S2_EP_33: How To Eat Organ Meats, Image Issues in Fitness and More with Ashleigh VanHouten

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Transcript:

Flex Diet Podcast Ashleigh

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, eat, organ meats, liver, meat, animal, book, cookbooks, carnivore, organs, recipe, big, day, talking, healthy, muscle, bad, women, bit, hypertrophy

SPEAKERS

Michael Nelson

Michael Nelson  00:00

Welcome back to the flex diet podcast. As always, thank you so much for listening today we’ve got a great program, awesome interview with Ashley Yvonne Houghton about her new book called, it takes guts, which yes is about eating all parts of the animal. But we talked about why organ meats are kind of becoming a little bit more popular now, dare I say? why they’ve have not really been popular in the past, the role in fitness different ways that you can prepare them. I gave her my question about how I should prepare liver that I’ve had in my freezer for quite some time. And we even take a few tyrants and rants about the fitness industry, body image training for females versus males, and much more. I always enjoy talking to her. I’ve been on her podcast a few times. And so it was great to have her on the flex diet podcast here. So as always, the flex diet podcast is brought to you by the flex diet certification, you can go to flex diet.com. And you’ll be able to enroll in the free newsletter there at the top where it says join the waitlist. This will also enable you to know the next time that the flex diet certification opens up, you’ll be one of the first people to be notified. So go to flex diet.com flxdiet.com. Sign up to the free newsletter and by all means drop me a reply there. I would love to hear from you. And enjoy this interview with Ashley. Alright, so welcome back to the podcast, my good friend Ashley van hooten. Is that right?

02:01

Pretty close man Houghton. Yeah. Van Houghton.

Michael Nelson  02:03

Okay. And we’re gonna talk about her new book, which is about eating all parts of the cow, which is awesome.

02:11

Yes.

Michael Nelson  02:12

Yeah. So thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. I know, you’ve been kind enough to have me on your podcast a lot. So now I get to interview you with all my questions.

02:21

Yeah, it’s kind of cool to be on the other side. We’ll see how this goes.

Michael Nelson  02:24

Yeah. And you’re doing okay. And in Canada, they’re so far hanging out. Yeah, I

02:29

mean, you know, we talked offline, I could complain all day, but what’s the point? It’s like, stuff kind of sucks. But it also could be worse. And that’s kind of the approach I’m trying to take to it but it could always be worse. And you know, I think the one advantage going into a second winter of this is that at least we know a little bit more right? And if nothing else, we know a little bit more about how we personally can handle uncertainty or you know, a total mess up of our lives. So I’m like doing better with the improved home gym from last January and you know, being a little bit more disciplined in how I work at home and making sure I go out for walks every day. Yeah, for my sanity. So yeah, so I think I’m like handling it pretty good. All things considered. It still sucks but you know, what are you gonna do?

Michael Nelson  03:18

Yeah, what do you have a new in the home gym? No.

03:21

Okay, so the two big ones so I’ve always had for years I had a little individual Infrared Sauna which I love and I love to use we talked about this before about I’m not super into like the ice bath situation I prefer to go the heat route living in a cold place so I’m having a sauna you know in the winter is beautiful. So I’ve always had that and then like some dumbbells and kettlebells and things like that, but this year we got a pull up bar nice because that’s one of my favorite movements. I wrote a whole program trying to get people to do pull ups so I want to have one of those. And then the other big one is we bought a bob so the like guy the rubber guy that you can punch.

Michael Nelson  04:02

Oh, his name is got a name Bob. I was like we bought a bob I’m like What are you talking about? This is a Canadian thing.

04:08

I honestly, I have a different name. I’ve given him the name of one of my favorite MMA fighters But

Michael Nelson  04:13

anyways,

04:14

well it’s actually a woman Valentina. Shevchenko. Okay, so she doesn’t look like valance idea is there, but I’ve always done you know, when back in the before times when we could go to gyms and you know, touch other people I started off with jujitsu, really you jitsu and also boxing, those are sort of the two martial arts that I really enjoy or you know, you know, and I just like really love like learning a skill. It’s cathartic. I get to punch things I get to, you know, learn, I think practical defense skills, like they’re just really practical, really fun sports that I enjoy doing, and I was going to classes and then that shut down. And I really wanted a skill based thing to Do That wasn’t just going in my gym and just playing around with dumbbells because I like that. But I mean, it does get it does get a little monotonous. So yeah, so we bought this guy that we can punch on all day long. And it’s been very good for my relationship and

Michael Nelson  05:16

nice. Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. And yeah, so transitioning to nutrition stuff. Like, just tell us about like, how did how did the book even get started? Because it’s, I think the timing of it is perfect. But I know there’s a lot of lead up to actually getting something published to so

05:38

yeah, in this case, I think I had a really a typical writing and publishing story, honestly. Because my window of like, the idea of the book to it being a physical reality was like less than a year. Yeah, it was very, very strange how it happened. And I think that the timing also was not on purpose. Because this was, you know, a twinkle in my eye before COVID, before people started really thinking like, hey, maybe I should learn how to hunt and like use all parts of the animal, because that’s really increasing, I think over the last year or so as people are just kind of figuring out how to become more self sufficient. So the type could work really well. But it was really about a year ago, it was like November, December 2019, that I had gone to an event, like I got some like, keto event or something. And I was hanging out with some friends. And I was talking to some friends of mine who had written cookbooks. And you know, because again, I’m a naturally curious person, I’m podcaster. So I’m asking them questions about how they got into it, and why they decided to write a book. And I was just kind of thinking like, it was one of those moments where I’m like, if you can do it, I can do it. And I love to write, I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I never anticipated it would be cookbooks. But I and so while this was kind of mulling around in my head, I had also been experimenting through my work in my personal life, doing this real more nose to tail approach to eating. I’ve been in the like paleo space, and just sort of ancestral health and, you know, healthy eating, nutrition, science, all of that stuff for years. And as I was moving more into that, I was really learning more about nose to tail and organ meats and things like that. And I was experimenting with it. And I’d like post stuff on social media, and people are like, what are you doing? But also kind of Intuit and like, tell me what you’re doing, like people were interested. And so I’m thinking like, there’s a possibility here, there’s an opportunity, because there are not a lot of cookbooks out there. The research I did, there were very, there’s very few I mean, you know, people think like, Who needs to write another keto cookbook, there’s like 300, keto Codex, there’s like 500, paleo cookbooks, those were all seen as a fad at one point, and now they’re really mainstream. So the fact that it wasn’t a popular topic did not deter me, I was thinking like, I have an opportunity here, like, there’s like half a dozen organic cookbooks out there. And most of them are written by hunters, or, like professionally trained French chefs. And I’m neither of those things. So it really was kind of one of these opportunities to show people truly, that if I can do it, you can do it, I have no special skills, that kind of like, you know, I don’t have any upbringing that I wasn’t eating organ meats, necessarily when I was growing up. But really, that kind of opened the opportunity for people to have a conversation around healthy eating our own sort of learned biases around what’s appropriate or Okay, or extreme or weird. And just kind of encourage people to maybe have a bit more of a adventurous and open mind around eating instead of putting things in boxes, or instead of being told one thing and sticking to it forever, or, you know, just having sort of arbitrary opinions about things just because they’re unfamiliar, not because they’re inherently right or wrong. So anyways, all this was like going on in my head. And I was like, I’m writing an origami cookbook, like, I’m just gonna do this. And whether anybody reads it, whether I have to publish it myself on Amazon, that was kind of the opinion that I had going into it. And I sort of had a bit of a kind of lucky break, where I ended up speaking to a friend of mine who worked who had written a cookbook with a publisher. And I was pitching the idea to her and she was like, this is a good idea. Like, why don’t I just kind of see if my people are interested. And if they are, they’ll reach out to you. And a week later, I had a call with a publisher. And a week after that, I was signing a contract. And then seven months after that, I was putting in a draft in the middle of a pandemic. So a really, really move very quickly. But it all worked out. Because,

09:38

you know, I

09:39

was stuck at home. My work was changing. My life was changing. I was freaked out as everyone was and now I had this thing I had this big project to work really hard on which I did almost killed me. But it just kind of all came together, you know, at the right time and in the right way and it was such a cool rewarding experience.

