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#PlantProtein #Fitness #VeganHealth

Audio Transcript

 

(This transcript was auto-generated so there may be some errors)

 

00:00:48:00 – 00:01:24:08
Nathan Crane
Welcome back to the podcast. I’m excited to have Daniel Austin here with us. Daniel is a powerlifter. He’s a punk rocker and he’s a long time vegan. And usually those three things aren’t commonly understood to go together. Yet he has been thriving as a vegan since 2005, a musician and a super strong powerlifter and excited to get into everything from your diet to, you know, what got you into veganism.

00:01:24:09 – 00:01:44:13
Nathan Crane
You know, what are some pitfalls people should look out for? You know, how have you been able to develop the strength that you have? You know, what are some things that athletes can think about in terms of plant based nutrition and helping them perform better and add more strength to their lives and a whole bunch of other stuff you got you got a good book out there as well.

00:01:44:13 – 00:01:48:09
Nathan Crane
So we’re talking about that. So, Daniel, hey man, thanks for coming on the podcast. Great to meet you.

00:01:49:08 – 00:01:51:01
Daniel Austin
Likewise. Thanks for having me.

00:01:51:15 – 00:02:17:12
Nathan Crane
So I was checking out some of your lives lately on Instagram. I saw you did what looked like you were doing that. You’re getting ready for me. Coming up, I saw deadlifts. You did three April for 75 for a triple. I looked like for ten back squat for a double or triple as well. Yeah. Bench press 285. What, also triple maybe.

00:02:18:04 – 00:02:53:16
Daniel Austin
Yeah. Yeah, I’m I compete in 75 CG weight class I’m pretty light guy I’m £165 so you know I’ve got currently all Texas state records for the 40 plus guys in my weight class drug tested and yeah I’m you know strength progress is not linear like all progress I’ve been this strong before. I’m kind of trying to get back to where I was and then exceed where I was.

00:02:53:16 – 00:03:15:01
Daniel Austin
And I think I’ll do it this year. It’s you know, I’m 41 now and I feel more aches in the joints. I’ve been powerlifting ten years straight, you know, so it’s I do feel it’s taken a toll. I should probably take a break for a year or something, but just like, do it. Yeah, yeah. It’s all about pain management.

00:03:16:23 – 00:03:26:21
Nathan Crane
Yeah, I hear you on this. You got the Texas State Records is pretty amazing for 40 plus, and you didn’t even start powerlifting until, like ten years ago, right?

00:03:27:16 – 00:03:46:24
Daniel Austin
Right. I was 32, my first competition. And as I always say, one of my biggest regrets is, you know, you brought up the fact that I’m a musician. I got into punk rock and stuff as a teenager and I played sports as a kid. But as soon as I got a guitar and got into playing music, I dropped all that.

00:03:46:24 – 00:04:02:01
Daniel Austin
And so I missed all those developmental years of being a teenager with the puberty. And if I had been active as an athlete, then I could have probably had more foundational strength and muscle development. But so my biggest regret is not being a jock. When I was in high school.

00:04:03:14 – 00:04:04:02
Nathan Crane
I totally.

00:04:04:02 – 00:04:04:11
Daniel Austin
Understand.

00:04:04:11 – 00:04:24:18
Nathan Crane
I started, well, people don’t get it unless you unless you started lifting later in life, whether it’s in your thirties, forties, 56. Now it’s just it’s not it’s not the same. It takes longer, it’s much harder. You recover slower. Like that’s why nutrition is so, so important. Nutrition, sleep, recovery, all that stuff, right? I didn’t start lifting until I was 30.

00:04:25:03 – 00:04:42:09
Nathan Crane
I started CrossFit with 30 and I started from nothing. I mean, I had a £0 deadlift I’d never deadlift before in my life at 30 years old. And so to build the strength that you have, you know, in that amount of time is pretty amazing. What’s your best lifts?

00:04:42:09 – 00:05:26:10
Daniel Austin
Best deadlift today is 535 best benches 325 and best squat was actually is only one of my best lifts that was in competition. I was for 69. I did all those not the to the bench and the deadlift were just in the gym. So I weighed over what my competition weight was on that day. I was probably in the lower one seventies and then at that time I squatted for 69 with the plant built team up at Mister America was it was a two hour weigh in and us APL me so I didn’t try to cut weight to make the 165 so I just I weighed 175 that day, but yes, almost £470.

00:05:27:01 – 00:06:03:05
Nathan Crane
Yeah, those those numbers are solid. Those are huge numbers, especially being a, you know, a buck 65, buck 70, you know, and people think you can’t get strong on a plant based or on a vegan diet. You and I and many others out there have obviously proven that completely wrong. We know that you can get strong and and many people even claim that when they switch to a plant based diet, even high level athletes that I’ve been documenting and writing about who switch, you know, in their late thirties when most people are at the tail end of their career, you know, these are professional athletes in all kinds of sports.

00:06:03:20 – 00:06:27:15
Nathan Crane
Novak Djokovic. There’s basketball players, football players. There’s there’s a strength athletes who switch to a plant based diet and then they claim they’re actually recovering better. It extends their career. They say they have more energy. They’re getting stronger when they felt like they were heading downward towards the tail end and then they boom switch and they get this upward trajectory for a few years.

00:06:27:15 – 00:06:29:19
Nathan Crane
So obviously I.

00:06:29:19 – 00:06:30:07
Daniel Austin
Do have.

00:06:30:07 – 00:06:33:21
Nathan Crane
It’s are false, but you got to know what you’re doing also. You got to know what.

00:06:34:02 – 00:06:34:24
Daniel Austin
The exact right.

00:06:34:24 – 00:06:36:12
Nathan Crane
That’s a big thing so.

00:06:36:19 – 00:07:05:22
Daniel Austin
Well and also you’ve got to be specific to your goals that that defines how you should eat. For example, you mentioned some athletes there who are strongman or power lifters or bodybuilders. They’re more endurance oriented. And I do think that switching to plant based vegan diets, if you are more endurance oriented, you know, protein is less important in getting that extra fiber and those extra antioxidants and all that.

00:07:06:06 – 00:07:40:13
Daniel Austin
It kind of lends itself more naturally like a more natural kind of whole food plant based diet to being more successful at endurance oriented sports or cross-training things like that. Whereas the more you take the cardiovascular training out of it and you’re just focusing on muscle, you got to do kind of what people think is crazy, unnatural, unhealthy kind of high protein diets, which is going to involve some supplement imitation and processed foods to get the calorie and protein goals, which is what my book focuses on the way of the meat head.

00:07:41:13 – 00:08:09:24
Daniel Austin
And so I would I would always tell people, you know, if you’re going for strength specifically and you’re not doing a lot of cardio type training, focus, focus on your macro goals to make sure you meet that which is going to be it’s going to feel unnatural. It’s going to feel weird. And it’s it’s not, I think, what any of the prominent doctors in the plant based movement would advise anyone to do.

00:08:09:24 – 00:08:42:15
Daniel Austin
But I find from my friends and powerlifting, from learning about Patrick, the blue man’s diet that he posted on YouTube, I mean, strongman and powerlifting diets are just not typical health diets, but it can at least be equal to in terms of the performance results, in terms of building muscle and building strength. And I do think there are still health benefits because you’re not eating dietary cholesterol and you’re eating less saturated fat more likely.

00:08:43:02 – 00:09:07:01
Daniel Austin
And, you know, I have 41. I’ve got I got a very solid blood work, very solid. Your blood pressure is very healthy. Whereas you look at those guys who are approaching 40 on a strong man diet and they need and they eat eggs, bacon and all that. They’re saying, yeah, our nutrition sort of told us we got to we’ve got to win and get out of the sport so we don’t die at 45, you know?

00:09:07:02 – 00:09:14:12
Daniel Austin
Yeah. So that’s one thing I tell people is drink doesn’t equal health and we need to be mindful of that I think even as vegans.

00:09:16:06 – 00:10:00:20
Nathan Crane
Yeah, that’s a good point. I think there’s, there’s a balance there right. I think you can do it both ways. I’ve certainly been experimenting the last six years of, you know, building strength on a whole food plant based diet or, let’s say, whole food vegan diet. I do, honey. So, you know, hardcore vegans wouldn’t count honey as but I actually count honey as vegan because it’s not it’s the bees literally go to the flower, eat the nectar, which is like the most amazing thing you can think about and then spit, you know, convert it in their in their bodies and then spit out honey, which is like this golden, amazing, you know, nutritionally fulfilling, you

00:10:00:20 – 00:10:06:23
Nathan Crane
know, food product. And and I’ve actually used to have a wild beehive that I would harvest honey from. And they, you know, didn’t.

00:10:07:07 – 00:10:07:14
Daniel Austin
Even.

00:10:07:14 – 00:10:32:03
Nathan Crane
Sting me as like they allowed me to do it as long as I didn’t take too much. So, you know, my experiences with yeah, I like the way that everything commercially raised today from honey to chickens to, you know, beef and everything is is very destructive. But if we’re living closer in harmony with nature and with the animals, things start, you know, using permaculture principles of regenerative agriculture and things like that.

00:10:32:03 – 00:11:00:04
Nathan Crane
It starts to shift more towards a harmonious relationship with these animals. Anyway, that’s my take on honey. But point being is I’ve been doing it primarily as Whole Foods plant based, you know, as a because I came into this through the health aspect, through the health research and through cancer research and helping cancer patients. And then I applied that same information to myself as an athlete and have gotten amazing results, you know, in six years.

00:11:00:04 – 00:11:01:14
Nathan Crane
You know, in my life, I.

00:11:01:14 – 00:11:20:04
Daniel Austin
Think the crux of it for people is just knowing how to do it, how to get off the board, how to build a plant based vegan diet specific to your goals, which for a lot of people that means you have to ask them, what is your goal? I mean, do you want to be jackass? Do you want to be vascular, lean or do you want to be able to run a marathon?

00:11:20:04 – 00:11:25:23
Daniel Austin
Do you want to be able to deadlift £500? Like those are all different diets. So yeah.

