Keto Chat Episode 62: Tyler Cartwright Loses 300 Pounds on Keto

Tyler comes to a ketogenic diet by way of having weighed 505 pounds at his heaviest, and having lost 295 pounds in the process of defeating Type II diabetes, regaining health, and rediscovering his zeal for life. He spends his time these days teaching others how to overcome the obstacles and barriers which resist change, and how to achieve goals and outcomes which have eluded them thus far in their lives. He and Luis Villasenor run virtual boot camps for beginners and intermediate lifters, which focus on resistance training, motivational discussion, and a healthy dose of honest conversation. In 2017, their clients have lost (as of August) nearly 19,000 pounds, and (as he often points out) have added years of quality to their lives for the sakes of children, grandchildren, spouses, and employees. His areas of focus and interest are human nutrition and bioenergetics, the psychology of change, and the marriage of the two. Tyler is married to his wonderful wife Jamiee (who has lost 127 pounds following a Ketogenic diet herself), has one daughter, and a rambunctious Labrador retriever.

Specialist in Fitness Nutrition (SFN) – International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA) Certified Fitness Trainer (CFT) – International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA) Bayesian Bodybuilding Personal Training Certification Precision Nutrition PN1 / PN2 Currently Studying for CISSN / Starting Strength Certified Coach Bachelor in Business Administration – Mid-Continent University MBA – Bellevue University (IA)

Ketogains Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ketog… Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/ketogainsTyler’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tyler.cartwr… Twitter: @cartwright2Tyler’s Instagram: @ty_cartwright

Get a Free 7-day Fast & Easy Keto Meal Plan https://info.ketocarole.com/optin

Transcription

Carole Freeman: Hey, welcome everybody to another episode of Keto Chat. I am your host, Carole Freeman, Certified Nutritionist and creator of the Fast Track to Keto Success Program. I am so excited today because I am here with the one and only Tyler Cartwright.

Tyler Cart: And his cat.

Carole Freeman: Hey wait. Is that the … Was that Bonanza? Were they the Cartwright’s?

Tyler Cart: They were the Cartwright’s. [crosstalk 00:00:31]

Carole Freeman: Are you related to them?

Tyler Cart: I’ve gotten Hos my whole life. I’ve never gotten Little Joe. I don’t know why this six foot one guy doesn’t get Little Joe, but it is what it is.

Carole Freeman: Nice. For people who aren’t familiar with this, who are you? How do you identify? Who are you?

Tyler Cart: I am 41 percent of the guy that I was 11 years ago.

Carole Freeman: Okay.

Tyler Cart: I came to a Ketogenic diet having weighed just a tick over 505 pounds, at least according to the freight scale in the back of my doctor’s office. And I came to a realization I was going to die or something was going to change, and so something changed, and I am now walking around at about 210 pounds or so on any given day. Four years ago or so, got introduced to a guy named Luis Villasenor that you’re familiar with I know. And we have really been pushing the envelope forward about the idea of resistance training, although I joke sometimes that it’s really more therapy by barbell than it is anything to do with actual lifting. So we have officially tried to kind of take the brand forward with Keto Gains and help people to recreate the successes that we’ve both had coming kind of from two different ends of the same lens. He, from more of a disordered eating and anorexia side of things, and me from being so big I couldn’t get off the couch. Yeah, that’s me.

Carole Freeman: Wow. Okay, that’s a great introduction, and a little … That’s just a overview of everything we’re going to talk about, so good segue there. Take us back … And you live Tennessee? Is that right?

Tyler Cart: I’m in Nashville, Tennessee. Well, [crosstalk 00:02:17] Tennessee.

Carole Freeman: All right. Well, so how was that eclipse?

Tyler Cart: Actually, really cool. I sat on may back porch with my eclipse glasses on, and I didn’t bother to check and make sure they were the right spec, and I just figured if I go blind, at least it’ll be a cool ass thing to see. Unfortunately, they were the not recalled version of the eclipse glasses, so I still have my vision, or at least whatever I had before the eclipse.

Carole Freeman: Well, good. That’s good.

Tyler Cart: But no, it was really cool. My daughter got to see it, and wife got to see it on the roof of her office, so good stuff.

Carole Freeman: Nice. Once in a lifetime, maybe. Depending on how old you are, but …

Tyler Cart: I will probably not be around for the next one in 90 years. If we are then I can thank Metformin for that.

Carole Freeman: There was one when I was a little kid, like in elementary school. I remember going outside to see it, but I don’t remember what we got to look through it with. I don’t know. I mean, yeah. Well, anyways. Okay, so walk us back through … Take us back to your earlier years. Is your whole, your family big? Or were you the only one?

Tyler Cart: You know, some of them used to laugh because my mother is about five foot two and a half. She says she’s five, three, but I just don’t believe it. She’s been pretty small most of her whole life. I mean, they used to call her “Bugs Bunny” because big front teeth and 100 pounds soaking wet kind of personality. And you know, my dad’s always kind of battled with his weight. My mother, not so much. I’ve said before, sometimes I think life just gets in the way of rational decision making, and it’s really not so much that I can go, “Oh, you know, I have genetics to blame,” or “Oh, I have …” I’m sure genetics play a factor. I’m sure emotions and behaviors play a factor, but you learn food is comfort. Right? I mean, you never express it that way, but the truth of the matter is you expressed it that way every time you call the pizza place and order up two large pizzas because two of you are hungry, so yeah.

Carole Freeman: So did you do that fake voice when you’re ordering? Like, “Oh, and what do you want on your pizza?” Really, when you’re just ordering for yourself?

Tyler Cart: You know, I was telling somebody today, I hadn’t ever done that one, but I did definitely do like the two orders in the drive-through thing. You roll through, and it’s like, “I need a number four.” You run it through, and it’s like, “I also need another number four, but this one with a coke.” Because it’s like, if you order a different drink, or maybe you get tots instead of fries or whatever, maybe they’ll believe that the 500 pound guy with the seatbelt extender that barely can steer the car because the steering wheel’s rubbing a hole in his stomach, maybe he’s not eating all of those at the same time. And I know as soon as I drove away, the guy in the drive-throughs like, “You know he’s eating all those.” But no, I have never done the fake voice or the, “What do you want” thing. Yeah, I’m sure they could see through the veneer when we ordered pizza four or five times a week, that there were probably some issues there for sure.

Carole Freeman: So when-

Tyler Cart: I’m not coming to the door, just leave the pizza on the front, the money’s in the mailbox, right?

Carole Freeman: Oh man. Yeah, so I was thinking about this. What kind of things are you the most grateful for that’s different about your life now? You mentioned the seatbelt extender. What are some of the things that you are so, you can’t do a happy dance enough, that are no longer part of your life?

Tyler Cart: It’s always the stupid little things right?

Carole Freeman: Yeah.

Tyler Cart: The other day I was … It’s probably been almost a year now. I was having a conversation with somebody in my kitchen, and I just kind of was sitting there and realized, “Wait a minute, I’m sitting on the counter.” And at some point mentally in that little lizard brain part of me that wasn’t really thinking, I just put my hands up on the counter and did a little push-up and hopped up on the counter. And continuing the conversation, although every clean freak on your audience is now going, “Oh my god, his butt was on the counter.”

Carole Freeman: Were you naked sitting on the counter?

