#ICYMI - Plant-Powered Athletes and Plant-Based Diets

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel…. Hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice explore the world of plant-powered athletes and plant-based diets with former German strongman competitor Patrik Baboumian, heavyweight boxer Cam F. Awesome, and vegan nutrition and fitness coach Karina Inkster. Photo Credit: Patrik Baboumian. Photo Credit: Deivitrix [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chuck Nice?

  Hey, StarTalk All-Stars might be off the air, but we have an all-new way for you to enjoy the show. Head over to youtube.com/StarTalkAllStars for free weekly video episodes of the show. You can still listen to all the audio episodes, but we figured you'd like to watch them with your very own eyes. Subscribe to youtube.com/StarTalkAllStars and hit the bell so you can be notified every time a new video gets published. Thanks to our supporters on Patreon for sponsoring this episode of StarTalk. Join them and listen to every episode with no ads. Go to patreon.com/StarTalkRadio to learn how.

• 0:44Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 0:45Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 0:46Gary O'Reilly?

  And this is Playing with Science. Today, we examine the myth that says only meat-based proteins can fuel elite athletes to the very top of their sport. And yes, you're correct. This is not the hot dog eating show. That may very well be on the launchpad very soon, so keep an eye out.

• 1:04Chuck Nice?

  Did you say lunchpad or lunchpad? Maybe I'm just hungry. Maybe I'm hungry.

• 1:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Maybe.

• 1:09Chuck Nice?

  And bringing the athletes POV is not one, but two world-class athletes who are not to be messed with. We're talking about world record-breaking strongman from Germany, Patrick Babumian, and super heavyweight, Golden Gloves champion boxer and Olympic hopeful Cam F. Awesome. Yes. Yes, he is, if I say so myself. Both of them will be here to tell their amazing stories.

• 1:36Gary O'Reilly?

  I've got to get to the bottom of that name.

• 1:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Really.

• 1:38Chuck Nice?

  Cam F. Awesome.

• 1:39Gary O'Reilly?

  First question, right at the front. Talk me through the name, dude. And giving us the interdisciplinary science of nutrition, which it actually is, is vegan fitness coach and nutritionist Karina Inkster. Now, here we go, chaps and chappesses. If you're a 100% meat-eating athlete and don't care for salad.

• 2:02Chuck Nice?

  Meat.

• 2:03Gary O'Reilly?

  I totally get it. But if you'd like to hear how to challenge the conventions and your own thinking, then this show most definitely is for you.

• 2:15Chuck Nice?

  Alright, and to kick things off, as we promised, he is a world record breaking strong man. If you ever get a chance, uh, check out his videos on YouTube because they are absolutely phenomenal.

• 2:28Gary O'Reilly?

  They're ridiculous.

• 2:29Chuck Nice?

  They are ridiculous, man.

• 2:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, in the nicest possible way.

• 2:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. We're, we're talking about a man who carried over 1,200 pounds about, uh, 10 meters, which is insane. That's his world record, and it's a pleasure to bring to the show Patrick Babumian. Uh, Patrick, how are you, my friend?

• 2:49Speaker 02

  I'm great.

• 2:51Chuck Nice?

  Am I saying, am I saying your name correctly, Babumian?

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, Babumian's perfect.

• 2:55Chuck Nice?

  Okay, Babumian, fantastic.

• 2:57Gary O'Reilly?

  We got a name right.

• 2:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we got a name right, I can't believe it, especially me.

• 3:00Gary O'Reilly?

  That's a lap of honor at the end of the show.

• 3:02Chuck Nice?

  You know it, right.

• 3:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Alright, um, okay, quite simple. What triggered your change from a meat-based diet to vegan?

• 3:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 3:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Cause that's, that's a story that really captured my imagination.

• 3:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and I, and yeah, go ahead.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, so basically, um, um, I was a typical strength athlete and, and bodybuilder and whatnot, um, for 12 years. Um, and like most of the guys in, in, in that kind of, uh, um, community, um, I believed in the superiority of, um, animal protein, um, over plant protein.

• 3:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Uh, and therefore I, I used to eat a lot of meat and, uh, I'm, I also had tons of dairy products. Like in my worst kind of days, I had up to two gallons of milk a day, so.

• 3:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow!

• 3:51Speaker 02

  It was really, really bad.

• 3:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, that is bad.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Um, and, uh, that was because I thought I need the protein from those sources, uh, and that plant sources wouldn't do the job for me, um, you know, for muscle building and so on. Um, and what triggered my change, uh, to answer the question is, um, that, um, at some point, I just realized that I was very compassionate towards animals, so, so I would, you know, rescue animals from the forest if I would see an, an injured animal, I would try to help them, get them to the vet, and, and try to do something, and that was a very natural reaction for me. Um, and I was sometimes even, you know, putting a lot of time and energy, for, for instance, once we had a, um, baby, uh, raven, uh, and we, you know, um, we, we put, put in like

• 4:35Speaker 02

  a few months of time trying to help that one bird, and I was just thinking, well, while I'm doing this... I'm eating in that time span, I'm probably eating, you know, like thirty or fifty chicken.

• 4:48Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  How does it make sense, you know, to try to, you know, put time and energy into trying to help one animal? Uh, and at the same time, you're basically eating, uh, other birds while you're trying to help that one bird.

• 4:59Chuck Nice?

  Well, the, the answer, Patrick, would be that ravens are not delicious.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  You don't know, you don't know.

• 5:06Chuck Nice?

  This is true. You're right. You're right. I'm joking, but go ahead. Continue.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  So that's basically when, when I stopped eating meat. And then now switch forward, uh, six years later, um, I was pretty successful as a vegetarian strongman then. Uh, I even, um, you know, got to, um, get, uh, the heavyweight national champions, uh, title in Germany.

• 5:29Chuck Nice?

  Ah, wow.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  So that's, that was in two thousand and eleven. So this is six years after, uh, going vegetarian. Uh, and once I gained that title, that brought me a lot of, you know, media attention. I was in all kinds of stu- Uh, newspaper, uh, newspapers in Germany. And at that point, I realized that I was now influencing a lot of other people through media.

• 5:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Um, and that's when I made the decision to actually go one step further and go completely vegan. Although in this case now, I wasn't really sure if it would work. Because, you know, as a vegetarian, I had already learned I was doing great. I was even doing better than when I was me, uh, eating meat. But I was really not convinced that I could do that on a one hundred percent plant-based diet without any animal products. Because I was still, as a vegetarian, having tons of dairy products.