Michael Nelson  09:59

Nice nice And I do have to ask you that looks like you did a lot of the photos yourself. Is that correct? Or did you? How did that process go? Because I know that’s a completely different undertaking. In addition to that, I have the luxury of I write stuff, like, I don’t do much for graphic stuff, I do videos, but to get all the photos and to get everything else in the layout. That’s that’s a whole monumental task.

10:24

Yeah, I

10:25

had a girlfriend of mine, a very good friend of mine that I went to university with who is a amateur photographer who also didn’t know what she was getting into when I said, Hey, do you want to take some pictures

10:37

for this cookbook I’m doing.

10:40

It ended up being really incredible. But we really had our work cut out for us, not only because we were so inexperienced, but as I’m sure you can imagine, organ meats are not the easiest foods to take pictures of yet, like, you know, Instagram ready pictures of, it’s really easy to cut up a bunch of fruit and put it in a bowl. And it’s beautiful, colorful, and it’s pretty, you know, Oregon meat is meat, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s one color, it’s sometimes intimidating looking. So it was quite a challenge. Some recipes turned out better than others, picture wise, obviously. And it was also interesting, because of course, halfway through this process, the pandemic hit and everything was shut down. It really didn’t slow us down too much. Except we did have to help the photography for a few months because we weren’t allowed to be together. But then, you know, we’ve got great stories of it was, I don’t know, March in Ontario, and I was bringing plates of kidney and liver over to my friend’s house. And we were on her back deck. And it was snowing. And she’s trying to take pictures of this thing and natural light outside because we weren’t allowed to be in the same room together. Yeah. So all of these things that at the time are like, what, what are we doing? Like, this is nuts. It’s cool, because you look back and you have these stories and these memories. And I think that’s one of the things that was really special about this book is that pretty much everybody who was involved in it. It was a personal friend of mine. I mean, there’s illustrations in the book that were made by another friend of mine, another good friend of mine. And, you know, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon wrote the foreword, she’s a good friend of mine, like, these are people who really know me and really just came out of nowhere to support me in a, in a project that was kind of crazy to a lot of people. They’re like, Okay, I guess you’re writing a cookbook about organ meats. But you know, I love you. So I’ll help you. And you know, it worked out.

Michael Nelson  12:33

And I do have to ask, did you make all the meals yourself? And then have them photographed that? Yeah,

12:42

yeah. So in that, it turns out, this is how much I know about making cookbooks that that’s actually kind of rare.

Michael Nelson  12:47

Yeah, that’s not the norm. Yeah, I

12:49

didn’t know that. That I’m like it maybe you know, if I get a chance to do this, again, I’ll like outsource but but this is the other thing is this was very bootstrapped. Because we don’t, I don’t like I didn’t get an advance. I’m not a famous writer, no one’s given me money to do this, they’re taking a chance on me and saying, hey, if you can make this good, we’re gonna support you. But no one’s like throwing money at me to do this. I mean, that’s

Michael Nelson  13:11

like a multi year, million dollar plus contract, you know, paid up front, and you could spend the next three years of your life working on it.

13:21

Maybe people buy this book, I’ll get that for the next next. Next time. I got it. But no, I mean, a photographer hiring a, you know, just professional photographer to take pictures is costing in the 10s of

Michael Nelson  13:33

1000s of dollars, six months. It’s

13:34

not. It’s not a thing. So, but no, I did. So basically, if you look through the book, there’s about a dozen recipes that were contributed, through, again, friends of mine colleagues, you know, you’ve got Ben Greenfield in there. And I’ve got a couple chefs locally and in the US who are recipe developers and who really kind of feel the same way I do about nose to tail and nourishing, good healthy food. And so I reached out to a bunch of people when I was putting this together, and asked for some contributing recipes. So some of the best recipes in the book are contributed by other people who are more experienced with this stuff than I am. But it was a cool experience for me because I learned about recipe development. And I learned about how to put recipes together and how to test them. And a lot of it just kind of came from my own imagination as someone who loves to eat and really, it’s just like, let’s think about the recipes that I love to eat grown up. Let’s think about the things I love to eat. Now, let’s look at some of the cultures that really embrace nose to tail and then you kind of take it and put your own twist on it or make different, you know, add different ingredients or do it in a kind of different way. I mean, not a lot of people are creating completely unique recipes from scratch. It’s really about kind of your own take on things. So that’s sort of what most of them are really

Michael Nelson  14:54

nice. That’s awesome. So why why organ meats for someone listening to this Like, I don’t know, like, are you like, you know, heart and kidney and liver? Like, why should I even bother eating these things to start?

15:10

Yeah, that’s probably the most common question I get in life is just why. And so I feel like I’ve gotten pretty good. I’ve got a couple of like answers locked and loaded. But I mean, for me, there are there are a couple different elements to this. So the despite what maybe social media would like you to believe, the vast majority of us still eat meat, we’re still omnivores, we still eat some meat, we’re on a sliding scale. Not all of us are carnivore, or try to eat paleo or whatever. But veganism and meat, meat free diets are still relatively, you know, they’re not as mainstream, right, like most of us are still eating meat. And so I’m not trying to with this book, convince vegans to eat kidneys, that is not something that I’m interested in. I’m not into it. But for the vast majority of us who eat meat, I wanted to open up the conversation about how to use the resources that we have in the most ethical and sustainable and most respectful way possible. And in so doing, eating in a way that’s healthiest for us. Because the more we learn about organ meat and nutrient density and nose to tail eating, the more we realize that these animals are sacrificing for us, and we are throwing away the most beneficial parts of them. And so I really wanted to approach this in a way that was exciting and positive and adventurous. Instead of, you’re killing an animal, so you have to eat all of it, choke it down. That’s what you do. That’s the healthiest thing, right? It’s more like, you know, this, this way of eating has been the norm throughout history in every culture. It’s only very recently, in some parts of the Western world, that we have the privilege of being as wasteful as we are, and being as cheesy as we are. So a lot of, you know, for every person who messaged me and be like, what are you eating? And why there are people messaging me saying, I grew up eating this, and it’s amazing, and it’s healthy. And this isn’t weird. And why do people think this is weird? Because it’s not weird. You know, we’re, we’re animals who eat animals. And throughout history, before we had Google to tell us that liver was the most nutrient dense part of the animal. People just knew it, you know, they hunted and they, they harvested the organs first. And whatever was leftover, they, you know, but it’s at the end of the day, it’s the most nutrient dense part of the animal, we are eating animals, we’ve accepted the fact that this is part of who we are on the planet, that we’re going to kill animals to eat them. So let’s do this in a way that is respectful, and making the most use of it and nourishing us in the best way possible. And doing it in a way that we can enjoy. You know, I think it’s, it’s twofold. The book being about nutrition, and also about being open minded, really, it’s just about reflecting on our preconceived notions about things that often don’t have a lot of basis. In truth. It’s just this sort of natural, maybe inherent human reaction to be afraid of things that are unfamiliar or different or weird. And I want people to look at things that are different and think this is cool. Let’s try this. Let’s experiment like, what can we lose? You know, instead of saying, I’ve never done that before, I’ve never eaten that I’ve never seen it, that’s gross. That’s weird. You know, and for every person who’s bought this book, and been willing to give it a shot, and they said, You know, I tried this thing, and it wasn’t so bad, or my husband finally ate some liver and like, he liked it. And it just, it makes me really happy. I find it really, really rewarding. And I think that that kind of willingness to try new things, has a positive cascading effect on the rest of your life to So, you know, it may sound silly to say, but I think you know, you try liver one day, maybe you try kiteboarding The next day,

19:06

maybe you you know,

19:07

maybe you try traveling or meeting someone new or trying a new language or, you know, I really think that that kind of stuff can enrich our lives in more ways than just nutrition.

Michael Nelson  19:17

Awesome. Reminds me of the old farside comic where they had this guy, there’s a Native American holding up this one little tiny piece, and he goes, What’s that? He goes, it’s the one part of the buffalo we don’t eat. But that was the norm, right? I mean, that was you. Do you know like where the some us culture that divergence kind of came from or why?