Tyler Cart: I was not in my workout loin cloth. No I was not. I was fully clothed sitting on the counter. But, you know it’s funny. I say that, but then kind of the, “Aww” moment here on the other side of the coin is one of the things I’ve talked about. It’s actually a section in a book I’m working on is, is this idea that when you get big, people treat you like you have leprosy. When you get that big, yeah you’re fun to be around, but there’s kind of this halo around which they don’t touch. They don’t approach. They don’t engage. They don’t involve. And so you get to be a part of the experience in the same way that a fly on the wall is a part of the experience, or the same way that a lamp is a part of the experience. And they talk, and by “they” I mean social physiologists, will talk about the number of meaningful touches that people need in the course of a day.

One of the things is that it became very easy to see yourself as part of the furniture as opposed to part of the experience of living. And so, I just try my best, and I’m still not very good at it, but I do try very hard to just sort of soak up the every opportunity to live. To laugh, to engage, to give a hug, or a fist bump, or a high five, or whatever sometimes awkwardly so, but at the same time it’s like, “I don’t want somebody to go away from the conversation feeling the same set of fears or self-issues that I used to deal with every time somebody would hug and high five, hug and high five, hug and high five. When they get to me and go, “Nice to meet you see you later.” And then turn and make the beeline. And it’s like, “Where the hell is my hug?” Right? “This isn’t fair.”

You just kind of realize that, and I don’t anybody to walk away from that experience or having the opportunity where I can affect some piece of change there now that, that wall’s kind of come down to be that guy that says, “[inaudible 00:09:07] everybody.” Seriously. I don’t hold grudges, I’ve never met a stranger. So, come in give Papa Ty a hug, whatever. That was totally not creepy right? But truthfully, it’s kind of the thing. We all spend time with each other, and we walk away and you really wonder, “Did I really spend time with that person, or was I just talking at that person and were they just talking at me?” You know?

When you weigh 500 pounds and everyone treats you like you are dying and no one wants to be in your presence, literally you don’t want anyone to go away having that same feeling about themselves or about the same situation. So, yeah. That was a really long answer, I realize that.

Carole Freeman: Yeah, no. That’s really cool. And this is like totally deeper than I ever thought that we would get, but also a different side of you. And I think it’s really great and it’s just … You’re really touching on something that’s really important in our society. It’s one thing, the movement that people have, “Just love yourself as being fat and accept people the way they are.” And you’re not so much talking about, “Don’t do anything about what if you’re overweight, or you’re struggling, or you’re very unhealthy.” You’re not talking about just ignoring that and embracing that, but treating people as real people.

Tyler Cart: That’s the issue. And treat yourself as a real person too. You know, look, I love the “healthy at any size” movement in part. And I resent it in part. On the one hand, it’s kind of hard to be kind of caught in that middle ground because you get fingers pointed back at you and you get called mean names when you speak out against it, but I’m sorry there is something [inaudible 00:11:03] unhealthy with telling yourself that is fundamentally untrue. You are not healthy. Just orthopedically alone, you’re … If you’re significantly overweight, look at what the orthopedic studies say about knee and hip replacements, and the likelihood of that occurring if someone lives a life overweight. Let’s think about age related sarcopenia from not doing [inaudible 00:11:30] exercise on a regular basis.

Look, do I think everyone needs to be a size two or be a size 32 men’s, Lord no. God mad us all different sizes and that’s not what this is about, but I do love the fact that they’ve been able to, as a movement, to separate self-worth from jean size. That is an awesome, awesome and powerful thing.

Carole Freeman: Yeah.

Tyler Cart: But dagonit, if we could just be transparent and honest and say, “It isn’t about laughing about it and calling yourself healthy while you’re shoveling down pizza.” The truth of the matter is, there is a sense of personal responsibility, your self responsibility, to be the healthiest that you can be, not just to say, “Well, don’t have diabetes yet, so I’m going to keep on eating this way.” That to me, just seems anathema to everything that you’re standing for when you’re talking about using the word healthy in the name of the movement, but again, every time I talk about this, people love to point the finger at me and say I’m not being sensitive or I’ve forgotten where I came from or whatever. It’s like, “No, I haven’t forgotten at all. I just want better for you than you clearly want for yourself.”

Carole Freeman: Well and you can believe both, right? It doesn’t have to be one or the other. You can believe that you’re a worthy person and acceptable whatever size you are, and you can work to be healthier.

Tyler Cart: Absolutely. And the cool thing is, you get to decide what you think is healthy. I mean, for some people, they see the neuroticism of somebody chasing after getting every bigger or ever smaller, is as a different kind of unhealthy. And I can respect that position too, but let’s not pre-suppose that somebody who’s starving themselves to death is healthy and somebody who’s engorging themselves to death is healthy. It’s sort of like driving down the road. If you stay in the middle of the road, you’re good, but if you go into the ditch on either side, you’ve got a problem.

Ultimately, there are extremes on both sides of the equation and I don’t think the answer form a rejectionist perspective is to say, “If I don’t have any debilitating condition yet, then what I’m doing is fine and you don’t have a right to judge me.” No I don’t have a right to judge your worth and your worthiness and who you are as a person, you’re absolutely right. But I do have an obligation not to lie to you and tell you that what you’re doing is a good idea.

Carole Freeman: Well and I think a big part of the problem is, is that the state of denial that people get to stay in because of our current medical model of, “You’re fine until you’re not.” It’s black and white and the truth is, it’s really a continuum. Right? Things start going bad long before the doctor’s going to give you a diagnosis of something. So, it turns out it’s about educating people what other markers can we look at? What are the other things we can see where your health’s starting to turn and show some signs early on. Because I talk to people all the time that are like, “I’m really healthy. I’m just overweight.” And then when we dive in, and we start talking about all their numbers, they’re really not as healthy as they think they are, but their doctor’s been telling them they’re fine.

Tyler Cart: Yeah, you know you’re exactly right. We diagnose based on reference ranges no. And a great example of that is something like thyroid conditions. Hypothyroid 50 years ago was diagnosed based upon how the patient presented right? If the patient said, “My hair is falling out, and I feel like crap, and I can’t get up and do anything. I have brittle nails and everything’s terrible.” Then you go, “Let’s take some blood work and see where we’re at.” And you let the symptoms drive the diagnosis, but now we pull blood work and go, “Oh, well your TSH is too high for relative to the T4 and T4’s not being converted to T3, thus you’re [inaudible 00:15:33] intrathyroid. And you’ve got a problem.” And the whole time, the person’s going, “But I feel fine.”

Carole Freeman: Yeah.

Tyler Cart: And so, what we’ve gotten into … And there are some great doctors, so I don’t mean to paint too broad a brush, but it’s hard not to sometime. And to your point, “Oh you’re healthy because you’re A1C isn’t above seven,” or “You’re healthy because … And we’ll ignore the fact that the CRP is through the roof and other markers of inflammation are absolutely crazy just because this one place, this one thing that I’m holding, planting a flag in the ground means … I’ll give you a great example, Carole.

When I was at my heaviest, I was in full-on denial for the longest time. And one of the things I always said to myself is, “You’re still an athlete. You’ve got a lot of muscle mass.” So when you look at yourself, yeah it looks like you’re way fatter than you actually are.

Carole Freeman: Because the muscle was pushing the fat out?

Tyler Cart: And I said, “As long as I can still do a push-up, as long as I can still do a sit-up, as long as I can do a wall sit and get back … I’m fine.” You know? Eventually the push-up was a six inch movement because my belly got in the way. “Hey, I touched my chest and I’m back up.” If that’s the definition of health is my ability to do this very low bar sort of opinion of what health is, then I’m going to live my whole life assuming I’m healthy when I’m literally dying slowly. And that’s the part that breaks my heart, is so many people who are being committed in this sort of state of denial where it’s just like, “Look, as your coach, as your practitioner, as your nutritionist, whatever it is that role that we fulfill in that space, there is a part of us that really, we aught to have this sort of shame on us mentality for when we don’t speak the truth to somebody who’s paying good money or seeking out help just because we’re nice people. Whatever that we try to help.