00:11:26:19 – 00:11:33:09
Nathan Crane
What’s your what do you prescribe to in terms of like protein? Are you doing about a gram per pound of body weight or what do you do?

00:11:34:04 – 00:11:57:20
Daniel Austin
I do more than that because well, you got to see really, you got to experiment and see what your body responds to. For me, I think I don’t know. I’m not going to say. It was like a low responder to just eating a basic vegan diet and not worrying that much about protein. Because I also didn’t know a lot about proper training at the time.

00:11:57:20 – 00:12:25:07
Daniel Austin
I was trying to, you know, training correctly also is going to shut down your ability to grow or to be able to recover and grow, you know? So, I mean, there’s so many factors, but in terms of protein for a strength athlete, I advice for vegans, you got to overshoot. It’s better to get too much, especially since there’s no research showing there’s any risk of like kidney damage from consuming high amounts of plant based protein.

00:12:26:01 – 00:12:59:10
Daniel Austin
You know, I start that we start to see studies that are showing that plant based protein poses a threat to your kidneys. I would change my tune. But, you know, 19 years vegan right now, in about ten years, eating the very diet that I talk about in my book, I’ve got, you know, healthy kidney function. You’re always got elevated blood, urine, nitrate or whatever from having more muscle and more protein since protein waste, you know, those are standard things for athletic people.

00:12:59:10 – 00:13:20:07
Daniel Austin
And unless you were a sedentary person and had high levels of that, there’s nothing to worry about there. But yeah, I would say there’s, there’s a couple of factors and why I advise vegans to eat more than one grant. If you’re pursuing streams like I am to eat more than one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day.

00:13:20:07 – 00:13:57:15
Daniel Austin
And that’s because one fiber is a factor. You’re eating more fiber on a plant based diet. Fiber is great for your gut health, your colorectal health and all that. And it’s a life saver in so many ways. But if you’re eating 3000 plus calories a day, that means you’re getting even more fiber. And that can reduce the bioavailability of the amino acids in the proteins you’re eating, which means, you know, like we’re just flushing things out of our system faster than omnivores much of the time, unless they’re omnivores with sufficient amount of fiber, which in America we know that that’s not most people.

00:13:57:15 – 00:14:24:01
Daniel Austin
So anyway, you got to overshoot for that accounting for the bioavailability factor versus your fiber intake. There is, I think, such a thing as eating too much fiber. And you’ll notice if you go to the bathroom seven times a day when you start eating that, that’s drink training, diet, you know, which is what happened to me. And I had to get I had to start to find ways to mitigate the effects of probably eating too much fiber with my high calorie, high protein diet.

00:14:24:01 – 00:14:50:22
Daniel Austin
And that was by then kind of trying to find the balance between fat consumption, fat calories and carbohydrates and protein and two way that I could get it manageable per day, you know, yeah, to me, if you’re going to the bathroom to take what, you know, a number to keep it clean four times a day, that should be like probably your upper limit.

00:14:51:18 – 00:15:14:23
Nathan Crane
Yeah. I mean, the other extreme of that is I know people who, you know, poop once, once every other day. And that’s horrible for your health as pooping as I don’t know about as vegans actually. I don’t know if I may be. I actually I don’t know if I mean, vegans told me that the people who’ve told me that are almost always omnivores.

00:15:15:06 – 00:15:40:24
Nathan Crane
I’m not saying it can’t happen to vegans. I’m sure it can. Right? But the ones who I know who’ve told me and I get I poop every other day. I’m like, what? Like that’s insane. Like the minimum should be twice a day. Meaning that flushing your GI tract, at least I go, you know, every morning, every night. And once in a while there might be a third time during the day, especially when I’m on like a bulking diet, you know, and the more you’re eating, the more you should be pooping as well.

00:15:40:24 – 00:15:50:14
Nathan Crane
Otherwise it’s, you know, just building up inside of you. But yeah, four times or more a day that, you know, that might be signs that there’s something else going on as well.

00:15:50:14 – 00:16:03:02
Daniel Austin
There’s going to be nutrient loss associated with that. It’s just too much. So that’s one factor of why I would say you got to be careful to eat, I would say is a bigger, more protein.

00:16:03:02 – 00:16:07:10
Nathan Crane
What is your what is your like what do you aim for in terms of grams per pound?

00:16:07:11 – 00:16:20:04
Daniel Austin
Well, you know, if I’m weighing 170, which is actually what I weigh this morning, I’m I’m eating four. I’m aiming for roughly 200 to 10. But on some days.

00:16:20:07 – 00:16:23:24
Nathan Crane
One, 1.2, 1.3. Is that with the mouth?

00:16:23:24 – 00:16:51:06
Daniel Austin
Yeah, yeah, yeah. In my book I say as a vitamin and you should aim from 1.25 to 1.5, and that’s going to be hard for some people. So, you know, to me, if you get over 1.2, you’re doing pretty good. And the interesting thing is there are people on my team, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the being strong plant built team like our team captain is Ryan Stills, who’s a five time IBF world champion, powerlifter.

00:16:51:06 – 00:17:02:16
Daniel Austin
He’d be another guy. It would be very interesting to talk to. He’s one of the best parallel stories of all time, and he’s a captain of our team. And, you know, he’s a big guy. He weighs £100 more than me. So he competes, like to 65.

00:17:03:04 – 00:17:05:14
Nathan Crane
He’s he’s vegan, too, huh.

00:17:05:14 – 00:17:28:08
Daniel Austin
Yeah. And no, he’s 48, 49. So, you know, he’s a he’s a bit older than everyone on the team, but he’s been lifting for like 30 years or more and he went vegan about five years ago or so. So a couple of his titles he’s done as a vegan. All his other previous titles were just, you know, as an omnivore before he got into vegan consciousness or whatever.

00:17:28:08 – 00:17:37:02
Daniel Austin
But, you know, I was surprised for as big a guy is as he is, he’s only eating about 0.8 of his body weight.

00:17:38:01 – 00:18:04:05
Nathan Crane
That’s about what I do on average. Yeah. Yeah, I do. Maybe I used to I was doing too little because I was like, man, I think I’m fine. But I realized once I had started bumping up to like .7. 7 to 1.0, which is where all the research is in terms of protein muscle synthesis. Now, a lot of that now the research is there is research on, you know, protein from me and protein from plants.

00:18:04:05 – 00:18:22:17
Nathan Crane
And they don’t show on both of those. From what I’ve seen, they don’t show a lot of additional benefit. Once you go above, you know, 1.0 or 1.2, there’s not much benefit. Right. That protein, that excess protein mostly gets converted into back into glucose through the liver. I mean, it’s right.

00:18:22:17 – 00:18:23:04
Daniel Austin
Right, right.

00:18:23:09 – 00:18:45:21
Nathan Crane
Gluconeogenesis, I believe, is what that process is. Right. So which is extra energy taken from the body that you could have just gotten by eating carbohydrates? But what you’re saying is, you know, because the extra fiber, you may be losing out on some of those amino acids through your stool potentially, which is why you encourage higher levels. I’ve got a buddy and again, that’s why you says individual.

00:18:45:21 – 00:18:47:07
Nathan Crane
You got to kind of figure out what works for you.

00:18:47:07 – 00:18:47:24
Daniel Austin
Yeah, yeah.

00:18:47:24 – 00:19:11:13
Nathan Crane
Everybody who does like less than half a gram now, he’s not a big strength athlete, but he’s he’s shredded. He’s ripped. He stays super lean. Yeah, but he’s he’s CrossFit R and he doesn’t have any problem putting on muscle, but he’s also not like as a, as a big strength athlete. So again, strength and muscle hypertrophy, for example, you’re trying to grow muscle.

00:19:11:16 – 00:19:24:05
Nathan Crane
There’s a bodybuilder, powerlifter, Olympic weightlifter. Obviously, the research is clear. You know, you get to that 1.0, 1.. 8 to 1.2 or point 7 to 1.2 is like that sweet spot. Yeah.

00:19:25:02 – 00:20:01:15
Daniel Austin
Right. And I would say, you know, when I was trying to look, I weighed about 135, £240 as a 18, 19 year old, 20 year old vegetarian. I was vegetarian at the time when I in my late twenties decided I wanted to grow and be stronger as a vegan. I had to get real about how much protein I was eating because before it was all intuitive, I had no idea and I wasn’t training and for me, I didn’t start to grow until I really overshot.

00:20:02:14 – 00:20:26:15
Daniel Austin
And so that’s why my book, The Way of the Vegan Meat, had the way of what I’ve done. And I encouraged people to experiment because it’s just a blueprint for how I got over the hump and learn how to get into that growth zone through training and diet. Whereas because I was just a scrawny, stereotypical vegetarian vegan, you know, and when I went vegan I lost about £5.

00:20:26:15 – 00:20:49:15
Daniel Austin
I looked about the same, but I got a little more skinny, fat. And so and it’s because I wasn’t eating as much calories really, because back in 2005 know there was tofurky, sausage and stuff. But a lot of times I would just go out and get pizza with vegetables, no cheese. And so you’re taking all those protein and fat calories off the pizza and you’re just eating straight carbohydrates.

00:20:49:15 – 00:21:11:22
Daniel Austin
Right. And it’s half the amount of calories is what if you had the cheese on it? So I started losing weight. I started losing muscle mass. But I wasn’t I was I was a touring musician back then and it actually helped my respiratory system. And I seem to get sinus infections and things like that. But in terms of carrying muscle, I got smaller.

00:21:12:20 – 00:21:29:09
Nathan Crane
And read that a lot. I read that comment a lot from like ex vegans who are like, Oh, I tried vegan but it didn’t work because I lost so much weight, I couldn’t keep on weight. And usually if you start asking these questions, just like you shared, it’s almost always exactly the same reason. Like they’re just eating on the healthy side.

00:21:29:09 – 00:21:32:04
Nathan Crane
They’re just eating salads all day, right?

00:21:32:04 – 00:21:33:11
Daniel Austin
Yeah, salads too.