19:45

I believe through through my research, and it probably was like a number of things. But I think that one of the most significant things that kind of created this sort of dissonance was when we started, you know, industrialized agriculture happened and mass production of food. And factory farming started gaining popularity over local firms and like local small butcher shops and cheese shops and things like that. Because Oregon’s generally tend to be a little bit more delicate, so they’re harder to store, maybe they’re harder to move around, and transport and things like that. And we were producing these animals in mass quantities, it was easier to kind of have more muscle meat and worry less about the organs and things like that. And they started to fall out of favor in favor of these, like more mainstream, palatable, easy bulk cuts. And so when they fell out of favor, and when there were less, again, like sort of local butcher shops, where you could go in and know the guy behind the counter and ask him about where this came from, and how to make it and all of these things, it became just less popular, less available, less there. And as that happens, of course, when it’s not in front of people, and people aren’t educated about it and trying it and it’s not common, it just sort of falls out of favor. So I think that was kind of one of the main reasons. And then from that comes like, these are the leftovers, these scraps, these are the things that the less fortunate kind of have to throw together. These are the sort of less appealing cuts, which isn’t, again, throughout history has not been the case, it’s actually been the opposite. But I think that was kind of the main the main issue. And now again, like just kind of demonstrating how arbitrary it is. And I talked about this in the book. Awful. We talked about a lot. We talked about liver, maybe liver mostly, and then like heart and kidneys and stuff, but there’s a ton more right like half of I think it’s about half of a butchered cow is non. It’s like, what is it non like sort of muscle meat cuts. So that means it’s like skin, bones, organs, things like that. So there’s a ton going on in there. And a couple organs and organ meats are still considered delicacies, widely accepted. You find them at delicious French restaurants sweet breads is a good one. Most people don’t bat an eyelash at fried sweet breads or French restaurant patay, things like that. Bone Marrow is another one. And so again, to kind of just have a look and not not in a judgmental way. But just to reflect on the fact that most of us can go to the store and buy hunks of mussel meat, we can cut open a femur bone and roast it in the oven, and have no feeling about it whatsoever. Because that’s normal. That’s what we eat every day. That’s our food. But then you look like a cup, like a foot to the other direction of the animal and take that piece. And that’s disgusting. That’s weird and extreme. It’s bizarre. It’s a bizarre attitude to have really, if you’ve accepted that you’re, you know, here you’re taking meat from this animal, but this meats weird and that meats not you know, so. But again, it’s just it’s I think it’s pretty classic human psychology like we get why people feel that way. But I’m just trying to like, nudge it in a different direction, just sort of open up the conversation in another way.

Michael Nelson  23:11

No, I think that’s great. I have this other little theory where I wonder how many people would actually eat meat if they really, I guess kind of knew where it came from, and actually maybe had to hunt it or even go as far as even just purchasing it in bulk from a local you know, butcher local farmer. It just seems like the culture has been the more mass I guess America can be removed from that process. There seems to be a trend going that way. Because like the amount of people I’ve talked to who are like why buy like buy hamburger already pre padded so that way I don’t even have to really touch it. I’m like, hold on a sec, like you know where a hamburger comes from right? And God knows how many cows that was actually from especially if you don’t know the source. And you already said that you’re eating it. But you don’t want to think about where it came from. But you made the decision to eat the animal. I don’t know. It just seems like a very weird just, I don’t want to think about it thing.

24:19

Yeah, you you would like I posted my I created my own meme on social media the other day that it was a joke about like, show me the people who will eat meat but are squeamish about handling it. People that I’m going to like eat in the apocalypse because, like, guys, like get with the program. But I think also the other thing about human psychology is that and we talked about this before, is we’re better in the extremes. We’re better at all or nothing. And so I think when people are taught or told that eating animals is cruel, and unnatural, they’re like they just sort of latch on to that. That’s the black and whites. That means I cannot eat animals. Anybody who eats animals is cruel. Anybody Who does this is contributing to the demise of the planet, rather than the fact that I think almost all of us can agree that factory farming and this mass produced industry that we have is problematic. It’s cruel, it’s inhumane. People don’t want to support it when they understand. But that there is so much more in the middle, there’s so much more nuanced and ways that we can support our natural physiology and still eat animal protein, and do it in a way that isn’t cruel, and inhumane. And then, of course, the other side of it being Of course, that vegan diets are not death free, that no diet is death free that I really do believe, no one’s saying that it’s comfortable, and that it’s awesome that we have to celebrate killing things. And anybody who knows a hunter knows that the vast majority of hunters are incredibly respectful of the animals and nature and they, they do not take it lightly. And those people are really kind of the bravest ones, because they’re the ones who instead of turning away from something that is scary, or intense or unpleasant, they turn towards it, so that they can fully experience what is happening. And so that’s I mean, that’s one of my goals. This year, I actually did my hunter safety course in my firearm safety course, late last year, so I can get into some hunting this year, not because I’m super pumped to go out and shoot an animal. But because if I’m, if I want to practice what I preach and talk about how important it is to, you know, use your money wisely and support people who are doing this in a humane and sustainable and ethical way, I want to know what it’s like, right? So, you know, just today, I really don’t engage a lot with like, people fighting on the internet, like I don’t, I’m just I’m not, I’m not into it. But today, I kind of got roped into something on social media, that was a commentary about a completely different subject. I don’t know if you’ve seen it much. But this, it comes up every couple of months about there will be like a woman’s magazine with like an overweight person on the cover. And they’re saying this, there’s health at all sizes, and everyone freaks out. That’s a whole other topic we don’t have to get into. But someone kind of was talking to me in this thread. And someone else came in and commented a stranger, because I guess they looked at my account and saw what I was about. And kind of gave me a little tirade against meat eating and how meat eating is evil. And that’s why everyone’s overweight. And that’s why everyone’s unhealthy. And my comment really, rather than kind of engaging in the face of it was more about that that is not an effective way to change people’s minds. I don’t think on the carnivore side or on the vegan side, anyone has ever changed anyone’s opinion or behavior by giving them unsolicited advice about how stupid they are on the internet. And that’s, that’s kind of another big thing that I’ve been like struggling with. And I’m actually interested in your feedback on this too. Because, you know, being in this world where we’re trying to, we’re content creators, we’re people who are trying to put together helpful useful information and pass it along to the people who need it. And I found that our industry does tend to get very like polarized, and very us versus them, and very clickbait to the point where people are even communicating in a way that they don’t even believe just because they know what’s going to get more eyes what they’re writing. And it’s frustrating to me, because I will I will never do that. Because I just I think for me, it’s disingenuous, but it’s also really hard to get attention on a subject when you are trying to be nuanced and reasonable. And so when you’re trying to say like, Look, you know, our meals will all look, all of us who are omnivores, it will still look different, my plate could look completely different than your plate. And, you know, there’s such a wide spectrum. And yes, there are some vegans who can be healthy. And there are some carnivores who can be healthy. And it’s just this whole big tapestry. But here’s some information for you about the science of it. The again, the physiology of it, if you decide to never eat animal protein, again, that’s your choice. But it’s not because you’re morally superior. And it’s not because your body is running more efficiently on some you know what I mean? So, anyway, the conversation was more about, like, we’re losing sight of what we’re trying to do, which is maybe educate and teach and help people be healthier. And instead, we’re just trying to say, No, I’m right. No, I’m right. On the internet, which, I don’t know. That’s I feel like that’s one of the reasons why people are so stressed out miserable, because they’re just on the internet arguing all day every day.