We don’t get a pass. We’re not looking at someone and being completely transparent with them and saying, “No, this is not what I would call healthy. No, your blood panels look terrible let’s talk about it.” And that’s, I think, the biggest challenge is knowing … And I’ve railed on this lately so I won’t beat the horse too much to death, but we use euphemistic words like “high, low, moderate, healthy, unhealthy,” but we don’t ever really define what those terms are. And so it allows all of us, ourselves included, to live in a sort of nebulous world of self-insulation that says, “Oh, I’m healthy by the standard that I define, that only I get to define and you don’t get to have any input or you don’t get to tell me that what I’m doing is not healthy.”

Because I did an experiment because I’m an idiot, a while back, where I bought four pounds of leaf lard just to test a theory because I wanted to see … People kept saying, “Oh, you know, you need to manipulate … You’re keytones are too low.” And I’ll tell you, I run about point four to point five and there is literally nothing I’ve found I can do to manipulate that or to make that happen, or to make that change rather. I just seem to be a person that takes that up very rapidly, and therefore, don’t make a lot of keytone.

Carole Freeman: You know, I’ve really seen that though in all the clients that I’ve worked with, the ones that are the most insulin resistant, they tend to run pretty low there. So …

Tyler Cart: But what’s interesting about it is so, I actually did this for an entire week. I tested blood ketones and blood glucose. And I ate nothing. I literally fasted for an entire week, training for two hours a day, every day, just to see what would happen. I got one point five and the rest were all point fours. And so I said, “You know what, I’m going to go the other extreme.” And so I take the leaf lard and ate nothing but leaf lard and salt for a week while I …

Carole Freeman: Oh, how did you even do that?

Tyler Cart: It was the most revolting thing I have ever put … It tasted like melted candle wax with a salt backer.

Carole Freeman: Did you try different things like cold, or warm, or hot or just spoonfuls?

Tyler Cart: I just shoveled it down about the best that I could figure out to do.

Carole Freeman: For science.

Tyler Cart: For science, yeah. I got two point fives, not two point five, two, point fives.

Carole Freeman: Okay.

Tyler Cart: And the rest-

Carole Freeman: Two times point five.

Tyler Cart: And all of the measurements were between point three and point four. And so, there is an argument to be made that I’m not ketogenic and that there’s something defective in me and that I need to go do this, that and the other. And I need … But the truth of the matter is, we have to step back and say, “Were either of those approaches to life healthy?” Hell no. Not even a little bit. And that’s a terrible diet regardless. If you get science out of it then sure, but as a day-to-day eating pattern, I’d be better off to develop whatever that thing is that cows get where they eat nails and wood. I mean, like pica I think it’s called.

Carole Freeman: Pica, yeah.

Tyler Cart: I mean seriously, I’d have been just as well off eating nails. I mean, they’re just as nutritive, but the point being is, you don’t get the opportunity to pretend something isn’t what it is. That was a stupid approach and so are a lot of the approaches that people are taking to how they eat, how they lift, how they move, how they run, how they do stuff. And we should, professionally speaking, have an obligation to those people to be transparent and honest and say, “This is a bad idea. And that doesn’t make you bad, it just means that this is not a go idea. This isn’t well thought out.”

Carole Freeman: Well and what if the same way … We’re talking about the continuum of actual health markers. What if we talk about health as this continuum as well? There’s no line you cross that guarantees you’re actually healthy right? Because there’s probably a lot of other things going on in our body we can’t even measure.

Tyler Cart: I like to talk about using the word fitness. And crossfit beats this into people pretty regularly. That the idea that fitness is activity specific, meaning that how fit you are for a task or for a purpose is wholly dependent on how well you’ve prepared for that task or that purpose, right? If I haven’t studied for a chemistry final and I’ve got to go sit for it, I’m not fit to sit for that final. I’m jut not. I haven’t prepared myself and I should have no expectation of doing well on it. And I think it’s sort of the same thing.

I look at health in a lot of the same continuum. It’s like, “Because I’m healthy to do one thing, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m healthy to do another. And because eating a certain way or eating a thing is healthy in one context, doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily healthy to do it in another. A great example, when I coach someone who’s doing a middle distance triathlon, so maybe something like an Olympic or half iron man or something, their training volume is something as such that if I don’t put carbohydrate back in them, the truth of the matter is that they’re going to bonk all day long and they’re going to hate my guts. And if I’m not loading them on 12 to 15 grams of salt a day, they’re going to fall apart. But they’re also crazy type A’s who track and measure everything by and large. They’re bio hackers extraordinaire and they come to the table with all this data, and it’s so much data that it’s almost a little overwhelming. And you just simply say, “Eat 100 grams of carbohydrate a day.”

“But I want to be Keto.”

“Let me assure you that if you’re training three hours a day, you’re still going to be Ketogenic.” That’s a totally health and rational approach to a diet for someone who is training at that volume and that intensity. The same for someone who is doing Jiu Jitsu, or Judo or anything that’s really physically exerting. Resistance training is kind of somewhere in the middle honestly, but to them, look at someone who is where I started, 400, 500 pounds. And so you end up eating 100 grams of carbohydrate a day for all that time you spend sitting on your duff, no you don’t. I’m sorry, so what is healthy in one individual, becomes unhealthy in another.

And so I do think we need to be very cognizant of the context in which we speak things or say things to people too. And it’s another kind of pet peeve of mine that we get into in this kind of cottage industry or Ketogenic dieting is we fail to take context into the definition of what we say and do and define for people. And so we have this problem where we say, “A Ketogenic diet is this percentage of this and that percentage of that.” And I’ll be like, “What if I have somebody on a 20 percent caloric deficit?”

Carole Freeman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tyler Cart: “That’s going to change the percentages. Well are you suggesting they need less protein? Because at a minimum, the research data would say keep it the same.” But if you’re to believe some of the stuff that’s come out fairly recently, then people on a deficit actually need more protein as a percentage of their total caloric intake, not less. So, I think Menno Henselmans would disagree with that assertion, but setting that aside, our accounts would agree. But when you look at that model, it’s like, “Why are we so afraid of context?” It’s like we’ve tried to do this reduction ad absurdum sort of an approach to things where we’ve made it … We’ve tried to make it so simple and so boiler plate that it only works for people underneath a very, very narrow curve.

Carole Freeman: Right.

Tyler Cart: And what it does is it makes us look like zealots and sort of pseudo scientists, as opposed to making us look like rationally minded people who genuinely just don’t believe that we need huge doses of carbohydrate for everyday living.

Carole Freeman: Yeah, well and I mean, one of the important things that people need to know about a Ketogenic diet is that there’s, like you said, there’s no “one size fits all.” The term that you use … One of Tyler’s favorite words is context right? You got to tailor to individual and wherever they’re at in their life, and what fitness, what activity they’re doing, what training they’re doing. And what works for somebody when they start out is not going to be the same thing that’s going to be working out for them for a year or five years down the road.

Tyler Cart: Absolutely.

