How I Changed From Being A Vegan Preacher To Carnivore

0:00 Patrick, how did you find carnivore? I didn't find it. It found me. Um, so the story is it's it's very interesting. So I come from well my background is extremely versatile. When I was a kid, I grew up with my family in a kind of I'm from Europe, originally from Holland. My parents were really in love with France and the French way of eating and drinking. So there was always heaps of alcohol, nothing like alcoholic wise, but just lots of wine and drinks and big heavy meals. And this is how I grew up. And this for me was the normal way of eating. I was always a very skinny kid. So it never affected me in

0:45 the sense that I got uh I I I became a big boy if you wish. But then I in my mid30s I lived in Thailand. I lived there for 11 years and I did a lot of uh Thai boxing purely recreational, never been in a fight or anything but just for purely for fun. And I started to realize that my that my recovery was really crap. [gasps] And I'd never made the link that maybe what I eat has anything to do with my recovery. So through a friend of mine, I got introduced into nutrition. And this person gave me, you know, those nutrition books called Nutrition for Dummies, the 101, the yellow and black books. Yeah. So, she gave that to me and

1:31 I read it and I was like, "Oh, okay." So, basically what it says is that what you put in your body is quite important for your health. Then I met the mother of my son which was about 15 years ago and she was already really into health but more in the vegan kind of style health. She's an acupuncturist and already based upon that kind of that nutrition for dummies book which kind of made me realize maybe I should be looking at my food a little bit better in order for my uh Thai boxing recovery. She then introduced me into what I came to believe for a long time the real health thing. So I became a

2:17 vegan. No, I started off kind of vegeta let's bring it back a little bit. I started looking at my food. I started to eat greens. I start which was definitely an improvement compared to what I was eating before because that was just junk. So I started to eat more greens. I start I I had gained quite a bit of weight eventually because as you get older, even when you're a skinny dude, eventually the weight starts packing up. So, I had gained quite a bit of weight. So, when I met her and I started eating more greens, I started to lose some weight. I started to feel better. Of course, I started to feel better because I started to eat at least whole foods. And then eventually through friends of her, I got introduced into veganism and especially to raw veganism. So Dave

3:03 showed me, you must have heard of it Dave, this book called the China Study. Have you heard of The China Study by T. Colin Campbell. Right. So this is the vegan Bible. Right. I read the China study and I was like, "Oh my god, this is the missing link. Meat is the devil incarnated. I should drop all the meat." And remember, I came from a family with lots of big meals and lots of meat of course and normal meats and organ meats and you know as a child I would eat already frog legs and I would eat knit and I would eat liver and all these things but of course with big sauces and lots of French fries and whatever came with it. But now all of a sudden I came to realize, oh my god, I'm

3:48 doing it all. I'm doing it all wrong. Meat is the devil incarnated. So, I dropped all the meat and I started preaching it because when you're a vegan, you need to preach. Now, that's maybe a little bit nasty towards vegans, but I did believe like, oh my god, I found I found the the the holy grail of health. So, I want all the people that I love to be healthy. So now I told my family how evil milk was and that they should stop eating meat and as long as they did they drank green juices they would just live forever. Um these friends that introduced me also into this book were raw vegans. So they

4:33 convinced me that actually eating raw food was the best thing to do because the moment you you might know how the whole raw movement things. The moment you heat it up above 40 food above 40°, you start to lose vital nutrients. So, you need to eat it all raw. It's like, okay. Hm, makes sense. So, I started eating raw food. The most insane massive salads, like you would spend an hour cutting everything super small because otherwise you can't chew it. these massive salads. I of course lost an enormous amount of weight, which was very easy for me anyway because my genetics is quite a skinny dude. Um, and I did that for a while and then her and

5:21 I we split up. No, I should say something actually a very important thing. We lived in Thailand and I have a background as a dive instructor. I've uh organized motorbike holidays through the north of Thailand. This is all like between 2000 and 2010. Eventually, I managed a bunch of beach bars. So, there was a lot of drinking, a lot of partying involved. But when I met her, that kind of all died out. She got pregnant. I became a little bit more um of an adult. So, I kind of stopped the drinking mostly um and I started my vegan trip with her. And then we started a juice bar. We were on a tiny little island in Thailand and we started a juice bar. We called it living juices because the idea behind drinking green

