Transcript of “284 with Abel James”

22 Pages·2016·0.42 MB·English

Transcript of “284 with Abel James”

Bulletproof Radio podcast #284

© The Bulletproof Executive 2013
Bulletproof Radio
Podcast #284, Abel James

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Bulletproof Radio
Podcast #284, Abel James

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Today's guest is a friend, a guy I've known for a long time, and a guy that you've probably seen
talked about recently, I think a former guest, I know he's been a guest on the show. He's come
up to my house a few times, hung out at his house a few times. He's a TV personality star
because he just starred on ABC's My Diet is Better Than Yours, a speaker at the Bulletproof
Conference, and just an all around awesome dude. I'm talking about none other than Abel
James. Abel, welcome to the show.

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Bulletproof Radio
Podcast #284, Abel James

Abel: Dave, thanks so much for having me, man.
Dave: You just came out with a book called The Wild Diet, which is pretty cool, and I think you hit
number 1 on Amazon which is neat.
Abel: Yeah, and we were a Times best seller too which was pretty awesome.
Dave: Oh, you did hit the New York Times list?
Abel: Yeah.
Dave: Sweet. Where'd you end up on the list?
Abel: I don't even know. I just got it sent over today so it was basically, the way that the sausage is
made when it comes down to book writing is absolutely fascinating because I focused on
Amazon for the majority of the time but when the ABC show originally aired and my guy lost 16
pounds number 1 the first week just crushing it, it sold out on Amazon so it's been sold out for
like pretty much the past month.
Dave: The TV show helped. It's kind of funny because I know Bulletproof the cookbook just came out
and it sold like 2 or 3 times what one of the Kardashian sisters sold and she made the list and I
didn't. I'm like I was robbed but then again it's a cookbook.
Abel: Then again you're not a Kardashian, Dave.
Dave: I've been getting a bigger butt lately but I can't keep up, man. It's really hard.
Abel: Bio hackers, baby.
Dave: I was hoping to get some tips from you, no. The reason you're on, though, is I wanted to get you
right before the show's finale is even out, right?
Abel: The show is done filming and the finale is out but man, you're hitting the top of the buzz right
now.
Dave: We're going to push the show out really fast because what you did was something I actually
thought about. I always wanted to go on like the Biggest Loser and just be like I'm the boring-est
loser because all you do is sit on the couch. There's very little suffering and you go out there,
you actually did use the butter in coffee idea and you basically ...
Abel: And the soap dish.
Dave: The soap dish for travel, sweet.
Abel: That's right.

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Bulletproof Radio
Podcast #284, Abel James

Dave: I didn't see the soap dish one but like these are classic Bulletproof things and kudos to you for
making it work. Everything else you did was eat lots of good fat and you could walk people
through exactly all the things you did but what I want to say is bad ass and what I always wanted
to do was you beat all the other random, some of the diets you were competing against were
not very interesting but dude, you kicked everyone's ass. How many pound did your guy lose in
what amount of time?
Abel: Yeah, so it was 14 weeks and he lost a total of 87 pounds. Most importantly, he went from 52%
body fat to less than 30% body fat so basically doubled the fat loss of other plans on the show
and so for a fat burning man I had to live up to my name, right?
Dave: Yeah, and so what did you do to cause this?
Abel: Well, okay so basically if people haven't seen the show a lot of people have seen The Biggest
Loser. It's not quite like that because that's still reality television, which reality television is a
misnomer in and of itself. It has an unreliable narrator I like to say but the set up of the show is
completely different. It's not like a weight loss camp. You're not starving yourself and hungry
and miserable or at least you're not necessarily doing that, depends on the plan you're on. What
this is is they take 5 people out of Atlanta who have about 100 pounds or so to lose and they set
them up with celebrity trainers and coaches and basically the twist of the show is that they work
1 on 1 but if the person who's being coached if number 1 it's not working, if their diet and
nutrition plan isn't working or they don't like it or they don't like their trainer they can eliminate
them from the show at any time.
It's kind of a unique way to set the show up. It's hosted by my buddy, Shawn T, which is an
absolute blast and hopefully I think what people are taking away from it is that it's a bit more
inspirational than some of the other shows that basically say you must be hungry and miserable.
Basically I wanted to go onto that show to show people that they could eat butter, bacon,
chocolate, cheesecake, delicious things and still get incredible results, especially with minimal
exercise and that was the part that I was excited about.
Dave: That's the big thing. You're The Biggest Loser because you're exercising all the time instead of
looking at what you put in your mouth, right? There's one episode where there's a guy chasing a
potato chip and you're like this is so broken because it doesn't matter if you chased it. If you eat
it, you lose, right?
Abel: Right, exactly. There isn't nearly as much sabotage on this show which is really cool to see. A
little bit about my guy, basically when we first started he was at 352 pounds and more
importantly people might not have seen the whole background on the show but he was in a
head-on car accident years ago, almost a decade ago, which broke his neck. After that happened
he had to have a plate put in and he had a bunch of other different injuries but over the course
of the next few years he was getting sicker and sicker and no one really knew why. They
eventually found out that there was Staph in that original plate that they put in. It was
manifesting itself throughout his body.