• 6:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  And I sincerely believed that these dairy products and then milk and, and all that stuff, that that was, you know, one of the main pillars of my nutrition, um, that, you know, um, made everything work for me. So, um, I was really anxious, uh, if, if I could make it work. And I was super surprised, once I did it, that actually my performance levels even when, when.

• 6:44Chuck Nice?

  All right. Let's, let's ask you a question here.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  That's.

• 6:47Chuck Nice?

  What timeline have we got from you?

• 6:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Stopping a meat-based diet, coming into plant-based, coming vegan. How long does it take before you see quantifiable difference in what you can do?

• 7:02Chuck Nice?

  Interesting question, yeah.

• 7:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. Is it, is it an overnight thing? Is it a month, two months? Please?

• 7:07Chuck Nice?

  When did you wake up and go, "Wow, being a vegan is awesome!" Yeah!

• 7:13Gary O'Reilly?

  That would be you.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  That doesn't happen at all.

• 7:17Gary O'Reilly?

  It does in Chuck's mind. Go on, please.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  The most important thing is, this is, again, a very good point that you're making. So a lot of people have this misunderstanding that you go vegan and then automatically something awesome happens to you.

• 7:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  And, and you become superhuman. And obviously, that's bullshit. That, that doesn't happen.

• 7:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  And that's also one, one of the reasons that a lot of people think that a lot of the vegan athletes are actually kind of, you know, fake or, or a fraud or just pretend that it works for them, just because they want to influence people. Because they have this misconception that, you know, that, that we want to tell people veganism is something magical. It isn't. So if you go vegan, you still have to make, you know, you still have to make nutrition work. So you still have to give your body all the nutrients and everything it needs. And the reason that it works better than with animal products is actually pretty simple. If you do it correctly and you give your body everything it needs, what you're really doing is you're taking away a lot of the stuff that is stressing your body,

• 8:20Speaker 02

  like cholesterol and, you know, other chemicals and, and also a lot of stuff that negatively affects your microbiome, for instance.

• 8:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  All that stuff.

• 8:31Chuck Nice?

  A lot of that, a lot of that is in dairy too, just let me say. I mean, I'm not advocating one way or the other, but from a scientific standpoint, everything you talked about, a lot of your microbiome is adversely affected by dairy and a lot of the things that you were talking about just right before that, it shows up in inflammation.

• 8:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 8:50Chuck Nice?

  And so that's also extremely adverse for, for anybody, not just athletes. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. I just wanted to drop that in. Go ahead.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's one hundred percent what you say. So and therefore, if you do it correctly and you go vegan, what you basically do is you take all that away, but you still give your body everything it needs. Obviously, it's gonna do better than before.

• 9:11Gary O'Reilly?

  So for you, for you, Patrick, for you, Patrick, how many calories a day are we talking here?

• 9:16Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wait, let me, let me do this. Let me do this because I, when I was doing my research on Patrick, I saw this and it freaked me out. So I'm gonna give you your own words back right now, Patrick, and then you can, and then you tell us exactly what Gary asked, like, what is this? All right. I'm so excited to do this. I don't even know why. Six thousand calories a day, three hundred and fifty grams of protein a day, eight meals a day, and three hours of training, four days a week. As a vegan, can you give us an idea how you get three hundred and fifty grams of protein and six thousand calories in a day?

• 9:57Speaker 02

  One, one of the things about this is a misconception that a lot of people have, what vegan nutrition means. And that's because the one, you know, the first thing you think about vegan nutrition, if you hear it and you're not vegan, is salad.

• 10:12Chuck Nice?

  Salad.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Broccoli. So obviously, stuff that is not calorie dense.

• 10:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  And if you eat that way, if you, if I would eat that way the whole day, I would just crumble. So that's why I say I have to make sure that I get everything I need to grow. So I need to get the calories and I need to get the protein. Now, it's actually pretty easy if you know what to eat. My, my, my most favorite example is peanuts, not because I eat peanuts the whole day, but if you take a look at the, you know, how calorie dense peanuts are, they're pretty calorie dense.

• 10:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, they are.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Like, you know, it's pretty much like, like meat. But you also have a lot of, you know, plant-based fats in it.

• 10:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Which, which helps with the calories. But the most important part is you have twenty five grams of protein per hundred grams.

• 11:04Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  A quarter, a quarter of, uh, of, uh, of, of the, uh, weight that you're eating is protein weight.

• 11:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Um, and, um, so if you eat in a way that you make sure, you know, you eat a lot of legumes, you eat a lot of starches and a lot of stuff that is calorie dense and has enough protein, it's actually pretty easy. Uh, you can actually get your calories just as easy with a vegan diet, uh, as with a animal, uh, product-based diet. So you just have to make sure that, uh, um, you eat calorie dense enough.

• 11:36Chuck Nice?

  What is the equivalent of the whey protein that the bodybuilders are all talking about? So if I wanna get a plant-based protein and I want it to be the equivalent of whey protein, tell me what to do.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, so you have two options. Uh, you wanna make sure that you get a protein that is, uh, well-balanced in terms of the amino acid profile.

• 11:58Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  So one option you have is you can combine sources to get that. So you take legumes and starches, combine them together, and you get a pretty well-mixed, uh, source. That, that would mean something like, uh, you know, um, um, corn protein, uh, with, uh, soy protein, something like that.

• 12:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Uh, or if you wanna have a single source, so you can replace it one by one, I would always, uh, take soy, because soy is already well-balanced, uh, out of the box. So, um, most of the time, I'm just using a soy protein. Uh, but I, uh, tend to, from time to time, I, um, I use other protein sources too, just because I also eat a lot of soy products, uh, um, and I just wanna mix it up a little bit so that it doesn't get too, um, you know, too one-sided.

• 12:47Gary O'Reilly?

  But I go back to the point where you start a meat-free diet. You must then go through a number of physical and mental changes, developments. Can you talk us through that? Because there'll be a lot of people, and there's one sat right here, who hasn't been through a vegan diet. And therefore, what would it be like for someone listening to this show today if they were to take that course?

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so what you have to know beforehand is that you're going to, you know, you're changing the way you eat very dramatically.

• 13:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  And that's gonna have, you know, in the beginning, it's gonna have some negative by effects too. Because, you know, your whole digestive system has to accumulate to the new situation. So your microbiome is going to change. On the long run, it's going to change to the better. But that takes some time. So, and in that time, it can get a little bit awkward. So for me, it was probably the first two weeks or so where I felt a little bit, you know, off and I couldn't really, it's really hard to put it into words because it's just more, you know, literally a gut feeling.