00:21:33:12 – 00:21:44:13
Nathan Crane
Like they’re eating when you’re eating, too. I mean, it is, it’s it’s thermogenesis. I mean, it’s it’s a lot more calories in, calories out with some minor percentage of fluctuation based.

00:21:44:18 – 00:21:46:23
Daniel Austin
On all individual genetics.

00:21:46:23 – 00:22:03:03
Nathan Crane
But at the end of the day, it’s almost precisely calories in, calories out on any diet. I don’t care if it’s a Twinkie diet, if it’s a vegan diet, carnivore diet, calories in, calories out pretty closely with a percentage is about what’s going to. So it wasn’t the vegan diet, it was the calories.

00:22:04:02 – 00:22:28:18
Daniel Austin
I see it all the time. I on occasion, I’ll privately coach people in powerlifting if they approach me. There’s a lot of I find a lot of vegans will go get a just a general trainer or even a general powerlifting coach and I tell them they’re vegan and these people get very discouraging. And so I’ve trained a handful of people over the last five or six years and whenever things are stalling out for them, I’m like, Well, how much protein are you eating?

00:22:30:00 – 00:22:44:23
Daniel Austin
Because here’s the thing. A lot of people get my book, but they don’t read it. So it’s like, Well, yeah, I know you’ve got it, so you better read it. And then they start up another protein and they go, Oh, okay, now things are now the way it’s moving. Now I’m growing, you know, and it’s just a fact.

00:22:44:23 – 00:23:08:22
Daniel Austin
I always say, Hey, it’s a numbers game. Something’s failing in your training. Well, we can look at your programing and the periodization of all of that, but we also need to look at the numbers of what you’re eating. Are you eating enough calories to support the output, the energy output that you’re you’re placing on your body in? Are you eating enough protein to support recovery and growth?

00:23:09:00 – 00:23:47:03
Daniel Austin
And most people aren’t. And most people think it’s just a casual thing you can do. But if you’re going to be serious about making progress, you’ve got to look at the numbers. And so the other reason I would say that I encourage vegans to overshoot protein consumption to get more than 1.2 or even slightly higher range is amino acids like leucine, which are that amino acid in particular signals the beginning of the protein synthesis process.

00:23:47:03 – 00:24:07:06
Daniel Austin
And if you don’t have enough of that amino acid, which of course you can get from plant based sources, but if you’re eating more whole food, plant based type stuff, it’s going to it’s going to lack in that a little bit. And then you’ve got the fiber factor and you’re losing some amino acid absorption to begin with. It’s just better to overshoot.

00:24:07:06 – 00:24:26:19
Daniel Austin
And so like for me, I always try to eat 30 grams of protein a meal because you’re usually going to get about at least three grams of leucine out of 30 grams of protein. And then you don’t have to worry about having enough losing. I know not everybody, especially smaller bodied people, are not going to want to eat 30 grams every meal.

00:24:26:19 – 00:25:00:08
Daniel Austin
So it’s it’s really a matter of figuring out based on your lean mass, your body weight, how much protein you need to eat per day. And then you should probably divide up or the amount of meals you think you can realistically stomach to eat. Yeah. And hit that protein protein target. And in the cool thing about all this amino acid absorption science is we’re finding out that the window of time that you have to utilize all the things you consume seems to be bigger than we ever thought.

00:25:00:11 – 00:25:00:23
Nathan Crane
Right.

00:25:01:08 – 00:25:13:18
Daniel Austin
So, you know, you could be you know, they’re saying optimal is within 4 hours. Get it, you know, getting all those amino acids ingested. But now some people are saying it could even be as much as a day. Yeah.

00:25:13:22 – 00:25:20:10
Nathan Crane
So I mean, it used to be oh, you have to get in that protein within 30 minutes to an hour after. Yeah. And now they’re like.

00:25:20:11 – 00:25:21:13
Daniel Austin
Yeah I used to do.

00:25:21:13 – 00:25:45:09
Nathan Crane
That too for hours. And in fact even plant based protein in general, you know, protein from plants, whether it’s in a in a powder or you’re eating actually breaks down even slower throughout the body. So it’s like and they’re showing that, yeah, you could as long as you get it within even up to 4 hours. Yeah. They don’t see much difference at all.

00:25:46:05 – 00:26:08:11
Daniel Austin
Right. Right. Yeah, I’m, I’m old school so I try to just, I just, I think I, I would like in 2000 when I started training for real by about 2011 and I wasn’t trying to be powerlifter, I was just I had Robert she’s book making bodybuilding and fitness and I was just doing a programs on his book because he’s the first vegan bodybuilder I met and I was doing the thing.

00:26:08:11 – 00:26:19:09
Daniel Austin
Just walk out of the gym with a shake and a bar right away, I guess, soon as I finish. But in these days, it’s just I let myself get home, make a smoothie, that kind of thing, and I don’t rush it as much.

00:26:20:01 – 00:26:26:04
Nathan Crane
What is your what is your kind of macro percentage is look like and what’s your kind of calorie intake look like? Personally.

00:26:27:21 – 00:26:55:11
Daniel Austin
What I’m finding for me over time is that these days, maintenance calories is about 2600. I can diet at 2000 to 2200, depending on how hard I want to diet. If I want to lose about a pound a week, I’ll probably do 2100 calories, something like that. And then if I want to bulk just, you know, I eat more than 3000 range, maybe 3200.

00:26:55:11 – 00:27:28:22
Daniel Austin
So there’s a there’s a differential of about 600 calories between the levels of weight loss, maintenance and bulking. For me, you know, again, I’m I’m about £170 and I’m about probably 13 or 15% body fat, depending on what kind of reading I get. And yeah, the macro breakdown of that would be I always try to eat at least 30% of my total calories from protein as a strength athlete.

00:27:28:22 – 00:27:52:16
Daniel Austin
And coming up with this whole vegan meat thing, like in my book, I was basing it on the world’s strongest men like Eddie Hall and Brian Shaw and has to be one sentence. These guys, their nutrition coach is are saying they’re not looking out for them in any kind of health oriented way. It’s just you know yeah.

00:27:52:16 – 00:27:54:11
Nathan Crane
If you watch what they eat, man, but they.

00:27:54:11 – 00:27:55:04
Daniel Austin
Have the.

00:27:55:13 – 00:27:56:05
Nathan Crane
£400.

00:27:56:05 – 00:28:25:21
Daniel Austin
I mean, these guys weight. Yeah, they weigh over £400. But I’m just looking at the the ratios, right. I mean, they they strive to eat over about 30% fat, 30% protein, and the rest would be carbohydrates. So it’s usually for me, 150% carbohydrates. And it’s it’s I’ve broken it down in certain variations of my diet in my book, to be as low as about 25%.

00:28:25:21 – 00:28:49:01
Daniel Austin
So I would say I’m a moderate carbohydrate guy overall and a high protein guy in. And as a vegan, I eat more fat than people would expect. And I think the benefits of eating more fat is, you know, the sex hormone recovery benefits. You know, that’s been my experience thus far, you know, because I tested your.

00:28:49:02 – 00:28:57:10
Nathan Crane
Have you tested your hormones? Yes. BGH, testosterone, all that stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Everything’s fermented with more fat or less fat to see how it impacts you.

00:28:58:08 – 00:29:25:16
Daniel Austin
I haven’t drastically changed my diet too, to see how much it affects specifically like testosterone, because testosterone has always been in a healthy middle range or I don’t have I’m not like an outlier with the 900 level total testosterone, I’m usually more 5 to 600 range, but it’s always kind of been that way since I started testing in my thirties after doing this for a number of years.

00:29:26:24 – 00:29:49:05
Daniel Austin
So and that’s usually where I’m sitting right now in the the CHP. It’s always been in the middle. Dale’s always been like normal, healthy range because, you know, as a guy, you don’t you don’t actually want your estrogen to be too low, right? You want to have a healthy amount of that.

00:29:50:00 – 00:30:06:18
Nathan Crane
You don’t want it. And some people think like, you know, young well, not just young people. A lot of men think that, oh, I want to get my testosterone super, super high. Right. I want to get 1200 plus. And then and then I’ll be more you know, I’ll have more strength, I’ll have more energy, I’ll have more that.

00:30:06:18 – 00:30:26:07
Nathan Crane
The problem is with any of our hormones, if they go too far in any extreme, too far, high or low, then you start having metabolic dysfunction. So it’s not all about you know, we kind of think, you know, a lot of I know a lot of younger athletes think this. I’ve even thought this, like I got to get my testosterone, you know, way up there, way above to the high numbers.

00:30:26:18 – 00:30:44:16
Nathan Crane
And that, number one, may not benefit you much at all. You know, if you’re extreme and in fact, if you’re extremely high, it may throw off other hormones that may cause other metabolic problems. So it’s like as long as you’re in that healthy range, which is a pretty wide range, you know, it’s like.

00:30:45:05 – 00:31:09:09
Daniel Austin
Right, it’s a very wide range and it’s it again, it’s all relative. You know, I’ve got a friend who’s getting into weightlifting and I think he’s actually got he’s probably in his early thirties, but he’s actually, you know, higher than most of us. He’s he was like 750 when he first got it, you know, and I don’t know, I would be interested if I could go back to my twenties and get get my readings.

00:31:09:09 – 00:31:36:03
Daniel Austin
But in my thirties I’ve never been that high, you know. But he actually feels like crap and has a lot of joint pains and I’m like, he doesn’t feel like he’s training right or eating right. And it’s really relative. You could have a high number and feel like garbage, whereas I’m more in the middle range, 550, maybe on a good month, 600 when I go and I make progress, I feel fine.

00:31:36:12 – 00:31:55:10
Daniel Austin
I’ve I’ve actually this is my 10th straight year competing in powerlifting and I’ve never had an injury that was severe enough to keep me out of a competition that I had planned. Well, I’ve always shown up and done. Yeah. Yeah. And so is it training smarts big. Yeah. Eating, sleeping, all those things. All your lifestyle factors are big.