Carole Freeman: Now, I want to go back one thing … You were talking about how much of denial you were in because … Back when you were at your heaviest, that you could still do a six inch push-up or a two inch push-up or something. And I wonder if part of the denial also was because you felt hopeless, right, that you didn’t know a way that you could get out of that, or you didn’t have any confidence. A lot of the people that I talk to, they’ve tried everything out there. And nothing ever works and so, they end up being in denial because the attitude is like, “Well, why try? I’m just going to feel miserable and tired and hungry. I’m just going to gain the weight back, so why even try?” Were you there? Did you have any thoughts like that?

Tyler Cart: I’ve always joked that I’m my biggest critic. I’ve never met anybody, and there’s a writer name John A. Tough who nails this point. Sorry, my phone was apparently not off and so it’s randomly vibrating on the table, which is the most bizarre thing I have every experienced. I was like, “What the heck is going on over there?” He said one time, and I’ll completely paraphrase this and butcher it. So John, if you ever happen to watch this, I’m sorry. He said that he’s never met anybody who’s inner monologue or their inner critic, wasn’t a critic. That it was ever helpful. It’s like nobody’s ever gone, “Gee, Jiminy Cricket voice in the back of my head. Thank you. I hadn’t considered the fact that I was fat and out of shape. Thank you for pointing that out right as I stared at the 24 pack of cookies. I appreciate that.”

Never has that happened in the history of mankind. And so, forgive me. My religious upbringing here will shine, but I heard a pastor say one time, “The first thing the Devil wants you to know is that you have a problem. The second thing he wants you to know is that you’re the only one.” And I think it’s a lot the same thing because that little inner monologue is so good at convincing us that we are the only one that’s defective in that way.

Carole Freeman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tyler Cart: We’re the only one that struggles with will power. We’re the only one who’s ever struggled this problem. “Nobody understands what I’m going through except for me.” And it’s like … I didn’t know any 500 pound people. I didn’t … I had no idea. All I knew were a few things. My wife wanted a child and there was no way in Hades that, that was ever going to happen. So, I’m failing at marriage in a lot of ways. I’m failing as an employee. I’m failing as a son. I’m failing … So why should diet be any different? They talk about, “Nothing succeeds like success,” but I got to tell you, nothing fails like failure either.

Carole Freeman: Yeah.

Tyler Cart: And for somebody who kind of naturally … I call myself “pragmatistic,” but I think that’s just euphemism for “depressive disorder and blunted affect.” Legitimately, there is something to be said for the fact that I’ve battled depression and social anxiety my whole growing up life. I joke that God has a sense of humor, that he makes me extroverted enough that I desperately need the attention and relationship with others, but introverted enough that I like it to be about this far away all the time. It’s like, I don’t really know how to combine those two things together, and so it creates this inner turmoil.

All I knew is that I looked around and in every capacity of things that you could use as an arbitrary scoring system, there wasn’t really any place where I could hang my hat and go, “You know, well, he’s not very good at anything, but daggonit, his bathing habits are meticulous.” What is the thing that I’m supposed to use as the launching point for that success? And there really wasn’t anything. For me, and I’m a science nerd. I’ve joked before or pointed out before I guess, I’ve got like 2,300 or so books. And I read everything.

And I just came to a point where I had to turn it almost into a science experiment. It was like I had to remove myself from this and turn myself into a subject. Like N equals one. Now that you’ve walked over and stared down into the abyss for the last 10 years of your life, can you step back from the ledge? How far back from the ledge can you actually step? Is it possible to go from death’s doorstep back to a place of relative health or fitness or whatever term we want to use to kind of euphemistically name that. But it’s tough because there was no history of success. You know, they talk about basketball players and they go on fire. They hit one and they just feel like they can hit everything. And so they’re shooting with confidence. And they’re mechanics are proper and what do you say to somebody whose goal …

When I first sat down Carole, when I first sat down to do this, I was like, “I’m going to make some goals.” My first goal, and I probably could find the journal if I ever went and looked as I write everything down, was “I want to be able to walk on a treadmill for 30 seconds without getting out of breath.” And then it became, “I want to be able to walk on a treadmill for five minutes without pain.” And you know, it would be a situation where after a minute on a treadmill, I had a bead of sweat going down to my navel or what I thought was a navel. It was kind of hard to see at the time. And the same down the back side of me. And it’s like, “Well, this is where I’m starting.” Right?

I think the biggest problem is, for me to start, I had to remove the veneer where the six inch push-up was enough for me to say, “I’m healthy.” Right? I had to strip away the mask that I wore in front of everybody where I was really strong and I could still lumber up and down hills at 500 pounds and do all the stuff I wanted to do. It’s like, I had to remove all that and become very, very vulnerable because when you set foot in a gym … I joke sometimes and I’ll say, you know, everybody wears the Princess Leia headphones at the gym. It’s like the international sign of, “I don’t want to be bothered, leave me alone.” And they’re so busy taking selfies most of the time, they don’t even know you’re there.

When a 500 pound guy walks on a treadmill that’s rated for 300 pounds, the whole place, including the ownership, goes … And they’re just sort of waiting for the treadmill to collapse or for something bad to happen. And it’s just like … That was kind of that anticipatory response or whatever. And it’s like, “You have to just lay it all on the table.” So it’s not the same as for somebody with 15 or 20 pounds, vanity weight so to speak, that they want to lose. Not that, that’s any easier sometimes for those people to strip that same veneer off, but it is a different sort of veneer.

To be able to walk in and just say, “I realize I have cottage cheese thighs and I’m wearing spandex and you’re just going to have to be okay with that.” You know, to be able to walk in and be like, “I may break this machine. This thing may break underneath me like the chair at the Mexican restaurant, but by God, this is … I’m planning a [inaudible 00:34:34] and I’m going to do this.” It’s not easy. And the problem is, it’s not a one time decision, it’s an every damn day when you wake up kind of a decision where you got to plant the flag again and say, “I’m choosing to do this in spite of all the other things that are naturally kind of … That there’s a natural anatropic pull back into doing that because this is what I’ve done for all of my growing up.

This is how I’ve coped with all my growing up. And now, I’m not eating pizza to deal with problems? Now I’m hitting a heavy bag? Now I’m doing medicine ball squats? Now I’m doing woodchopper on a cable? Now I’m going for hikes up a hill? What kind of crap is this?” There is legitimately … There is a part of you that almost has to forfeit the identity that you’ve crafted for yourself.

Carole Freeman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

Tyler Cart: Compared to completely forming a new identity.

Carole Freeman: Yeah.

Tyler Cart: And you have to accept the fact that there are going to be parts of you that will always remain in the old identity, and that you’re just going to have to learn to live with the duality of positions that you are. To be the fat athlete. To be the in shape obese guy. To be the … Whatever term you want to use. You have to just accept those things and deal with the tension that they create in you from an emotional perspective.

Carole Freeman: So how did you make that transition? Was it just you hit the little goals you made and each day making that decision? Did you just find Keto and that’s what you committed to or did you try something else first and … What was …

Tyler Cart: People say things like, “Oh, you can’t gain weight on Keto.” That’s crap. Yes you can. Let me assure you, I am one of a handful of people that I know who gained a lot of weight on Keto. Not initially, but when you get to a point where you … I’ve said before, sometimes people get offended when I say this. Not counting calories, not being concerned with energy, eating … That stuff does work until it doesn’t work.

Carole Freeman: Right.

Tyler Cart: And when it doesn’t work, that’s the time that you have to step back and say, “Am I just genuinely eating too much? Is my stomach distended and I need to start eating smaller portions to allow myself to feel more satiated in terms of actual volume in my gut? By just dealing with some discomfort of hunger for some period of time and allowing my brain to learn that hunger isn’t the end of the world and all of that kind of stuff. So for me, it became this sort of, I was my own pet rat. I was kind of my own little science experiment rodent model. And so, it was, “Let’s see what I can make Tyler do today. If I shock his left foot, let’s see how high he jumps.”

