By Faraz Khan on October 20, 2020

Nutrition Tips to Gain 10 pounds of Muscle in 12 weeks while cutting fat: John Jaquish & Faraz Khan

Here are the top 3 items of discussion:

  • How to turn on the most important hormones for building muscle and turn off the hormone that adds fat

  • Is it really possible to gain muscle and cut fat at the same time?

  • The nutrition tricks you need to get right to transform into a sexier body.

We continue where we left off from part 1 of this episode.


Faraz Khan: Welcome back. This is part two of the interview with Doctor John Jaquish. We dive into hormones and nutrition. Doctor Jaquish explains why it’s bad to do cardio for more than 20 minutes at a time. And how the X3 Bar resistance band bar system workout will turn up your testosterone and growth hormone. Finally, we also talk every importantly about nutrition and how you can eat to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. Stay tuned.

So, let me talk about a question that I got from a female audience from my Instagram. And she said that, “Okay, great. This is good for men. But I just want to lose five to 10 pounds of weight. I don’t want to add a bunch of bulk to my upper body. How will this help me?”

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, the good news is, most women are not eating enough protein to gain muscle anyway. And they also don’t really have the hormones or hormone receptors to get that. I mean, I’ll be harsh. When somebody says, “When I lift, I get big.” And I’m like, “No, when you eat cupcakes, you get big.” Like, it’s just in your head. Any incredible female physique you see, women are like, “Oh my god, what’s your program?” Like there’s some secret around that. She does strength training, that’s why she looks great. A developed musculature on women makes women look more feminine, not less. And yes, there are the anomalies out there that take male performance enhancing drugs. And okay, yeah, they look a little masculine or a lot masculine. And maybe that’s their goal. So, for them, okay, that’s what they want to do.

But there are almost no women who can just pick up a strength training intervention, even a super powerful one like X3 portable gym , and all of a sudden, “Oops, I look like a dude.” Not going to happen. You will look more feminine. Your waist will get narrower, your legs will get harder and more defined. There’ll be a little bit of definition in the back. Your arms will get thinner and more defined. Like, that’s what happens. You just go from looking frumpy to looking like the statues from the characters in Greek mythology.

Faraz Khan: Yeah, wow. I think that’s a very good, aspiring physique.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s terrible that women are afraid of strength training because they’re afraid to look like men. Like, no. Besides, I have never ever met a guy that didn’t like a girl because she was too strong. Like, that’s kind of awesome. Yeah.

Faraz Khan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Like, when I meet a woman who’s strength training, it’s like, “Wow, you’re amazing.”

Faraz Khan: Yeah, any guy that’s into fitness, you’re right, I don’t think would mind that at all.

Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, maybe there’s some really deep conditioned guy out there that would be intimidated by that. But do you really want to be with that guy anyway? Probably not.

Faraz Khan: No. If he’s ignoring his body, there’s a lot more he’s ignoring.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Faraz Khan: And it’s going to show up in your life. Yeah. Okay, so a lot of women, obviously as you know, are doing cardio. They spend hours and hours and hours either running or doing cardio hours per week, right? So, what’s wrong with that approach, Doctor Jaquish?

Dr. John Jaquish: A lot. The problem with cardio is it chronically upregulates cortisol. Cortisol does two things in the body, gets rid of muscle, and protects your body fat, so you keep it longer, because it wants to keep the fuel, the storage system in the body, so that you can go even further when you’re doing your cardio. So, it’s giving you exactly the opposite. It’s keeping you fatter longer, and it’s diminishing muscle and increasing your chances of injury doing activities in daily living, or even cardio. You also lose bone density from it. Your bones become weaker, and you have a higher chance of exaggerated kyphosis, so hunching forward, you know? And looking older. So, cardio makes you look older, it keeps you fatter. Yeah, I don’t think it’s the solution to anything. Now, like I said, if you want to be a marathon runner, you’ve got to run marathons.

Faraz Khan: Yeah, that’s [crosstalk].

Dr. John Jaquish: But don’t claim it’s for your health.

Faraz Khan: Right. Okay. So, is there a certain length of time that you’re working out or doing cardio that the cortisol goes up and shuts down the positive benefits? Like, there’s HIIT training, right? You could say that’s the crazy cardio.

