, even an hour and a half, as long as you are just, like, taking that adequate break, because you have this spike in insulin, and then insulin level needs to come down for glucagon, the counterregulatory hormones, to release, which are ultimately going to allow fat loss to occur. Like, lipolysis, as far as I know, cannot occur in the presence of insulin. Like, if insulin is elevated at that particular moment, lipolysis cannot occur at that moment. You cannot be utilizing fat while insulin is elevated. That doesn't mean that you never spike insulin. That means you keep track of when things go up and down. Your fat-burning mode isn't right when you eat, contrary to the whole thermic effect of food thing. Like, that's such a negligible amount. The fat burning occurs after the insulin levels have come back down to baseline and lipolysis and beta oxidation can occur. So I think maybe it's not a non-negotiable as far as the general world is concerned, because you could effectively eat, like, a pea every five minutes and be eating 800 calories and lose weight.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
- TDThomas DeLauer
But I think for adequate muscle preservation and for maximum fat loss, I think just keeping a keen eye to that is very beneficial. Um, (clears throat) other non-negotiables, uh, I think G-flux is a very important thing that's not talked about enough. Uh, that's energy flux.
- CWChris Williamson
I subscribe to this one.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, I realized this as soon as I started doing CrossFit.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah. Right? It's, it's, you know, you know what's crazy is, um, I've had... You know Alan Aragon?
- CWChris Williamson
No.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Uh, he's, he's great. You should have him on. He's, he's, uh, just, he's basically the person that takes a lot of these m- major research papers and, like, writes the summaries for them. Like, he's, like, that well-versed, so he basically writes the condensed summaries. So he's so good at articulating. In fact, I literally, like, I did a number of videos with him just 'cause he's so well-spoken on this stuff. And he and I were talking about it, it's like, have you ever been in the presence of, like, an athlete that is just a crazy intense athlete with a lot of energy? It's like you're around them and you can, like, literally feel their energy. Compare that to someone that's on their deathbed. There's, like, a completely different, like, it's, they're literally fluxing at a different capacity. And people don't realize that there's, like, a mobilization cost or fee associated with more energy and using more energy. So if you eat 2,000 calories per day and burn 2,000 calories per day, and I eat 5,000 calories per day and burn 5,000 calories per day, you'd say, "Hey, you guys are both at net zero, right?" Wrong. I'm actually burning more because there is more energy cost and G-flux, energy flux, involved at a higher rate of metabolism. It's almost like the mobilization fee. It costs, it costs money, it costs currency, to mobilize that much energy. It's like if you call someone over to replace your windshield, they're gonna charge you a mobilization fee because it costs them money to get there. So every time you have an energy exchange, it costs currency. The more you eat and the more you move, the more you burn overall.
- CWChris Williamson
This was what I realized when starting CrossFit, that I'd always, up until that point, because I was doing bro split bodybuilding, which means that really, unless you're doing incredibly intense sessions, how are you losing... Uh, y- you're not gonna put yourself into a caloric deficit through training. You're gonna do it through food, right? So it's always this sort of race, chasing your tail of, like, fewer calories to beget fewer calories, to beget lower metabolism, to beget fewer calories. Then I started doing CrossFit and I'm like, okay, my, I need to eat three and a half thousand calories just to not be hungry when doing this, and I got leaner. And I thought, "Oh, that's strange." And then I started training more and getting heavier and getting fitter and leaner. I was like, "I'm..."I keep on eating more and more food and yet I'm getting leaner, because I couldn't put enough food away in order to be able to compensate for the deficit that the training was putting me in. And I understand, I understand that you have much more control over the food that goes in your mouth and the calories that you expend through your output. I, I, Ben Carpenter came on the show and gave me a really beautiful framework that helped me to understand why losing fat, for most people, through caloric restriction rather than the increase of exercise, is at least something that they have a greater degree of control over. I think that that seems to make a good bit of sense to me. But for the people that do have it in the tank to be able to go and do high-intensity training, with progressive overload, with some loading, multiple times maybe per day or at least every day, G-flux theory for me, which is the 3000 in, 3000 out versus 2000 in, 2000 out, that seemed to make a massive difference as far as I could see.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Dude, it's, it's huge. I love Ben, by the way. Dude, that guy is great.