Legitimately, it was almost treating myself like an out-of-body experience. That it was just an opportunity … And I know that, that probably sounds wildly irrational and you’re going to have a psychiatrist or somebody watch this and be like, “He’s suffering from schizoid disorder,” or something ridiculous. Legitimately, it was just easier than having to admit and deal with the fact that I was where I was. That it allowed me to kind of step outside of myself and make myself do this. And the writing it all down and recording it in science type journals and logs. And I did this and this was the volume calculation. It really made it more of a science experiment than it made it an everyday thing that I had to get up and do.

And for me that works. For others, I’ve had this conversation with clients and they’ll say, “Well, that sounds stupid.” And I’m like, “It is stupid, but it’s a stupid that worked. So now we just have to figure out what your stupid that works is and we’re good right?” And so we go through this first three or four weeks of where people go, “I hate you and this is stupid. I’m hungry, I’m mad, I’m cranky, I’m sore. I’m all these things.” And I’ll be like, “You know, but here’s the thing.” And I’ll remind them. I’ll copy that email maybe 12 weeks, maybe 16 weeks after we’ve been working together and I’ll literally paste it in there and it will say, “I’m so upset right now. I haven’t lost any weight. Maybe I’ve lost a few inches. I’m cranky, I’m tired, I’m sore, I’m mad dot, dot, dot. No you’re changed.”

And people just don’t understand that if you can endure the difficulty of this thing, this stripping away of this false self-identity that you’ve given yourself and to embrace the fact that it’s okay to suck at being the thing that you’re trying to be. We’re so used to being really good at who we are that when we try to become something different … And it’s hard because people don’t like change. And I don’t mean we don’t like changing ourselves. People are around us that we think are going to support our change, don’t like change. And so they start saying things that are well meaning like, “You lose anymore weight, you’re going to just float away.

Carole Freeman: Yeah.

Tyler Cart: I just want to be, “Trick, I weigh 300 pounds. It’d have to be a hurricane breeze to blow me over.” There’s a part of you that says, “Are you insane? Why are you saying these things? Because you don’t realize the consequences of a little de motivational value of doing that. Why don’t you just do yourself a favor and not talk to me for a while if you’re going to say things like this.” But you do get to a point where it’s like, “Okay, you have to embrace that I’m going to be terrible at being the new me for a while. I’m going to fail.”

And the trick is just to fail forward. Right? To do more right things than wrong things and to give yourself the grace and to bathe it in forgiveness as opposed to guild and shame when you screw up. And to get back on the horse and do it again. And just keep at it and keep at it until eventually you star to kind of form this version of you and you go, “Wait a minute, I’m very different than I used to be, but I’m no longer a beginner at being very different than I used to be. I’m not ridiculously good at being this person that I wanted to be.

I posted something on Facebook the other day. Somebody shared with me a little charm that they wear on their wrist and it says something like, “She thought she could and so she did.” I wanted to respond and I bit my tongue because I was like, “Don’t be that guy.” But I’ll say it here because safety right? I just wanted to say, “What if she thought she couldn’t and she did it anyway?” How freaking powerful would that be? Because the truth of the matter is, I had no idea what was going to happen. I had no idea if I was going to die of a heart attack in the gym and they were going to find burn marks on my chest from the defibrillator not working.

The worst thing about being dead, is being dead and extra crispy. I mean, that would be terrible. It’s like I don’t want that, but I know that I’m facing that inevitability either way. And so at some point, the price of change became equal or lesser than the difficulty or the price of remaining exactly where I was. And so I was willing to take on that mantle and just be the flailing idiot in the gym for a while until I kind of figured out what I was doing. And that’s what worked for me. Maybe that will help someone who’s equally neurotic as me. I don’t know.

Carole Freeman: Yeah, okay. So just figuring out what it is. Knowing your own personality or trying enough different things to figure out what works for, what gets you going, what keeps you going. And like you said, doing more things right than you’re doing wrong and know that you’re going to do things wrong and that’s part of the process.

Tyler Cart: If you’re not doing something wrong every day, you’re not pushing yourself. I mean seriously, you’re not trying enough new stuff. We get … We talk about these like, “Oh it’s a journey, it’s a journey.” But the truth of the matter is, life’s a journey with no destination. It’s like we get fixated on this idea that, “Oh when I make it, when I get there.” And it’s always that “if, then” talk. Right? It’s like, “If I can bench press body weight, then I’m going to be strong. If I can fit into the same pants I wore in high school, then I’m going …”

Have self-worth now. Seriously, have a sense of pride now. Screw the jeans. I mean seriously, just be proud of who you are now and embrace the fact that you suck at something and try it. And if it’s not for you, yeah take your list of things that suck for Carole or suck for Tyler, and draw a line through it, “This sucks.” And then move the next thing. Be like, “Oh, I’m going to try this now. And I’m going to try this now.” And if that’s eating Keto, if that’s eating vegan, there’s a smart way to eat vegan. You don’t have to be crazy and foolish in the way that you approach a strict vegetarian or a vegan diet. You don’t have to be crazy in the way that you approach a Keto diet. You don’t have to be crazy in the way that you approach a gym.

Rob’s been on your show before and you know, Rob Wolf will tell you, “I hate working out in a gym.” He’s like, “I love Jiu Jitsu that’s what does it for me. So, that’s what I do.” I’ve kind of tried …

Carole Freeman: You just kept reading my mind. I’m like, “The next question I’m going to ask …” And you just start answering it before you even ask it. Because I was going to ask about Keto gains. I think the perception is, you guys are all about lifting weights in the gym, but something I saw the other day was … I think it might have been Mike Berta that commented this about, “You guys just encourage people to do the type of activity that they actually like and enjoy right?”

Tyler Cart: Look, I want to say it was [inaudible 00:44:40] or one of those guys who said one time that, “The best diet is the one you’ll effing stick to.” And I think that there’s some truth about that as it relates to activity and exercise also, right? There is absolutely no sense in being miserable in a relationship. There’s no sense in being miserable in an occupation. And there is no sense in being miserable in an activity. If the hobby or the activity that you’re doing to try and improve your life is making your life tangibly worse, find a new way to do it.

I mean, seriously. And I think it’s the same kind of thing. It’s like there’s this perception I think out there that Keto Gains is full of meatheads and … I mean, the demographics, we’re I think 63 percent women between the ages of 24 and 64. Statistically speaking, that’s not a true statement, but setting that aside, the thing that we’re about is just helping to empower people to get to wherever they want to go. That’s what it really amounts to. We use the words “gains” because we started as sort of how to lift weights and do Keto. And then over time, we realized something. There’s a desperate need in this society for people to learn just how freaking powerful they can be and that they don’t have to be the victims of life, but can be victorious over life.

And I feel like I’m a cliché machine right now, and I’m sorry, but it is true. There is something to be said for physical strength affecting emotional and mental strength as well. That there is something to be said for being able to endure the time in a gym or time at a Jiu Jitsu gym, or a time in any kind of martial arts studio, or a time hiking, or a time wrestling with your kids or your grandkids in the front lawn or whatever it is that’s the thing that you do. If that empowers you to know just how awesome you are as a person, and that, that has downstream effects on your kids, and your grandkids, and your work, and your hobbies, and your social stratosphere if you will. The folks that depend and expect of you, your friends and family.