Dr. John Jaquish: That works very different. HIIT training does not work like sustained cardio at all. In fact, because there’s a self stabilization aspect, and the first and hopefully only meta analysis I’ve ever authored with my same coauthor, Henry Alkire. In 2016, we wrote a meta analysis on stabilization firing and upregulation of growth hormone. It’s profound, and HIIT training will give that to you. So, totally different story. People who do high intensity intervals with sprints or no matter what it is, there’s a lot of different things you can do. That’s great. Now, I would almost say that X3 Bar resistance band training system acts a little bit like that because the heart rate is going up and down. But I try to make that point. And I read an article in Flex Magazine when I was in high school, self appointed experts. They didn’t like that I compared X3 Bar variable resistance training system training to high intensity. I was like, all right. Well, high intensity interval isn’t like a magic thing I need to say for people to go, “Aha. I understand it now.” So, I was like, all right, forget it.

Faraz Khan: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: But yeah. So, self-stabilization exercise, which is always high intense, you’re not doing something with low intensity and you’re losing your balance while you’re doing it.

Faraz Khan: Right, okay. So, high intensity, obviously very good. I love that. I do it quite often, because I’ve been a soccer player my whole life, so I love to sprint. But I think what I was asking you is, for the cardio, for the cortisol for sustained cardio to not be beneficial and instead be harmful, is there a period of time that is bad? Or just all sustained cardio is not beneficial?

Dr. John Jaquish: 20 minutes.

Faraz Khan: 20 minutes.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, don’t go longer than 20 minutes.

Faraz Khan: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: And you don’t have a problem. You’ve got people who do like, “I did an hour of riding a bike. I spent an hour on my Peloton.” I’m like, “You’re going to get nothing out of that or you’ll be worse.”

Faraz Khan: Peloton will sell that multi-thousand dollar bike to them to put in their basement.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Faraz Khan: Okay, cool. I want to switch gears. We’ve been talking about the X3 Bar exercise band bar system . We talked about muscle gain, we talked about fat loss. We talked about busy executives, athletes. We talked about men versus women. So, we covered a lot. Thank you for that. Now, I want to talk about a couple of other things. And we’ll try to go faster on these. The first one is the hormones. What hormones get released as you’re doing the X3 Bar resistance band bar system ? I know you’ve made mention of testosterone, growth hormone, cortisol just now. And you also talked about the myostatin, that protein that can actually inhibit muscle growth in the book. So, maybe touch on those four. And then we’ll get into nutrition very quickly to wrap this up.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, testosterone gets upregulated when you put heavy loads on the body. And also, the receptor sites become active. So, you need both. That was the reason I brought up the enhanced athletes, these guys that will work for a steroid. And I’m trying to say, your body does all this on its own. Does it do it to the degree of introducing external hormone levels? No, not to the same degree. But you can definitely have a breathtaking physique and incredible strength, speed, power, injury prevention mechanisms in the body, all active in protecting you at all times without it. So, for me, I got testosterone replacement therapy at 28 because I had a testicular injury. I played rugby, I just got basically a testicular injury. Yeah, I mean, you know.

Faraz Khan: That’s right.

Dr. John Jaquish: [inaudible].

Faraz Khan: It’s very dangerous, your man parts right there.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, well, it injured everything. But you know, yeah. So, I mean, I just got hit really hard. It was no big deal. But it limited me testosterone wise. And so, I was told I’d probably have a heart attack in my 30s if I didn’t get on testosterone.

Faraz Khan: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Faraz Khan: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, of course, at the appropriate levels, testosterone replacement therapy replaces what’s supposed to be there. And there’s also a lot of fools on the internet who think TRT is a prescription for anabolic steroids. It’s not. It’s at a replacement level. It’s sort of like somebody who has a glass of wine a week is different than an alcoholic.

Faraz Khan: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s all in the dosage. So, yeah. So, testosterone you get heavy. Growth hormone you get with self stabilization. And the only way you increase self stabilization is by adding load. So, when I’m doing an overhead press, I push the weight over my head. And I’m holding more weight than I could ever get above my head normally. And my core is just jack hammering with stabilization firing to keep me from falling over. And it’s automatic. The more that happens, the more your growth hormone goes up. And so, the stability type movements, the overhead presses, the squats, the dead lifts, they have a strong influence on growth hormone. And so, that’s where that comes from.

The next one you mentioned, cortisol, I covered that when I was talking about cardio. Now, also, it’s an oversimplification to say cortisol is bad, because you’re not born with anything that’s trying to harm you within your body, right? Sometimes you end up with that stuff, like a cancer cell or something like that. But everything you’re born with is there to help you out. And cortisol included. It’s a stress response. It’s a response hormone to a lot of things that are designed to calm you and slow you down, because you’ve kind of had enough.

