#28 Danny Vega – Keto Carnivore

About Danny Vega:

As an avid fan of The Ketogenic Athlete, I first met Danny at Keto Con in Austin Texas. He was a so down to earth and the real deal. He and his wife Maura, with their 2 boys were warm and welcoming.

You can hear Maura’s episode HERE:

Danny and Maura are the ultimate in the keto carnivore movement. And in this show, he talks about why he is choosing this lifestyle.

A native of Miami, Florida, Danny received his bachelor’s degree in political science from Columbia University in 2004, where he was a member of the football team and a three-time Dean’s List recipient. Danny earned his Master’s of Science in Human Performance from the University of Florida, where he worked with the national championship men’s basketball team along with women’s basketball, tennis, and golf programs.

He then went on to become the Strength & Conditioning coordinator for VCU basketball, helping the Rams to the 2007 conference champions and making it to the second round of the NCAA tournament.

Find Danny:

https://www.instagram.com/ketocounterculture/

Show Notes:

• Played sports and football his whole life
• But moved over to the Basketball facility
• Assistant with the basketball team and at the same time, he is designing programs for men’s and women’s golf and tennis
• 11 years ago, he moved back to Miami and started as a pharmaceutical rep and got in to medical device sales for the pas 6 years
• Started Keto in 2016 and it changed his life so much.
• Became a co-host to Bryan.
• Masters in Science and Human Performance

LITTLE BIT OF THE WISDOM THAT YOU’VE LEARNED BEING THROUGH THOSE PROCESSES.

• As people start to know who I was you would probably say, “oh this guy, he doesn’t like high protein. And it was never that. I have a mediocre reaction to people definitively saying things without trying it out with themselves.
  It bothers me like crazy.
• So the first year, all I heard was everybody was saying, “you need to eat this much protein or else your muscles are going to disappear.” And I was like, “let me just prove that wrong.”
• I listed Robert Sikes Keto Savage because I was doing the cut on my own and I was getting a little bit creative of the recipes.
• We were already friends at that time so I said, “look, I’m going to pay you. I want you to give me a plan and I want you to keep me accountable.”
• I can’t do it on my own because I have never gone down to 6% body fat and that was the goal at that time.
• What we did is we reduced my protein over time – slowly.
• We worked together from June to August. That was the tale end of my cut. Which was actually the most effective portion of my cut was when I worked with Robert.
• My protein at that time was under a hundred grams for a long time.
  We started off by 120 grams of protein and by the end we were almost half of that.
• So the last couple of weeks my protein was 75 to 80 grams and my fat had only dropped by 215 grams. So my fat was still very high.
• My ratio was 84 or 85 percent fat and I felt awesome.
• I’ve gained 6 pounds of lean mass.
• And then I did another experiment with Robert.
• But what I’ve noticed at the end of last year, I noticed that I have always had a lot of added fats in my diet.
• My fat would be 275 to 300 plus of grams of fat a day.
• The three things that I have noticed. The first on was that, I noticed that I started going to the bathroom more often and it was like an inconvenience.
• The second thing that I noticed was that I started to accumulate around my stomach and my gut area.
• In August I started this whole carnivore thing.
• I don’t need vegetables, I don’t love them so let me just see if I could operate at the same level and feel healthy and feels good as I did with Keto, doing this version of it.
• That was a revelation because I absolutely loved it.
• The difference between Keto and carnivore in some aspects was greater than the difference between the standard diet and Keto.
• The two ones that I felt it the most was my mental sharpness and my hunger control.
• Cutting fat, the first thing that I noticed is that my body regulates my blood sugar better.
• The second thing is, that I was able to get to the lower caloric number that I got to with Robert way quicker. Because when you cut carbs, you’re only cutting ¼ calories per carb that you cut, versus 9 calories per gram of fat that I cut.
• I actually suffering less at a lower amount, and I’m here stuck at that lower amount because when you hit your caloric floor, you basically stay there for 4 weeks.
• Instead of these last 4 weeks, instead of keeping everything constant, I’m going to bump up my protein by 10 grams each week.
• So I went from 160 grams where I was the whole steady to 170 grams last week and I’m at a 180 grams this coming week, and I would end up with 190 grams of protein with my fat with only 175.
• My protein is higher than my fat, but my ratios are still Ketogenic.
• I tracked from April through August. Then I had a break for September, and then I tracked from October to December. Then I had a week break, and then I’ve been tracking this whole time. So after this, I’m officially stopping to track.