- CWChris Williamson
He's fantastic.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Like, he does a really good job of, uh, just distilling things and just, uh, humanizing it. Like he just, like s- There's not, not a lot of people that I really like, and he's kind of come on the scene recently for me, like I've just... And, um, yeah, just, I mean, just-
- CWChris Williamson
He's crushing it.
- TDThomas DeLauer
... kudos to him. He's doing good.
- CWChris Williamson
What else? Anything else?
- TDThomas DeLauer
So, well, kind of dovetailing off the G-flux thing, I think the non-negotiable that also comes into play is adequate diet breaks. Like, and so that comes with the G-flux. Like it, if you just continually restrict calories, you're gonna end up in that, that cesspool of just... And that happens so much with intermittent fasting. It's relevant, right? Because people say, "Oh, I'm gonna do 16:8 fasting." So they restrict calories, and then next thing they know, like they think they're fasting, but all they're doing is restricting calories. Like, sure, they're eating in a certain time block, but that doesn't absolve them of thermodynamics, right? So at the same time, they just like restrict calories and then they have to restrict calories more. And then they're like, "Oh, well, I'm eating 1800 calories a day or 1500 calories a day because I'm intermittent fasting, but I'm fasting every day. Why isn't this working anymore?" Well, because you're doing the same damn thing as just restricting calories, right? Now, re-int- (clears throat) Now reintroducing calories and being able to actually get the metabolism back up to a, an adequate state involves applying G-flux with proper diet breaks. So what I mean by that is you can't just say, "I'm going to have a diet break and start eating a bunch of shit." If you do that, things are gonna go cattywampus. You're gonna have compensatory mechanisms that come into play that make you gain fat very fast, probably because-
- CWChris Williamson
'Cause you've driven it through the floor so-
- TDThomas DeLauer
You've driven it down and now all of a s- Yeah. So people make the mistake of going back to eating like they used to eat. No, you have to increase the calories to where you are at maintenance now, which is very difficult for people to understand because-
- CWChris Williamson
Reverse diet back up gently.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah. Well, people don't under- Most people aren't gonna figure that out. They're not gonna say like, "Okay, I've lost 30 pounds of lean mass, 20 pounds of fat mass. That means I need to adjust my calories to baseline at this for maintenance." So the easiest way to do that is when you get to those stages, if it's possible, increase your intensity of training to allow for increase in calories. That way you're increasing that flux while taking a diet break in a very conservative fashion that limits the risk of fat regain, but still allows for metabolic rate to increase and your RMR to come back up.
- CWChris Williamson
Right, because that's then going to allow you to, uh, increase metabolic rate without gaining too much more weight, which then allows you to re-begin another diet from the top with this higher base metabolic rate, right? Okay.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Nailed it.
- 1:00:19 – 1:05:50
Does Eating Meat Play a Role in Health?
- CWChris Williamson
your read at the moment? I asked Peter this yesterday, so I can compare and contrast your answers.
- TDThomas DeLauer
There's interesting arguments on both sides. Um, I do think that the methionine research makes sense. I do think that there's a, a large plant-based kind of skew to it that sort of distorts how we look at that data. I try to look at that data objectively without sort of the plant-based skew and say, "How do we apply this methionine, um, discussion and protein contributing to aging independent of any plant-based discussion?" Like, can this apply for the Mediterranean diet where there's still moderate meat consumption? Um, and I think the answer is yes. I do think that being able to have adequate mTOR phosphorylation is very important for adequate recovery. I think that we are learn-
- CWChris Williamson
This means eating meat, right?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Eating meat, yes. (laughs) Yeah, sorry. I, I, so I think it's very important for recovery. I think it's very important for cellular signaling. I think insulin is one of the most important hormones for longevity too.... and, you know, as a peptide hormone, it- it comes under fire as this demonized thing, but I think insulin is also a catalyst for repair. So, it is a balance, but do you balance at 51% towards the mTOR phosphorylation side or 51% more towards the AMPK side, where you're trying to be like, "I'm gonna restrict." Um, and with that, I lean slightly in the camp of being on the mTOR side, being protein being more important than restriction of protein. I think adequate amounts of protein with caloric restriction might be somewhat of the answer.