And a short instance of cortisol is not a problem. In fact, it’s normal. After every workout, your cortisol goes up. After getting out of bed, your cortisol goes up, and then goes down. So, it’s not a problem. It’s a chronic high that will encourage even increasing your level of body fat. So, there’s been some research that more stressed people, people that don’t have any relaxation, they got some problems. Their cortisol is high and they get fatter quicker. So, again, no such thing as a bad hormone. But that one will do some bad things if it’s always high.

Faraz Khan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: The last thing you mentioned was myostatin. Now, we use hypoxia by keeping constant tension. And the constant tension that we use with the protocol, this is why I tell people … Like, you look at the 12-week program and they’re like, “Hey, what about if I add in?” I’m like, “This is the way.” Yeah, watch [Amanda Lorian], this is the way. Don’t ask any questions. And because I don’t want to have to go and give a lecture on hypoxia. And that basically means trapping most of the blood within a muscle, not letting it out, so you can truly exhaust the cell of ATP glycogenic creatine phosphate. If I say that to most people, they’re done. When I get to ATP, they’re like, “To hell with this guy. I don’t even know what that is. It’s way more information than I want. I’m not going to remember it anyway.”

So yeah, you use constant tension and you get the same, actually, or more effect, like a blood flow restriction banding. Like, you don’t need that. Your body does it anyway. But it doesn’t work very well with regular weight training. But with variable resistance, at the level we’re delivering the variance, very powerful. And by showing the body that some of your musculature is missing, like blood’s not going into it or out of it while you’re doing the exercise because you’re not locking out at the top, you’re not resting at the bottom. You’re just keeping constant tension, going through slow controlled repetitions. As soon as you’re done with the exercise, blood rushes in. But that short period of time, that minute or minute and a half, the body’s saying, “Wow, we lost some muscle, we can’t find it. It’s gone. So, we should down regulate myostatin so we can put some muscle back,” because apparently that’s the axis, the cardiac axis for myostatin.

And when you look at all the research, you’ve got to look at the entire body literature before really coming to that conclusion. But after reading all things about myostatin regulation, it’s pretty clear it’s cardiac axis. And really, what was figured out is, they would do blood flow restriction on extremities. But then they would show that the pecs would grow in correlation. Well, the pecs are not being constructed. You can’t put a tourniquet around your neck. You can’t keep the heart from pumping blood to the pectorals, but they grow anyway. So, it’s really got nothing to do with blood flow restriction tools. It has to do with restricting blood flow. Your own physiology can do that with variable resistance, and maintaining constant tension.

Faraz Khan: Okay, well great to know. I’ve got a blood flow restriction band that I’ve got sitting around somewhere, but I haven’t used it. But the reason I was interested … So, you were saying don’t use it. Okay. But the reason I was interested in myostatin is because a friend of mine, Liz Perry, she owns a gene therapy company. And she’s trying to bring it to the masses, which, as you can tell, with regulatory approval it’s an FDA, it’s just a nightmare. But she’s working on it. And obviously she’s attacking this from some of the disease states that you get when you’re much older than just muscle development, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Just so you know, the moment that’s out, it’s going to be used to cheat at sports.

Faraz Khan: Yes, absolutely.

Dr. John Jaquish: No. Everybody who hears myostatin suppression is not like, “Wow, we could really help a lot of people with muscle wasting diseases.” They’re like, “Let’s cheat at sports.” So, yeah. That’s exactly how it’s going to be used. But yeah. Your body kind of does it anyway. Now, depending on the degree of which myostatin can be altered, that can be very powerful. In fact, if anybody … There’s actually a picture in the book of a Belgian blue cow.

Faraz Khan: I saw that. It’s huge.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. That cow wasn’t given any extra anabolics. It just had its myostatin down regulated and that’s a much more powerful effector on growth than even testosterone.

Faraz Khan: Yeah, good.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, so I like that direction of research. Of course, the problem is, now they created … There’s some researchers that created an antibody that would attack myostatin. It was almost like a virus that would destroy that particular protein in the body. And they gave it to mice. And the mice all died of heart attacks. They got totally muscular and then their heart couldn’t take the muscle and then they had heart attacks.

Faraz Khan: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, myostatin’s there for a reason. It’s not like a cruel joke from your central nervous system or god or whatever you think screwed you together. Yeah, so that’s a thing. So, down regulating, needless to say, this antibody was not approved for human trials. Faraz Khan: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: But there are people who, I’m sure would have tried it, and I’m pretty sure would have died.

Faraz Khan: The reason I brought that up is, she, Liz, actually did gene therapy to prove to the world that this is going to be safe in whatever time it takes. But she got a myostatin inhibitor into her cells. And she got a telomerase activator to increase the telomerase size, so she ages more slowly. Again, she didn’t become muscular by any means. She was just the same way.