• 14:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  So, so you have to get through that phase.

• 14:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  But it just takes, you know, like two weeks or so. And I always recommend people to, if they want to try it, to give it four weeks. Because four weeks is pretty much the time that it takes until, you know, all these positive effects kick in. And after four weeks, most people really, you know, once they experience these things, they're really motivated to stick to it. Because another thing that a lot of people have a problem with and that I had a problem with is that it just sounds scary if you, you know, if you make the decision and you think, okay, I'm gonna do this for the rest of my life. For me, that was a super scary thought because I love to drink milk. I love chocolate milk.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  I love so many, you know, dairy-based products.

• 14:56Gary O'Reilly?

  You were vegan athlete of the year in 2012, is that correct?

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:01Gary O'Reilly?

  And and you are now an ambassador. And you have featured in The Game Changers, which is a movie that has the fingerprints of James Cameron on it. Yeah, you're quite humble about this. Please, please explain more about your involvement in this particular movie.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the thing is, the movie started off as a one man project by producer James Wilks. So James Wilks is the winner of the Ultimate Fighter. I think it was the ninth edition of the Ultimate Fighter.

• 15:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  And he won the whole thing. And then after winning that, so that was pretty much the peak of his career. After winning that, he injured himself. He had a knee injury. And he started, you know, doing a lot of research and he just basically learned that all of his, you know, all of these ideas that he had, you know, about animal protein and all these things that it's necessary for him. He just learned that it wasn't true and there was also a different way. So he, you know, just tried veganism and and and just, you know, did it as an experiment to see how it how it goes. And it really helped with his recovery so that he recovered fast.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  So that made him think it would be a great idea to kind of specifically make a film for guys like him and guys like me who believed in that, you know, meat is, you know, for muscle building and and animal protein is is the main thing if you want to build strength. To specifically have a documentary that touches those topics. And that was the initial idea and it was a completely one one man show. So the first time he visited me back then, it was just him, a camera, and we just talked just the way we talk now.

• 16:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  We just talked and trained together and that was it. I think it is three or four years ago when James Cameron got involved and then it went crazy big. So they all came back and we re filmed everything. So if you take a look at the vegan population, what you just basically are going to see is that we have like seventy-five percent or something like that, female vegans.

• 17:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  And the reason for that is that it seems like women have a much easier time to just make the decision and just go for it. And on the negative side, men just don't get it for some reason. And we think that the reason that's a lot to do with just, you know, cultural ideas that are just planted in our heads, that, you know, meat eating has something to do with masculinity and, you know, a real man.

• 17:49Chuck Nice?

  I'm a man. I eat flesh.

• 17:52Gary O'Reilly?

  I mean, it goes back to prehistoric times where we hunt, we gather, we throw sharp objects at big beasts, we wear them, we eat them, we do all that thing, and it defines us and our way. So it's interesting that it's got that depth of connection in our own psyche, and it's still quite prevalent in the thinking today. Are you still competing?

• 18:17Speaker 02

  So my last competition was in two thousand and sixteen, after I tore my tricep. I didn't do any competitions after that, so I'm still training. I'm like, you know, maintaining seventy, eighty percent of my performance level that I had back then.

• 18:30Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  But I'm not competing. And also, in just a few weeks, I'm going to be forty, so it's kind of, you know, and I started with competitions when I was fourteen, so I think it's time to give my body some rest.

• 18:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, man, you can't keep up that pace forever, you know what I mean? I'm sure you've probably lost about an inch in height.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's definitely, once you do it, if you measure it right after that, you're going to be a bit shorter than before.

• 19:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, without a doubt, without a doubt.

• 19:06Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, we're gonna say goodbye, but with a sad heart, because, yeah, it's been brilliant talking to you. Thank you. Patrick Booba Yem.

• 19:17Chuck Nice?

  Boobamane.

• 19:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Boobamane, Boobian.

• 19:19Chuck Nice?

  Uh, Baboo.

• 19:21Gary O'Reilly?

  See?

• 19:21Chuck Nice?

  Doggone it, I can't say it now. Baboomian, Baboomian.

• 19:25Gary O'Reilly?

  No, in fact.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Patrick's okay.

• 19:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, yes.

• 19:27Chuck Nice?

  Patrick. Baboomian.

• 19:29Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, thank you to you. We are gonna take a break. Um, a name I can say is coming up, and a name I don't understand, but Cam F. Awesome will be our next guest. He's a Golden Gloves, super heavyweight boxer, and if either of us get out of line, we're getting more than just a thick ear. Right, uh, right, we're gonna take that break. Cam F. Awesome on the other side. Stick around, back shortly.

• 19:56Chuck Nice?

  Is your wall empty? Welcome to the club. Does it need to be covered in science? StarTalk is here to help. Go to starTalkRadio.net/store and choose between our Let's Make America Smarter Again poster or our StarTalk Universe poster. Get yours now at starTalkRadio.net/store.

• 20:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back to Playing with Science. I am, of course, Gary O'Reilly, and that, of course, is Mr. Chuck Nice.

• 20:23Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 20:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Plant-based athletes, this is where we are right now. Uh, we've spoken with Patrick, and you do his name better justice than I do.

• 20:33Chuck Nice?

  Uh, Baboomian, Baboomian.

• 20:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you.

• 20:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 20:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Strong man.

• 20:38Chuck Nice?

  Strong man, world record holder.

• 20:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Now, Cam.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  That's the Ger- German dude?

• 20:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that is the German dude.

• 20:43Gary O'Reilly?

  And that voice.

• 20:44Chuck Nice?

  And the voice that you hear.

• 20:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Is Cam F. Awesome.

• 20:46Chuck Nice?

  Cam F. Awesome.

• 20:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, um.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  That dude got some killer chops.

• 20:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, he's got some killer chops, and by that, he's not talking about his performance skills. He's talking about the actual mutton chops.

• 20:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, man, he's.

• 20:58Chuck Nice?

  That he, the, the, uh, what are they? Uh, Wolverine-esque.

• 21:03Gary O'Reilly?

  He's, he trimmed them back.

• 21:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, he did.

• 21:05Gary O'Reilly?

  He did. They're no longer.

• 21:07Chuck Nice?

  They're no longer Wolverine.

• 21:07Gary O'Reilly?

  The size of a small European country.

• 21:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 21:11Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 21:11Chuck Nice?

  Hey, thanks for being here, man.

• 21:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, how do we get to Cam F. Awesome? Where did that name come from, apart from your imagination?

• 21:17Chuck Nice?

  Gary needs to know the name, man.

• 21:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 21:19Chuck Nice?