00:31:55:19 – 00:32:27:20
Daniel Austin
And you know, I was before I moved here to Virginia just a few weeks ago, I went to a strong man gym for a few years in central Texas. And, you know, I’m like the only vegan in the gym and is a strong man gym. So almost everybody’s on, at the very least, testosterone replacement therapy. But a lot and a lot of these older, big, strong guys are telling me the ones that are just doing it for replace Men, just for general health, they’re telling me they’re doctors just trying to get them to like for 50 because that’s where they start to feel normal.

00:32:28:02 – 00:32:54:00
Daniel Austin
Mm. You know, and she goes and these are guys like Jax, you know. So you would think that they’re more like 1200 or maybe like bodybuilding, Olympia 2000, just completely artificial. But now they, they, they’re like numb. And I’m like this 500. So they, they were impressed that I told you every day I was over 500.

00:32:54:16 – 00:33:15:00
Nathan Crane
Yeah, I know. That’s so funny. Well, and that’s, you know, I don’t know those guys in your gym, but the little that I know about, like, peds and steroids and stuff, if they were using them earlier in their life. Yes. And then they stop using them. It does cause your body just to, you know, reduce. Yeah. Slow down and mess up your natural urine.

00:33:15:00 – 00:33:38:07
Daniel Austin
I do I do know some people like that. They just got on it too early because they wanted an artificially high number, you know, and and it caused them lifelong problems because they’re managing it and they, they look fine, but they have to get things prescribed to to level them out. And, you know, and I have other friends who just kind of had the hereditary issue of low testosterone.

00:33:39:00 – 00:34:07:07
Daniel Austin
And when they go to treatment, doctors are just trying to get them above 350 to 400. And then it changes their life. They feel totally different. So people obsess over having a high number and it just goes to show. Like we’re saying, it’s relative to your genetics and just your your personal experience that you could get a lot done with relatively low healthy number in terms of your testosterone readings.

00:34:07:17 – 00:34:09:22
Daniel Austin
And there’s a lot of other things you should focus on.

00:34:11:10 – 00:34:48:08
Nathan Crane
Yeah, I did. I did. On the disaster zone. So a couple of years ago I tested and my trying to find the previous support it was so it was told testosterone was 711. But my free testosterone was a little bit low, was like 8.5. And then my SPG was, was, was high. So it’s like I had high testosterone, but my body wasn’t benefiting or let’s say 711 is kind of, you know, higher healthy.

00:34:48:12 – 00:34:51:10
Daniel Austin
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that’s what’s above and fitting.

00:34:51:10 – 00:35:18:18
Nathan Crane
It wasn’t yeah it wasn’t benefit eating as much from that number it increased later to 832 and then my free testosterone went up into a healthy range closer to ten. And then and then I tested again last month and it’s almost 900 and my free testosterone went up as well, 10.3 But my SPG didn’t go down. But what the reason I’m sure now is it’s it’s gone up the last couple of years.

00:35:18:18 – 00:35:36:00
Nathan Crane
You know, I’ve been primarily vegan for 13, 14 years as well. And I use tofu and soy almost every single day. Right. The stereotype, the misconception is, oh, soy is going to tank, your testosterone is going to increase your estrogen. And I’ve never seen that. And the studies don’t show that.

00:35:36:00 – 00:35:37:08
Daniel Austin
And no other.

00:35:37:08 – 00:36:00:15
Nathan Crane
Person I’ve ever talked to that actually happens. Um, so we know that doesn’t actually happen to the general population, right? But what I think increase my discharge from, from 7 to 9, 700 to 900 was I, I was doing for ice bath. So for ice spent a week Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday in the morning before I worked out.

00:36:01:02 – 00:36:25:16
Nathan Crane
And so that was the biggest difference I did for like six or seven months and I retested. And the reason I did that is because I saw this the small Japanese study where they saw that if you did cold exposure before working out, they saw testosterone increase in men. And and then I saw a case study where a doctor did the same thing and he did ice baths before I worked out in the morning and then saw his testosterone shoot way up.

00:36:25:24 – 00:36:34:06
Nathan Crane
And so I did the same thing. And and then my testosterone went up. So it’s kind of interesting that I saw that.

00:36:34:08 – 00:36:36:05
Daniel Austin
And and how did you feel in training?

00:36:36:22 – 00:36:37:23
Nathan Crane
In Amazing.

00:36:37:23 – 00:36:38:13
Daniel Austin
I mean, like.

00:36:38:22 – 00:37:01:20
Nathan Crane
Oh, it’s so much more energy. Like, I’m generally I love mornings, but it’s always taken me, you know, ever since I was a little kid, it’s always taken me like I’ve always thrived in the afternoons and evenings and nights. And so I’ve always been more like slow in the mornings. But when I do the ice bath in the morning, I’m I’m wide awake.

00:37:01:20 – 00:37:17:10
Nathan Crane
You get that adrenaline, you know, epinephrine. It’s like you got clarity of mind. I go to the gym and I’ve just got way more energy, especially if I’m doing strength in the morning. It’s better than two shots of, you know, four is better than four shots of espresso. So.

00:37:17:21 – 00:37:18:04
Daniel Austin
Yeah.

00:37:18:11 – 00:37:36:15
Nathan Crane
More energy, more clarity, training was better. And then, you know, like I said, I can’t 100 cent prove my increase in testosterone was from that. I’ve never taken experienced Tassajara, never done TRT, I’ve never done I’ve never I’ve never even taken DHEA, which is like a you can get as a synthetic hormone that people take.

00:37:36:15 – 00:37:37:01
Daniel Austin
Yeah.

00:37:37:08 – 00:37:54:16
Nathan Crane
I’ve never even taken that, you know. So like that was really the biggest change that I made. And, and yeah, it’s hard every morning getting in that freaking ice baths is hard. That’s what I did four days a week, so seven days a week because it was like, I just have to be able to do it. But yeah, I, I mean, I feel amazing afterwards.

00:37:54:16 – 00:38:00:05
Nathan Crane
And yeah, my testosterone went up like almost 200 points, which is pretty incredible.

00:38:00:05 – 00:38:14:07
Daniel Austin
And that’s really good. And you know, I just curious if it if you actually felt good in and at a ratio is comparable to how much it went up because you know like I said, I know people.

00:38:14:08 – 00:38:15:19
Nathan Crane
I mean my head I hit all.

00:38:15:19 – 00:38:16:21
Daniel Austin
Readings of don’t feel good.

00:38:17:02 – 00:38:42:07
Nathan Crane
During that six months I hit all pairs and everything that I was working on, which I was actually working on the 11 because I do CrossFit primarily and so I do Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, plus all the endurance stuff and gymnastics. So all my gymnastics hours went up, all my powerlifting lifts went up, all my Olympic weightlifting lifts went up, everything went up during that six months, more than they had previously in like a year and a half span.

00:38:42:16 – 00:39:03:16
Nathan Crane
My numbers went up in like that’s it was about an eight month training block that I was on. I also overtrained and trained through, you know, two small things. I should have backed off for a week and let them heal and then train through them heavily for like two or three months. Not smart training, as you said. It was dumb training and then cause.

00:39:03:16 – 00:39:10:18
Daniel Austin
Yeah, I mean, I just I mean, they made these mistakes. Do you know, I mean, if if you love to do it, you’re going to make mistakes like that.

00:39:10:23 – 00:39:30:02
Nathan Crane
Yeah, that’s probably true love. Something so much. It’s like you push yourself through it, you know, even through the that’s that’s the problem with the David Goggins mentality. Everybody out there who’s following David Goggins, it’s like, yeah, some people need a kick in the ass to get them going and other people need a leash to like pull them back a little bit, back, chill out and you know, you got to know which one you are.

00:39:30:03 – 00:39:39:15
Nathan Crane
Like, I don’t need that extra kick in the ass, you know, I need to pull back, you know, and otherwise I push too hard and then you end up with injuries and problems.

00:39:39:15 – 00:40:01:00
Daniel Austin
Like, yeah, I’ve got a, I’ve got a recent anecdotal experience with that. You know, last year I went to Nationals in Las Vegas, up a drug test and national championships, and I did I put it my best dot score that I’d ever done. I’d tied the, the at 40 years old, I tied the most amount of weight I’d ever done it at that body weight.

00:40:01:07 – 00:40:33:23
Daniel Austin
That’s awesome. And yeah. And then I had to see that was that was July and then in October. So only it was like mid-July is really like less than three months later I had another meet with my team at Mr. America in New Jersey and my hips were just shot with my groin and my hips were giving me so much pain from just the really I kept trying to train heavy, to not lose the neural adaptation of lifting the heavy weight so that I’d be meat ready.

00:40:34:07 – 00:41:04:05
Daniel Austin
And only about two months, which is not really enough time as an older advanced lifter to develop any more strength. And I was in so much pain, I started doing ice baths and it helped manage the pain and get me through that knee. And I did pretty poorly at the meet. Like, I mean, granted, I won my weight class, I won the Masters class, you know, but my, my personal score went down from the summer pretty significantly.

00:41:04:05 – 00:41:26:10
Daniel Austin
And I was bummed about that, but it was great. The team, you know, we all cleaned up the team of our lifters we all placed and even Brian Steels, our team captain, he won best of the tour of the whole meet. Oh, this was this was Vegas Nationals. I did nationals in Vegas. And then I had a sports festival with the Plainville team in October.

00:41:26:10 – 00:41:26:21
Nathan Crane
Gotcha.

00:41:27:01 – 00:41:32:07
Daniel Austin
And I was at top of my game in July and by October I was just fried.

00:41:32:14 – 00:41:34:17
Nathan Crane
That’s I had to go training. Yeah.

00:41:34:24 – 00:42:14:04
Daniel Austin
Yeah. And so after that, I told myself, well, I’m not I’m not competing until April. So, you know, that’s six months. So I spent three months of only doing power building, hypertrophy, work, and I hadn’t done that in years. And man, it’s felt so good just to keep my squats at a relatively low intensity. But high, high reps, it just got the blood flow back where I need, you know, and I tested one rep maxes When was that?