Dr. John Jaquish: Did she exercise?

Faraz Khan: She does not exercise. But she’s skinny. I don’t think it’s a huge difference where you go and you say, “Wow, Liz. You’re a big difference.” But interestingly, maybe in 20 years when this is all safe, every nerd can look like Doctor Jaquish or Dwayne Johnson just by-

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, certainly have to do the exercise. Like, there’s no getting away from heavy. But I mean, you might have X3 workout bar system and you might be down regulating myostatin. And yeah, and it’d be easier to get an incredible physique. But I mean, ultimately, you can put the building blocks in the body. You can give all the steroids in the world to somebody who just drinks Mountain Dew and plays PlayStation all day long and they’re going to look like shit. It’s not helping anyone.

Faraz Khan: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: In saying that, [inaudible].

Faraz Khan: Okay, I want to move to nutrition in just a second. But I think I’m going to split the podcast into two. So, I want to recap what you said about the hormones in particular. So, what you’ve said, Doctor Jaquish, is that heavy, heavy weight is going to activate or release testosterone in your body. It’s also going to activate the testosterone receptors in your body, which are very important, because they go hand in hand. And that will provide the anabolic effects of testosterone where you can actually gain muscle. Now, growth hormone is also activated by using your technology, the X3 Band . And what that’s going to do is, that’s going to protect your muscle and it’s going to help you lose fat. So, that’s a double whammy, double anabolic effect that you get from using this by lifting heavy weights.

And you talked about myostatin. And then, cortisol, I think, is a problem when you are doing cardio for more than 20 minutes or more at a sustained pace. If you’re doing sprints or HIIT training, then that’s not even an issue, and that’s generally regarded as good by most medical community, and you approve that as well.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Faraz Khan: Okay, got it. So, let’s move onto the other pillar. If one pillar is the exercise, the heavy weights, the other one’s definitely nutrition. And so, what do people eat during this 12-week program, and then moving on from there, per your recommendations?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, I try and keep it as realistic as possible. But when doing the research on just what kind of nutrition you need to optimize muscle growth. Now, I approach health probably a little differently than some other people who write about it. What are the things that we know about long life that are indisputable? Or thus far indisputable, because everything in science can be challenged. Unless we want to talk about gender and global warming.

Faraz Khan: That’s true right now.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right. We don’t want to do any more research on that. Okay. I’m sure you don’t. So, what we’re looking at is conflicting … We want to avoid the conflicting things. Like, what do we know for sure is the biggest driver of long life? Turns out it’s high level of strength, and the second thing is low level of body fat. Okay, so they go hand in hand. The stronger you are, the more muscle you have, the leaner you are. And the easier it is to maintain your leanness with more muscle mass, because that’s an engine running all the time.

So, how do we get as strong and as lean as possible? Well, that answer is also very difficult challenge. It would be high levels of animal protein and low levels of inflammatories. And then, I also really like some of the effects of time restricted eating, fasting. So, when you want … Let’s say you eat one meal a day. And then, you look at some of the things that you would potentially eat or think are healthy. But then you look at the protein requirements to grow muscle. You don’t have room in your intestines for much else. So, I’ll eat two or three pounds of meat a day in one meal. That’s it.

Faraz Khan: Two to three pounds of meat?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Faraz Khan: That’s definitely a lot of meat.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, and that’s every day I eat. Now, I also do 72 hour fasts once a week.

Faraz Khan: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, I mean, I eat like five … So, Sunday midday will be my last meal. And then, I won’t eat anything for the rest of Sunday. Nothing Monday, nothing Tuesday, and then Wednesday afternoon, which actually, I just had a huge meal right before talking to you. But that was my first meal since Sunday.

Faraz Khan: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So, I’m all about the time restricted eating. And then, I’ll go back to having large animal protein meals. I think I had a whole bunch of tuna. Like, a half pound of tuna. I had eight sausages, six scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese. And then, eight ounces of ground beef.

Faraz Khan: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, so that’s like 150 grams of protein.

Faraz Khan: That’s a good heaping of protein. And do you only eat one meal a day then?

Dr. John Jaquish: Usually. Today, it’s my father’s birthday today. So, yeah, I will have a dinner right after this.

Faraz Khan: Okay. I’m sorry I’m holding you up. But I will hurry.

Dr. John Jaquish: No, no. It’s good. I told them I’ve got a podcast, and they understand.