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Podcast #284, Abel James

He got septic. He had a blood clot in his lung and ultimately he was hospitalized for about 13
months and one of the most crushing things for him about it was that he's a grandparent, he's
the oldest guy on the show at 47 years old, and he missed his grandchild being born because he
was so sick. He was in the hospital and so taking him back out of that to something that
resembles health was a huge journey for him and I think really inspiring for a lot of people
because it's not like he had the option of being a cardio buddy. In fact the whole show, a lot of
people don't know this, he had a stress fracture in his knee so running wasn't an option as a
form of training. It was basically just going out there and walking with his grandchildren with the
stroller up the hills behind his house, walking with his wife, and doing some amount of strength-
based training to make sure that he maintained muscle while he was losing fat. That's really the
most critical thing you want to do when you're talking about health anyway.
Dave: Where does one get a full body bacon costume, Abel? You open the show wearing that which is
over the top. You know I love you man, you're the funniest guy but where did you find that,
Etsy? Where do you go for such a thing?
Abel: I think it was $20 on Amazon. It was something like that. It really wasn't that hard to find. True
story, first time I ever saw myself on television I was wearing a full body bacon costume. It was
right before New Year's they were playing a bunch of promos for the show. We don't even have
a TV so we were at a hotel and I was watching and I was like my lord. This is happening. As the
people who are on the show, we don't see the cuts until they're actually airing so it's all ...
Dave: Oh yeah, they can trash you. They can do whatever they want with the cuts. Did you think the
cuts were fair?
Abel: You know what, I'll tell you think, that when you're filming 12 hours a day for like 7 weeks on
end when they're putting you in these tiny little pens and you don't always have ready access to
food and water or an escape plan or anything else it's difficult to not look like a raving lunatic by
the end of the day. They're filming for 12 hours but they're only showing this tiny little bit and
it's usually you at your worst when you've been through a lot of different stuff and I think for the
most part I tried to just put my Captain America pants on like I do with fat burning man right? If
I'm not talking to thousands of people a lot of times my language will be a little bit more
colorful. I might say some things that might not be totally PC but for the most part being on
reality TV, knowing that there was a bulls eye on my head the whole time I was doing my very
best to keep things positive, to use it as an opportunity to really show people that you can get
results, you don't have to give up your favorite foods.
You don't have to turn into a cardio bunny, you don't have to do all this ridiculous stuff that the
industry says that you have to do. I just wanted to show people that you can have fun and take
it seriously even though it's a silly reality competition.
Dave: Yeah, it is kind of a reality competition but I've lost 100 pounds. Your guy lost 87 pounds and
he's probably lost the other 13 or whatever, the other 16 he needs to lose because he already
knows what it feels like to eat, oh it's not hard to lose weight when you're eating right. It is life
and death and it is whether he sees his grandkids for another 20 years or not. It's actually really
serious but at the same time it's entertainment. There are people who take it too seriously and

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Bulletproof Radio
Podcast #284, Abel James