00:42:14:04 – 00:42:46:23
Daniel Austin
Probably, probably around two years ish. I can’t remember. It was within the last month and a half and then my strength was better than I was in October and it was almost as good as it was in July. So, you know, I’ve still got a couple of months to go to my knee, but since I was training smartly and backing off the intensity, especially at my age and how long I’ve been doing the same thing, it just made a little difference and feeling better and sometimes less is more, you know?

00:42:47:09 – 00:42:57:15
Daniel Austin
Yeah, it just depends on where you’re at. That’s, that’s far as I tell people. They need to learn about periodization and training. So you just can’t go all the time. You’re going to get injured know.

00:42:58:05 – 00:43:32:12
Nathan Crane
Well and that’s, you know one of the major benefits of hypertrophy work but in powerlifting or living weightlifting, you call it accessory work. You know, other people know it. It’s just, you know, bodybuilding, it’s, you know, three, four, five, six sets, you know, anywhere from five, 6 to 30 reps. Right. And it’s just a benefit of doing that, even adding into regular training, even if you’re doing three sets per muscle group per day, alternating arresting muscle groups, you are helping strengthen and add longevity towards the connective tissues, right?

00:43:32:12 – 00:43:57:06
Nathan Crane
The tendons, the ligaments, the things that tend, you know, end up getting inflamed and tear. You know, that is where you get so much benefit aside from, you know muscle endurance, muscle hypertrophy, muscle strength. You get all that extra benefit from, you know, supporting the connective tissues. And I’ve found that as well. That’s what doing right now is just like a part of my healing protocol.

00:43:57:06 – 00:44:11:19
Nathan Crane
It’s like I’m doing lots of P.T., obviously physical therapy, but I’m doing lots of bodybuilding and just, you know, hitting, you know, and given lots of rest between because I was training 5 hours a day to two sessions a day.

00:44:11:24 – 00:44:13:12
Daniel Austin
Got 4 to 5 days.

00:44:13:12 – 00:44:32:01
Nathan Crane
Yeah, two and a half hours of the morning to enough hours in the evening. And you know, that’s and it’s a big mix and it’s a tremendous amount of volume. And it’s like, you know, and if if you don’t back off when you need to, you know, like I now I now know I need bigger d load weeks than what I was taking.

00:44:32:01 – 00:44:52:21
Nathan Crane
I was following the prescribed loads, but those D loads were still three and four hour training days and they were like twice, twice as much volume than most people train regularly if they’re just, you know, try and stay strong and healthy. And it’s like, I need all day load weeks where I’m backing off, you know, 50 to 70%.

00:44:53:02 – 00:45:11:00
Nathan Crane
And so I’m still learning what my body can actually handle. But yeah, the hypertrophy work I’m doing now, it does feel good. I mean, it’s I’ve never really liked you know, go to the gym and just doing bicep curls in front of the mirror like that never motivates me. I like what I can do with the fitness and I don’t care.

00:45:11:00 – 00:45:27:01
Nathan Crane
Like people, people really love bodybuilding. It’s like they love shaping their bodies and the physique and all this stuff. I get that now. I used to not understand that, but now, now I understand it. But now I’m starting to actually enjoy some of the hypertrophy work, whereas before I probably just had a judgment towards it. It’s just ego guys.

00:45:27:01 – 00:45:34:11
Nathan Crane
Just care about how. Yeah, whatever. Like I understand it more now and the health benefits of it are actually, you know, pretty substantial.

00:45:35:02 – 00:45:59:10
Daniel Austin
You know, I had 20, 22 national storms in Atlanta in about three months out. I had a rotator cuff strain. And it’s the first time I ever went to PPG for anything. And essentially all they did, I mean, they did a little dry needling and deep massage on my shoulder. But in terms of my training, they advised me to work with bands and very light weights and basically do body work on my shoulder.

00:45:59:16 – 00:46:13:11
Daniel Austin
And I showed up on Nationals three months into this big and I feel normal inside my all time R bench. And, and then I thought, man, I got, I got to stop dogging these bodybuilders. I know, right?

00:46:13:23 – 00:46:20:09
Nathan Crane
I know. It’s like I got to stop talking. I guess I’m talking shit in my head. These guys are doing better than I am right now.

00:46:20:16 – 00:46:22:12
Daniel Austin
Yeah, yeah.

00:46:22:12 – 00:46:44:05
Nathan Crane
But I love God. I love I just love the strength aspect of it. But I like, I like the progress part of it. I like what I can do with my fitness, you know, it’s like that’s the stuff I really, really enjoy. And people find it’s like, whatever you find your enjoyment in, whatever activity you’re doing, the main thing is you find enjoyment in it, you know, otherwise you’re not going to continue doing it.

00:46:44:10 – 00:47:06:06
Nathan Crane
I mean, that’s it. That’s the secret right there. It’s pretty simple. But I was going to ask you in terms of like a typical well, let me ask you the typical question. People who don’t know where do you get your protein from on a plant based diet? But really seriously, though, for you, like where what is your main sources of protein.

00:47:09:09 – 00:47:30:12
Daniel Austin
If if any of your listeners want to know our our it’s all in my book the way the meat head but in general I advise it’s good for all of us to get as many sources as we can. I’m not keen on one being necessarily better than the other. I think they all play a part in the big picture of our protein consumption.

00:47:31:18 – 00:47:57:24
Daniel Austin
But you know, I do supplement with protein powders, so it’s usually I get it about six grams of protein powder a day. That’s usually two to like I like to wear it. Like I said, I like to do 30 grams per meal at least. So if I make a smoothie with protein powder with 30 grams of protein powder in it, I’ll probably peanut butter for another ten grams.

00:47:57:24 – 00:48:20:11
Daniel Austin
And then either tofu or I like that ripple unsweetened vanilla. It’s got about the same macros as tofu. So if you like smoothies smoothie I use the ripple one serving that good another eight nine grams or a three one quarter block of tofu and the water from the smoothie and and that all adds up to about 50 grams in a smoothie.

00:48:20:11 – 00:48:50:05
Daniel Austin
I always say that’s my second breakfast. And, and in accordance with the name Vegan Meat Head, I’m big on plant based meats. The faux meats granted, when I break it down, I don’t eat them at every meal like people might think. But I would say usually my first meal of the day is morning star farmed chicken strips. About half a bag usually, or it’s usually about two servings.

00:48:50:05 – 00:49:14:13
Daniel Austin
It’s about it’s only about 280 calories. But you’re getting about 45 calories, 45 grams of protein out of that. And I usually some vegetables with that like broccoli, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and probably two servings of vegetables on that. So it gives me over 50 grams in that meal. So already we’re at 100 grams by my second meal the day.

00:49:15:16 – 00:49:46:23
Daniel Austin
Usually before I work out, I’ll have a protein bar, maybe a builder’s bar for some carbs and protein siggi’s yogurt. So another ten grams or I like new go. Yeah. You ever had this new goal? Slim bars? Hmm. I’ve done a macros evaluation on a lot of them, a lot of protein sources. But among bars and probably one of the only ones is about 30% protein per calorie.

00:49:47:09 – 00:50:24:00
Daniel Austin
So 16, 16 grams of protein for only about 180 calories. So that’s pretty good. I like to eat those am only two of those because that would be like 32 grams of protein right there. And, you know, and before I go the gym, I might have some Kiwis or some Mandarin oranges or something like that. And then after the gym, I have another high protein, 40, 50 grams protein powder smoothie with maybe some more tropical type fruits, a little more simple carbohydrates like pineapple, mango, banana, and not as much fat.

00:50:24:06 – 00:51:00:12
Daniel Austin
You know, I don’t add peanut butter post-workout you, but you know, I add all those Capriati around 200. So then if I have any other kind of snack or meanwhile that I usually give me over 200 grams a day. But but my point there is I think we say protein powder. I get the trace proteins from all the vegetables and the nuts and the nut butters and the tofu and you know that it’s pretty it’s actually a pretty simple way to eat for me.

00:51:01:04 – 00:51:29:00
Daniel Austin
And then, you know, if I ever go out to eat, you know, I love Thai of Chinese. I love and anywhere you get tofu, tempeh, things like that, Satan, love. So I do try to not on a on a regular basis I try to not eat so many things with buns or bagels and all that. Those are special occasions because obviously I like those things.

00:51:29:00 – 00:52:01:06
Daniel Austin
But if you got weight class goals in mind, you got to keep track of condiments and buns and that’ll detract from the total amount of protein per calorie in your diet, you know. So now you got to choose your calories wisely if you got wrinkles to keep in mind. But that’s it. I mean, it’s supplement a bit with protein powder, fake meats and then the more like natural sources like tofu, temporary, certain.

00:52:01:06 – 00:52:32:17
Daniel Austin
And then you’ve got all your trace sources they might be from nuts, beans, things that I would say are not primary protein sources. They do have protein in them. Right. I make it I make a big delineation about that in the book. It’s like, you know, these are fat sources, carb sources and they have protein. That’s fine. Still goes towards your protein goals, but they’re not primary sources because, you know, with beans, if you’ve got as much fibers, you’ve got protein, you you risk not absorbing all that protein.

00:52:32:17 – 00:52:37:17
Daniel Austin
So so those are sides.

00:52:39:00 – 00:52:54:02
Nathan Crane
And there are there are like, yeah, and it’s a good point. It’s like nuts and seeds. People like, Oh, I’m getting lots protein. It’s like, no, you’re getting lots of fat and, a little bit of protein. They’re very healthy for you, but you don’t need, you know, a tremendous amount of them in your diet. You know, you’ve got to be careful, too.

00:52:54:02 – 00:53:04:20
Nathan Crane
I mean, but but then there are nuances there. You know, Mediterranean pine nuts actually are pretty high protein. They’re not necessarily easy to come by.

00:53:04:20 – 00:53:05:04
Daniel Austin
Yeah.

00:53:05:11 – 00:53:09:09
Nathan Crane
But for a nut, they’re actually very high protein, which is. Which is one of the rare ones.

00:53:09:09 – 00:53:11:11
Daniel Austin
Okay.