6:08 juices is that you're drinking a living juice. It's all alive. All the kale and the spinach and the carrots and everything is alive. So living juices. And that became really popular because we were the first ones on the island to offer something like this. And people started to catch on to this slow juicing green juices because I got so much into nutrition and I started to believe that this was the way forward. I um followed a study uh in integrative nutrition with the in um the institute for integrative nutrition in the states. You might have heard of them for a year's health coaching. And so I became a health coach and now we had this juice bar which then turned more into a restaurant cuz we

6:55 started to do health foods as well and fruit salads and things because of course in the tropics you have some absolutely amazing uh fruits. Um I started to work as a health coach. I started to pre I found my way to preach veganism. So now I started to work with all these people from the juice bar. you know, they come in, they're like hot leads, aren't they? They come in for a green juice and you go like, "Ooh, you're interested in green juice." And then you got this conversation rolling and then it's in a way, I wouldn't say quite easy, but you have you got this little hook into your health coaching program because the majority of course is not so healthy. So, I became this vegan preacher if you wish. Should have registered that email

7:40 address at the time. Um, then me and her split up. We moved back to Europe mostly because of our son. We wanted to be closer to the family. She's from the UK. I'm from Holland. We wanted to be closer to the family. We moved back to Europe. We moved to Ibita where I I still am. I've been here for 11 years. Still a little bit of sunshine. It's not as warm as Thailand, but it's a pretty okay middle ground if you wish. Um, we split up. I kind of I wasn't no so much ve strict vegan anymore. I did become more vegetarian because you know my 30 years of conditioning from my childhood and eating meat kind of started creeping back up onto me. But I

8:26 still had this cognitive issue with like yeah but meat is bad for you. Meat is going to give me cancer. Meat is going to give me heart disease. Heart disease runs in our family. My granddad died of heart disease. My dad had his first heart attack when he was 42 years old. Um, he survived. He's still alive, but by now he's had a stroke already. He's had a triple bypass, so he's got lots of heart issues, but he's still going strong. So, I was still thinking, I can't eat too much meat. So, I really limited the amount of meat that I ate and I would eat just massive amounts of um greens and in the summer still massive salads. And yeah, I would put some eggs in and sometimes some some some um feta cheese or so, but it would be mostly greens. It

9:11 was all based on greens, greens, greens because that's healthy. All right, that's the background of the story. a good friend of mine who lived in uh Portugal a few years ago. We're talking now 20 23. He sent me a video one day, the video from Anthony Schaffe, the presentation where he says, "Plants are trying to kill you." And he sends it to me and he's like, "What do you think of this?" [laughter] And I watched it and I thought, "This guy's bonkers." What? What? What? I had such a resistance to even consider that plants could be an issue that I listened to this and was like, "All right, well, this guy lost the

9:57 plot." So, I kind of completely ditched it. But this friend who send it to me, he has been he dealt in the past with a lot of mental issues. He became keto through the algorithm. things started feeding him carnivore because once you start looking on YouTube for keto eventually it starts sneaking in of course carnivore stuff and he turns carnivore and it changed his life. So I went to visit him and now we're talking April 2023 so coming up 3 years coming April March actually doesn't matter. So I visited him and he was like, "Listen, I eat full carnivore. Do you want to join me?" And I was like, "You

10:43 know what?" Because I saw how well he was doing. I was like, "You know what? One week, you know, again, my background. I like meat." So I was like, "All right, let's just do it." So I ate one week full carnivore. Not a single carb, not a single vegetable. He was super super super strict. It wasn't so much lion because there was also uh pork and bacon, but it was super strict. Just drank water and just ate meat. Oh my god, Dave. After that week, when I flew back home to eat pizza, I was buzzing. I was I didn't know what to do with my energy. It was crazy. I got home here. I'm I'm I'm sitting at home, so I'm looking around. I got home and I was like, "Oh my god, I need to do something