Faraz Khan: Okay. I actually love that you are combining something, which we’ll talk about in a second, the animal protein with fasting, because what I’ve heard in longevity research by Doctor Valter Longo and others, is that high levels of protein can actually spike or increase your levels of IGF-1. IGF-1 is a pro-growth hormone, which causes your body to be growing in an anabolic state all the time. And what you want to do for a longer life is to reduce IGF-1 so you’re not doing cycles, like feast and famines. You’re catabolic for a while.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, you want to be anabolic at times, and then you want to be not anabolic at times. And you’ll actually grow more. There’s a section of the book that talks about anabolic acceleration. And the people who do significant time restricted eating, 48 hour fasts or longer, they’ll grow more muscle. So, their anabolic state is more powerful. And going back and forth will long-term build more musculature than trying to stay in the anabolic state at all times. So, my point is, you can have it all. You can be really [inaudible], really big and powerful, and live a long time.

Faraz Khan: That’s very interesting.

Dr. John Jaquish: Totally reconciles with their findings.

Faraz Khan: Yeah. The other finding that a lot of people quote is that eating more than 20% of your daily intake from protein, especially animal protein, has been linked to higher rates of cancer, and I believe cardiovascular disease.

Dr. John Jaquish: That is on CNN, because that’s fake news. Yeah. What that came from was one study about colorectal cancer, where they found a group of people who had what they said was animal protein. What they only disclaimed in the survey detail section of their study was that these people ate nitrate meat every day for 40 years. Now, nitrate meat is like an Oscar Mayer hot dog. So, they found a group of people, I think it was something like 4,000 people who ate an Oscar Mayer hot dog every day for 40 years. I mean, so pretty much they got their source of nutrition was at gas stations, because you can’t even get that at a fast rood restaurant, nitrate meat.

So, if somebody’s eating their meals at gas stations, is there a chance that they might drink more alcohol than the average, maybe smoke some cigarettes, maybe do hard drugs? Like, meth. I mean, when I see somebody buy … I mean, generalization here. As a scientist, I probably shouldn’t do that. But it’s kind of amusing, so yeah. When I see somebody buying a hot dog at a gas station, they’re not doing it for their health. I don’t even need to ask. So, yeah. It’s like, okay, so you found a group of people who were on a warpath of self destruction for 40 straight years. And they had a 2% greater chance of colorectal cancer. You just proved nothing, because there’s so many other variables in that. And that’s where that whole thing comes from.

There’s other studies where people are eating more protein heavy diets for performance purposes, and the opposite is found. Or they go to countries were only meat is available. Like, you go to places like Moldova. It’s kind of too cold there to grow vegetables, but they have a lot of cattle. They grow grass. Grass will grow in the cold. So, they’ll eat more animal based meals. Same thing with Kazakhstan and certain parts of Russia, where it’s like animal protein is just easier to get. And so, they eat that and they live longer than the people that live in regions where they’re eating more and more plant based. But also, they’re not controlling for things like stress and happiness.

Like, the blue zones where people live to be 100, vegans love to bring this up because it’s like, oh yeah, everybody’s eating all vegetables in all those places. Number one, that’s a total lie. Number two, the biggest factor that’s non-nutritional or physical is low levels of stress. So, they’re happier more. So, these are places where they don’t put old people in old people’s homes. They put them with the kids. So, the old people get to play with the kids. That’s like a common thing in a lot of these areas. So, we’ve got to keep mental health in mind when it comes to triggering cancers. And especially, I’m sure you know … The name slipped my mind. I’ll think of it in a second. But used to be head of cancer research at Stanford. And now he teaches in New Zealand. If you think of who I’m talking about, please throw his name out.

Faraz Khan: I can’t. Name doesn’t come to my mind.

Dr. John Jaquish: Brilliant guy. He talks about how stress is really the trigger for almost all cancers, that and the chronic cellular inflammatories we ingest. But stress and cortisol, cortisol is an inflammatory. And so, when cells are in a constant state of inflammation, they decide to self-destruct.

Faraz Khan: Yeah, okay, fair. I know that.

Dr. John Jaquish: There’s more variables than just eating meat. It’s like, is it a hot dog? Is it somebody who’s on a nutrition and health program that would describe them as a meth addict? Well, okay, why is this person in the study then?