  He loves it.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  Uh, I, I, I think it's, uh, I think I fit it, but I, uh, I would go by, I was called Lenroy Cameron Thompson Jr. It's what I was born. My mom would call me Cameron because I was a junior, not to get me confused with my father. Uh, I think you, in that situation, you just call the kid junior, but whatever. They call me Cameron and I shortened it to Cam because I grew up in the nineties and there was a very relevant rapper, uh, that I wanted to be liked. So I went by Cam Ron and then he no longer became relevant. So I just shortened up to Cam.

• 21:55Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 21:56Speaker 03

  Legally, when I fought, they would have to call me Lenroy and I wanted to change that. So I went to change my first name. And then I saw that there's a section to change your last name and I was like, Sam Price?

• 22:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:11Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 22:12Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 22:12Chuck Nice?

  So this is your legal name, Cam F. Awesome.

• 22:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Love it.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I love it. He's like, yeah.

• 22:20Gary O'Reilly?

  That's cool. See, boxing is such a combination of different things. It's power, strength, explosion. And then you've got to have the endurance side of the whole thing together. How, as a plant-based athlete, do you manage to get everything you need in your diet to achieve those things?

• 22:42Speaker 03

  Oh, uh, I think most of it is, is a product of, you know, capitalism. People are just trying to sell you stuff. All of the stuff that like, you don't need all the protein they're selling you. Like I know ladies who will, on their 30 minute lunch break, they go for a 27 minute walk and then have a 1,200 calorie protein shake. Like it doesn't really do anything. You're just taking expensive foods. I don't count protein out, count carbs out, do any of that. I just kinda eat plant-based foods occasionally. I'll, I'll splurge and have like a vegan burger or, uh, the Beyond Burger or the Impossible Burgers are really good.

• 23:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  But I, I don't, I'm not like a health nut like that.

• 23:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Has it, have, have you found, once you go to this vegan diet, that your actual boxing improved?

• 23:37Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:38Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  It improved for the, for the first reason why is I have a negative rela-, I, I don't have a positive relationship with food.

• 23:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  I love food. My favorite feeling in the world is eating so much until I not only hate myself, I hate everyone around me. And then I go to sleep. I just waddle to the closest place I can sleep. And then I wake up and I eat the rest of the food room temperature. To me, that's the greatest feeling.

• 24:05Chuck Nice?

  We, we're gonna have to get you some new feelings.

• 24:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, that's hilarious.

• 24:13Speaker 03

  When you're eating plant-based, like, the, the, one of the greatest benefits at first was if I could stop off at McDonald's and just have one quick meal today, cause I'm busy, just today, only today, I would do that twice a day for the rest of my life. I can't stop myself from going through a drive-through. But now that I don't have any drive-through options, I have to pre-plan my meals.

• 24:34Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  And weirdly, I, and it's where I am right now. I live in a van. And I have like-

• 24:40Chuck Nice?

  Down by the river? Don't, don't say down by the river.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  This is not a plug, but that's the name of my podcast.

• 24:48Chuck Nice?

  Oh, come on.

• 24:50Speaker 03

  I just interview strangers when I travel. I just, it's harder to get people in your van than you think.

• 24:57Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty funny. I love this guy. I love Cam F. Awesome.

• 25:04Chuck Nice?

  Dude, that's amazing. Okay, too damn funny. So, Down by the River is the name of your podcast? Let's give it a proper plug there. Yeah, that's hilarious.

• 25:13Gary O'Reilly?

  How about being a spokesperson for-

• 25:15Chuck Nice?

  For veganism.

• 25:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, veganism, vegan athletes.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  Oh, uh, I, I don't like to be one really, cause I feel like the other vegans, they do a lot of research and they read a bunch of stuff. And my goal is, like, be happy, win things, be vegan, slightly mention it sometimes. And someone's like, hey, what's your secret? And I'm like, vegan. And they're like, what? Tell me more. And then they're more receptive to listen to what I have to say.

• 25:43Chuck Nice?

  Interesting. Yeah, interesting. So, when, when you say tell me more, what, what would you tell me? If, let's, okay, so I'm gonna be very honest. Right now, we talked with, uh, Patrick, you know, and I've been to a few websites. I'm kinda thinking about it. I'm kinda thinking about it. So what would you tell me?

• 26:04Speaker 03

  I would say, well, first I'll ask, what would be your reasons for going? Is it health reasons?

• 26:09Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I'm getting older. It's harder for me to maintain weight. Um, my health is not a hundred.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Looking good though, looking good.

• 26:17Chuck Nice?

  My health is not a hundred percent, and I think maybe this might help me. So that's the reason.

• 26:23Speaker 03

  All right, well, I would say, uh, maybe Forks Over Knives is a good film to watch and it explains not just food, but labels and how the FDA says you can say anything you want in the front of the label, but the nutritional facts is that's the only thing that has to be true.

• 26:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  And like you see the Pam cooking spray?

• 26:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  It's zero fat, zero carbs, zero everything, but for point, for one eighth of a second.

• 26:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  You're big into science. You literally can't do it for one eighth of a second, even if you did that.

• 26:58Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. That's the, that's the serving, basically. If you were to have a serving size, it'd be an eighth of a second spray.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  So what, what do you do? You go

• 27:08Speaker 03

  and that's like two billion calories right there. So when you think, oh, I just had, uh, eggs. I don't know how I'm gaining weight. I just have eggs for breakfast. Well, that's like your daily calories in just spray. But that's the kind of things that the film teaches you. It kind of teaches you how to grocery shop. You, you do the outskirts. You don't need to go down the aisles. Everything down the aisles are canned food, processed and junk. So you gotta shop around the outskirts.

• 27:34Chuck Nice?

  I probably do that already, you know? I'm, I'm talking specifically vegan, you know what I mean? As a lifestyle. I mean, I'm, I'm concerned that I don't know if I could make that lifestyle change.

• 27:47Gary O'Reilly?

  It, it, it takes a lot of commitment and you've got to get into, uh, you've got to have more of a conviction to go completely into the lifestyle. And you know, if you said like, I'm not wearing leather. And then go to the recycled aspect of materials and it really, really get involved in it to that depth. That's, that's a serious commitment. And once you've been around on the

• 28:10Speaker 03

  You can go crazy doing that.

• 28:11Chuck Nice?

  I like all of that stuff though, man. All that stuff. I actually like all of that stuff. I actually agree with all that stuff. I just don't know if it's for me.

• 28:18Gary O'Reilly?

  So, okay, we take away all of the things that are, and

• 28:22Speaker 03

  Here's the thing we need to do.