Michael Nelson  29:25

Yeah. No, no, I get it. I mean, I’ve just kind of struggled with that or spent a lot of time thinking about it to to the I probably would sell a lot more certifications and do a lot more other stuff if I was more confrontational, but I just don’t like that and I don’t want to wake up and be in one of those people that is doing the thing that I don’t like because I don’t sleep well at night then. For me personally for what I want to do and my buddy, Dr. Ben house had a good line. He’s like I didn’t I don’t like the concept of selling Beer, which I agree with, you know, it’s like, I could probably sell a lot more certifications, if I really kind of scared people a little bit more. And I get that you have to try to, you know, out, fear base the next person, but I just, I don’t like that mentality, I don’t think it’s good long term, I’m fine with not selling nearly as many certifications or whatever I’m doing. Because of that, that’s totally fine. And my hope is that, you know, kind of like what you’re doing that they’ll still be enough rational people who want something to just make them better. And I do you think it’s getting closer to where there’s going to be a backlash against that, especially after last year, and everything that that’s happened, which I think will probably be a good thing. The flip side to that, and I’m reading Robert sapolsky, his book behave right now, too, is that a lot of this stuff is just humans is really hardwired into us, we want the simple story, we want the us versus them, we want to be a part of the tribe, it’s just, I think it’s gonna be I don’t want to say a fight, but always going against what humans have been wired to want to do for a very long period of time, which has been successful. That’s why we’re here. You know, yeah, yeah.

31:19

You make a good point. I mean, I, the only thing that makes me feel slightly optimistic about this is the conversation we had the other day, which is that we are still able to override the sort of hardwired reptilian parts of us that in many cases are there for good reason. But that don’t often translate as well into modern society. So all of this sort of just in fighting for the sake of it, and this, we’re trying to one up each other all the time, which, again, we’d get why it makes sense. It just doesn’t make sense in this setting. So I think that if we are able, like you said to have to bring in some reason, and and I always go back to the like, pragmatic part of this, where if I thought that, like you said, kind of leading with fear or leading with, like patronizing people, or being overly you know, dogmatic about something, if I thought that that would actually work. I might be more intuitive because I have opinions like I’m not, you know, I, I’m not political on social media, I often have to bite my tongue. And I want to say something. And I don’t, I totally have opinions. And if you asked me for them, I would be happy to give them to you. But yeah, I just don’t think again, maybe I have to psychologists, parents, so I kind of grew up with a lot of this weird kind of stuff. But I just telling people that they’re stupid, and they’re wrong, doesn’t fix it. And making people feel bad, doesn’t make them change. And we all know, because any of us who have struggled with body issues or self esteem issues, which is almost everyone, yeah, we’ve all spent time saying terrible things about ourselves and being mean to ourselves. And again, that can sometimes work like in the short term, like you just kind of hate yourself enough to lose a couple pounds. But like, that’s not the sustainable way to do it. So I know that, you know, attacking vegans or telling people that if you only eat boneless chicken thighs, you’re an idiot.

33:18

It’s not, it’s not going to help

33:20

me in the long run, and it’s not going to help them. So yeah, we’re all entitled to our opinions. But I think it’s knowing when to use it, knowing when to communicate, and just again, remembering what we’re doing it for, like, I’m not doing it to be the right one. I’m doing it because I feel really strongly and really passionately about this subject. And I think it’s going to help people. So however I can get that message across is how I want to do it.

Michael Nelson  33:44

Yeah, no, that’s great. I wasn’t told, not necessarily clients, because most of the clients I work with, they’re been really good about it. But just people in general, that you just can’t hate yourself lean. Like you, you may do it in the short term. And you may make a little bit of progress, but long term, like I have yet to even see a single case where it’s been successful long term, I have especially five, six years ago, seeing the reverse, or we got the person they did the work. I’m not taking credit for what they did. They got to the body comp they wanted, they still hated their self and they still thought their life was miserable. You know, it’s like, and now they were like completely distraught because they did the thing. The thought would be the thing to solve the thing, but it wasn’t and so then they get to that point, and then they’re really just like, oh, crap, I thought this was the thing that was gonna solve my issue and didn’t Yep,

34:39

there’s so much psychology to that like I you know, I’m pretty fortunate that I haven’t had a whole lot of issue with that I’ve never been overweight, not that that has any bearing on people hating themselves because plenty of course, he or whatever people hate themselves, but I I’m fortunate that I haven’t struggled with that too much like I’m in the fitness world and I’m a woman so of course, I have been concerns and I have a, you know, I go back and forth about feeling more or less good about myself. But I think generally I’m pretty okay with it. But I did, you know, some bodybuilding competitions and like the biggest message and I still even had to learn it myself but I pass this along to is that, like, the six pack does feel good for a minute and when you go search for it, everybody’s like, Whoa, look, it does feel good. But then two minutes later, everyone else goes on with their lives because no one really gives a shit. And then you’re still left with you and your issues. So it doesn’t fix it just like what you said, your your happiness never is fixed by a six pack. It just isn’t like you’ll get your dopamine hits, you can get that from eating candy or whatever else you want to do. Six Pack will do it too. But it just it doesn’t fix it. And yeah, I mean, I think that’s, that goes back to though the thing that I was talking about the internet that I’m actually interested in what you think because you do a lot of body composition work is so this, you know, this magazine that’s like sort of an overweight person on the cover and saying this is healthy too. And, and of course, there’s people who are just saying, No, it’s not this is this is so bad for our culture that we’re allowing this, we’re saying that this is okay. And you know, we’ve got such an obesity problem, and this is terrible. And then there are people responding saying, like, you can, you know, we can be healthy at different sizes and look different. And our ideal perfection, an idea of beauty for women is so unattainable and so unrealistic, which I also agree with. But I think ultimately, the bigger issue here isn’t the like sort of fighting on either sides. It’s the fact that we’re still looking completely and valuing women especially but also men on how they look. And that’s the value judgment, right? Like, we’re still just talking about what this woman looks like, instead of the, you know, behind the scenes, because people don’t have this conversation about a chick with six packs and veins popping out on a Fitness magazine. No one’s like, that’s not, you know, healthy and we shouldn’t be promoting this and one’s like, look at her, look how hard she worked and how great she is. Her blood markers might be terrible, she might be a mess, I can

Michael Nelson  37:11

say most of the time, I can almost guarantee they are in my experience.

37:17

So it’s still just so much. And it’s so much a judgment thing, because again, it goes back to luck. Maybe if she is 50 pounds overweight, maybe she isn’t optimally healthy, but telling her that she’s, you know, it? Yeah, it’s just the way we the way we approach it and the way we communicate it. And the completely physical judgement of it isn’t how it gets fixed. If it was if shaming women for how they look, is what fixed it, we wouldn’t have the problem that we have, right? We wouldn’t have like constant, persistent self esteem problems and massively high rates of obesity. If we could shame people into being healthy, right? That’s

Michael Nelson  37:58

Yeah, definitely. And it’s so hard, because it’s very rare that anyone can be objective about any of it. Like I’ve seen bloodwork from, you know, pretty, you know, not super high level competitors, but higher level competitors. Most the time they came to me because they have a whole litany of issues. One person in particular, I’m not gonna name her name, but we’ll say she was on the cover of very many magazines in the late 90s, early 2000s, she was a female, very good shape. And I did a consult with her, probably 15 years after that, a complete, utter train wreck in every way a match. You know, and again, that’s just an N of one is just an example. But sadly, from what I’ve seen, that’s probably more true than not. And who knows, maybe it’s the reason they, you know, got to that extreme or whatever. And there’s ways you can do it to be a little bit more healthy. But to me, it’s just so weird how society’s wires are completely crossed, like you mentioned, that we’ll look at that or look at some magazine cover or people doing God knows whatever pharmacal interventions are like, wow, that’s super healthy. I’m like, nope, if your HDL is 10, that’s not healthy, right? You may look that way. And if that’s your goal, cool you do you whatever. But then the flip side is you see someone who may be 50 pounds overweight, and it’s almost like taboo to say that, you know, obesity, we have a lot of data to show that that’s not bringing you closer to metabolic health. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. That doesn’t mean you’re not trying. For all we know that person could have been 200 pounds overweight. We don’t know where they’re at, in their journey. It’s not a judgment on their value as a human being. But I think we also have to be realistic that, yeah, if you’re several 100 pounds overweight, the odds of you being metabolically healthy are slim to none. Right? If you’re in that intermediate area, it’s debatable, right. So then again, you’d have to look at, well what markers are we using for health? Are we looking at aerobic fitness, we’re looking at strength, we’re looking at blood markers, you know, but that’s, it’s a super hard discussion to have, because everybody wants the kind of the snap judgment of what it is. And I think that is just skewed on both ends of the spectrum.