11:29 with this energy." Now, what I didn't tell you before, when I lived in Thailand at the time that I did Thai boxing, I discovered CrossFit as well. And I really enjoyed that type of highintensity exercise, body weights, push-ups, pull-ups, squats. So, I was like, "Okay, I need to do something with my energy." What I'll do is every time I get up from my chair, because my my job by trade now the past 10 years has been web design, so I sit a lot. But when I get up from my chair to go to the to the fridge or to go to the toilet or to do whatever, I'll just do 10 push-ups. I'll just do 10 push-ups. Well, I did that for a few days. Like, well, that's nothing. I'll just do 10 push-ups and 10 squats. So, slowly within a few weeks, that kind of made me realize maybe I

12:16 should just start a real um workout routine because I like these types of workouts. So, of course, by now it's 2023, you can easily find an app on your phone that gives you like a whole structured um body weight workout routine. So, I started doing that. Now, diet-wise, when I came back home, I continued carnivore, but there was so much cogn there was so much cognitive dissonance that I couldn't drop the veggies. In the years before, I would drink four massive green juices per week. I had my own um I brought it from Thailand, my slow juicer. I would drink my green juices. So, I still kept on having my green juices. I still kept on

13:03 eating vegetables because my mind just I I couldn't I I you had to eat vegetables. But over time, and now we're talking maybe like three or four months or so, I started to eat fewer and fewer vegetables, I started to learn about oxalates. I stopped drinking green juices because what I was what I had been doing luckily without any issue. It been I've been drinking oxalate juice for years because I would put kale and I would put spinach and everything was raw and the greener the better and I would barely put any fruit juice in because I understood already the problems with sugar. So hardly any fruit juice. So I would just

13:48 drink straight up these these bitter vegetable juices because hey it's good for you. So to just ditch that in my daily life for good was too big of a step. I I I had to take baby steps. So that in combination with my workouts because by the time I be I I started to become vegan 101 15 years ago and the years following all that weight that I had packed on which was unhealthy weight dropped and I became this super and you can see it on my Instagram. I got one photo there from 2019. Dave I I mean, I don't want to say it here in public, but I look like I I came out of

14:35 some labor camp. It's terrible. I don't know if you ever seen that photo, but I cannot believe people didn't tell me at the time, like, Patrick, you look like you're about to die. I was I was I'm 1 m 76 and I was like 62 kilos. I was skin and bones. Now, I started to gain a little bit of more weight in the years after when I started, especially to eat more carbs. I had a girlfriend who liked her sweets and stuff, so I started kind of snacking on that. But it was not until I started carnivore that my body actually was like, "Oh my god, I'm getting proper nutrition." And I started to balance out my weight, which meant in my case gaining weight where everybody is losing weight. I was gaining weight to find like what nature does, homeostasis.

15:21 that in combination with my workouts just made my body change like in in okay I was skinny or quite skinny already so it wasn't very difficult but within three or four months I had I had like yeah what you could call a six-pack or at least a fourack maybe the last two ones you couldn't see but you could and I'm you know by then I was 49 years old so I wasn't 25 so I started to pack on muscle and therefore I started to feel great and this continued. I kept on I my girlfriend I got my girlfriend into it. She is carnivore or I would say say animalbased. I I'm not a 100% strict carnivore but we'll get to that later. She got became carnivore. She started

16:08 doing workouts. We are both just absolutely buzzing. So that continued for about a year until I visited my friend in Portugal again and he's like, "Oh my god, man, you look absolutely fantastic." I was like, "Thank you so much for introducing me into this because this this has been the biggest change in my life ever." So he's like, "Why don't you help start helping others with it? you you did your coaching degree, whatever you want to call it, but you got your coaching license through integrative nutrition. You uh I like helping people. I like teaching. I was a dive instructor for a long time. Even before that, in my early 20s, I worked for an American software company

16:53 and I trained resellers in our product. So, I'm I like teaching and I'm fine speaking in front of groups. So, he was like, why don't you start helping people? You are the best example. yourself that this is working. I was like actually that's another another brilliant idea. Thank you. So last year I when was this around this time last year I started setting up my coaching business and I started basically reaching out to people and my Instagram. But the thing is I'm still doing web design which pays the pays the bills because I live on a very expensive island. So, I need to make money to pay the bills, to pay my son's school, to pay my daily ribe eyes, which is really