- CWChris Williamson
This is an area that I find quite confusing because I've got, on one side, friends like Mikhaila Peterson, Mark Bell, uh, a- and also my own felt sense that when I do lean more heavily into meat that I think I perform better-
- TDThomas DeLauer
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... I feel better, uh, my body is better. Um, the feedback that I got from Marek Health after I did my blood panel was the same. "Let's... We need to get some organ meats in there, let's eat some more red meats." And then I see the other side of the world, especially the longevity, biohacking side that sort of demonizes a lot of this. Uh, I don't know whether you've seen Brian Johnson.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Have you seen that guy?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
What do you think of him? What do you think of his approach to- to the world?
- TDThomas DeLauer
So he's sort of, uh, got the approach of, I mean, moderately low protein, right? Yeah. So it's... You know, other than kind of the surface level stuff with the moderate/low protein, I don't follow or subscribe to his way of thinking, so I can't comment aggressively, but I think that the more that we can thoughtfully acknowledge both sides, that's- that's really important. Because again, like, we have to ask ourselves the question, like, are we looking at this through a wide-angle lens or not? So, like, what is happening globally? Like, what is your protein intake like? Are you in a net positive protein balance? Is... I don't know this. I mean, you might be able to answer it, is like, is Brian suggesting that you be in an... like, a net negative protein balance?
- CWChris Williamson
I have no idea.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, he's coming on the show in a few weeks. I'm going to ask him.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Yeah, it's... I mean, and... B- I still think a net... like, a net neutral protein balance would be optimal, but no one's gonna be able to-
- CWChris Williamson
What does that mean?
- TDThomas DeLauer
That means your muscle protein synthesis is matching that exactly of your muscle protein breakdown. But who's gonna be able to figure that out, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- TDThomas DeLauer
So, that would be the ideal situation. So, until we have a way to measure that, we're always gonna be in a slight surplus, which could be more... You know, methionine, could be more issues, uh, facing as far as longevity is concerned, or you're slightly on the opposite. So for me, like, how do we attenuate certain things and activate AMPK and activate these markers that are associated with longevity and caloric restriction while also maintaining protein levels? 'Cause I don't think protein is the problem. I think it's one of many different elements. And if you look at the Blue Zones, which people talk smack on the Blue Zones, um, and understandably so.
- CWChris Williamson
What's the Blue Zones, for the people that don't know?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Blue Zones are the, uh, areas of the world that have the people that live the longest. So you've got, like, Costa Rica, you've got Sardinia, you've got Greece, you've got... You know, so, uh, Okinawa. And I did a video on this because I was so interested. I was like, "We focus so much on the common denominators of these regions." We say, "Oh, well, all of them eat in a 10 to 15% caloric restriction. All of them eat low meat." Well, that's not necessarily true. "All of them eat X fat, all of them do this, all of them do that." It's like, "You guys are trying to find the common denominators. I wanna find the outliers." What makes these unique? What makes the Okinawan diet so unique and different from the other Blue Zones? What makes the Costa Rican diet so different from Sardinia? Let's look at the outliers, and take those outliers and craft the ultimate longevity diet. And that video crushed. Like, I think it just, like, got people thinking. There was no scientific rigor to it whatsoever, other than that-
- CWChris Williamson
What were the main takeaways?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Uh, the main takeaways of it were like, okay, uh, high oh- high omega-3 content, uh, moderate polyunsaturated fat content, uh, fruit polyphenols, uh, fiber and diversity of diet. So you've got things like the Okinawans eat a crap load of, like, purple sweet potatoes, you know, things like that, right? And looking at that still being in somewhat of a deficit, but that deficit being more from like 1% to 8% versus a universal 15%, so a slight deficit. No scientific rigor to that whatsoever. It's just looking and pulling outliers and being like, "What are the benefits of these outliers? And if we combine that, is that doing something?" And I just encourage people to look at things like that, because we're so quick to look for patterns that we forget about the power of an outlier pulling an average.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. So, you mentioned the thermic effect of food earlier on. Somebody that you're a little bit more familiar with than Brian Johnson would be V Shred.