40:15

Yeah. And and because I mean, you’re saying that, that it’s shouldn’t be a personal or personality judgment against someone who’s overweight, and it shouldn’t. And in many cases, it isn’t. But historically, it’s so obviously has been Oh, totally,

Michael Nelson  40:29

I agree. 100%.

40:32

And like you said, I think someone even posted recently, something about how, like, they did some study, and they were showing overweight people. And they said, you know, rate, what you think about this person or something, and like, they were rated really high as being perceived as lazy or something. And then when they said, this person actually has just lost 100 pounds, or 100 pounds heavier, and completely changed their opinion of this human being. Right,

40:53

they look exactly the same,

40:54

but the opinion has changed. And I think what makes it more difficult, and again, I’m not saying like, men have body image issues, too. There, we put a lot of unrealistic expectations on men in society as well. It’s a big problem. I can only speak from my perspective as a woman, but I think that it’s more it’s a bit more of a touchy subjects for women, because we have been taught for so many generations, so much more acutely, that our worth is based on how we look how we physically come across, if we are appealing to men, and we’re always being told, what’s the new thing that’s appealing to men now? Is it ABS yet? Or is it a big ass? Or like, I can’t, I can’t keep up with it. But whatever it is, you got to be doing it? Because if you’re not, you’re not doing it. Right, right. So I think that that’s so so deeply tied to our self esteem. And you know, I just had I know we’re going down like a real tangent, but I love talking about this stuff with people in real real time. But I had I posted something the other day, it was sort of like an amusing that you might be interested in to as a coach and a body composition person about this concept that, you know, we joke about, there’s a lot more women in the gym these days, right? notwithstanding the fact that all the gyms are closed, I just mean cultural. Yeah, totally a lot. Women working out working out with weights. And not just kind of doing aerobics or whatever people did, like the 70s and 80s. But there seems to be a trend right now with women really focusing on like lower body aesthetics and getting a big bump, right, like a nice big muscular bomb is very in right now. And I kind of made the the posit that women who focus solely on growing a big butt are the same as men who only do like chest and arms, right? You go in there, and all you do is just rip out some biceps. And that’s whatever not to say, again, not placing a value judgment, they have just made the decision to focus on a very specific aesthetic goal, right? Not something that’s functional, not something that, you know, makes sense with the rest of them what they want to do, because it looks a certain way, the difference being that we encourage women to do this, and we make fun of men for doing the same thing. So if you you know, anybody who knows the guy who only does arm day, and everyone kind of rolls their eyes, and you’re like, look at chicken legs,

Michael Nelson  43:13

there it goes the light bulb.

43:15

Yes. And when women are in there doing just kickbacks for two hours a day, and grind a huge ass. And then we’re like, look how hot she is. And that’s so amazing. It’s so sexy and look at you. And again, that goes back to the idea. I think maybe this is just my opinion. But I mean, I think there’s there’s something to be said here that the reason that we are okay with one group doing it and across the board not okay with another group doing it is that we still expect women to go in the gym for aesthetic reasons. You’re going in there to look hot. Men should be going in there to get strong and like get better at sports and like be doing something practical. But we expect women to just go in and like what are you doing to be sexy today? That’s what it is. Right? And I think that does again, both both groups a disservice. Because I love to preach if you want to have a big strong but from deadlifts and squats, that’s great. But I also love the idea of women going in and getting super strong in a functional way. Yeah, because I think that has a much longer, more sustainable effect and your self esteem. I’ve always said that I think for both for both genders like confidence comes from actual competence in a thing. Because being caught is great, but there’s always somebody hotter, and eventually you’re not going to be as hot and then where’s your competence, right? So for me, it’s like okay, but are you really good at something? Are you good at a sport? Are you good at your job? Are you you know, did you just learn a new skill and you feel really good about that. And then all this like nice, attractive muscle comes as a bonus, and that’s fantastic. But I think that if we focused more on and I’m not saying women can’t do that if they want to look that way, but if we focus more on like let’s get really good at a skill and really competent and really strong and then you can be really good at the sport over here. The thing you want to do, and then hey, also you have what great looking but that’s nice instead of just this constant, you know, encouraging of just look a certain way that’s gonna get you likes basically.

Michael Nelson  45:13

Yeah, no I agree with and I, even with clients I tried as hard as I can. I know they’re paying me for a result. But if I can get them invested in the process, to me, that’s a lifelong skill. And a lot of people I have the luxury of working with now we’re already pretty good at that to begin with. Because the hardest part is, there’s just so much variability in it, right, you could take someone who’s been exercising for quite a while, and they’ve got certain structure genetics or whatever. And you can’t guarantee they’re gonna make x result right or look like the whatever the elite of their sport is. But if you focus on the process, whatever the outcome you get is what you get, right? You could spend all day worrying about, oh, man, am I doing hip thrusts, you know, right or wrong? Okay, figure out the best way for your physiology to do them. Do the program. If you gain one inch on your butter, three inches, I have no idea what’s gonna happen. But if you did the things, whatever result you got is probably the best result you could have gotten under those circumstances. And yes, you could point to some genetic freak at the gym, who does half the weight you did, and their ass is much bigger or whatever, guys, their pecs are bigger, their arms are bigger, whatever, there’s always going to be some outlier for whatever reason, whatever decisions they made in their life, that is going to be different. But you can’t do anything about it. Like, yeah, that person. And it’s so hard because humans want to compare themselves to everybody else. And there’s not much you can losing game you, there’s nothing you can do about it. And so I do agree that the process of just being able to, okay, here’s the thing I’m going to focus on, here’s the progress that I’ve made, and looking at, like overload, like, okay, I did a few more reps here, I did a few more reps there. That’s something you can control. I was like the Eric Helms about this too, that I think it was his idea actually, that hypertrophy is more or less like a weird side effect. Like we can kind of train for strength, we have a better idea, we can measure it very granular in the gym, but I’ve heard is really hard to measure. It’s kind of like this weird side effect from training. You know, it’s not as much of a direct thing. And what you see in studies is that it’s much more variable, right? We’ve all seen very, let’s say, elite level, even physique, competitors, who, by all determinations or training, it’s pretty stupid, right? But some people hate you just put a little tension on the muscle and it grows really well. Other people. I remember Stu Phillips presented some data years ago, they were looking at a hypertrophy study. And they showed the graph and you put up a data plot of all the people in the study. And what you saw was the average people in the middle two people weigh the hell up at the top. And one poor bastard in a 12 week study got worse in terms of hypertrophy. And so I asked him, like, what’s going on with that? He’s like, yep, the two people that top he called them the beef brothers, because they were genetically related. They worked on a farm. He’s like, I don’t know, I think they just ate like several pounds of meat a day, big, structured organ with probably organ meats. And he’s like, they did the same program everybody else did. And they were way above in terms of their results. So they looked at testosterone, a bunch of other stuff on it wasn’t really related to that. And then you got the one poor bastard at the bottom, who, for whatever reason, actually got worse. So they did all the work. They did all the reps that did the thing, granted, who knows about nutrition, sleep, whatever. And they went backwards. You know? So to me that always just like, stuck in my head of like, you don’t know where you’re going to be on that, that graph. And we can make arguments that maybe you need to do different training, different things like that. But yeah, that’s what’s hard. What?

49:02

What do you think about because I know that’s a hip thrusts are like sort of a controversial movement a little bit, because people either think it’s like, the movement for glute growth, or it’s gonna like snap your back. Yeah, it’s terrible. What do you think?