17:40 not it's not a cheap diet if you eat ripey every day, which is what I do. And I eat three times a day because most people eat on carnivore only eat once a day. I eat three times a day. Yeah. Because I just I have to. It's amazing. I'm just hungry morning, lunch, and dinner. not in between, but sometimes I can do with two meals a day if I don't train in the morning, but I train most mornings. Um, yeah, I I have three meals a day. So, yeah, I still need to pay for those bills. So, I started this coaching business. That's what I'm doing now. I'm sure we can talk about that later. Um, but this is where I'm at now. I should say though that I started to notice that

18:26 I have a tendency to be extreme because I was extreme vegan, extreme raw vegan. I was I was this newly convert preaching to the world that this is the holy grail to health. And then I noticed that I started to do this with carnivore as well. I was like okay I it's interesting because it was almost like a spiritual journey in a way. I just saw with what I what was happening within me if you wish. So it's like okay I'd love to be nuanced. I know what works for me. For me it works from calorie wise 95% comes from animal protein but I do have avocado. I also love avocado. Uh I

19:14 do have some berries. >> Right. So So what does a typical day of eating look like for you if you are having those three meals? >> Ah okay. So for breakfast first of all I um because I'm I'm dealing with a a heart issue which is not diet related. I'm I'm dealing with atrial fibrillation which is basically I'm in a recovery phase but basically what happened is is I I have an issue where there is a electrical there no there is not there can be an electrical imbalance between my vag nerve and my heart which is exercise induced to make it sound really cool I my body chills out too quickly if I exercise real hard and my heart rate goes skyhigh

20:02 high, it drops so fast when I stop exercising that there is an imbalance in the signals that the my the lower chambers of my heart and the upper chambers of my heart get and my heart starts fibrillating. And when that happens, that's a scary thing. So part of my recovery now is that I shouldn't train fasted, which I always did. It's just not so good in my particular case to train fasted. So in the morning I have a decaf coffee um with heavy cream and collagen and half a scoop of protein powder. That's kind of my that's not my breakfast. That's my preworkout

20:47 coffee if you wish. Then once I've done my workout, I make a smoothie with protein powder with creatine. And I I use quite a bit because I've heard about all the mental benefits of creatine. I'm not necessarily using it for muscle, but especially for mental clarity. And then I have handful of berries and a banana. And then I use again full fat cream. I don't use milk. I use full fat cream and water. That's kind of my breakfast if you wish after a workout. Then for lunch, well, it depends, but it's either minced meat, a big bowl of minced meat with eggs, an avocado, and some sauerkraut. Um, sometimes some halumi. I love halumi cuz it's so nice and salty. I don't know

21:32 if you're familiar with it, the criotic cheese, but it's brilliant. Or I make a burger, an organic uh grass-fed burger with bacon and with goats cheese, and I put also some avocado. And I put some what else did I put on there? A fried egg like basically a big burger patty without the bun of course. Something like that. Sometimes some smoked salmon. But now is the problem of course with salmon and farmed salmon that is full of crab. So you know it's a hard it's a hard landscape to navigate because I would love to eat everything organic. I would love to eat everything grass-fed and pasture pastured, but it doesn't exist here on the island. And if it does, I can't afford it. It's It's

22:21 already like a ripey every day is a lot. If I was to eat a grass-fed ripey, man, I'd love to, but I can't. So, I try to find the best balance that I can. My burgers are organic. I get all my meat from the butcher, not from the supermarket, which which at least makes me feel I'm doing a good job or a better job because I don't want to touch the supermarket food. So that's my lunch. And then for dinner, often I make bone broth, which I might have in the afternoon if I just fancy something salty. I do yoga every day. Sometimes before yoga, I have a bone broth. Um, and then for dinner, I basically have an absolutely insane massive ripey. So like a se 6 700 gram ribeye. Um sometimes

23:06 once a week with some uh liver, not too much uh liver because of the vitamin A overload. Um cuz I don't like eating small pieces of liver. If I eat liver, I'd like to eat like a proper amount of liver. Um and fried eggs. And then once a week I also eat some kidneys. I love kidneys. Uh there I use some garlic and red onion and lots of heavy cream. um and stir fried in the pan. Um what else? Oh, I I make osabobuko in kind of a stew. I bought a pressure cooker, which is to anybody who's listening, invest in a pressure cooker. It's the best investment you could possibly do for your bone broth, uh for your stews and stuff. So, I buy like a big lump of