• 28:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  You need to give yourself a, uh, Who lives in your house?

• 28:28Chuck Nice?

  Uh, well, it's not my house. It's my wife's.

• 28:31Speaker 03

  I did a little bit of research. I heard that you are, you're in charge for maybe a few minutes a day.

• 28:37Chuck Nice?

  If, if, if that, yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  What, what you need to do is ask her, get her permission and make everything in your house vegan and do a family 28 day challenge. And everything you do, meal prep it. Because people think that eating healthy is expensive. It's not true. Eating conveniently is cheap. And convenience tied together with being cheap is a good deal. You can drive through a drive thru, go through a drive thru and get a burger which has meat, cheese, lettuce and sauce, bread, all for a dollar. But if you grocery shop and drop 80 bucks or like 60 pounds, got you, bro.

• 29:18Chuck Nice?

  Thank you.

• 29:19Speaker 03

  Of groceries, you can eat like a king all week.

• 29:24Chuck Nice?

  I got you.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  And it's healthier, but it takes a little bit extra.

• 29:27Chuck Nice?

  It takes planning. So you're, you're saying plan and prep is the key.

• 29:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Strategy.

• 29:33Speaker 03

  Here's the best way to do it.

• 29:34Chuck Nice?

  Strategy.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  Here's the best way to do it. What we, what I did with my group when, when I first lost the bet, every Sunday, they would, I had some people come over my house. We'd all go grocery shopping together. We'd throw money in the pot and everyone shows up with their containers. We cook literally all day. So there's like two, three people in the kitchen, other people in the living room play Monopoly. I always win, uh, Jingo, whatever. We exchange back and forth. The end of the day of like eight hours of cooking, which it doesn't feel like that because it's a hangout.

• 30:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 30:03Speaker 03

  Uh, everyone gets their containers and we all separate the food. You have all your food you need for the entire week. So everyone has like 24 meals.

• 30:10Gary O'Reilly?

  They're the cookathon days that I read about.

• 30:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, Sunday cookathon.

• 30:14Gary O'Reilly?

  All right. And then, then I read.

• 30:15Speaker 03

  Oh, you did research.

• 30:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, man, yeah. Here we go. Here's something that I'm, I'm still, I've got to ask you because my head's getting messed up. Plant-based engine two compliant dishes.

• 30:26Gary O'Reilly?

  That I'm speaking, I'm speaking in tongues.

• 30:28Chuck Nice?

  Plant-based Engine 2 compliant dishes.

• 30:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Hit me, talk to me again. Come, Cam, let me know what's going on.

• 30:35Chuck Nice?

  It sounds something like a computer would say when the self-destruct mode has been invoked on a spaceship, just like, "Plant-based Engine 2 compliant, now in operation."

• 30:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 30:47Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 30:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Alright.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  Uh, that, that's uh, the, the 28 day challenge that, what I suggest you do.

• 30:53Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  I suggest everyone do that, even if you have no interest in being vegan, because when I did that, you eat so clean that you learn how to read your body, which sounds a little silly.

• 31:03Gary O'Reilly?

  No, no, no, no, get that.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  When I'm eating clean like that, uh, which I don't always, but if I'm training for a fight or something, I eat clean. You know when your body's craving carbs, when it's craving fats, when it's craving sugar, whatever you need, you know what your body needs.

• 31:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  And I did that in 2012, and still to this day, I'm able to understand my body more. And it was only 28 days. I wish I had more vegan information. I just, my research is, I tried it, I like how I feel, and that's what I go by, because there's so much out there of misinformation and people who want everyone to eat meat will say things bad against veganism, or people who don't want to eat meat will say bad things against eating meat. I just tried it, I love it, it made my life happier, it brought me joy, and it brought me that slight moral superiority that I don't mention, but I'm like, ah, I'm doing something good in life, because I don't like waking up early on Sundays.

• 32:01Chuck Nice?

  My man.

• 32:01Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go.

• 32:02Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Hey, listen, that may be the best endorsement I've heard for veganism, period, and it's because you're kind of doing it, uh, in a way where you're respecting everybody, but it's really about making yourself happy, and, uh, you know, who can't respect that?

• 32:17Gary O'Reilly?

  No, that's true. Right.

• 32:18Chuck Nice?

  You have to. Thanks so much, brother.

• 32:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, Cam F. Awesome. Uh, check him out. That podcast again is? Your podcast?

• 32:26Speaker 03

  Awesome. It's Down by the River.

• 32:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Down by the river.

• 32:31Chuck Nice?

  Down by the river.

• 32:34Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 32:35Speaker 03

  Also, anybody wants to book any school gigs, I'm starting my school tour in July, traveling the country, speaking about appropriate social media use, bullying, social media use and social and emotional learning.

• 32:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, where do they get in touch with you? Boom. Where do they get in touch with you?

• 32:51Speaker 03

  celebritiesports speaker dot com or camfawesome dot com or at camfawesome on all social media platforms.

• 32:58Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 32:59Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go.

• 33:00Chuck Nice?

  Hey, man.

• 33:01Gary O'Reilly?

  And it's time for us to go to a commercial break.

• 33:04Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 33:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Camfawesome, thank you once again. Been fabulous. Good luck with your target 2020 vision Tokyo Olympics. Thank you. Right, we will take a break. When we come back, Karina Inkster.

• 33:19Chuck Nice?

  Inkster.

• 33:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Vegan fitness coach and vegan nutritionist. This is going to be another interesting, really interesting conversation and it will be coming up straight after the break.

• 33:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back to Playing with Science. Right, Karina Inkster, vegan fitness coach.

• 33:44Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 33:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Vegan nutritionist.

• 33:46Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 33:46Gary O'Reilly?

  And someone who is amazing at pull-ups and Chuck has something I never knew existed, which is pull-up envy.

• 33:53Chuck Nice?

  Yes. So first of all, Karina, thank you and welcome to the show.

• 33:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 33:57Speaker 04

  Thank you so much for having me. Super excited.

• 33:59Chuck Nice?

  And secondly, thanks for showing off on your website and your perfect pull-ups. I mean, I've never seen more perfect form. And by the way, she does pull-ups, she does palm-facing chin-ups, which are like a variation of a pull-up. It's not quite a chin-up, it's not quite a pull-up, but your palms are facing each other. Okay. And then she does one-handed pull-ups using a towel for stability, which really just made me lose my crap. Okay. And so I am envious and I am jealous and let's get into some vegan talk here because that's why you're on the show.

• 34:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, plant-based diets. Okay, we know guys have gone meat-free and...