Michael Nelson  49:17

I just think it’s a different movement. It’s just a different way of loading it. Yeah, you can get a lot more weight because you’re getting to, you know, terminal hip extension. The biggest thing that I get worried about now with exercise, so like, I just like to cast them for men one, literally before this call, too. So we were talking about queuing and that kind of stuff. And now I’m literally at the point where I used to think if I use like an internal cue versus an external cue or the things I tell you that I can dramatically change your exercise performance. I think you can still change it, but I don’t know if it’s all that much. So I was telling him what I do now as about four years ago. Like people come in for a one off session. Okay, get out, just lay down to the table. Let me just do old school manual muscle testing. Yes, I know it’s not the most accurate thing, whatever. Does your glutamine do what a glute meet supposed to do? Right? Does your glute max at least Can I feel like it’s firing the way that it should? Right? Does each muscle in isolation, do what it should be doing? Right, I can’t, I should not be able to take my hand and push your glute down to the table, right, there should be some resistive force there. If that’s not there, we need to get that working. First, I’ll do primarily be activated and reflexive performance reset. And then we’ll go do some exercise and see what it looks like. Right. And I think a lot of people from whatever compensations, whatever things are going on, they’re loading hip extension with a heavy load at the end, but their glutes are not firing as well as it could and their hamstrings and low back are taking more of the load. versus if we can change that activation pattern a little bit. And I can watch, you get to that end movement without your spine moving, that’s probably going to be a good movement for you might, if you’re driving that with a lot of your extensors and your low back, you’re probably just going to get a stiff low back from it too. So I think back to our conversation about changes in outcomes, that is something I think people can control. You can show them how to do the drills on themselves, whatever, you know, there’s tons of other stuff they could possibly do, too. So now I’m at the point where, you know, do you have just basic activation of a muscle the way that it should? Okay, then we can load it. But this idea of just loading it without changing the biomechanics or doing a different movement, thinking that if I just go heavier, that’s gonna solve my issue. Usually, I say get worse.

51:40

Yeah, I think one of the things I learned the most, because I’ve been, you know, a meathead lifting weights for half my life now, but I’m always still learning. And I think one of the most impactful things I’ve learned over the last couple of years from our mutual friend, Ben pakulski, not only the focus on like, really actually feeling the muscle contraction and the time under tension, and the idea that it’s not how much weight you’re lifting, it’s, you know, how you’re lifting. And if you’re feeling the contraction if you’re actually doing the movement properly, but also this concept that, within reason, there really aren’t any, like bad exercises or machines or movements, it’s really about whether it works with your physiology, whether you’re able to execute the movement properly. And like even things like he’s talking about different muscle attachments, and you know, your, your skeletal frame, and all of these things, and how like adult raised for me might look completely different than his just because of the way our body is shaped. And that was really helpful for me, because I think a lot of people do just go into it saying, like, here are the movements, here are the machines, here are the exercises, go do them. And if it feels weird, it’s because you suck at it. Or if you don’t like it, it’s because you’re weak, or you know, in some cases, that may be true. But in other cases, it’s because you haven’t mastered the movement properly. Or maybe it’s even the machine isn’t set up for your physiology or all of these things. There’s just it’s about finding the exercises that work around you, instead of trying to like, fit your body into a leg press machine, you know what I mean? So that part’s really helpful for me. And I mean, the cool thing about working out in bodybuilding and hypertrophy is that there’s just always new things to learn and try and experiment and play with yourself. So it’s really cool.

Michael Nelson  53:22

Yeah. And I think the biggest thing that I had to learn the very hard way from all sorts of hip issues, little back issues, old injuries, all that kind of stuff was for a while, like probably five, six years ago, I would take videos of my back squat and send it to you know, a lot of the top biomechanics people like, Hey, what do you think of this? What does it look like? in like, five of them are back and they’re like, looks good. Not much weight on the bar, but it looks good. And I’m like, it feels like dogshit I’m like, it feels bad. And if I keep doing it, by like, week three, I can have low back pain, hip pain, all sorts of stuff. And they’re like, I don’t know, it looks fine. And eventually I just went, What am I doing? I’m an idiot, like, biomechanically, maybe it is good based on physics. But maybe for whatever my structure is, at that point, it just doesn’t like it. Maybe my left adductor is firing way more than my right. Like, if I have a bent suspension arm and my Jetta, I can take the steering wheel and I can still drive straight. But I’m constantly putting that neural input in all the time to keep the car going straight. So maybe I can do bilateral symmetric things and make them look good. But I don’t know what my body is doing to accomplish that. And based on the feedback I’m getting from it, it seems pretty pissed off about. Yeah,

54:44

yeah. Yeah.

Michael Nelson  54:45

Yeah. Yeah, good discussion. Cycling back to crazy stuff.

54:52

We fell completely off.

Michael Nelson  54:54

All right. No worries. So I noticed and there’s a book that Vegetables are no longer they’re not bad, right? We can still eat vegetables as long as they’ve eaten with organ meat. Is that okay?

55:07

Yeah, it depends on who you talk to.

55:09

Me,

55:10

I’ve I’ve never I mean, I’ve always been very like measured in the fact that again, I believe we’re all omnivorous. And I believe that the vast majority of us should be eating animal and plant foods, how that looks to the individual is completely different. So for me, my plate is usually going to look like a hunk of meat with some vegetables on the side. For a lot of people, it’s going to look like a big bowl of vegetables with like some meat sprinkled on it. And that’s totally fine. And I think that the what makes this complicated, and I’m sure you can speak to this, too, is that this concept of sort of individualized nutrition where I feel like ancestral eating, and paleo and Whole Foods is the just common sense, baseline approach for the vast majority of people. But then from that starting point, you need to do the individual work of testing, because maybe you’ve heard for a million years that sweet potatoes the best, but it spikes your glucose, you don’t like it, whatever. And maybe some people when they eat super high fat protein, even though the carnivore people are telling them, that’s what they should do. It makes them feel like garbage. So you have to kind of take that basic framework, and then play with it from there to figure out what works for you. But with that said, vegetables are great. I eat some of them sometimes. And so I even have a whole chapter dedicated to some sides. It’s funny, because a lot of the people who bought the book because they want to support me and their friends of mine, but will never eat in Oregon. They were like, Oh, well, there’s like a chapter with like normal food for me. And there’s like a dessert chapter. And I’m like, yeah, there’s there’s plenty in there. Like there’s there’s a lot that’s not as scary as you think. It ranges from brain recipes that are pretty intense two meals that you could, if you were that kind of person, you could trick somebody and not tell them that it was organ meats, and they would eat it. Enjoy it. So yeah, there’s all kinds of stuff in there.

Michael Nelson  57:01

No, that’s cool, because I I just like giving the carnivore people crap. Because back to our discussion about let’s come up with the craziest, outlandish thing. Like Never did I ever think that it would be popular to say vegetables are bad. And I get it. Like my wife has done a carnivore diet. She’s doing it right now for some elimination issues. And yeah, it worked amazingly well for her for some of the gut stuff she had, but to say as a baseline of a healthy human, that vegetables are, I don’t know, just crazy.

57:33

I’m actually not that surprised for two reasons. I mean, one is, again, just from like a human psychology standpoint, that everyone who grew up eating boiled brussel sprouts is like looking for someone to tell exactly.

Michael Nelson  57:45

Yeah, that confirmation bias. Yep,

57:48

yes.

57:50

There is like, you know, there’s some elements of truth to things like, you know, phytonutrients, and plants that have defense mechanisms that make them you know, so but again, that’s not saying this is where we go from that whole, like, extreme thing. It’s like, Oh, well, some plants are irritating to our gut, if we eat them raw, let’s never eat a vegetable again. Yeah, obviously, there’s a lot we can do there. And some people are gonna benefit from different kinds of vegetables and more or less and, you know, similar to God, like I like to when I want to do like an elimination diet or a reset, or if I’ve just been eating garbage and feel bad, and I want to kind of like get back to midline. I usually do it with a carnivore, reset, I’m not super into keto, personally, it hasn’t really been very beneficial to me, and I find it to be and I don’t really like fasting for long terms, like I’ll go a day without eating every now and then. But I don’t the longer term fasting. So for me, this is the best way to reset my like satiety signals, make sure that I’m still being nourished, make sure that I’m still getting protein that’s going to support my my muscles and my growth, my function and all of those things. And I still enjoy it. And I like meat. So you know, it makes a lot of sense for me from like a reset tool perspective. And that’s kind of how I talk about like, carnivore, organ meats, keto, fasting, all of these things like this is not a lifestyle. This is not who you are. Now, it’s just a tool in your toolbox you can use to make your life easier and to make yourself healthier, right?