00:53:11:11 – 00:53:35:03
Nathan Crane
But then yeah, I mean, in terms of like just natural whole food ones, I mean, obviously tempeh, you know, tofu, those ones are good beans. Beans are good. But like you said, it’s like they are definitely they’re good source of protein, but they’re definitely high carbohydrate. So if people are concerned about getting that higher protein number, you’ve just got to, you know, track for a week and see where you’re at and then make some adjustments.

00:53:35:10 – 00:53:43:13
Nathan Crane
I mean, that’s I avoided tracking for the first three or four years and I was like, Oh, I better track and see. And I was like, okay, you get some.

00:53:43:13 – 00:54:15:03
Daniel Austin
Big, you know, like my I back in 2018, I did a national competition and I had one of the world’s best powerlifting champions, kosher, meaning he wasn’t a vegan. So he was really interested to see how I track because that that that meat was a to our way is for us APL and I had to have everything on point to our way and you can’t really I mean you don’t have a lot of time to you can’t be too depleted when you go into it like that.

00:54:15:09 – 00:54:38:24
Daniel Austin
So, so I had everything on point and that made me better at just being able to eyeball and estimate, you know, if I guess what I’m trying to say here is if you have a maybe put in a few months, half a year of tracking to get good at it and you know what your routines are because I don’t track now.

00:54:38:24 – 00:54:51:24
Daniel Austin
I know I, I know generally what I’m getting and how much of everything is in my food and I can even go out and probably be a little better at estimating what restaurants are doing.

00:54:52:16 – 00:54:58:16
Nathan Crane
But but it took you a long time to get there of actually paying attention, though, right? Yeah.

00:54:58:21 – 00:55:20:23
Daniel Austin
You had to practice, you know, and for people struggling to move the dial, whether up or down with whatever their goals are. Yeah, I don’t avoid tracking. I know people just don’t like to do it and it is a pain in the ass. But if you it’s something that if you do it enough, you don’t need to really do it anymore.

00:55:22:04 – 00:55:33:24
Daniel Austin
If you start experiencing things going the way you want them to and you just, you know, like me, the way I eat is second nature. I don’t I don’t really need to try much different.

00:55:34:18 – 00:55:54:08
Nathan Crane
Yeah. I mean there’s, you know, my fitness pal awesome app, right? Like, like what I found is if you tracked for two or three weeks and you kind of build some meals and understand things, it’s like you can and you’re kind of where you want to be. You don’t really have to track after that. Now, if you want to bulk or you want to cut, you’re going to have to track for a while.

00:55:54:08 – 00:56:19:23
Nathan Crane
Right. And again, you there for two or three weeks kind of see that you’re and then check your weight every day and kind of see that you’re on the right track. But it’s not I mean, unless you’re an elite athlete, top point zero, 1% who is in a professional sport, you know, trying to be your most optimal peak performance possible as an athlete, as a human being, you know, you really don’t have to track every day forever.

00:56:20:04 – 00:56:32:10
Nathan Crane
You just don’t. I mean, you do have to track for a period of time. For me it was a few weeks and then it was like, okay, now I know what I’m eating. I can eyeball as well, you know? And then when I went on a bulk, I was like, okay, I have to track again to make sure I’m doing things right.

00:56:32:10 – 00:56:40:22
Nathan Crane
Okay. A few weeks was fine. Same thing went to cut, same thing track for two or three weeks. And then, you know, it’s pretty simple. If you do it two or three weeks, you get the hang of it.

00:56:40:23 – 00:57:05:04
Daniel Austin
Yeah, I find that bulking is actually the easiest thing people think of eating right hard. It just, I find is easier for me. Yeah, well, you know, I know what my maintenance calories are, right? And that’s I figure that out. So now if I want to bulk, which I don’t often do anymore because I know where my dishes and where I’m best in the world most competitive, which is where I am right now in terms of weight.

00:57:05:04 – 00:57:11:24
Daniel Austin
But if I ever want to bulk, I just eat more cereal, soy milk. I just eat what I’m eating. I’m going to have cereal, you know.

00:57:12:15 – 00:57:13:08
Nathan Crane
Just add a bowl.

00:57:13:13 – 00:57:14:03
Daniel Austin
Of animal.

00:57:14:05 – 00:57:14:09
Nathan Crane
To.

00:57:14:10 – 00:57:16:02
Daniel Austin
A cereal will make you gain weight.

00:57:17:10 – 00:57:35:14
Nathan Crane
As true. That is true, especially at night like you want to you want to get fat and like eat cereal at night before bed. And if you’re if you’re fat and go on to be fat, you know, see how much food you’re eating at night before bed. It’s like the best time to eat too bulk. Worse time to eat if you want to be lean and healthy.

00:57:35:14 – 00:57:35:21
Nathan Crane
Right?

00:57:37:00 – 00:57:38:07
Daniel Austin
Right. Yeah.

00:57:38:23 – 00:57:50:03
Nathan Crane
Pretty simple, actually. What what are your, like, kind of long term goals with powerlifting or, you know, what are your water goals that you’re working towards right now with powerlifting.

00:57:51:01 – 00:58:06:18
Daniel Austin
I see my my goals are more immediate I am doing nationals and which is going back to Las Vegas this year. I now I’m a Virginia resident so I just want to get all the Virginia records that I can.

00:58:08:19 – 00:58:11:16
Nathan Crane
So that’s close to home. Are you.

00:58:11:17 – 00:58:38:08
Daniel Austin
Above? I will, I will clobber them once I get to that meet. Yeah. Oh club. Nice. And then you know so I’ve got the, I’ve got a meeting in April is IPL, it’s actually a master’s cup so you have to be 40 plus to be in it. But it’s an international competition so that’ll be interesting. I’ve never done a meet is all 40 plus and then I’ve got Nationals in June.

00:58:38:15 – 00:59:18:12
Daniel Austin
Late, late June. No. Yeah, yeah. So that’ll be my first one as a Virginia resident and which I can probably claim some records there. And then I’m on the team, the Trump team, and we got greenlighted with more sponsorships to go back to Mister America and New Jersey this October. And that one’s going to be a new federation that I to be in but it’s it’s one is getting kind of popular called W RPF which I thought you know when I go with the team we’re just there to represent the cause and show what Diegans can do.

00:59:18:12 – 00:59:40:11
Daniel Austin
Because we’ve got across the team, we’ve got our our liaison team, a volleyball team, depending on what event, what is being hosted at the festival, there might be Olympic weightlifting team. We have a strong man team that did very well last year, which is really cool because all our strong men are and women are drug free. You have to be drug free to be on our team.

00:59:41:04 – 01:00:04:19
Daniel Austin
But you know, Strongman is not a drug free sport. But we had the best our dude, one of our dudes won first place among the big guys and our our one of our women won first place among the open women so that was really awesome and drug free Diggins won the strongman. Let’s go across the border.

01:00:05:07 – 01:00:08:10
Nathan Crane
What’s that now? What’s a team called you says vegan green belt.

01:00:09:12 – 01:00:11:19
Daniel Austin
Vegan, strong plant built team.

01:00:11:19 – 01:00:12:21
Nathan Crane
So being.

01:00:12:23 – 01:00:45:00
Daniel Austin
Strong still. Yeah. Robert Cheek, the author. Former bodybuilder. I’m being a bodybuilder. He he started a basically like an outreach organization called Vegan Strong. And then the plant built team, which has existed since I think about 2013. It’s founded by Giacomo Markazi and Danny Taylor. They’re their married couple, but they’re both big bodybuilders and coaches and they started it initially.

01:00:45:00 – 01:01:12:18
Daniel Austin
It was just a vegan bodybuilding team to go out, compete together against non, you know, against everybody, you know, and just demonstrate what vegans can do by like 2014, 2015, they started expanding and having new teams and CrossFit and power lifting. That’s cool. By 20, 2015 was my first meet. I competed with them and so the team was on hiatus for like five years.

01:01:12:18 – 01:01:40:00
Daniel Austin
But when they came back in 2022, Robert, with his big and strong brand and the plan built team, they merged. So now it’s the vegan strong plant built team guys. Yeah, I think that was just like a business decision in terms of getting sponsorships and connections because Robert’s out there hustling all the time and then there’s already the existing clamshell brand.

01:01:40:00 – 01:01:44:07
Daniel Austin
So now we’re the vegan strong plant male team. It was originally just called Plant Built.

01:01:44:19 – 01:01:53:10
Nathan Crane
But you have a do you have a like a vegan protein supplement company sponsor. Sponsor, you guys.

01:01:53:21 – 01:01:55:13
Daniel Austin
Yeah, our current sponsors, plant fusion.

01:01:56:02 – 01:01:56:21
Nathan Crane
Plant fusion.

01:01:57:18 – 01:02:17:04
Daniel Austin
Yeah. Yeah, they’re based. They’re also based in New Jersey, but they’re kind of one of the O.G. Vegan Supplement companies. And I think I think they’ve got I was buying their stuff when I got into doing vegan athletic stuff more than a decade ago, and it’s cool that they’re still around and still a successful company and they’re sponsoring us.

01:02:17:04 – 01:02:17:19
Daniel Austin
That’s really cool.

01:02:18:00 – 01:02:24:09
Nathan Crane
That’s awesome. Yeah. Are you are you guys do you have like an exclusive with them or could you have another sponsor?

01:02:24:09 – 01:02:52:10
Daniel Austin
I mean, I see that members of our team have some of us have individual sponsorships that I haven’t seen anybody back away from those. Mm hmm. I do think that there are members on the team in the past, especially specifically some of the bodybuilders who kind of outgrew the team. And they have specific sponsorship types that would not let them awesome promote our sponsors.

01:02:52:17 – 01:02:56:04
Nathan Crane
The bodybuilder doing their own for the team no pun intended as a pretty good.

01:02:56:05 – 01:02:58:18
Daniel Austin
Yeah I’ve seen that happen.

01:02:59:05 – 01:03:07:11
Nathan Crane
The reason I ask because we’ve got we’re launching our supplement here in the next couple of months and I’d love to talk with you guys about maybe doing. Yeah.