• 34:47Gary O'Reilly?

  There are pluses, there are some minuses. Can you give us an overview of what the pluses and potential minuses are? For anyone thinking, be elite athletes or just guys like Chuck who wanna have perfect pull-ups in the gym?

• 35:08Speaker 04

  That's a great question. So my focus is definitely on the strength side of things. So I've got a lot of clients, they're all vegan, they're all around the world. They're all at different levels of strength, of course. So all of my pros for veganism are usually focused around what it can help you with physically in your training. So a lot of professional athletes are actually finding that they can recover more quickly from their training when they go plant-based. And so there's a few pro athletes out there who actually have gone plant-based entirely just for performance reasons. So they feel like they can recover faster from their training, they're not as sore, they're not as inflamed. And it could be because they're eating a lot of antioxidants from plant-based foods and they're no longer eating

• 35:53Speaker 04

  pro-inflammatory foods, which are usually dairy and meats.

• 35:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Right. So at a cellular level, it's down to antioxidants, it's down to less inflammatory product within the system? Have I got that right?

• 36:06Speaker 04

  Yes. And so on that note, also on the cellular level, or a very small microscopic level, I was just speaking to a gastroenterologist actually for my podcast just two days ago. And there's some new research out there that vegans apparently have way healthier gut microbiomes. I mean, who knew, right? This is totally new info. Compared to people who eat animal products, and it's because of the huge variety of plant foods. So this gets into, just because you're vegan doesn't mean you're healthy. You could eat Oreos and fries and Skittles and be vegan, and that's all you eat.

• 36:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Don't say things like that to Chuck.

• 36:40Speaker 04

  I'm giving Chuck some ideas here.

• 36:43Chuck Nice?

  All I'm telling you right now is hallelujah, okay?

• 36:47Gary O'Reilly?

  He never thought.

• 36:48Chuck Nice?

  I have found my diet. That is my diet. You've convinced me. I'm going to be.

• 36:54Speaker 04

  You're not gonna be doing a crap load of pull-ups on that diet though, I gotta tell you.

• 36:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm with you on that. First of all, let me just shout out your website, which is carinaingster.com. And on Karina's website, people, you, uh, she has a, a, a 10-day free email course on how to go vegan. She has a, a free 350-item plant-based grocery list, which I think is what a fantastic service that you're doing for people there. Yeah. Because that's going to bring me to my next question, which is, what am I gonna eat, Karina? What am I gonna eat? They tell me that I shouldn't eat meat, and then they tell me that I gotta cut out the carbs because the pasta and the bread is no good for me because it causes inflammation and it spikes my insulin.

• 37:42Chuck Nice?

  And then you come along and say, be a vegan, I can't eat any fish, I can't eat any honey, I can't, what am I gonna eat?

• 37:49Speaker 04

  Fair, fair question, fair question. Well, okay, so those 350 items are just to start, right?

• 37:56Speaker 04

  If anyone ever asks like, hey, so what the hell do vegans even eat? Just say, hey, well, here's the 350 list, item list to get you started.

• 38:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 38:03Speaker 04

  Um, okay, so here's the thing, I've been vegan for 16 years.

• 38:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  About half my life, but I was vegetarian before that. And so even when I was vegetarian, honestly, I didn't know what half the foods were that I eat now, like tempeh and wakame and all these like weird sounding foods that are delicious.

• 38:22Chuck Nice?

  Sounds like something out of Black Panther.

• 38:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, right?

• 38:25Chuck Nice?

  Wakame.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  All sorts of different cultures and, um, Thai cuisine, Indian cuisine, Afghan cuisine, like there's so frickin' many options. It's amazing. Um, but again, it goes back to that mindset of try not to get into the avoidance mindset. Like what you just said, it's like, oh, man, no meat, no fish.

• 38:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:43Speaker 04

  No eggs, right?

• 38:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:44Speaker 04

  Instead, you want to eat as many new foods to you as you can. Pile on as much plant-based food as you can onto your plate and just think about the abundance, right? There's foods out there, probably hundreds, probably thousands, that I haven't tried in 16 years of being vegan.

• 38:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, I, I was, that's why I did that, because, you know, I'm kind of joking about the whole thing. But yeah, I think there's a lot of people who actually feel that way, like, you know, well, what, what else am I gonna eat? What is there left?

• 39:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:09Chuck Nice?

  But I love the fact that you have this, you know, 350-item grocery list. I think that's a huge, huge, like, service, so thank you for that.

• 39:19Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, here we go, here we go.

• 39:20Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead, go ahead, Gary.

• 39:21Gary O'Reilly?

  With my background in sport, I would, I have not been vegan. So I would look at it from a distance and in my ignorance go. Well, is it the diet? Or did they just up their training regime? And therefore they're stronger? And this diet stuff is nah, it's not the thing. Is it? Is there the psychosomatic? Is that I'm vegan and they convince themselves? Or? Talk to me about this, please.

• 39:49Speaker 04

  That's a really good question. So honestly, I think we need a ton more peer reviewed research in this area. So people I've had on my podcast, dieticians I've been speaking with, sports scientists. It's kind of anecdotal level evidence at this point, right? So people are noticing, oh, hey, I can recover faster. Oh, I have more energy. But there's no long longitudinal, super long term research at this point that really says, hey, you're going to improve your performance on a vegan diet. For a lot of people, it's just the fact that they're thinking about their food more in general, right? Whether it's vegan or not, gotta say. If you're really thinking about your food, you're probably more mindful about is this really in line with my goals? Is it not? Should I eat this Oreo? Should I not?

• 40:34Speaker 04

  You know? So being related to that, there are some physical changes though. Like I mentioned with the gut microbiome. I mean, that's not something we have control over on a conscious level. Like all the little microorganisms hanging out in our intestinal tract, right? So changes like that are very interesting, along with lowered cholesterol and possibly recovering faster with antioxidants. But there are a lot of, a lot of athletes out there who kind of use themselves as case studies. So I know a couple of people who are vegan, but they've tried different types of vegan diets. So like higher carbs, lower protein, higher protein, lower carbs. And they're just kind of doing experiments on themselves.

• 41:15Speaker 04

  But what we really need is a large body of research. And this is such a new area. We don't really have that yet. So yeah, sure, a lot of it could be mental. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who feel like they have something to prove. Like there's still this BS myth out there like, oh, vegans are super weak. They're not getting enough protein. Everyone cares about protein when you tell them you're vegan.

• 41:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Right. All of a sudden, it's all about protein.

• 41:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. Like, how are you getting your protein?