Michael Nelson  59:18

Yeah, and design the social media aspect, which sounds like we’re just much old people ripping on social media, but I get super nervous when it becomes part of their name. So like, whatever the latest trend is keto, this carnivore, like when that’s your candle, and that’s like your stick. It’s like, I get it, like you’re probably gonna sell a lot of stuff. But like, what happens if you change your mind? You’re so pigeon holed into that thing that the amount of bias you’re going to have is going to be super high and it’s just really hard. As a person as a business, this is your life. It’s very hard and I think it’s I realized for myself, it’s unrealistic for me to expect those people to radically change their opinion very fast. There’s one book we have something that comes out on great. But when that becomes your only thing, especially when it’s very limited, he likes that makes me worried.

1:00:18

Well, I actually have a guest coming up on my podcast soon muscle Maven radio that is speaking directly to that. It’s, she’s a female bodybuilder, who was a vegan bodybuilder for a long time. And she recently very publicly changed her stance for health issues. So her health was failing. And it was in large part due to her diet. And so she started incorporating animal foods. And of course, she got a massive backlash, there was a lot of anger from her followers, and I’m sure she probably had a lot of we’re gonna find out in the interview, but a lot of kind of issues herself in terms of her identity and, and how she feels about communicating about all this stuff. So I’m really fascinated to learn from her because, you know, I gotta say, my own bias side, I have heard a lot more people go from vegan to eating meat, again, for health benefits, rather than the other way around. There’s really not a whole lot of people I know who long term go from eating a Whole Foods omnivorous diet to vegan and get find long term health. So I think there’s something to that. But I’m going to be really interested to hear not only how her health changed, but also how she had to kind of go through that process in the public eye where people are judging her for a personal choice in what she puts in her body. It’s just kind of crazy. But

Michael Nelson  1:01:37

yeah, yeah. And even for, like, 25 years, I actually didn’t eat any red meat. Like as a kid growing up, like Neither of my parents were vegetarian. Just I don’t know why Monday just didn’t, didn’t sound very good. And I was like, 12, maybe or something. And then I went to college, took some environmental courses and like is probably not the best idea. And then of course, he tried to lift weights. I tried being a vegan for a couple weeks, I was bad. I tried being a lacto ovo vegetarian for a while that was okay. But again, when you’re trying to abstain on 40 grams of protein a day and lift it doesn’t work. So well. Yeah. Eventually, when I got into metabolic flexibility, I was like, Hmm, maybe I should get to the point where I could eat meat and not have an issue because I didn’t have it for so long. Like I was afraid of, you know, if I had some, you know, here I am preaching metabolic flexibility, you should be able to wide variety of stuff and I can’t eat red meat. That’s probably not a good thing. But then once I got back into it, my first step was talking about organ meats was actually gelatin. So I’m like, Oh, this is probably very processed. It’s not really like red meat, but kind of, like, Can I eat gelatin? And that can be okay. Yep. Okay, that’s fine. And I remember going to the Arnold when you’re getting when, like, hydrolyzed meat protein was becoming a thing. I’m like, this is the most processed meat product, I can find that I still kind of sort of trust. So can I consume that? And that’s okay. Right, that was okay. And then we bought a grass fed cow. So I had some of that. And now I eat lots of grass fed all the time,

1:03:11

when you weren’t eating red meat, were you eating like fish and poultry and stuff like

Michael Nelson  1:03:15

that eventually got to the point where I did eat fish and eventually did eat chicken, because it just got to be just Oh, hard otherwise, especially when I was in college. And you know, you don’t have a lot of choices over your foods. This is kind of more or less presented to you. You know, once I graduated by that point, I was already eating fish and chicken, so it wasn’t too bad. Yeah, this is harder in that environment. For sure.

1:03:38

There is a small part of me, people might be surprised to hear that kind of empathizes with vegan or plant based people whose health really is failing, and they’re incredibly conflicted about adding animal protein back in our corner, man, there’s a part of them that knows this will help me and they’re extremely guilty or uncomfortable with it, because I get it when you’ve been taught or told that this is inhumane. And it’s cruel. And it’s not right. And it’s not natural, that is a very hard thing to shake. And most, most people do not relish the idea of any living thing, suffering or dying for, you know, your dinner plate. Most people don’t love the idea. So I really do get it. And I think that’s why and again, this could be a whole second hour. But I think that that’s why stuff like the work that Diana Rodgers is doing. And you know, humbly the work that I’m doing is, is hopefully going to just start helping people get their head around that things can be difficult or challenging or uncomfortable. But that doesn’t mean they’re unnatural, and it doesn’t mean they’re wrong. And that you can still make choices that you can compromise you can live with that are going to help you that you know because again, it is so difficult. You talk to even even plant based people plant based advocates that are like the vast majority of us we have to work so much harder to get that nutrient profile and to make sure that we’re being supported. If we’re training for something or we’re trying to be optimally healthy. And so I think that just having more of those voices out there that show you there can be a different way to do this, I think is important.

Michael Nelson  1:05:11

Yeah, I think you can do a lot of approaches very healthy. I had a client once who was a vegan keto person. And that for me was, that was hard. You know, because in my head, I’m trying to think about all the different things and they did fine with it. It was more for ethical reasons, you know, which I, I totally get. But they spent a lot of time in a lot of eating, and a lot of thought had to go into it to do it healthy. Yeah. And as we wrap up to other questions, I have some liver that has been in my freezer now for two and a half years. So we bought a grass fed cow. And I’m like, Okay, I’m gonna get the organ meats, I’m gonna do this thing. And all of a sudden, I got this. And I know it’s a internal thing. I got just, like, weirded out, because I had flashbacks to my parents, frying liver. And the smell of it just was bad because of liver and onions, which I didn’t like either one of them. So I have this flashback of like, I don’t want to make it that way. And then I did take some of it and split it raw into a shake, which wasn’t too bad. But if you put a whole pound deliver mental note into a shake, you can’t really find anything to Hide.

1:06:31

Hide a pound of liver in a shame. Yeah,

Michael Nelson  1:06:33

yeah. Yeah. So my two questions are, what is the best way? For a recipe potentially? And the other way is, do you it may be a health concern. But what about consuming liver that’s been frozen, you can verify the source? Is it okay to consume some of that raw?

1:06:52

Yeah, so Okay, there’s a couple of things there. One, and this is not medical advice, but I do think I do think throat liver that’s been frozen for a couple years, your you might be getting a little old with it. Be still okay. But like, generally speaking, I think you probably want to consume something that’s been fresh, it was fresh, and then you froze it, right? I would say like, you probably want to be consuming that like, at least well, within the year, ideally, sort of like six months. So again, I’m not saying that that’s necessarily bad, but you’re probably better off and again, liver is cheap. So you can just go buy another cow liver for like five bucks. Yeah, that’s pressure. So that would be my recommendation for that. I would say that you can, I think that you can and like you look at the Paul Salah dinos of the world, eating raw organs can be done safely. I’m personally quite interested in it. But it’s not something that I put in the book. It’s not something that I advocate, because just like eating beef tartare, raw muscle meat, you got to make sure it’s a really healthy source, you got to make sure it’s fresh got to know where it’s coming from. I don’t think that a lot of organs are inherently less safe to eat raw, like there are some organs that can harbor parasites and things like that. But again, if you’re if you’re getting it from a reputable source from a local source from a fresh source, there is something to be said for the bioavailability of like fresh raw meat. So that I do kind of have to say that sort of like a do at your own risk sort of thing. I personally, if I if it was offered to me, in a safe setting that I was comfortable with, I would do it. But I’m not gonna run around, tell everybody eat a bunch of raw organs in terms of how to make it palatable. And I will say in the book, first of all, but it’s not the recipes aren’t all beef, either. I’ve got chicken in there, I’ve got lamb, bison, pig, all kinds of different animals. So because they all have organs, and they’re all delicious, and tongue and things like that. So that’s all in there. And beef liver is a more stronger liver than say like so the smaller the animal, the more mild it’s going to taste

Michael Nelson  1:09:03

like pretty mild.