- TDThomas DeLauer
(laughs)
- 1:05:50 – 1:09:45
Thomas’s Opinion on V Shred
- TDThomas DeLauer
I am V Shred.
- CWChris Williamson
What is your reading of V Shred and his work in the world of diet and fitness?
- TDThomas DeLauer
I don't give two craps what V Shred dos- does. I just don't want people to confuse me with him anymore.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you see why people confuse you with V Shred?
- TDThomas DeLauer
Well, we're both charlatan, total.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- TDThomas DeLauer
(laughs) No, I'm just kidding.
- CWChris Williamson
Dude, it's... Uh, you're significantly bigger and leaner than him, but-
- TDThomas DeLauer
Well, that's a plus 90.
- CWChris Williamson
If- if it was a dark, foggy night, I could see why people could confuse you for him.
- TDThomas DeLauer
Well, isn't that the most, most of social media? Like, I mean, it's a dark, foggy night for most people.
- CWChris Williamson
That's... If you're putting the filters on, it is. Yeah. Interesting, man. I mean, you'll speak to Z later on about this, but, um, he did a- a series of adverts. 'Cause you can go on... I didn't know you could do this, but if you go find out someone's ads manager account or something-
- TDThomas DeLauer
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... or you can press on a- a particular page and see all of the adverts that they're running on Facebook.
- TDThomas DeLauer
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, and they went on and had a look at all of the different adverts that V Shred was doing.
- TDThomas DeLauer
(coughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And in one of them, they'd set him up in a studio, kind of like this, uh, that had the same red curtain, the same mic arm, the same mic, the same, uh, like, muffler top, the same desk, the same lighting as Rogan's studio, but he wasn't on Rogan. And it was him giving... doing basically an ad read fake on a podcast. I'm like, "Yo, we don't need ChatGPT and AI to CGI, like, horse shit down our brains." Like, people can do this in person at the moment. That... Th- I mean-... brings VShred up to Zach later on, 'cause he's got very strong opinions on the guy. Um-
- TDThomas DeLauer
I, I mean, it's, it's, uh, I, I saw that months ago, and I actually s- uh, screenshot it and sent it to my team. I was, "Look at this guy." Like, like, he's literally faking being on Rogan. And now, n- I notice it, it's a couple months later, it's, like, circulating around. Um, but, I mean, like, if my shirt's off and my hair is styled the way it normally is, like, it's, it's, it's ridic- I did a video on it, like, uh, I don't know, three, four, five months ago and, dude, I mean, hundreds of comments being like, "I thought you were him." Like, "I'm sorry." Like, "I was really confused. I st- wait, you're not him?"
- CWChris Williamson
Have you ever con- have you ever considered that you might be, like, cleaning up VShred's, uh, public image?
- TDThomas DeLauer
100%.
- CWChris Williamson
'Cause VShred's really got his mind deep into the data here, he's reading the white papers. Y- it really sounds like he's been educating himself.
- TDThomas DeLauer
N- uh, well, it's, it comes up. It's-
- CWChris Williamson
As he holds onto the coattails of your, like-
- TDThomas DeLauer
Pe- people-
- CWChris Williamson
... hard work.
- TDThomas DeLauer
The, like, the best comment I saw was, like, you know, "Oh, well," like, "I thought that you had all this really good content going organically so that you could afford the ability to be more aggressive in your ad campaigns, uh, you know, and be very superficial and simple in your ad campaigns, be more aggressive, because people are, you know, they're not subsc- or they're watching your other content where it's very deep and very, uh, scientifically backed." Yeah, it's, it's becoming an actual battle that I have to deal with, where it's-
- CWChris Williamson
Consider-
- TDThomas DeLauer
... wild.
- CWChris Williamson
... maybe a really aggressive, uh, like, design change, like a gender reassignment perhaps or, like, a pink hair, like, grow it out. You d- I just think e- one of you needs to change, and it might as well be you.
Episode duration: 1:23:41
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