Faraz Khan: Fair, yeah. You know, it’s interesting about the carnivore diet, when you talk about eating 150 grams protein from animal meats. When people started doing the carnivore diet, I thought it was the stupidest idea ever, because that much … Like, nobody except the Eskimo has probably eaten than much meat in the history of humankind. But people that are eating clean meat, grass fed, nose to tail, their biomarkers are surprisingly pretty good, you know? Skin’s clearing up. I’m hearing, not even anecdotal, but people that I know talking about it. So, I’m getting more curious about it. So, given that, I think that throws all this into confusion, where maybe that study isn’t the end all, be all. There’s more factors behind it. Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Also, that study was done by Seventh Day Adventists, who it’s part of their religion to make everybody else eat only plants. And then, also, some of the other studies, like I said earlier when you were just talking to me, most of the vegetable … Like, conclusions, we should eat plant-based stuff is funded by Nabisco or the medical groups that are funded by Nabisco fund the study. And Nabisco knows that vegans and vegetarians are not eating vegetables. They’re eating Oreo cookies, they’re drinking Coca Cola. They like packaged products, because if you actually try and eat a diet of all vegetables, you’ll probably die of malnutrition very quickly, because you can’t get enough calories. So, you’ve got to get them concentrated. How do you get them concentrated? Processed foods. Well, that’s what they do. So, there’s a huge bias there. And you’ve got to look at funding sources. And even when it says, such and such medical group, find out who funds that medical group.

Faraz Khan: That’s really important. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’ll probably be Nabisco. Yeah.

Faraz Khan: Okay, got it. All right, a few more rapid fire questions about nutrition. Obviously get enough protein. What about carbs, fiber, fat? How much should people eat of that?

Dr. John Jaquish: I would say, fat usually just comes with whatever cut of meat you get. And there’s just nothing really to do about it, just eat it. It’s more satiating than protein, so you need it. Like, I think I actually don’t get enough fat in my diet. I’ve kind of been kicking that around, because I like keeping the calories pretty tight, but the protein high. I’m kind of toying with the idea of really upping that, which will probably be like a quarter pound of liverwurst a day. I’ll just throw that into the meal plan. I like liverwurst. Delicious.

Faraz Khan: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: I tried to feed it to the friends I have, and they’re like, “I’m never coming over again if you serve this.” So, it’s okay. I can eat the whole thing. So, yeah. And then, carbohydrates, you don’t need fiber. Like, if your toilet’s plugged up, do you throw a towel in there and flush the toilet five times because you’ve got to get more stuff through the pipe to clear it out? No, that’s not how things work. And fiber doesn’t help you digest things or move things along at all. That’s a total myth. In fact, carbohydrates don’t even fit the definition of a macro nutrient anymore, now that we know what we know in the last 10 years. They serve no purpose, other than how … This is most easily seen in a bear’s nutritional model.

Bears give themselves type two diabetes every year before hibernation by gorging themselves on high fructose type foods, like honey, like berries. And so, that’s how they get fat, because they can live off their fat while they’re just kind of hiding out underground. So, bears get like … I want to repeat that. Bears give themselves type two diabetes every year, which kind of makes you think, is type two diabetes a dysfunction of the human body? Or is it a function of the human body to help you get as fat as possible? That makes sense when you look at what the bears do. Like, why would our body go into a mode of hyper fat storage if that could kill us? Well, for a brief period of time, it could help us. If we’re going to be in freezing cold temperatures, being fatter means you’re better insulated. Also, you can go without a meal for months at a time and live off the adipose tissue. You just sit there and digest your own big fat gut, right? That’s how it works.

So, I mean, I know that’s a really controversial thing to say. But I can back it up. So, it makes me go, okay, yeah carbohydrates can have their place. Now, somebody asked me, “Is there anything nice you can say about carbohydrates?” I actually get more hate for being an anti-carbohydrate guy than for anything else. And I get a lot of haters. It’s just jealous losers. They’re just losers. They’re mad they haven’t done anything in life. And everybody who’s successful is obviously a jerk. It’s like, look at what people have to say about Jeff Bezos. It’s like, okay, but he’s also the richest guy, so yeah.

Faraz Khan: He’s doing something right. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: He built a business that everybody uses. The people that bitch about him, it’s like, I bet you use Amazon, don’t you?

Faraz Khan: For sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, when somebody asked me, “Is there anything nice you could possibly say about carbohydrates?” I thought about it. I thought, yeah. Like, there are some things that happen, like replacing muscle glycogen. If you’re depending on gluconeogenesis, that takes a long time, you know? Like, maybe a full 24 hours. But you consume carbohydrates, it might happen in half an hour. So, I kind of looked at hydration. And then, it got me going down a path of research, which was mostly championed by some professor at Florida State. I’m not remembering his name either. Jose … Damn it. I’m just not remembering his last name right now.

Faraz Khan: It’s all good.