• 41:43Speaker 04

  Right? And so there's still people out there who feel like they've got something to prove by being a vegan athlete. And that probably has a mental boost on some level to their performance.

• 41:52Chuck Nice?

  Probably.

• 41:53Speaker 04

  A lot of different, there's a lot of different aspects to that.

• 41:55Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. That, that, that's how.

• 41:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:58Chuck Nice?

  That's how my marriage has survived 22 years is that my wife, my wife keeps trying to prove to everybody that that was the right thing to do. So I'm gonna milk it as long as I can, Corina.

• 42:08Gary O'Reilly?

  There's a question in there Corina mentioned that you've never had. Should I eat this Oreo or not?

• 42:14Chuck Nice?

  Uh, listen, that is not, those are, those are not questions that we ask. Some things are just beyond knowing. Let me ask you this. Is there a prescription that you can give us for making a transition? Into becoming vegan if somebody's just thinking about it? Or is this something where you have to jump in both feet first? I mean, everybody can always do a trial thing. Okay? Like you could, you know, you could say, well, I'm gonna try it for four weeks. And now Patrick, that's what he told us. Like he, he tells people try it for four weeks because that's about enough time for you to get the idea of what your lifestyle would be and whether or not it's for you. Um, are there any other ways to make a transition is with, with something like, uh, you know, paring down your, your diet?

• 42:59Chuck Nice?

  Or, you know, just a lit, an elimination process or how, you know, is there any way you go about this that you would recommend for people different ways?

• 43:08Speaker 04

  That's a really good question. So I have in my 10 day online course, a meal by meal approach. So what I normally do with my clients is start with your breakfast. So we're going throughout the day here. We're not going a length of time like a month. We're not going all in necessarily all at once. We're going by time of day. So what do you normally eat for breakfast? Okay, let's veganize that. And let's do that for a month. Just your breakfast. Don't care about the other stuff. And at that point, you don't have to think about your breakfast anymore. Then you move on to lunch. Okay, so how are we gonna veganize your lunch?

• 43:40Chuck Nice?

  Wow, smart.

• 43:41Speaker 04

  You don't even have to think about your first, you know, half of your day by that point. And you've got your snacks and you've got your pre and post workout if you're an athlete.

• 43:48Chuck Nice?

  Brilliant.

• 43:48Speaker 04

  You're good, then you're plant-based.

• 43:50Chuck Nice?

  That is a brilliant approach. Do you know why? It is directly tied to your lifestyle. Because no matter who you are, you eat a certain way. So instead of trying to change all at once, what you're doing is you're attacking it from the lifestyle perspective.

• 44:08Gary O'Reilly?

  People talk about being energized, people talk about having more strength. How come? How, how, how by changing what I eat, surely it's got to be, I go back to the training regime, what I'm doing. How come? It's all because of stuff I'm sticking in my face?

• 44:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, right. You know, you know what's missing in most people's diets? Apparently ninety-seven percent of Americans are deficient in this. Any guesses?

• 44:33Chuck Nice?

  Um, I'm gonna say anything, chocolate, yeah. I'm gonna say anything green.

• 44:40Speaker 04

  Very good guess, and it's in things that are green, and it's fiber. So apparently, almost every person in North America is not hitting the fiber needs, including athletes, including everybody, just population-wide, we are not getting enough fiber. Now, if you're vegan, all you eat is plants. You're getting a crap load of fiber just by being vegan, assuming you're not sitting there just eating Oreos and nothing else.

• 45:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, looking at you, looking at you.

• 45:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you can look at me all you want. Wait, I, right now, I just wish I had a thing of Oreos here, a sleeve of Oreos.

• 45:12Gary O'Reilly?

  I'd see you if it wasn't for that box of Oreos you just sat behind, yeah.

• 45:15Chuck Nice?

  But go ahead, go ahead.

• 45:16Speaker 04

  So, so a lot of it has to actually do with the, the different types of nutrients that you are now eating. It's a very different diet. You're getting the fiber you need, your digestive tract is working a lot better now, which is important for athletes too. Um, you're getting a lot more antioxidants from plants. Let's assume that you're eating mostly whole foods, right? I mean, I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent gotta eat only whole foods and nothing else, but you know, eighty-five percent of the time. So you're getting antioxidants, which potentially help you recover faster from your training, which means you can then go train some more, which is kind of how steroids work.

• 45:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 45:50Speaker 04

  It's just recover super fast, go train some more.

• 45:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 45:52Speaker 04

  Um, so there's a potential performance benefit there.

• 45:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 45:55Speaker 04

  And strength, you know, honestly, I feel like we need more people like Patrick in the vegan world. There's tons of professional endurance vegan athletes out there. Brendan Brazier, triathletes, marathon runners, and the vegan strength world is there. I've got powerlifters who are competing on a national level. We have Robert Cheek, who's a well, very well-known bodybuilder. So he's like on the physique stage. But when you think about real professional vegan athletes, the strength world still needs to be populated some more.

• 46:24Gary O'Reilly?

  We got to introduce, we've got to meet the 11 of the Titans in the NFL.

• 46:31Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 46:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Went vegan last season. Oh, really? Yeah, and they're all linemen. They did it as a, as a team thing? Wow. Right. So they said, the thing I had, one of the guys, I was reading his interview, said, I lost so much weight. I went from 300 pounds to 265. And I'm thinking, this vegan diet's great. It's costing me my job.

• 46:49Speaker 04

  Hey, that's actually a really, really good point. So, and especially with guys, and especially with athletes, because generally men need more calories than women do just because of body size. And if you're an athlete, whether you're vegan or not, you need a lot of calories. So this is an excellent point, actually, for your listeners to hear, because vegan food, if it's whole food, let's just assume, well, the healthy whole foods, it's very nutrient dense, but it is not calorie dense.

• 47:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 47:16Speaker 04

  So if you're someone who needs to eat 4,000 calories a day, because you're an athlete and you're 300 pounds.

• 47:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Yep.

• 47:22Speaker 04

  You probably need to eat more, actually, probably like 500 calories a day, or I mean 5,000.

• 47:26Gary O'Reilly?

  5,000, yeah.

• 47:27Speaker 04

  Um, that is a huge volume of vegan whole foods, right? So it actually will probably feel like you're eating a lot more, like your plate is three times the size. I mean, if you have a salad the size of your torso, it's like 300 calories. And if you have a tiny little piece of steak, it's the same.