23:52 oabuko with the of course with the bone in it. I let the butcher cut it up and I make like a stew, which is delicious. That's what I would have for dinner and that's kind of on rotation. And [laughter] I got a 14-year-old son and still, I mean, this is going on for two and a half, three years. Still, he looks at me, he's like, "Papa, are you never getting bored of a ripey?" I was like, "I never ever get bored of a ripey. I am looking forward to it every single time. It's" And I said, "And I don't know how either. I don't know. I I can't explain. I can only tell you what is happening. I can't tell you why it's happening. Perhaps it's because my body knows that what I'm feeding it is nutritious and therefore it wants it.

24:39 But that's the only that's the only thing I can think. But I can tell you I never get bored of it. Cuz this of course is what a lot of people think. Like on carnivore you only eat meat. So boring. For me it's not because I feel amazing. So this must be the feedback loop for my body. like feed me the same stuff cuz it works >> and that's what I'm doing. So yeah, that's my dinner. >> Sometimes if I >> Sorry to interrupt. Uh I I think that you know regarding the people who think it would be boring, they think it's boring because they live in a different world to someone who's eating like this, right? So they they they can't understand what the change that happens

25:25 in your body. It's just like your body now sees food as more of a functional thing, not entertainment. >> Yes, that that is true. But even my taste buds, because that's why everybody of course binges on so much food because it's also the taste. Everything is hyper palatable. But for me, a rip eye is hyper palatable. I always try to get rip eyes with a big like a the cap of fat on it and then I fry the fat first. just I put it sideways in the pan. I fry that first until the the the fat is really nice and crispy and then I fry the ribeye. The taste of that fat like it's a it's a it's a taste explosion in your mouth. How can you how can you ever get

26:10 bored of that? It's impossible. It's impossible. So, have you um I I imagine having spent so much time as a vegan um and and running those businesses in Thailand um you must still have a lot of friends from that part of your life. Have you kind of with those friends? Have you kind of lost your um lost your I don't know your social card with them or something? Like have they do they do they feel like you've gone over to the dark side? >> Yeah. No, because none I >> I think that [clears throat] me and my partner at the time, we were kind of the only real vegans on the island. We got

26:56 people into thinking about healthier food because at least that's what we managed. We managed to get a lot of people to think about their food choices. So even though they might the veganism might not have been the healthiest thing, I'm also not the person to say like, well, veganism is bad in the sense like at least you're eating whole foods. So you you make people reconsider their food choices from packaged foods and and and high sugar foods to vegetables. But I think we were the only ones who were as strict about nutrition. So it was not like I had I had collected a group of vegan friends around me who then kind of ostracized me by the time I became

27:42 carnivore. In fact, here on the island, one of my best friends, he is a longtime vegan, and he hated me not being vegan. Not only not being vegan, eventually become being part of of the dark side, carnivore side, right? But we get along extremely well, so our friendship lasted. So, here's this vegan, and it's this always makes for a joke like there's a vegan and a carnivore walking into a bar, you know. Um, but we are really good friends. So that didn't really we just didn't have the the the nutritional debate because and he was he's was very much he was cuz he's not anymore very much an ethical vegan which I also understand. I understand this part from veganism where

28:28 vegans are like yeah but the way we treat animals is terrible. Totally true. I mean I would love to see everything as regenerative farm farming. I would love to see all the cows happily in the meadows. It would make my heart sing much more as well because I know what we're doing in the meat industry, even in Europe, and I don't know what it's like in your side of the world, but it could be much prettier than it is. So, I totally get them. I totally get it. But eventually he came around and he is not a carnivore. But about a year ago, we had his first steak together and we made it a whole kind of ceremony and he ate the steak and he was like, "Oh my god, this is so good." He's like, "Mhm, yes, it is." So, he was kind of he's the

29:16 only the the last and I think the only vegan friend, but he's not vegan anymore. And he even has a V tattooed on his wrist because he was so militant vegan and now he doesn't know what to do with it. Oh wow. [laughter] Wow. Um so um you uh you've been eating this way for about two and a half three years. >> Yep. That's right. >> Right. And so you can't see any reason that you would go back or or moderate at all? >> No. No, not at all. Not at all. I mean there time there are times that I do eat more vegetable.

