Episode 364: Wade Lightheart: Plant-Based Bodybuilding, Vegan Diet Misconceptions, & Genetic Limitations
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Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it! Hey friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits & Hustle podcast where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self. So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up.

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A-S-A-G-E dot com and use code BEBOLD for 15% off any of their products. I'm supposed to be cosmetically ideal. That's essentially what bodybuilding is. It's cosmetic fitness. I said, what am I doing wrong?

And he says, Wade, you've learned to build the body from the outside in. I'm going to teach you to build it from the inside out. And that changed my life. So those were a couple of paradigm shifts, you know, the plant-based stuff, the understanding that whatever the experts are advocating. So a common element in fitness is we need one gram per pound of body weight in order to recover properly. Well, what is the built-in assumption there?

that if I, do I need protein in my body? No, I need the amino acids I can extract from protein.

So how do I extract that? Well, that requires enzymes, hydrochloric acid, and proteolytic probiotics. That is probiotics that actually convert protein into amino acids that can be used, neurotransmitters, building blocks, whatever. So if I have a disruption in my digestive system, I could have the perfect diet, but I'm not getting the amino acids that I require. Biological value of protein. So a lot of people say, well, you can't get all the amino acids you require from a plant-based diet.

Well, there are 22 amino acids, nine of which are essential amino acids. That means our body does not manufacture them. And virtually every plant has all nine essential amino acids. Oh, so guess what? You can get all of the amino acids. Now, why isn't there a lot of plant-based athletes?

Well, let's look at the subset of plant-based athletes versus non-plant, like meat eaters, for example. Way more meat eaters than plant-based athletes. So what does that lead to? That leads to the development of science, of culture, of research that all are using this paradigm and you co-evaluate.

to confirm that paradigm blindness from their original assumption that plant-based athletes can't do it. Now we're starting to see that shift. So when I went plant-based as an experiment, not because I wanted to be some person that stood outside the first door and shamed people and stuff like that, because that's not my guilt.

We could just move away from all the ethics and morality and grandstanding because, you know, plants are sentient beings and all that sort of stuff. So, you know, are we killing plants? Are we killing bugs when we farm? Are we killing animals? You know, it really gets into semantics. But back then, you know, in 2003, so 22 years ago,

Nobody was doing it. And then over time, as the technology is developed now, there's tremendous amount of athletes who are doing plant-based and more and more research is coming around it, which is disproving that you can't get that. Now, where the truth is, is a lot of plant-based athletes don't eat sufficient amount of protein to get enough amino acids. It's not that you can't get it from a plant-based diet, it's that you've got to develop the strategy, just like all the meat eaters developed a strategy around bodybuilding and fitness to get in shape.

You need to be able to integrate that on a plant-based diet. And hopefully you've made that selection based on your genetic individuality. So for some people, no matter what they do, a plant-based diet is not gonna work for them. And some people it's gonna be the best thing ever. My business partner is a ketogenic guy.

He loves ketogenic. It works well for him. He loves metabolizing fats. He doesn't do as well in carbohydrates. And so that works for him. And one of the reasons that we were able to write this book is because we're two guys that produced outstanding success amongst a wide group of people. He's ketogenic. I'm plant-based. We're essentially dietary agnostic. And we're like, hey, here's all the major dietary strategies. Here's which one might work for you. Here's the reasons why. Here's are the...

Here's the pieces that are optimal about that. And here's what you've got to offset that's suboptimal and go for it. Okay, so then that's interesting. So then what did you do to win the award when you were plant-based, like to win the championship when you were plant-based that you didn't do when you gained the 42 pounds and became a marshmallow? Yes. What did you do differently? Yeah, so after that contest, I realized that the diet that I had been following...

which was a derivative of it fits your macros. So that's probably the most successful and easiest diet to do if it fits your macros diet, which is so much protein, so much carbohydrate, so much fat, and you kind of vary that. But you did it plant-based. Right. But not vegan, right?

At that time, you weren't. Right. We'll get to this in a second. Okay. So when I did that, there wasn't a lot of technology. And I was using the strategy that my coach had implemented at that time was really simple carbohydrate sources. So like fast acting stacked with a lot of protein. And.

Give me an example. Like what? Like rice cakes was the carbohydrate. Because you could just vaporize them really quick, which would create an insulin spike. The insulin spike was then stacked with amino acids to 50 grams or something like that. What was the protein though? What's that? So you could use like whey protein or plant protein or you could use meat. And what they usually use was meat. Right. So I'm trying to adopt this to a plant-based diet. Well, the simple carbohydrates in a plant-based thing, first off, I was so hungry.