Dr. John Jaquish: Normally I’m really good at that. But what he kind of came up with was looking at hydrating muscle, stretching it for the purpose of super hydration of the muscle, and then accelerated growth from there. And then, when I started looking at it, I’m like, okay, well what else would give super hydration? Well, vasodilation would. So, what’s the most powerful vasodilator that is readily available? Viagra. That’s what happens, people who take Viagra grow muscle faster.

Faraz Khan: I didn’t know that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Well, it was sort of a … There’s just a few articles on it. And you can’t really go to your doctor and say, “I want Viagra so I can grow muscle faster.” They don’t even know that. So, they’ll be like, “No.” But it’s pretty easy to say, “I need Viagra because I want to do a better job with pleasing my partner.” “Okay,” and they’ll give it to you in a second.

Faraz Khan: Here you go.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So, I thought, “Okay, what happens if we combine a little bit of carbohydrates and a vasodilator? And there are nonprescription vasodilators, like Epimedium or Glycerol, which you can just get in any health food store. And you can take those things and hyper-hydrate the musculature and then stretch it while it is hyper-hydrated. And when you do that, you actually are stretching the casing of the muscle and you can create the opportunity for even more accelerated growth. So, that is a way you can use carbohydrates in conjunction with a vasodilator and stretching after your workout, because that’s when blood comes into the muscle. And that’s a hyperplasia protocol, because when we stretch out the cells like that, that’ll cause the cells to divide. And Jose Antonio, Professor Jose Antonio.

Faraz Khan: Okay. Good to know. I’ll have to reach out to you after and get some more details on the protocol, unless it’s already documented somewhere.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s well documented in the book. I went so heavy in the detail. And I actually got trolled for that. Like, people gave me bad reviews on Amazon because it was like, “Nobody cares about any of this.” And it’s like, yeah, they kind of do. And when you write a book and you leave out detail, well then you screw it up. You didn’t write a very good book. The reason books exist is for details, not for the big picture, unless it’s a coloring book. But a lot of people in fitness can probably only digest a coloring book. So, you know, let me say this, I love saying this, there’s a reason that most fitness information … I don’t mean bio hacking, you know? That’s a much more intelligent population. Fitness information is mostly Instagram and YouTube, pictures and videos. Why? Because fitness fans can’t read.

If you listen to Jordan Peterson, 12% of the population is only intelligent enough to mop the floor. This is why the military won’t take the bottom 12% intelligence quotient, because these are the people that’ll shoot their own troops in the back by accident because they’ll forget to unload their gun.

Faraz Khan: Yikes.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, I remember hearing that from Professor Peterson. And I was like, really? There’s people out there that are that dumb? And then, somebody showed me what people were saying on And I was like, “I found them. Here they are, the bottom 12%.”

Faraz Khan: In By the way, speaking of carbs, so we could talk about that for an hour, by the way. But speaking of carbs, I’ve got this monitor for continuous glucose monitor that I’ve been using to track my blood glucose variations. And of course, eating white bread or anything causes it to spike. I don’t eat enough of it to have a meaningful spike, which is good. But I’ve been monitoring that. So, it’d be interesting to kind of add a lot of the diets and nutrition and kind of see how that does.

Now, the other question I wanted to ask you is, yes, the working out 10 minutes. Of course, you’re doing muscle to failure with the X3 Bar variable resistance training system . Do you do that in a fasted state? Or do you eat something before you do that? And if so, how long before you eat?

Dr. John Jaquish: Fasted state.

Faraz Khan: Fasted state.

Dr. John Jaquish: I can do it no problems.

Faraz Khan: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Your body needs to perform. Like, yeah, you lose muscle glycogen a little bit when you fast. I mean, it goes down maybe 10%. You’ve got a lot of juice in the tank, and your body makes sure you do. And gluconeogenesis still happens, even in a fasted state, because you’re metabolizing your old cells.

Faraz Khan: Got it. Okay, so you can do the X3 Bar resistance band training system in a fasted state. How long should you wait before you eat? Or is there no number?

Dr. John Jaquish: I think eating after you work out … There’s no such thing as the anabolic window. Like, oh, you have to eat right away, so all of it can go to muscle growth. You really grow at night when you sleep, which is why it doesn’t really matter when you get your nutrition during the day. And that’s been proven in plenty of studies. More meals, less meals, it doesn’t make a difference. If you get the target amount of protein, you’re going to grow. It could all be in one meal. But if you’re going to do that carbohydrate protocol, if I go three or four hours where I’ll have a workout and then have the vasodilator, or first the vasodilator and then the workout and then the carbohydrates and then the stretching. Three or four hours, I don’t feel so great. Like, it’s just like you’re tapped. Having a really good meal after that is a good idea. So, part of the reason I like working out, I prefer to workout towards the end of the day, because then I just have dinner.