30:01 Last year I went on holiday with my family-in-law. We went to this beautiful resort in Egypt and it was this all you can eat buffets and unfortunately the meat selection was very limited but the salad selection was really big. So I ate more salads. But I feel it straight away. I get bloated. I get, weirdly enough, cuz everybody says you need fiber to poo. When I eat fiber, I get constipated. I don't know if that's your experience, but when I eat fiber, I event I eventually had to start taking spoonfuls of olive oil so that I could go to the toilet. I was completely jammed by eating fiber. So, I know it doesn't work for me anymore. I don't I don't believe anymore I need it. this cognitive dissonance that has completely

30:47 cleared. I don't think anymore I need vegetables to be healthy because I've proven to myself now that I don't need it because otherwise I wouldn't feel as good as I do because what's the best best feedback? It's how your body feels. And if I was doing if I was malnourished, if I was on a deficiency of any any vitamin or any mineral, I would notice it because especially I'm turning 52 early next year. these things, you feel them in your body. When you're 25, you can ruin your body and just shake it off and you feel fine. But when you're in your 50s, you can't do that anymore. So, if I needed vegetables, if I was really lacking something, I would have already noticed, you know. Second of all, I know I don't

31:33 need the fiber. Third of all, I know it makes me bloated. So, for me, it's purely backup food if there's truly nothing else there because I I don't mind the taste. There's some vegetables I really like and I do like the crispy the the the the crispy feeling, the freshness of whatever tomatoes or iceberg lettuce. So once in a while I'll do it. I mean it's I might get like I said I might get ostracized by some really militant carnivores, but I've spoken about this on my Instagram channel as well that I really don't like a militant carnivores either. You know, you do what feels best for you. But no, I will not go back to eating I will not go back to eating crap. That's for sure. I will not go back to

32:20 [laughter] to green juices. Oh my god. I I didn't know there would ever be a day I would >> You dodged a bullet with the oxalates. >> Holy smokes. Right. I did. And I didn't realize that until later when I learned about oxalates. the amount of fresh I would get fresh spinach from an organic farm here and it would just go in by the handful into that juicer with kale and everything. It's amazing. I never and I never got any oxalate dumping when I started carnivore. I never got the keto flu when I started carnivore. I mean, I'm really blessed. Thank you. That when I started carnivore, from day one, I only felt benefits. I only felt I only felt great.

33:07 I never craved any sweets. I I never had any of the issues that I would say the majority of people have when they when they turned carnivore. Maybe it was because I wasn't eating a lot of processed foods anyway. So maybe my body was already cleaner. Yes, I was eating a lot of vegetables, but I wasn't coming off Twinkies and I don't know all the other crap that that a lot of people in the Western world. I never drank Coke or Fantaas or Sprites or any of these things. So maybe my body was already cleaner and that helped me. I don't know. It's just all it's all speculation, >> right? Um, so and you mentioned your girlfriend is like maybe she's not

33:54 carnivore, but she's kind of more was like keto or something. >> Well, she's more like me. I mean, I would have Okay, so here's the thing. When I started looking into carnivore, I came to realize because >> like I said, I got myself onto Instagram because I started my coaching practice and there was all then all these carnivores and then it was all like carnivore and wow, you had one blueberry, you're not a carnivore, you're a bad boy. And I was like, "Oo, this is very militant." So I started looking into carnivore. And then I found out that there's actually two types of carnivores, right? There's the um facultative carnivores and there's the obligate carnivores. And obligate carnivores are like lions and cats, a lot of these cat types, um that basically they cannot digest vegetables. They just can't. They have to eat meat

34:41 because otherwise they die. And then you got the facultative carnivores that get more than 70% of their um caloric intake from animal products, but they can survive on vegetables. And even dogs are like that. And I and then I remembered like it's true like in Thailand a lot of the stray dogs, they get the scraps, they get the fried rice with chicken, they get the the leftover pai, they get all the leftover food. They weren't great. that weren't doing necessarily great, but they were surviving. So I was like, that's interesting. So there is a type of carnivore that hence survive on a diet that has less meat and more plant matter, but they don't necessarily