01:03:08:00 – 01:03:31:13
Daniel Austin
I mean yeah I mean we’ve got all the sponsors like Go Ultima Ultima who’s like a electrolytes brand. Yeah. And Eunice Soy Vegan Jerky. Mm hmm. You know, so that’s cool. We’ve got people, good companies backing us with the supplements and the protein options. That’s awesome. So. So we signed on for another year to do that. So October, we’ll go to New Jersey.

01:03:31:13 – 01:04:17:10
Daniel Austin
And so I’ll just claim some state records and that federation that’s running the meat at that festival. Yeah. So that’s kind of my thing is, you know, I got I got, like I said, my biggest regret is not being a jock in high school. Since I started powerlifting at 32. It’s not really in the cards for me to have many chances at national world records, but state records almost every state I look at, you know, Texas or Virginia, it’s like, I’ve got a good shot at getting all of those in most federations, most of I think a lot of guys would get to be my age.

01:04:18:03 – 01:04:47:04
Daniel Austin
They either just gain too much weight to stay competitive at 165, or they get older and they get on hormone therapy. And so therefore they can’t be in drug testing leagues anymore. But the interest in being in Texas is like my squat state record is the same as the guy who’s on the non testing. It’s crazy. Yeah. So it’s like, I mean it’s supposed to give you 10% on a best case scenario, 10% advantage to be on roids.

01:04:47:04 – 01:04:49:19
Nathan Crane
But that’s the plans for you, man and plan.

01:04:49:19 – 01:04:50:17
Daniel Austin
So it’s.

01:04:50:20 – 01:04:55:04
Nathan Crane
You know. Yeah, plans are better so yeah.

01:04:55:05 – 01:05:23:07
Daniel Austin
No, you know, I love doing what I do with the big mid head enterprise I’ve got with the book. The book just kind of continues to sell so people keep finding it and there’s not it just does not appear to me that there’s other books that are as aggressively vegan and over the top about the protein. And, you know, it’s it’s it’s written in Jim speak, you know, I mean it’s very it’s it’s meant to be kind of a comedy endeavor.

01:05:25:06 – 01:05:27:23
Nathan Crane
And that, you know, working people get the book.

01:05:29:16 – 01:05:54:10
Daniel Austin
The main place people buy is on Amazon. So the way that you can meet had eating for strength by Daniel Austin I you can get you can order it directly from me always whatever companies I’m working with and I include coupons and I throw in stickers and, you know, extra perks for ordering direct from me. But of course you’re not going to get the free shipping like you do on Amazon but that’s Daniel Dash Austin dot com or vegan meat head dcoms.

01:05:54:10 – 01:06:21:09
Daniel Austin
Bunch of websites always having to do direct orders, but I have no qualms with people who want to order off Amazon. I mean, that’s where the world buys most their books at this point anyway. So it’s cool. People find it pretty easily on there, I guess, because I’ve been surprised. You know, I put the first edition out in 2018 and then in 2022 I put out the second edition and that’s gone even better than the first edition.

01:06:23:02 – 01:06:48:18
Daniel Austin
So, so I’m working on the audiobook right now, which I’ll have later this year. And the cool thing about it is it’s brought me a lot of opportunities around speaking it like bench press and just all kinds of random colleges will invite me to speak either online or even sometimes after college. Just last month, I. I gave a lecture for the city of San Antonio’s employees.

01:06:49:20 – 01:07:13:08
Daniel Austin
Somebody in San Antonio who’s like a fan of what i do told their h.r. Department, hey, you got to book this guy for one of those new year resolution lectures. So i gave a talk about how to make veganism work in the new year for hundreds of city of San Antonio employees. And that’s a lecture they recorded in their database for their as a resource for their employees forever.

01:07:14:10 – 01:07:34:18
Daniel Austin
Things like that are just like, I never saw this happening by being a vegan. I wanted to lift weights and eat a lot of protein. I mean, yeah. So I’m just I’m just going to keep I’m just going to keep lifting and keep trying to claim records and win competitions. I like to compete in more like high profile meats, like nationals and things.

01:07:34:18 – 01:07:57:12
Daniel Austin
So, you know, I only do about two, usually two meats a year. So what my body can handle best, one would be even better for my body at this point, but I’m doing three this year, so I got to be smart. I’m programing like we were talking about earlier, but I just glad to keep lifting, keep winning, keep writing, keep promoting, keep talking about it.

01:07:59:00 – 01:07:59:14
Nathan Crane
You know, I like.

01:07:59:14 – 01:08:00:00
Daniel Austin
I just love.

01:08:00:06 – 01:08:00:23
Nathan Crane
What I like about your.

01:08:01:08 – 01:08:01:13
Daniel Austin
It.

01:08:02:04 – 01:08:19:10
Nathan Crane
Yeah that’s it’s awesome. I mean, you have to love what you do, right? Otherwise you won’t be sustainable in it. And I love what I love about your story is like, you know, you were vegan first for a long time. I mean, from 2005. And then you didn’t start lifting until I think 2015, right.

01:08:19:10 – 01:08:22:10
Daniel Austin
But I start competing and start competing to start competing.

01:08:22:17 – 01:08:24:02
Nathan Crane
That’s when did you start lifting?

01:08:25:20 – 01:08:31:02
Daniel Austin
I would say I got serious about lifting in 2011. Okay.

01:08:31:02 – 01:09:05:23
Nathan Crane
So you’re already vegan for six years and then you’ve built because there’s an excuse that some people have is like, oh yeah, well, they built all their strength on a omnivore diet and then they switched to vegan. So they had all those gains and it’s like, right, it’s, it’s a not it’s it’s a nonsensical because if you switched and then for the next three or four or five years, you continued to maintain or get stronger, you know, basic logic says, well, if you believe that that diet is worse for strength and for competition and for athletes, then you would decline.

01:09:05:23 – 01:09:18:21
Nathan Crane
But these most of these athletes that have switched don’t decline, in fact, they actually maintain or get better. But it’s just, you know, I mean, you’re an example of others as well, but your example is great. I think just.

01:09:19:10 – 01:09:19:18
Daniel Austin
To show.

01:09:19:18 – 01:09:38:21
Nathan Crane
People the reality is like, no, you can do this long term. Same thing. I was vegan for however many years you, know six or seven years before I started lifting as well. So I had no strength. When I started lifting, I had nothing. You know, now I’m the strongest I’ve ever been in my entire life. Obviously, I keep getting stronger year after, so.

01:09:39:03 – 01:09:59:08
Daniel Austin
I went vegan strictly for an ethical reason. Just I didn’t want to support paying people to kill animals or take their babies away from them. And use their bodies for milk and then slaughter the babies. You know, I just didn’t want to pay people to do that. Yeah. And I had no idea about nutrition at all. And like I said, got a little skinny fat the first year I was vegan.

01:09:59:08 – 01:10:19:14
Daniel Austin
But yeah, so like 2011, I started trying to train kind of like a quasi bodybuilder, you know, I had Robert Fuchs book and I thought, I’m going to try to do this. But I found out I wasn’t really genetically cut out to be a bodybuilder. I just didn’t feel like it was it was going to be what I was good at.

01:10:19:14 – 01:10:47:01
Daniel Austin
And the friend recommended find my five powerlifting program, and that caused more transformation in my body than doing higher and lower weight work. You know? And that’s when I fell in love with powerlifting. But I became a certified personal trainer in 2012, and I worked in a gym for about a year and then I actually didn’t enjoy that.

01:10:47:01 – 01:11:08:12
Daniel Austin
I like had a lot of, of this. Yeah. Yeah. What I like doing now is on the side when people approach me for coaching and if I find they’re serious enough and they’re ambitious enough and they’re going to eat right. And, you know, I’ll take on maybe two or three clients at a time because I you know, I have a lot of that’s not my main thing I’m trying to be good at.

01:11:09:02 – 01:11:36:05
Daniel Austin
But I love to help the vegans make the gains, you know, and when I find the right person with the right attitude that wants to work with me, I think, yeah, let’s do this, you know? But I think at that time I was I was still kind of, I didn’t know about powerlifting as an official sport. I had done that program, the five by five program, and it kind of gave me bodybuilding results because, you know, reps of five still.

01:11:36:21 – 01:11:37:15
Nathan Crane
It’s right there.

01:11:37:15 – 01:12:00:24
Daniel Austin
It’s in between I in strength, you know. So my strength did go up, but I didn’t know any other kind of program. I didn’t know anything about programing, had the background of the education to be a personal trainer and I just kind of knew general fitness stuff and that’s how I trained people. And it wasn’t until 2014 that I realized, Oh, you can compete in power like I saw with the planning team was doing.

01:12:00:24 – 01:12:28:23
Daniel Austin
And I was like, Oh, I want to be on that team. So I got serious about my I picked a weight class and I started experimenting with my diet to get a protein up to even bring come down off the carbs. And I actually lost weight because I had been bulking so hard. I was like weight £186. And I thought, well, if I’m going to be like a 181 or 198 weight class, my numbers were competitive.

01:12:28:23 – 01:12:54:01
Daniel Austin
So I went down to 165 and back to what you’re saying about my progress after being vegan for many years? Yeah. By the time I stepped into my first competition, I’d been Deacon for ten years and I’ve been training specifically as a powerlifter for maybe close to a year before that. That first meet, I put up a total of like 1045.

01:12:54:08 – 01:13:19:02
Daniel Austin
It wasn’t amazing. It was I got my numbers on the board. I had fun. I met a lot of great people. I met the Planet team and it really motivated me. But, you know, now I’m in more like the 1260 to 1300 range at the same body weight, you know. So that’s like a 30% improvement on my total.

01:13:19:02 – 01:13:20:22
Daniel Austin
Yeah, at the same body.

01:13:20:22 – 01:13:22:02
Nathan Crane
Rachel That’s huge.

01:13:22:02 – 01:13:26:19
Daniel Austin
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I fought hard for that over the years.

01:13:27:02 – 01:13:49:21
Nathan Crane
It’s hard work, man. People don’t really people. You only know how hard work it is to add £5 to a lift. You know, it’s like, well, once you’re once you’re, you know, what they might call it an advanced lift or just mean that you’re you’re way past those newbie gains, you know, that had five or £10 to to to a PR.