1:09:04

Yes, and I was so that’s what I usually tell people is like if you’re gonna your first recipe, your first foray into this book and you want to go Oregon’s make the chicken liver moves, because it’s just palatable. It’s mostly cream and butter. It’s delicious, like you’re gonna love it. And the bigger the animal like we’ve got some bison and beef and things like that, it’s just gonna be a stronger flavor. Not worse necessarily. But if you’re somebody who’s like really dipping your toes into it, you might want to start small chicken, poultry, lamb, things like that and kind of work your way up. And so with something like a beef liver that is going to be stronger taste and you can make a patay or a moose out of the liver as well but I would really just recommend, I think we talked about this mixing it up with your ground beef and we did this round, making meatballs, making burgers making sausages. You want to make sure you get the ratio right so a lot of people are like half and half or something I’m like that’s not gonna work. And also from a textural point of view too, because even if you don’t I like the taste of liver. And it’s a texture thing the textures are different, which can be off putting. So generally butchers will recommend like a four to one ratio of like a ground beef mix with organ meat mix, which could be liver, kidney, heart, one of those things, all of those things. And you want to be careful about mixing them together yourself as well, because if you over mix it, the liver is going to become pasty. And it’s going to be a little bit weirder than that. So you want to kind of like just barely mix the liver into the ground beef. Most a lot of butcher shops will do that for you, which is fantastic. Because again, if you’re kind of like just experimenting with this stuff, one of the easier ways to get into it is to have help and to have people who know what they’re doing. Make it a little bit easier for you first, like I recommend for people who have access to restaurants. The first time you try organ meats, have a professional make it for you, like don’t throw like professional help. That’s the best, like the best version of it. First, you can see what it really can be about it doesn’t have to be the boiled brussel sprouts and the boiled liver of our youth it can be like something delicious. But yeah, I would say mixing mixing into a meal that you know you already love is a smart way to go about it. But I will also say in this book, there is a liberal onions recipe of Venetian liver and onions recipe that was contributed by a friend of mine who’s a chef here in Ontario at a Italian restaurant. And it is I know I’m biased because I’m the weird organ meat lady but it is my favorite meal in the entire city. Like I would rather order a sliver in onions than pizza or whatever delicious thing I can get. It’s it’s that well done. And I’ve had some people make it and they’re like, this is fixed my like trauma by like PTSD. You know, liver and onions experience. So always be willing to maybe give it a shot in a different way. So yeah, there’s there’s a lot options in there for you.

Michael Nelson  1:11:53

Awesome. And second, the last question I heard you have a very good recipe for Beefheart.

1:11:59

Yeah, my favorite recipe, there’s a few in there. But my one of my favorite recipes, the one I’m most proud of, is a stuffed beef heart recipe that is actually like a maritime delicacy from the east coast of Canada, which is where I was born. And you know, there’s a lot of hunting that goes on there and a lot of using all of the animal parts. And it’s really quite simple. It’s just a sort of cleaned and cut open beef heart that you stuff with whatever is delicious. In this case, I did bacon and mushrooms but you can do potato or whatever else you want to put in there. And you kind of sear it, you tie it up with some twine, you sear it on a cast iron skillet with some butter. And then you roast it for like 40 minutes. Super simple. But it’s delicious. And it looks impressive. Like you could put this on like a Thanksgiving dinner spread. And people will be like, oh, wow, look at you. And it was really easy to make. And heart is another recommendation that I give to a lot of people who are starting out because it doesn’t have the textural challenges that some other organs do because it’s a muscle meat. So just like your steaks that you’re used to eating, it’s a muscle, it has that beefy texture, it has a different flavor than a steak. It’s a little bit more meaty a little bit, maybe more gamey tasting, but a lot of people like that. But it just is cool. It’s just like a delicious roast made out of an animal’s heart. And when I made it, I was like, I was a little bit nervous. And I was like, is this gonna turn out? And then it turned out it was delicious. And like so many people liked it. Usually I’m used to just like a couple of my diehard. Yeah, this is why people were like, this is really good. And I was I was just really pumped about that recipe. So that’s what I recommend to a lot of people.

Michael Nelson  1:13:37

Oh, very cool. Yeah. I’ve often wondered if we took people who are not used to organ meats, and we we put them in like a fancy French restaurant, and it’s all in French, and they don’t even know what they’re eating. Like how different their experience would be other than saying, Oh, well this is this part of the atom or this is that part of the animal? Like you’re trying to drop those preconceived notions, I think it’d be quite different.

1:14:03

Absolutely. I mean, that’s exactly what I was talking about earlier with the like, yeah, like blog, Roz, another one and sweetbreads and stuff because it is wrapped up in this. This is a delicacy. This is special. This is what fancy people eat. Yeah, delicious. Like, Oh, I just cut this out of an animal in my garage. Oh, that’s terrifying. But it’s it’s literally the same thing.

Michael Nelson  1:14:25

Yeah. Awesome. So where can people get the book looks like it’s available in most stores. And he places we recommend?

1:14:33

Yeah, pretty much anywhere. I mean, whatever place you want to support. So it’s on the Amazon, it said chapters in Canada, Barnes and Noble. There’s a couple other websites for overseas folks. But all of that is also on my website. You can buy it from my website as well. Yeah, so it’s kind of available everywhere.

Michael Nelson  1:14:52

Do you do any personally signed copies if they get it through your website?

1:14:56

Well, you know, I’m working on that the problem being I would love to I’ve done a couple the the issue being that again, being way up north in the exotic. Everything’s so expensive shipping.

Michael Nelson  1:15:10

Oh yeah.

1:15:11

I had a lot of requests, and it’s so flattering and it’s so awesome. And people like, yeah, we want you to autograph it and send it to me. And I’m like, it’s gonna cost jet so that you know, if you if you are interested, if you’re invested, I would be happy to do it. It’s a little more expensive. But you know, you get, you’ll get a personalized message from your yours truly. So yeah,

Michael Nelson  1:15:29

and what’s your website?

1:15:31

It’s just my name, Ashley manhattan.com. And I’ve got, you know, everything there my podcast, you can get it from there. A couple other programs that I’m working on. And mostly, again, like we’ve been saying, as much as I thrown social media under the bus, you can also find me on Instagram. And I’m pretty. You know, I’m very accessible there. So you can find me on Instagram at the muscle Maven.

Michael Nelson  1:15:55

Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for all your time today. I really appreciate it. I enjoyed our wide ranging conversation. And we’re super excited about the book to make some of the the meals and stuff from here. And yeah, I was just impressed about how well it turned out and all the pictures and everything and just float and it looks really nice. So thank you for the effort on it.

1:16:18

Yeah, I appreciate that. I can’t wait to see what you make. And they’re like I said, there’s a lot of desserts in there. And they basically all have collagen or gelatin in them. So

Michael Nelson  1:16:26

Oh, there we go. Yeah, check it out. Cool. Awesome. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Mike. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. A big thanks to Ashley for coming on here and talking about her brand new book. It takes guts, I do have a copy of it, she was very nice to send me one is really well done. I’m in the process of making some of the recipes from there. But I would highly recommend you check it out. I think if we can eat more organ meats, that is definitely a move in the better direction. So you can follow her on social media also. So big thanks to her for coming on. always enjoy our chats. And as always, the podcast is brought to you by the flex diet certification, get on the waitlist and get the daily newsletter for free with all my ramblings on ways to increase your body composition and performance in the gym, add some strength, add some hypertrophy, no cost to sign up to the newsletter. That’ll also put you on the waitlist. For the next time the flex diet certification opens up. So go to flex diet.com flxdt.com. And if you could give us a very short review, and whatever stars or thumbs up or whatever the cool kids are using now for rating podcasts. That would be awesome. I really appreciate it. Any and all feedback is appreciated. I want to do everything I can to make this the best podcast available. So thank you all very much. I greatly appreciate it. Talk to you all soon.