35:29 thrive on it. And in my opinion, even though the whole world thinks we are omnivores, and of course the the true carnivores believe that we are apex carnivores, I stand a little bit more in the middle. I don't think we're omnivores, but I do think we are facultative carnivores. So, yes, we my idea is we thrive on meat, but we can survive on plants, which basically means for me and my girlfriend, coming back to your question, we eat mostly animal products. But if we do eat like a bite of salad or some some tomatoes or something, it's okay. It's not going to it's not going to do us harm because our body in my opinion can deal with some plant matter and it depends per person

36:15 of course some people can some people eat a tomato especially night shades and they feel absolutely terrible this is what you need to check in with yourself but I've got a strong system as we've seen with the oxalates and the spinach so I can deal with some of these things so if my mouth fancies this I'll do it I'm not going to be militant so and this is the same for her But yes, we will not touch seed oils and we will not touch any processed foods either. Stop doing it. >> And I guess you're not sitting there eating ears of corn and stuff like that, right? >> I don't eat corn anyway. [laughter] Corn is not a food, man. I've never thought corn was a food. Never. Not even when I was a vegan. >> Yeah, I don't know. >> I 100% agree with you on that. I

37:00 definitely [laughter] >> Yeah, same with tofu. Even when I was a vegan, tofu is not food. And soy one is is one of those things that I came to realize I my body cannot digest soy. If I eat soy, man, I won't tell you what happens. >> Yeah. I'm not I'm not a fan of soy. I think anything that once you take it out the packet, it looks like a wet sponge you've just done the dishes with. Doesn't belong in your stomach, you know. Um so [laughter] um so can you talk a little bit about the coaching that you do? Um are are you is it specifically around nutrition or do you also do like uh training? >> Yeah. Um so my coaching is based it's

37:48 still evolving because I only started last year. So this may be quite interesting as well because you see how a business evolves. I started purely as carnivore and fitness. That was my name at the time, carnivore and fitness. So basically doing what I do and help people with that same program cuz I knew that worked for me. And then through the feedback I get from people, I can tweak it. But I'm not a PT. I'm not a a personal trainer. I don't have any license in that. I mean, I've been doing daily workout. Well, not daily, but four times a week workouts myself for the past two and a half, three years. So, I have a bit of an understanding, but I didn't um I don't have a qualification in it. And people started to see me as a fitness

38:34 coach as well. And I was like, "Okay, I need to back away from that because yes, I want fitness to be part especially um if possible body weight fitness because I started focusing on on 40 people over 40 and it's just easier especially when you've never done anything to get injured when you start lifting weights. I wanted people to start with body weights. It's just less injury-prone. But I'm not a personal trainer. So I needed to move away from that idea which I didn't realize that people would have that I'm a personal trainer. So I moved more into focusing on on nutrition on carnivore but using also fitness as a tool of course cuz for me I don't want people who are just coming in for weight loss. I want people who just want to

39:21 feel awesome not because they want to shed 20 kilos. That's a byproduct. I don't even ask people anymore how much they weigh. I don't want to know how much you weigh. I want to know your measurements, like your body measurements now, in a month, in three months, in six months. That's what I care about. I want to know whether you have to buy new clothes because you just simply the pants fall are falling off your ass. Those are the things that I care about. I want to see your photos in the mirror now, in a month, in three months, in six months. That's what I care about. But I don't weight loss is a byproduct. So, I've stepped away from weight loss. But part of course is also especially when you're older as we're losing a lot of muscle and especially women once they go through pmenopause and then menopause is

40:09 exercise. You know we don't exercise enough. In my opinion you cannot just only be healthy on a carnivore diet. You need to move your body in ways that it's supposed to be moved. So I also kind of moved away from kind of onedirectional movement. let's say I'm still doing them for sure, but just doing squats and push-ups to more um functional movement, right? Where you rotate, for example, your body. Because what you want is when you're 75 years old and you have massive biceps, you still you don't want to have to turn your body like this when somebody talks to you, you still want to be able to just turn around quickly because your body moves in more than one direction. It's not just up and down. Um, so I was like, "Okay, this is

40:57 interesting. Maybe I want to kind of turn things around a little bit or evolve, I should say, and made it all make it all more functional. functional movement but also functional carnivore because I came to notice when I worked with women [snorts] men on a pure meat diet and again I'm talking about the majority of my clients are like late 40s 50s early 60s men put them on a meat diet they [snorts] just they that works amazing women doesn't always on a pure meat diet for some it does But not for all women it works. And depending on where they are in their cycle, they can really benefit from some carbohydrates.