If that is affected, then thank you curls, thank you squats, thank you oso togari, thank you whatever that thing is that you’re doing. Because this just became exocentional and stopped being purely transactional. It became a thing that it formed another part of the thing right? And I think there’s a reason when you look back at things like … Martial arts is a good example. That they have a spiritual element coupled with a physical element. Those two things are very, very hard to separate.

And when someone feels powerful, even just to be told that you’re powerful and that you have the choice to make a choice in any decision that you make. And that not choosing is in effect, a way of not choosing. There is something liberating about that. And that’s what we’re about. That’s what we want to see for people is that they don’t live as a shell of themselves, but instead that they squeeze every freaking drop of life that they’ve got left in them. Wow that sounded like a marketing pitch and it really wasn’t, I promise.

Carole Freeman: No that’s great. I think this is important message just for everybody and the mission that you guys have is wonderful. And I think it’s really great to be able to get this message out there too. Because I know you guys have a reputation online for poking the bear and stirring up controversy a little bit.

Tyler Cart: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Carole Freeman: So, it’s good to see the gentler, kinder side and the true you. I’m going to say this is … Actually I think all of that is you, but you’re a very kind and compassionate person despite what some people might say.

Tyler Cart: I have a pathological need to get to the truth about things. Right? And I don’t think we do ourselves any favors by speaking about them euphemistically and I don’t think we do ourselves any favors by closeting them in lagnuage that lacks definition. And sometimes that gets us in trouble for sure, myself being sometimes the chief culprit of simply saying, “I don’t know what that means.” There’s a line from Hot Shots, is it “chee to, Velveeta, knuckle underwear.” I mean those are words, but they don’t mean anything when you stick them together. That doesn’t form a complete sentence.

And so, again, we’re just such a rejectionist culture within the Keto sphere in general by nature, that we need to be careful and cognizant because some science or what is mascaraing as science, shouldn’t be trusted, does not mean that all science doesn’t need to be trusted. And that we can live in a world of unicorns and farting snowflakes that say, “Well it works for me.” Well, I mean yes, there is a certain element of bio individuality and epigenetics and all sorts of stuff, but the vast, vast, vast majority of physiologic functions and biochemical functions of a human being, they’re similar. We’re all homo sapiens.

Ultimately the way we stay alive, the way we respirate, the way we energize cells, the way that we locomote, the way that we ingest energy in, that we release waste. All of those things are all functionally the same. And so, if we’re going to spend all this time babbling in the point zero, zero, zero five percent of ways we’re different, we’re never going to get outside as being seen as loonies who are high on woo woo because they’re not wrong when they make those claims. And by “they” I mean sort of mainstream research science.

When we start say, “Things like calories don’t matter.” And we start saying things like that, “Calories in, calories out’s a busted model.” Well, you’re just beating up a straw man because energy balance in unequivocally a thing and absolutely matters. When we say things like, “A Ketogenic Diet is dot, dot, dot,” we need to step back and considered if we’re talking to an 80 year old geriatric or a 20 year old Olympian. Realistically the answer to that after that ellipses is going to be filled in, is completely contingent upon the context of the individual of whom we’re talking.

So, yeah, I get in trouble for being that guy, but it’s with the best of intentions. I’ve referred to myself before as the most benevolent of trolls. And so yeah, I guess that’s the truth of the matter.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. So let’s talk just a little bit about the protein thing because you guys sometimes have been very … Let’s see, what’s the right word? People want to paint you guys in the corner like, “You guys are the protein boys and the high protein group.” I know that’s not true. I mean, when I was in school, we learned a basic equation to figure out protein requirements of the human body is point eight to one point zero gram per kilogram. And I think you guys are probably right around that range, and that’s just what we were taught as the basic protein needs of the human body. And definitely, we were talking about a little bit before we went on recording too. So tell us a little bit more about, are you guys all about high protein, more protein, better and shoveling as much as you can?

Tyler Cart: Let me start by saying this. There is a point at which protein can effect ketogenesis unequivocally. And as we were talking before we went on air here, the point at which that would happen is so insufferably awful to have to get to that it’s very, very unlikely that you would ever get there. I caution and am very careful, and I think I would have Steve Phillips and Donna Langdon’s backing on this point when I say, the risks of chronic under consumption of protein since it’s the only source of exogenous nitrogen, unless you’re going to eat dirt or fertilizer, that you can possibly get in a human body, vastly overestimator, vastly overreach and concerns about moderate over consumption of protein.

So I want to start there. There is nothing inherently harmful about eating upwards to two, three or even four grams per kilogram of protein as it relates to kidney function, as it relates to oxidation of sub straight. It just means more protein’s going to get used for energy and that you’re going to poop more of it out when it’s all passed through the gut and all that fun stuff. The truth of the matter is, it’s not harmful. It’s only harmful when viewed through the lens that, “Oh, we’re ketogenic and protein is anti-ketogenic and therefore, we need to be concerned or cognizant about that.” And so, people have latched onto this construct of gluconeogenesis and they say, “Too much protein causes an increase in gluconeogenesis,” which you’ve sometimes seen distilled down.

And I think it’s a little unfair with the expression of, “Excess protein turns into chocolate cake,” or whatever it is. And it’s like, if that were true, one could in theory, protein themselves into diabetes. And yet, we don’t ever see that actually happening physiologically even in extremely high protein consumption communities like the bro culture of power lifting and that sort of space. And even more so, those that are using performance enhancing drugs where protein breakdown is actually diminished and the demand for absolute protein is actually less in those people. Yet they’re still consuming two and three and four grams per kilogram of protein. Those people should be full on diabetic at some point in their lives as a consequence of those things.

Now, the humor being most of them are on metformin and insulin, but they’re on metformin and insulin for very, very different reasons regardless of what they’re actual clinical diagnosis say, but …

Carole Freeman: You’re right. Actually that’s a very interesting thought because you’ve got a camp out there that excessive carbohydrates causes insulin resistance diabetes. And then you’ve got another camp that saying, “No, it’s fat. Too much fat does.” But, I haven’t seen anybody with the argument of, “No it’s too much protein that’s causing diabetes.” I just realized that.

Tyler Cart: One of the things that when you get into it, is that there is a kind of a jumping off point at which protein is consistently … When view in isolation, protein is consistently seen as the most satiating of all of the macronutrients. Who will go, “Oh, I’m so much fuller on fat.” Well the reason is because fat has what, two and a quarter times as many calories per gram. And so from an energetic perspective, you’re absolutely getting the same, but when I look at it form an isocaloric perspective, consuming 100 grams of fat versus consuming 360 or so grams of protein, eating a pound of chicken breast versus eating what is effectively three tablespoons of peanut butter, I’m sorry, but volumetrics alone is going to tell me that the protein is going to keep you fuller longer if you’re not being disingenuous.

But the problem that I have with the GNGR gluconeogenesis or the protein to cake argument is that if gluconeogenesis is actually what they call substrate driven or supply driven, which there’s really no human research data to support or corroborate that it’s really effected by the consumption of the macronutrients. But rather maybe the hormone, the consequences of that substrate, is that if that were true, well glycerol back bones from fat are absolutely readily taken up into the gluconeogenic process and turned into glucose. Just as the glucogenic amino acids.

And the same is true for lactate. Hello kitty tail. You know, is the same situation. And so, the reality is, one could over fat themselves into diabetes if this were true, or one could overexercise themselves into diabetes and we don’t see any of those being true. And so, you have to step back and say, “Maybe it’s not, maybe it’s regulated by hormones or maybe it’s regulated by the fact that evolutionarily speaking, it was there to keep us alive, to keep us from becoming hypoglycemic during times of semi-starvation so that we could run fast enough to go chase down a bird and get something for dinner. Or that we had enough energy to build a structure and a fire so that we didn’t freeze to death.”