TELL ME ABOUT THE MICRONUTRIENTS YOU GET FROM YOUR CARNIVORE DIET

• Meat is actually more nutrient dense than plants.
• Not only it is nutrient dense but it is also more bio available
• What you take in from meat is actually able to be absorbed better. Because with meat, you’re going to have the animal fats that will help you with absorption and most of the vitamins that we want and need are fat soluble.
• Vitamin A is 12 to 24 times more bio available in meat.
  Animal foods are the best sources of B vitamins.
  B12 is not found on plant foods, Vitamin D is not found in plant food.
• Now plants have Vitamin C.
• I’m possibly getting 10 to 20 milligrams of Vitamin C a day from my meat.
• And by that definition, my teeth should be fallen out, I should be getting scurvy, and any minute now, I’m probably going to die.
• It’s funny because one of the best treatments of scurvy is fresh meat.
• If you go to the USDA website, it will tell you the content of Vitamin C in meat and it is zero. It’s not based on anything real, they just assume that the content is zero. Which is not true.
• A good size of portion of meat is going to have around 10 milligrams of vitamin C.
• Georgia is one of my favorites and I would highly recommend her.
• She said, “why do people tell us to eat vegetable so much if meat is more nutrient dense.”
• It’s because what vegetables are so much s what they aren’t.
  They are not processed foods, they’re whole foods, they’re field with nutrients, they also have anti-nutrients.
• My micro biome of my gut has completely changed like 3 to 4 weeks.
• If I have something a certain plants that I haven’t had in awhile, I get an upset stomach.
• Being intentional in telling myself that, at least once a week, I want to get a half a pound of organ meat in and at least once a week I want to get a half a pound of fish in.
• If you’re an athlete and you want a sodium bomb, that just going to get you super hydrated for your training, there’s nothing better with starting your day with sardines and anchovies, and egg yolk omelet.
• Dietary cholesterol had no affect on your cholesterol levels and in the early 50’s they started to see that there were certain coloration between high cholesterol and heart disease risks.
• Cholesterol is not bad, you can eat all the cholesterol all you want and you’re not going to get a heart attack.
• Studies shown that women live longer associated with lower risk with higher cholesterol.
• I think the B12 is one of them and all the amino acids that are in the meat that were eating.
• This whole thing about protein is a very complicated issue; it is not black or white.
• People are so quick to worry about protein, and I understand that with the Ketogenic diet, especially if you are trying to treat certain conditions, you need to have more therapeutic levels of Ketones.
• But the three things that matter with protein in my opinion are lean body mass, activity levels, the shape and the condition of your metabolism.
• If you’re a healthy individual with no real signs of insulin resistance, you can eat protein.
• I myself have 212 pound of lean body mass.
• I recommend to people be closer to 80 percent with fat because I feel it helps so much to get people fat adapted.
• And once you’re fat adapted, you just have so much more freedom to go off to reservation and add some proteins, and do different things, and your body response because you’re fat adapted already.
• The affects on your metabolism from under eating cannot be understated.
• One of the things that messes people up and one of the reasons you see people gain weight back with the high carb, eat less, move more approach is that,
  number 1, you gain the weight back and number 2, you get hungry.
  And that’s because your body is responding.

WHAT HEALTH BENEFITS HAVE YOU EXPERIENCE FROM YOUR KETO DIET?

• The first thing is the inflammation in my joints.
  2 or 3 days into Keto, I felt my joints are so much better.
• The second thing that came to me all of a sudden I just became conscious of how much energy I have.
• The last one is the fact that I have been able to learn more about my body that I ever had my whole life.
• What we eat makes us hungrier, Ketogenic diet tend to lower caloric consumption and I’m not trying to make anybody holding back from food, but we tend to over eat.
• The main way we’re going to be healthier is not by eating less and moving more but it just remains the fact that we’re eating more.

Check out the previous episode here!

Comments

comments