01:13:49:21 – 01:13:56:12
Nathan Crane
It’s like it’s hours of hard work hours. Hundreds of hours oftentimes.

01:13:56:12 – 01:14:00:00
Daniel Austin
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I had this problem at this point.

01:14:00:00 – 01:14:01:06
Nathan Crane
But it’s a lot for sure.

01:14:01:08 – 01:14:24:09
Daniel Austin
At this point being 41, if I improve my total my like £10 a year, I think it’s amazing. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Whereas years ago I would see four year improvements of 50, 60, £80 a year, you know, at a competitions so yeah, you get diminishing returns over time. But I mean, I love being as strong as I can be.

01:14:24:09 – 01:14:28:10
Daniel Austin
So you just keep it’s like sisters.

01:14:28:10 – 01:14:54:08
Nathan Crane
Yeah my and bowler. That’s right. My uncle is 62 I think 63. He competed in power, powerlifter in his forties. He took 30, but he lifted his whole life. You know, he took 13 years off from lifting. So imagine this. Right. And he was he had some pretty big numbers, smaller guy in terms of weight class, probably similar weight class to you.

01:14:55:23 – 01:15:13:01
Nathan Crane
He was incredibly, though. And, you know, back then, I don’t I’m not sure if he was even natural. I don’t know 13 years off of lifting comes back in his sixties starts lifting again he’s already almost pushing 500 on his deadlift.

01:15:14:09 – 01:15:15:00
Daniel Austin
Sixties.

01:15:15:05 – 01:15:37:12
Nathan Crane
In his sixties. Yeah he was about he was at my house the other day, I think he pulled for 75. I’m, I’m barely just in front of him, you know, it’s like I’m on my yeah, I’m just 37. It’s like, I just pulled 500 the other day, you know, I just started lifting six, six years ago. And here he is like, you know, early sixties hasn’t lived in 13 years, comes back.

01:15:37:12 – 01:15:49:13
Nathan Crane
He’s been lifting for maybe a year or two and boom, he’s already almost 500. I’m I did it. Yeah it’s amazing how much the body can can hold on to those add adaptations or reclaim those adaptations.

01:15:49:13 – 01:16:20:06
Daniel Austin
Once you say yeah yeah. And I mean, it makes me think I need to take some years off. One of my teammates, Nick Squires, is really amazing. The barrel lifter, he tore his bicep playing hockey last year and he thought he was going to be able to show up for the team when he got re attachment surgery. And then Ryan, our team captain, coached him to how to train around that injury, you know, and so it could fully heal.

01:16:20:06 – 01:16:41:04
Daniel Austin
He showed up on meet day and I mean, everything went up because he he trained in different ways. He basically took like 4 to 6 months off. But it ended up being a net positive because he, like all of us, we all want to go heavy all the time. But he needed the variation. He needed to find ways to back off.

01:16:41:13 – 01:17:01:16
Daniel Austin
And it was a blessing in disguise. Like you, you tear your bicep off, you think I’m done? I’m done. For years, I might not even be able to come back. He came back in six months. Better because? Because he or many those months, he couldn’t even have a bar on his back because he couldn’t, you know, pin his arms back to to hold the bar.

01:17:01:16 – 01:17:25:18
Daniel Austin
So we had to find other ways to do, like, you know, bell squats and SSP squats and all that variation just and doing lighter weight for a while just allowed a central nervous system to recover and man, it was so fresh that day in New Jersey. Mr. America, we were just like, damn, I thought, I need to get injured.

01:17:25:18 – 01:17:30:14
Nathan Crane
It’s crazy how you it’s like sometimes the body just needs a little break, you know? And that’s.

01:17:31:12 – 01:17:31:16
Daniel Austin
And.

01:17:31:18 – 01:17:52:20
Nathan Crane
That’s what I’m doing right now through this. I’m I’m finding the blessings in disguise, right? It’s like I’m finding the silver lining in these in these injuries. And it’s like, you know, I’m I’m being able to attend most of my daughter’s basketball games. You know, I’m spending more time in the sun, more time focusing on sleep, more time meditating, more time, you know, relaxing.

01:17:52:20 – 01:18:08:02
Nathan Crane
Like it’s just because I’ve trained it’s so hard, so much volume and everything goes to the wayside. And here I’m like, okay, you know, this is a blessing in disguise. It’s like I’m getting this much needed physical that I just haven’t given myself in, you know, six years.

01:18:08:02 – 01:18:27:06
Daniel Austin
And I will say the last time I experienced a significant jump in my gains was 20, 20 when the gym shut down. And I was at home doing pull ups and push ups and just body weight stuff. And I even got to a point because that stuff just doesn’t stimulate me enough. Yeah, I just crave the heavier weight.

01:18:27:24 – 01:18:48:02
Daniel Austin
I stopped doing it for a number of weeks and just watched the entirety of Game of Thrones and eat ice cream and and like when I got back in the gym, it was rough for about a month and a half just acclimating. I probably lost like 10% of my max strength, but I went to Nationals that year, clobbered my old numbers.

01:18:49:20 – 01:18:51:13
Daniel Austin
Just it was the time of.

01:18:51:24 – 01:18:56:04
Nathan Crane
Well, there you go, you don’t need to get injured. You just need to take a month and to see that.

01:18:56:10 – 01:19:00:15
Daniel Austin
You need a pandemic. I need a pandemic. So you’re just.

01:19:00:15 – 01:19:01:11
Nathan Crane
Now no more per.

01:19:01:14 – 01:19:03:03
Daniel Austin
Day away from the gym no.

01:19:03:03 – 01:19:04:05
Nathan Crane
More pandemics.

01:19:05:03 – 01:19:05:15
Daniel Austin
That’s you.

01:19:05:19 – 01:19:06:05
Nathan Crane
No.

01:19:06:24 – 01:19:11:15
Daniel Austin
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you never know. You can always work it to your advantage.

01:19:12:06 – 01:19:35:21
Nathan Crane
It’s. It’s true. You find, find the. Find the blessing in disguise, you know. And I think that’s that’s a big part of it, too. As an athlete, it’s just a learning to to the body and learn to pay attention and learn to train smarter. And it’s, you know, yeah, you’re in your early twenties, you can kind of just tear through stuff and it’s not going to affect you very much, but as you continue to age, all that stuff becomes even so much more important.

01:19:36:20 – 01:19:39:07
Daniel Austin
All right.

01:19:39:07 – 01:20:06:17
Nathan Crane
Awesome, dude. Well, so the book is Vegan Meat. Had people go grab that online anywhere at the website or or on Amazon and plant build team sounds amazing man I’m going to check it out and yeah I’ll talk with you more about, um, you know, maybe some sponsorship stuff we’ve got. We’re looking for some athletes to collaborate with, with our the company I’m launching right now is called plant powered athlete.

01:20:06:17 – 01:20:41:04
Nathan Crane
And it’s all about helping inspire and educate and support people achieve their optimal performance on a plant based diet. And so, you know, we’re working on some really high quality organic plant based supplements. We’re coming out the protein powder to start, and then we’ll eventually have some others to support that. And a clothing line and then just education, just getting information out, encouraging people, you know, to to strategically add more plant based nutrition to their diet, even if they don’t go 100% vegan or vegetarian, it’s like just adding more plants.

01:20:41:04 – 01:20:54:03
Nathan Crane
Your diet, you know, is going to help you, is going to help the animals, is going to help the planet. And and in how to do it. And if you want to go plant based, then we’ll show you how as well. But we just want to, you know, continue to.

01:20:54:03 – 01:21:21:15
Daniel Austin
Yeah, I’ll tell you, man, that when we when we did the Mesoamerican festival last year, the Plant Bell team, we had this organizer of the meet was just like, Hey, man, you guys are just like, good for vegans, you guys are good. And then there was this one older dude. I think, he was like a firefighter. So he came up, he competed, but he goes, Man, I was just I heard you guys talking about tofu and all this.

01:21:21:15 – 01:21:40:08
Daniel Austin
And I always just been scared of that stuff. But, man, maybe there’s something to it, you know? I was like, Yeah, I’m scared. So it’s cool. It’s cool to see, like, old, stubborn meat head men saying, Hmm, you know, like, we know we can get through to those people and get through anybody, you know, and just got to demonstrate.

01:21:40:17 – 01:22:01:20
Nathan Crane
And my dad, my dad’s a testament. He’s on a he’s I mean, he grew up in old, you know, power lifting days, meat head, whole thing, you know, dozen raw eggs every day, you know, steak that’s a beef every day, whole thing. And now, you know, he’s in his seventies and he’s he’s healthier than he’s been in 20 plus years because he’s on a primarily based diet.

01:22:02:02 – 01:22:22:14
Nathan Crane
It is a little bit of chicken and fish once in a while, a little bit of raw eggs once in a while. But he’s mostly he doing like I’m doing smoothies every day, you know, fresh veggies. Fruit, tofu. And it’s his his heart, his blood pressure was through the roof and his what else did he have? He had he had two or three things going on.

01:22:22:14 – 01:22:46:14
Nathan Crane
And one of them was high blood pressure. I can’t remember the other. I got him on a, you know, like I’d call like a plant strong diet, you know, a plant based diet. And then he started working out again. And within weeks his blood pressure down and his and his markers got significantly better. And now it’s like he’s healthier than he’s been in decades.

01:22:46:14 – 01:22:48:03
Nathan Crane
And it’s really, it’s really cool to see.

01:22:48:23 – 01:22:51:08
Daniel Austin
Yeah, that’s early and never. Right.

01:22:53:08 – 01:22:56:07
Nathan Crane
Awesome, man. Well, hey, it was great meeting with you. A great chat with you.

01:22:56:09 – 01:22:56:14
Daniel Austin
Yeah.

01:22:57:21 – 01:23:02:01
Nathan Crane
You know, keep keep crushing it, man. Good luck with your upcoming meats.

01:23:03:15 – 01:23:08:09
Daniel Austin
Thank you. I hope I take care and take you back to.