I mean, functionally speaking, it’s not … I think it’s the D.R. Carlson who said one time, “A text without context is a pre-text for a subtext,” or something to that effect, or “subtext to a pretext.” I don’t remember. Anyway, but the point being that when we look at GNG separate of its evolutionary function, it becomes really easy to go, “Oh, well too much protein’s problem.” Well I could make the same argument that eating 3,000 calories of fat bombs is just as damning by the same logic by the same metabolic pathway as too much protein.

Now, setting my nerdy rant aside for the minute, the thing that I would point out, I think that it’s kind of a perception versus reality thing because we have lots of folks who like to flex and look very muscular and again, maybe law of attraction. Right? Muscular people talk to muscular people, that sort of a thing, whatever. And so the community has a lot of people who are very strong and very, very muscular, but the truth of the matter is, our protein recommendations are actually lower than those recommended by doctors [inaudible 00:59:59] and Bolick in both of their books.

So, the idea, and it we’ve been politely shouted down by people calling us “meatheads” and that our definition of protein is high protein and that everything else is moderate. First of all, I think those definitions really fly in the face of the word context that I mentioned before, but even if they didn’t, unless somebody’s prepared to call Steve and Finny a “high protein advocate” or “a bro” or a “protein Nazi” or whatever term they want to label.

I don’t understand why the same labels are applied to those guys other than the fact that they don’t look like they do a lot of heavy resistance training. And I’ll step back and say, Jeff Bolick absolutely did and can probably still out deadlift me if I had to take a guess, but he’s not a guy that walks around in a pair of spandex shorts with his sticky bun headphones on. That’s just not his nature either. So, I think it’s important to separate reality from perception. And when we see somebody where you may have had a previous history with a big mean bully who was twice your size. And you see twice your size, you automatically paint them into a [inaudible 01:01:17] light and say, “Oh, well they’re everything I don’t like about this, and therefore, it’s kind of fundamental attribution error to some degree.

Everything we say is run through the filter of, “You’re a bad person. You’re a mean person. You’re a steroid junkie. You’re a fill in the blank.” All because why? Somebody told them that our recommendations were high protein, when in reality, by any objective measure, they are moderate if we can use euphemistic terms to honestly somewhat low. Now, the argument being, “Hey, they’re twice the RDA.” Okay, does anybody in their right mind seriously believe that the recommended intakes from traditional labels really adequately encapsulate the protein requirements of a normal human being?

Carole Freeman: Yeah, most people don’t understand where the RDA even originated.

Tyler Cart: Exactly.

Carole Freeman: It meets the needs of half the population, not …

Tyler Cart: Exactly and …

Carole Freeman: You know, they keep you from dying basically.

Tyler Cart: This is what I was going to say. If we don’t want to get [inaudible 01:02:24], eat this much. If you don’t want to get scurvy, consume this much.

Carole Freeman: It’s what will keep half of the population from dying. Not even 80 percent of the population.

Tyler Cart: Not even close to an ideal definition of the word. And so, is there a place for a lower protein intake that we recommend? Probably, but do we have any issues, generally speaking, with folks? No, the only place that I would really caveat that would be to say, “Look, if you’re dealing with nerve degenerative disorders; if you’re dealing with an epileptic disorder; if you’re using this as an agimate therapy for cancer treatment; if you’re doing these things, you’re way outside the curve. I mean, let me be very, very transparent here and no one should be giving you recommendations outside of a confident medical professional. I’m sorry, they just shouldn’t.

Carole Freeman: No.

Tyler Cart: And that’s where you start to see those three to one and four to one ratio Ketogenic dieting. And yeah, unequivocally, one of … You know, my cousin’s daughter, I don’t even know what that ameks her biologically. I’m not good at … Apart from aunt or niece … I think it’s second cousin maybe, I don’t know.

Carole Freeman: It might be, yeah. Once removed.

Tyler Cart: Yeah, is dealing with a seizure disorder, a very young child, and the hospital has her on, I believe a three to one right now, but I have no business telling her, “You’ve got to bulk that baby up. Put her on a one point two gram …” No, it’s way outside of the scope of my practice. It should never come out of my mouth and generally speaking, won’t ever come out of my mouth unless you’re just asking me to go, “Hey your doctor’s not an incompetent imbecile.”

But yeah, the protein thing is honestly so overplayed. I think it’s … I was talking a while back to someone and I said, “The real frustration is, we seriously continue to fight ourselves over 10 or 15 grams of protein a day.”

Carole Freeman: Yeah.

Tyler Cart: Is this really a thing that we need to allow ourselves to continue to be divided about? And do I have opinions? Of course. And no offense Carole, I’m sure if we spend some time together, we’re going to figure out a whole bunch of things we disagree on too, but I can maintain a friendship and we can have an academic discussion about the relative merits of two things and then walk away with differing views. We don’t have to necessarily argue for a place of agreement. We can just simply argue to be understood sometimes. And that’s okay.

Carole Freeman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tyler Cart: But as a Low Carb USA, actually where I first met you face to face, which was awesome by the way, and those guys put on a great show. And we’re going to be speaking next year, so go team.

Carole Freeman: Oh, congrats, nice.

Tyler Cart: We’ll be at Low Carb San Diego next year, Lisa and I both, but we went to ask a couple of questions of Doctor [inaudible 01:05:06] after the presentation and I heard these folks in the aisle. And Rob was standing behind me and heard it too and just kind of chuckled. One of our administrators of the group asked a question about how we tend to see over time, a decrease in ketone levels of people who are in chronic ketosis. And these three folks over there, I heard under it go, “Oh, it’s the protein.” And I was like, “I don’t even know where to start.” First of all, is it just the fact that Ken is muscular that makes you automatically assume, because truthfully, he probably eats less protein than anyone else in our group.

I mean the guy would fit in just fine with some of Rosedale’s recommendations on protein quite frankly. He’s just not a big protein guy. He’s just naturally got a very large set of shoulders and biceps.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. He lives pretty close to me it turns out too. So, I’m hoping I get to hang out with him at the Ancestral House Symposium coming up here.

Tyler Cart: He is a brilliant, brilliant guy.

Carole Freeman: Yeah.

Tyler Cart: I absolutely encourage that, but you know the humor in all this was, I wanted to say, “But even if I yield the point that gluconeogenesis happens and that’s why the lower ketones are there, or whatever, let’s do the math on the absolute amount of glucose that can come from the amount of protein that Ken would be consuming, given what we know about the rates of GNG.” And it’s three grams or so, maybe four grams of glucose, new glucose. So I’m like, “Do we really … Have we really reached a point where we’re prepared to make three grams of glucose, a hell upon which we’re prepared to die?

Carole Freeman: Because people eat more than that with the little bit of their bacon every day right?

Tyler Cart: And that’s my point. And what makes me just want to go, “Ahh” is I go, “Hold on a second, how on hell’s bells are we going to actually affect change in the way the average American eats over the next 20 or 30 years?” If we’re continuing to fight amongst ourselves [inaudible 01:07:11] about something so nuanced and stupid, and I’m sorry it’s stupid, that we can’t ever present a united front, even when it’s necessary and would benefit the greater purpose of what we’re trying to say, which is very simply, you eat too much sugar, and you stay inside, and you don’t do anything.