then there are people who are opportunistic and flippant and honestly I've got to point out The
Biggest Loser kind of stuff where you're sort of making a mockery out of something that's
actually important.
Seeing fat people crawl after Twinkies, like it's sad on a spiritual level, right? I appreciate that
you didn't go there. I didn't watch all of the episodes because like you I don't really have TV but I
have an iPad so it's not like you can't get to it but it's one of those things where none of the stuff
I saw went in that direction. There wasn't a lot of the guilt and shaming so kudos to you and the
producers and whoever was doing all your editing to do the my diet's better than yours but
actually my behavior is better than other diet shows, too, could have been the subtitle.
Abel: Yeah, I'm happy that it turned out relatively positive. Of course there were lots of dramatic
things that happened. It is reality TV.
Dave: I can't believe you threw a cheesecake at the vegan. Dude, that was rude.
Abel: It's the part of the plan. That's the only reason Kurt chose my plan is because he got to eat
cheesecake.
Dave: He actually chose your plan for that reason?
Abel: Yeah, that's literally the reason he told me that he chose my plan. Look at what I'm going up
against? You've got my half-baked ridiculous looking plan where you get to eat butter, bacon,
chocolate, cheesecake, and all these other high-fat things and lose fat at the same time with
minimal exercise. Sounds crazy, not actually crazy when you look at it.
Dave: It sort of works.
Abel: You're comparing that to a vegan program where basically there is no solid food for the first
week. You are drinking your dinner, you are drinking your breakfast, everything, and for
someone like Kurt he's like an all-American guy, a 47-year-old salesman out of Atlanta, works
out of his car. That dude is not a vegan.
Dave: It's never going to happen, right.
Abel: It works. You want to meet people where they are because I think a lot of people, they think
that they need to give up all of their favorite things if they want to be successful, if they want to
have great mental performance, if they want to be able to become more resilient as people,
withstand intermittent fasting, withstand high pressure scenarios and still keep your wits about
you. I think one of the reasons that you see Kurt and myself on the show not really losing our
minds is because we're running on fat the entire time. We're not getting cranky, we're feeling
focused, we're feeling positive and that's what happens when you start using the right fuel.
Dave: It's almost not fair. I can't imagine being a sales guy and going into a meeting and you're like
okay do I want to disarm by target, the guys I'm selling to? I'm just going to feed them a low fat,

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Bulletproof Radio
Podcast #284, Abel James

high gluten, MSG lunch and sit them in a sales meeting for 2 hours but in the meeting they'll be
like I'll just sign and meanwhile you've had all the fat and you're like yes, I'm ready to go! I'm
going to kill it. You literally can manipulate other people's energy the same as you can yours
with it. I would not want to go back to the way I was when I was doing the 5 or 6 meals a day.
I'm fat but I'm going to use my willpower every day because I was a dick all the time.
Abel: No way, Dave.
Dave: You know me pretty well now and I'm not like that but literally my ability to regulate my
emotions, I had like carpal tunnel in my middle fingers. I tell you. I had road rage, all this stuff. I
totally know what you're saying really viscerally. You're on a set, which is one of the worst times.
That's why this high fat thing has taken over Hollywood, right?
Abel: Yeah, for sure.
Dave: It's because they're on camera for 12 hours a day and because they have to remember their
lines and you have to be conscious of where your body is. I don't think you can do it on vegan
crackers. Maybe a few people can, they have more willpower than I do and they're wasting it.
They should know better.
Abel: Right, well I can tell you that you get stamina when you start burning fat as your main fuel. It's
fantastic. I've been a musician for a long time. A lot of times you don't have access to food all
the time but if you're burning sugar as your main source of energy and you don't have anything
around you, you settle for terrible foods and then it's just this hamster wheel that you have to
keep running on. You have to either kill yourself in the gym or you have to put up with this low
energy every day whenever food's not around. Giving that up is one of the best things you could
possibly do.
For someone like Kurt who's just an average dude out of Atlanta, he'd never heard of any of this.
For you and I and a lot of your listeners, we've been on our corner of the internet for a long
period of time talking about this. We know it works. We know that there are a lot of mental and
performance benefits. For Kurt, though, the look on his face when Allison and I walked into his
kitchen for the first time telling him to eat more butter and focus on fat, it's ridiculous. His wife
and he thought that we were kind of nuts at the beginning but then when you feel the
difference in your own energy levels, when you lose 16 pounds in the first week and then you
win the fitness, he actually won the fitness competition, the oldest dude, I mean just dominated.
He'd never won anything in his life. It's something that I love seeing light people up for the first
time, you know what I mean? When you see that person first go bulletproof where they first
switch to eating the right foods and they experience that, it's just such a pleasure because
they're like man I'm never going back.
Dave: I don't know Shawn T but you introduced me to him and he seemed like a really cool guy. He
texted me right away. I sent some brain octane and some Bulletproof beans and all that stuff his
way, but what was it like working with him? He's kind of a big name in fitness.