But you still were able on a plant-based diet 22 years ago to win a title. Yes. And then you gained the weight 42 pounds. Well, what happened is my success set me up for the failure. I stayed on a restrictive diet for 11 straight months. Got it. I didn't have refeeds on that to boost my metabolism. So my metabolism had crashed so deeply.

And I had disrupted my digestive system. So when I came off that, I can remember sitting there. This is a literal story. I remember being at my friend's house, sitting there, and I'm cooking up this spaghetti. I couldn't get enough of it. I'm eating this pot of spaghetti. While I'm cooking the spaghetti, I'm...

slamming chocolate bars because I was in, I had activated my survival mechanisms. I had tripped over that genetic proclivity of survival. And my body was like, you've starved yourself to death. You got to eat as much calories as possible. The other thing is, is my digestive system was disrupted because my diet was so restrictive. I didn't have the good

bacteria flora inside my body that would allow me to digest and manage all this food. So my body just kept storing everything as body fat. And I knew all these things, but I was in this uncontrollable feeling. So for the first time ever, I was able to truly understand that

what it feels like to the person who is in that situation of uncontrollable eating, the guilt, the shame, the looking at yourself. And I was like, oh my God, I know exactly what my clients actually feel like. Now, during that, I rebuilt my digestive system. I went on a completely raw food diet at that point. And it went two years, 100% raw food diet to experiment with that. And while I was eating 250 grams a day of protein before, I went down to 85 grams.

because I improved my capacity to convert that protein into the amino acids I need. Now, there was limitations on that, which I found in about two years. So then I spent the next two years of optimizing that amount with the training so that I could compete as a raw vegan. Because they said, that's definitely not possible. Did you do that? I did that. So in 2007, I'm probably the only person in the world that's been to a world championships

in bodybuilding as a raw vegan and as a vegetarian. So I did that in 2007, not because I wanted to do the show. I was kind of past that, but I wanted to prove. Did you win? I won the national championships again. And then I went to, I think I placed sixth in the world, but again. Oh, Scott. Number one. Yeah. Number one and number two. There's nothing in this lifetime I would have done to beat those guys. From three to 10, we all kind of look the same. Yeah. One and two.

different physiology, wouldn't matter what I did. I'm never going to beat those guys. And so then I said, okay, I've got as far as I can. I retired and just went full force into our company and what we're doing and advocating around that. And then, you know, then we got to last year and I came back and to kind of prove this as a 50 year old, as opposed to someone who's 30. So are you saying that there is

I basically there's a, there is a ceiling to how far you can go because of your genetics. Absolutely. That's good to know. So no matter, I'm not going to look, I'm five foot eight. I am no matter how hard I train, I am not going to play center in the NBA. I say these things all the time. And then people like fight with me. Well, no, it's not just genetics. I think there, yes, you can push yourself beyond limits that you never thought possible. But at the same time, like to your point, I'm never going to be a ballerina, no matter how hard I try. I mean, I,

could, but I'm not going to be a good one. Right. Yeah. I'm not going to do well as an offensive lineman. Right. I'm lining up against some 300 pound massive dude. He's going to pancake me and I might not ever be able to walk again. That's a hundred percent true. Like I,

I always like my entire message in life and I've written a ton of books on this is that like do the best with what God's given you. Like I pushed it as far as I can go. And that's as good as I'm going to get guys. Like that's basically that my point is like, do the best you can for what you're given. But if you're a size six, don't try to be a size zero and kill yourself for it because it's just a, it won't last. That's the thing. Like, this is what I always want to, I, this is,

I'm telling people now, if you're listening, that like, yeah, you can maybe get there, but how much pain and heartache and difficulty will it take you to get from a six to a zero? And then how long can you sustain it? Because you can't, because I've done it. Like I've taken my body to places where it probably wasn't supposed to be when I had to do crazy campaigns in my life. And then I was miserable. I was starving and I didn't have any, like I couldn't have a social life. I didn't have dinner. I had to like carry my food around with me. I had...

You know, it was awful. And then by the way, the weight starts creeping up when you have a cracker. So the point, you know what I mean? Like it's not going to stay. And so there is like a happy medium. Like where's your baseline? We all have a baseline and then like we can modify it so much here and there. That's my belief system.