• 47:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 47:45Speaker 04

  So, right, it's kind of like. Where are your calories coming from? And it's a bit of a shift for a lot of people, especially athletes. Because the food is now very nutrient dense, which is perfect. It's gonna help you with your recovery, your training, fueling. But it's not super calorie dense. So as using myself as an example, when I trained clients in person at a gym, I did that for seven years before I went totally online. I was, you know, walking around a gym, demoing exercises, eight to 10 hours a day. I was on about 3,500 calories because I'm also doing my own training on top of that. So that's not insane. You know, if you compare that to someone who's a football player on 5,000 calories, it's it's still a decent chunk of food. But even at that level, 3,500 ish calories a day of healthy vegan food, I'm pretty much stuffing my face all day.

• 48:30Speaker 04

  Like people at the gym knew me as, oh yeah, she's eating again. It's like her fourth lunch, no big deal.

• 48:34Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 48:35Gary O'Reilly?

  You're already halfway there.

• 48:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm almost there.

• 48:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Because you're always thinking of food.

• 48:39Chuck Nice?

  You're damn right I am. I'm I'm hungry. This conversation is making me hungry.

• 48:43Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 48:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 48:44Speaker 04

  You're the perfect vegan like test specimen.

• 48:47Chuck Nice?

  I'm I'm serious. I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about I'm gonna I'm gonna look at your 10 day um your 10 day uh thing. I I told my wife it was a 10 day challenge, but it really isn't. But I'm.

• 48:56Speaker 04

  Well, you can make it a challenge for yourself.

• 48:58Chuck Nice?

  That's true. I can, I can. But I also loved your approach in that you do it on a meal by meal transition. I think that that is the most brilliant a strategy that anyone has ever said publicly. And I've had people say a lot of ways to go vegan, but no one has ever said it meal by meal. I think that's brilliant.

• 49:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, Patrick, Patrick earlier in the show, and and thank you for giving young young Chuck some advice there. He needs guidance.

• 49:26Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 49:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Patrick talked about the bump in the road. You know, from from day one to a maybe a month later and feeling the benefits, that not so much pain, not so much better recovery, energy, strength and stuff. What is the main or most common bump in the road people experience? Because it's not all roses and there's the odd thorn. So where is it hidden?

• 49:53Speaker 04

  So what we just talked about with the calories is usually the bump in the road for athletes. They're like, oh my god, I need to eat so freaking much food now. It's kind of ridiculous. And of course, that becomes your new normal at some point.

• 50:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 50:06Speaker 04

  But it's the unintentional weight loss. So you know, someone who weighs three hundred pounds because they have to for their job, then goes to two sixty, not because they wanted to, it's because of their diet changes. So that can be, that can take some figuring out. So now you're creating thousand calorie smoothies that you never had before. Other bumps in the road are cravings. So psychologically, man, I miss cheese, which is honestly the the most common one that I hear in my clients anyway.

• 50:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 50:33Speaker 04

  They're all around the world and they all say cheese. I don't know what it is about cheese. Apparently it has some kind of addictive properties to it. I don't know if that's legit or not.

• 50:41Chuck Nice?

  Oh, it really does. Are you kidding me? Sometimes I melt it and put it in a syringe and just mainline it, right? Okay, I'm joking. Go ahead.

• 50:48Speaker 04

  That's what I would do with chocolate.

• 50:51Speaker 04

  Um, so you know, it could be a psychological thing. It could be, wow, I kind of just missed this food because it's something I enjoyed. And I have to tell you guys, I didn't go vegan because I didn't like the taste of meat or cheese or eggs. I didn't go vegan saying, man, I don't like these foods. I had my ethical reasons, health reasons, environmental reasons.

• 51:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 51:08Speaker 04

  So it's it's part of the deal. I don't, I don't think about it anymore. It's been so long. And there's so, so many amazing options, like the Beyond Burgers now, Impossible Burgers, um, cheese options that are plant-based. So we got options now. Sixteen years ago, people didn't even know what vegan meant. They were like, hey, do you want a salad with chicken on it? Like, is that vegan?

• 51:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's true. That's so true. Super cool. All right, we gotta go. We have to. Oh, my god. Karina Inkster. You're, you're a delight. You're a delight. Website, website again is? KarinaInster.com.

• 51:39Speaker 04

  KarinaInster.com. You got that right.

• 51:41Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Hey, I'm gonna check back with you. I'm gonna let you know how this is going, all right?

• 51:45Speaker 04

  Please do. Yeah, absolutely. Any questions, if your listeners want to get in touch, it's KarinaInster.com is hub of all things vegan and science-based and badassery. So yeah, so get in touch anytime.

• 51:56Chuck Nice?

  And your podcast is called?

• 51:58Speaker 04

  It is called the No BS Vegan. I don't know if I'm, if you guys have a rated E podcast or not, because it's really the no bullshit vegan, but.

• 52:05Chuck Nice?

  That'll do. That'll work.

• 52:06Gary O'Reilly?

  That works for us. Yeah.

• 52:08Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 52:08Speaker 04

  Lots of science-based info. I'm really not into a lot of the pseudoscience that's around veganism and within veganism. So there's a lot kind of BS that needs to be busted. So I'm doing my little part there.

• 52:20Chuck Nice?

  All right. All right, vegan mythbuster. We love it.

• 52:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you. Yeah. Best of, best of luck with everything. And I mean, if anybody listens to this show and they're saying, you know what, Chuck, Gary, love you. Hopefully that's what they say. But I'm, I'm having me a big juicy steak tomorrow and I don't care. I'm good with that.

• 52:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, good for you.

• 52:39Gary O'Reilly?

  But if, if listening to our show today has helped you think in a different way, challenged a convention, then you know what, we're really cool with that. Cause there's a movement, that Game Changer movie that James Cameron's involved in, that Patrick was on. I think that's gonna make people sit down and think that, that movement is getting such, such a real pace.

• 53:03Chuck Nice?

  Super cool, man.

• 53:04Gary O'Reilly?

  It is.

• 53:05Chuck Nice?

  All right. Well, listen, I'm off to go have some Oreos.

• 53:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Again. Right. That is our plant-based athletes. I hope you've enjoyed it. I hope it's a food for thought. Pun intended, of course.

• 53:18Chuck Nice?

  I see what you did there.

• 53:19Gary O'Reilly?

  You did, didn't you? Good man. Right. I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 53:22Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 53:23Gary O'Reilly?

  And we're not vegan yet, but we might well be next time you hear us. Bye for now.

• 53:34Chuck Nice?

  Wish you could listen to StarTalk commercial free. Join StarTalk on Patreon for as little as $5 per month and the ads will disappear. Learn more at patreon.com/startalkradio.