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Podcast #284, Abel James

Abel: He is secretly one of the best bro huggers of my life but probably one of the best on earth. I was
so impressed with how present he was not in the way that I was expecting. You expect the
Insanity guy to be up in your face and super intense and dig deeper.
Dave: Return to internal training upside down, we just kick your ass all the time and you'll like it. Right,
right, I hear you.
Abel: You know what? When we started hanging out I was so amazed by how open he is and how
passionate he is and most importantly how sensitive he is. He's very in tune with people's
struggles. He's been there himself. I didn't realize this but when he was in college he put on 50
pounds and he does his best to deeply understand other people's struggles and working with
him was just a blast because we got to be really good friends by the end of it. His husband,
Scott, was also a fantastic dude so they're inspiring figures, not necessarily from the same part
of the fitness and health world as we are.
Most of the time we're saying if you want to be a fitness junkie that's great and you can have a
lot of fun doing it but it's not necessary for a lot of this stuff. It might seem like a contrarian
point of view than someone like Shawn T. He's a lot of times talking about intense exercise but I
think where we meet in the middle is finding that joy in whatever you're doing. For him, his
background is as a performer and a dancer and so he brings that to the exercise world and I
think it's very similar to what I experience when I play music and when I sing. It's something
where you're in the zone and you can tell that throughout the whole competition, throughout
the whole TV show he's there for people and he's coaching them through some really tough
moments, some of the hardest moments in their entire lives.
I mean, when you're getting half naked in front of America weighing in on a scale every single
week it does crazy things to your brain and he was there the whole time just propping everyone
up. It's awesome to see.
Dave: That's really cool. That's part of what made the show special. I was so glad to have the antidote
to The Biggest Loser. That show has always just made me sad. Some of the guilting things, like
everyone who's fat feels a sense of failure. Even if you're like I'm happy with my body image, no
actually you might have come to terms with it but you're not as happy as you would be if you
had all the energy you could have because if you're fat you have an energy storage problem
which means you have an energy metabolism problem which means you don't have all the
energy you could have. Sorry, that's just how it is. It doesn't mean you're a bad person, it
doesn't mean you're weak, it doesn't mean you have willpower, but it means there's a problem.
To use the power of TV to point people in the wrong direction and to shame them versus what I
think you did which was very different. I'd never seen that on TV before so I just wanted to say
thanks to you, thanks to Shawn for shedding a little bit of sanity on what was going on there
because 15 years of that other crap, it was time that someone did it right.
Abel: Things are changing, things are getting better, and Shawn T, I had him put butter in his coffee
and he likes it.

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Bulletproof Radio
Podcast #284, Abel James

Dave: Oh, yeah. He's got the brain octane hopefully at home by now. I've got to follow up with him,
thanks for that intro. We're going to get a lot more people eating this and I fully expect there to
be shortages of quality food. If you're listening to this and you're at Craft Foods or you're at
McDonald's or Campbell's or Monsanto, we've got your number and your number is ...
Abel: I've heard that there are shortages of Kerrygold. People have told me that they're running low
on a lot of things that you and I both recommend. It's awesome to see that.
Dave: Yeah, in fact why is Kerrygold $3 a stick? It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It should be like
$4 or $5 a stick because it's better than other butter and it's artificially cheap compared to what
it does for you on a cost per calorie basis. If you're panhandling and you get $3.29 you go to
Trader Joe's and you can pick up a stick of Kerrygold. You've got enough calories to last you for
like 3 days.
Abel: That's a very good point.
Dave: It's just too cheap, but anyway. I'm getting on I would say my soap box but it's more of a butter
box to be honest.
Abel: It's a butter box, yeah. Amazingly, you're able to stand on it the whole time. Must be all the
biohacking.
Dave: Yeah, I'm levitating on the butter. Now, it's one thing to lose a bunch of weight but you guys
tracked bio markers, right? Was this part of the show or part of what you did?
Abel: Yeah, so there was a team of doctors who they were looking at every contestant the whole time
to make sure that their liver enzymes were okay or make sure that their blood work looked okay
because this is pretty stressful on the body, especially when you're looking at some of these
plans which are kind of pretty intense. When you're taking someone who's never done anything
close to juicing and you're getting them to juice and do intense exercise at the same time
sometimes it can drive everyone's bio markers crazy, right? Especially if you're coming from a
place of medical condition, sickness, what have you.
Throughout the entire time we were working with a doctor measuring that, also measuring body
fat, the competition itself basically used The Biggest Loser weight loss percentage of body
weight. That's how they ranked people and they ranked them every week not overall so there
are a lot of little nit picky things but one of the things that I thought was very promising is that at
least they're talking about body fat as something that matters. They're also talking about blood
sugar on the show going up or going down with different plans. You see someone who eats a
plan that has a lot of fruit in it, especially in the morning, he gets pre-diabetic on one of the
episodes.
We're staying away from fruit, my guy's blood sugar regulates right away. His blood pressure
regulates right away. He went from being on about a half dozen different prescription
medications to I think by week 3 he was off every single one of them, didn't need them anymore

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