41:42 So it's like, okay, so I need to step away from being too militant myself and start working what works best with everybody. So basically become a functional carnivore. So now I had functional uh exercise, functional fitness, functional movement, whatever you want to call it, and functional carnivore. So I started to work with those two and then I also and I love it how you just see yourself evolve over time. You know, you don't become a coach and then that's it and that's what you do for the rest of your life. This program you just see how things evolve. They of course came to realize how what an important part sleep is as well because you can eat the best diet in the world. You can do the most amazing

42:29 movement, but if your sleep is crap, sleep is where your body heals. Again, when you're older, even more so. So then I started to base my coaching on three pillars. Functional nutrition, functional carnivore, functional movement, and sleep. And that's where I am now. So I'm again changing my kind of name and branding to reflect that more. So as we speak now November now what are we December 2025 I'm doing a slight rebrand. The approach is still the same. Actually the approach has evolved. So, I work one-on-one with people, in groups with people, and I have launched, but I'm still playing

43:14 around with it, a self-study program, 8week self-paced program, all based upon these three pillars. So, functional nutrition, which is basically carnivore, but I just don't want to use the word carnivore too much in order to have a wider reach and not be banned. Functional movement and sleep. And that's what I'm doing now. And I love it because I do it myself. My sleep is amazing. Has always been good, but it's even better now. I track my sleep with my Apple Watch. I analyze my sleep. I know when I'm ready to work out. I just want people, it's almost like a IO hack, if you wish. If you know what your sleep is like, if you know what your HR, Nobody's heard about HRV. If you know about your H, if you know about HRV, if you know about your TSB, if you know

44:01 about all these things that a smartwatch, for example, can measure, especially again as you're older, you know where your body is ready to grind or ready or it needs a rest or it needs some yoga or a light walk. And this kind of optimization of your health, especially at older age, that's what I really want to help people with. Cuz in the end, Dave, I just want them to feel as great as I feel. And I feel better than I've ever felt before. And I had hear so many people say that I I feel better than I was 30. Surely I'm older, but it's even more awesome because I have the wisdom of being older with the energy of being young. It's the best of both worlds. >> Wow. Um and so how can people find you on

44:48 Instagram or any other place online? >> Sure. Sure. So on Instagram you can find me on uh functional.healthcoach. On Tik Tok it's also functional.althcoach. Um YouTube is functionalhealth coaching and online my website is patrickexander.coach. and that links still to my functional carnival website today, this month, but I'm in the transition of bringing it over. But because I've been going through these changes, I would like people when they watch this video in a year's time, not go like, "Oh, all the links are broken." So, Patrick Alexander.coach will be my main domain name. If you're

45:34 watching this live or pretty much live, you will be redirected. If you watch this in a few months, that's where you find me. Awesome. I'll link to all of those in the show notes. Um, Patrick, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story and experience. I really appreciate your time. >> Excellent. Thank you so much for having me here, Dave. And yeah, I everybody could feel just so much better. And this is this is my goal. I just want to make people feel better than they've ever felt before. Because you don't realize how good feeling great feels until you feel it. Most people don't realize how crappy they feel until they feel good. And that's just my goal. So the

46:22 more I can talk about this with people like you or anybody or even at parties I talk to people whenever I I find a little opening in the conversation, I'll just try to sneak it in and see if there's opening within someone. Again, I don't want to preach, but if there's an opening within someone to improve their lives, I want to help them out with it. So, having these conversations like with you, it it's amazing because man, everybody should feel amazing and everybody has every reason to feel amazing and everybody has the opportunity to feel amazing as well.