Be a little more active, eat a little less sugar and go sit in the sun for a while every so often, you’d be surprised how 80 percent of those conditions and problems that you’re dealing with probably will just wither away. But we’re so busy fighting amongst ourselves, that we don’t get a chance to lock arms and say, “Hey, on these following topics, we all completely agree.” And that, it breaks my hear, because how many people are going to die from complications from diabetes before we stop arguing and start trying to find points of agreement? It just, it makes no sense.

Carole Freeman: Yup, good points. Now, just putting a nice bow on all of this and wrapping this all up. Was there anything else you were hoping that I would ask you about, or you were wanting to share all the world out there.

Tyler Cart: I don’t think there is. I’ve sufficiently ranted for the last hour. I think you got three questions in, which may be a record for podcast with me on it, but …

Carole Freeman: I get the most questions asked of you?

Tyler Cart: Yeah, I will send you … Your award is in the mail don’t worry. No look, I think that the reality is, is this … I posted this today. People will say, “What if I fail?” I find myself saying, “What if you never start?” What if you live in this place where you feel trapped inside of a 300, a 400, a 600 pound body and you know that inside of there, is a person that wants to live life in a way that you’re in prison. I mean, you simply can’t. And you’re saying to yourself, “What if I do this and I fail?” “Hell, what if you never begin?”

Carole Freeman: Yeah.

Tyler Cart: You know, one more oversized coffin chucked in the ground, you know? Write on the tombstone, “Here lies so and so who never did anything, but had really good plans for what she was going to do with the rest of her life.” It’s like, “How sad, how difficult, how …” It’s almost like when you see someone commit suicide and you find yourself talking about it and you say, “Well how could he have done this” or “How could she have done this?” Don’t die without living, you know? And forgive me for turning this into an alter call, but I mean seriously, had somebody not been honest and transparent with me and said, “It’s okay to fail. It’s not okay to not try.” I probably would have never gotten off the couch and started down the path that I’m on.

Truthfully, the bottom line is I just wish people that people would stop being so damn afraid of trying something, so afraid at failing at something that they never give it an honest effort or an honest try. And to just strip away the fact that, look, life’s going to kick you in the shins and the only real question is if you can kick back as hard as you take or whether you’re going to lay there and take it. And I would just encourage anyone who listens to this. Seriously, fight. To go Dillon Thomas on you raging, it’s the dying of the light or whatever, but seriously, it’s like you have the only key to get out of the prison that you’re in, but whether you choose to open the door and walk out of it is completely up to you.

And there are people like you and like our community and a host of other communities that are out there that are ready to help and cheer you on and be your biggest advocates and greatest sources of fist bumps and bro hugs and whatever else. But, it’s up to you to take the mask off and be transparent and honest about where you are and work towards trying to improve. So yeah.

Carole Freeman: Yeah and you’re making me think about … We have this thing that for some reason with diet, we have this mentality of, we do it for a while, but if we fail then we just throw in the towel and go all in and go, “Oh I screwed up. I might as well just keep eating junk food.” And I think it was … I was trying to remember who was telling me this analogy. Were you there? I think it was Dave Feldman was saying how it’s kind of like the same thing of how, if you accidentally bump into a car and you crash into a car, and he says, “You don’t just give up and go, ‘Oh, I hit that car, I might as well just keep running into all the other cars that are parked down the road.'” Why is it with diet and exercise is the thing that we do that. We go, “Oh forget it, I’ll just give up,” instead of going, “Oh, I just hit that one, I can get back on the road the rest of the way.”

Tyler Cart: You know, I’ll say this and I don’t want to turn this into a five minute rant, so I won’t, but eating … Disorder eating is really weird. When you deal with a cocaine addict, we say, “It would probably be a really good idea if you never touched cocaine again and probably didn’t use a lot of opiate derivatives in general. And oh, by the way, you probably shouldn’t try heroin or meth because addictive personalities tend to be addictive personalities, right?” Those are probably good sage advices, but when you deal with somebody who’s addicted to eating for whatever reason, compulsion, actual addiction, whatever, it’s … You can’t just say, “Never eat again.” You kind of have to help to figure out how …

So yeah, it’s … I think that the closest analogy that you can find is honestly almost like drug addiction where one person had one bender. Right? And then all of a sudden it becomes, “Well, I’ve got to turn in my sobriety chip, so I might as well have a few more along the way before I get silver again or before I get straight again. And it’s like, it breaks my heart, but that’s the montra that we have, and it honestly just goes to show how poor a job we’ve done at helping people to cope and deal with the challenges and struggles in their lives.

It challenges me to be a better friend. It challenges me to be a better family member. It challenges me to be a better dad and a husband and all of this stuff because I don’t want that baggage to be things that my friends have to go through alone. I don’t want them to have to understand or to be allowed to have that mentality without going, “Hey you know, fact check here. Let’s step back.” But yeah, no, you’re exactly right, it’s … We have this all or nothing sort of bumper cars mentality with pizza. And it’s like, “Why is it pizza? Why is it ice cream?” I think Mary and Nestle would probably have a an opinion on why that is with some other food politics and the marketing stuff, but I’ll leave that be.

Carole Freeman: Yeah, all right. One final question for you. The meteor’s coming for the Earth today, we’re all going to die sometime today. What’s you’re final meal?

Tyler Cart: You know, here’s the thing. I was at a random steak house in Virginia, actually. I don’t even know what the name of the place is. We had maybe had a few drinks before we went there and I will neither confirm nor deny whether it or not. The [inaudible 01:15:12] bone-in rib eye that I don’t know if Jesus himself said a prayer over this rib eye or if the cow was massaged by professional massage therapist and fed only select saki. I don’t know where the holy cow came from, but all I can say is this.

That was the single greatest steak I have ever eaten in my life. Now, it may have had something to do with the herb butter that they apply liberally to the top of this thing, but I have to say unequivocally that a bone-in rib eye from wherever this restaurant is in Northern Virginia who shall forever remain nameless, I want. And so now every time that I’m back there or work reasons, I will literally cruise through the area that I think it is trying to find this place. And I have never found it again. So it’s like that episode … Was it Friends where like … No I take it back. It was How I Met Your Mother where they had, had the world’s greatest cheeseburger, but couldn’t remember where it was. That’s basically where I’ve found myself for like the last 10 years. So, it would absolutely be a bone-in rib eye with herb butter and probably grilled asparagus I had to be honest.

Carole Freeman: So basically, the meteor’s coming, you’d be in your car driving there trying to find it desperately.

Tyler Cart: Yeah, if I got nine hours, I’m going by car. If I’ve got nine minutes, I’m going by … I’ll hijack a concord. But that would be definitely … I’m a beef guy, so beef would be at the top of the list for certain.

Carole Freeman: Nice. Well Tyler, thank you so much for being here and sharing everything so honestly. And we’ll put the contact info below in the show notes there if people want to get some more information about you, how to work with you and the boot camps and everything else that you guys have coming up too. So, thank you so much. If you guys like this, give it a thumbs up. Well, you can only give us one thumbs up. So give a thumbs up.

Tyler Cart: Create a second account and give a second thumbs up and another view.

Carole Freeman: Yes and subscribe if you want to see more. And what’s your last .. What’d you say?

Tyler Cart: I said, create a second account and then watch it twice so it gets two more hits and some more likes and we’re good.

Carole Freeman: Yeah, yeah. Comment and all that kind of good stuff down there. Thank you everyone for watching. Tyler, thank you so much, it’s been a pleasure and we’ll be seeing you more soon I know.

Tyler Cart: Sounds good.

Carole Freeman: All right. Take care.

Tyler Cart: Bye guys.