Faraz Khan: Yeah, me too. Like, around 4:00 or 5:00 PM.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Faraz Khan: Okay, let me ask you about BCAAs, your position?

Dr. John Jaquish: Garbage.

Faraz Khan: garbage, okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, and there’s plenty of reasons on that. That’s not my … I don’t even go into that in the book. Branched chain, it’s all the wrong ratios. So, it’s like, yes, it is the amino acids you use during exercise. But it’s not the amino acids that get put together to build muscle, and it doesn’t do anything.

Faraz Khan: Yeah, I’ve heard that from a couple-

Dr. John Jaquish: Just [crosstalk].

Faraz Khan: Yeah. I’ve heard that from a couple of other people I trust, so great. So, BCAAs out. Essential aminos, should you be taking that in pill form or get it from the meats or the foods that you eat?

Dr. John Jaquish: Given those options, meat. There is a supplement that, I mean, full disclosure, I put this out, Fortagen , it’s bacterial fermentation byproduct. And it gives you the right ratio of essential amino acids. It’s the most anabolic protein I’ve ever seen. So, I’ll get like 100 … Like, today, I got 150 grams of protein. I’ll probably have another 50 later. I won’t have a very big meal for my father’s birthday. I’m sure my mom probably made some pastries or cake or something, and I’ll have to move it around my plate and make it look like I ate something. But I’m not eating shit. But don’t tell my mother.

Faraz Khan: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, then I’ll have some Fortagen later, which will take care of the rest of my protein requirement. But it’s really easy to digest. You digest it in 20 minutes. It’s clear like lemonade. Yeah, it’s fine.

Faraz Khan: Okay, cool. So, get Fortagen . What’s your take on weight-

Dr. John Jaquish: Essential amino acid needs to be made in the right way. So, there’s a lot of essential amino acid products that don’t do anything because they weren’t made with fermentation. And also, they’re probably copying somebody else who’ve got the ratios wrong. Where Fortagen came from was a cancer treatment. And it was proven to help with the lowering muscle or eliminating muscle wasting during chemotherapy and radiation. And so, I made a few changes to make it a lot more anabolic, and then launched it.

Faraz Khan: Awesome. Okay, a couple more last questions. What’s your take on pre-workouts?

Dr. John Jaquish: Depends what’s in it. Most of them are just like a chemical shit storm. Like, a whole bunch of stuff I would not put in my body. Now, here’s another … I mean, I don’t want to just pat myself on the back. But I came out with one myself called IN-Perium . And that one has medium chain triglyceride for appetite suppression and energy. It doesn’t have … Like, each serving has 200 milligrams of caffeine. There are pre-workouts with 800 milligrams of caffeine.

Faraz Khan: Wow. 800 milligrams?

Dr. John Jaquish: What?

Faraz Khan: That’ll jack you up, 800 milligrams.

Dr. John Jaquish: No, you feel like garbage. You can’t even workout. Like, totally counterproductive. But a lot of people think more is better, right?

Faraz Khan: Sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: People just do that. So, yeah. I mean, I don’t know. I look at those people, I just shrug my shoulders. I’m like, “All right, if you don’t want to learn anything, keep going. But you’re just going to have shitty workouts. You’re not going to grow.” So, I prefer lower level of caffeine with a little bit of beta-alanine, which gives you more energy than a higher level of caffeine, but it doesn’t have the side-effects that a high level of caffeine can. So, IN-Perium is the preferred pre-workout. But yeah, I mean, I believe in that before a workout. And then, what’s funny, when you workout, you actually undo what caffeine does, because you vaso-dilate instead of vaso-constrict. Your body forces basically the caffeine to be negated.

But going into the workout, you felt a higher level of energy because of vaso-constriction, your heart rate going up. As soon as you start exercising, your heart rate stays up. So, you maintain the energy. So, it’s really kind of funny. You really have it for the first set. And then your body’s like, “No, no, no. We’re not doing that vaso-constriction thing anymore.” So yeah. But it works. So, yeah. I’m in favor.

Faraz Khan: Okay. If I haven’t said this already, I am going to get on the 12-week program in just a few days. And I am going to take before and after pictures shirtless. I’m not an investment banker, so I can do that.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

Faraz Khan: Bio hackers get away with that stuff. So, we’ll do before and afters.

Dr. John Jaquish: Investment bankers get away with it too. They just have to not be self-conscious.

Faraz Khan: Right. Right. So, yeah, so I’m looking forward to that. I’m going to take your recommendations and I’m excited to gain a few pounds of muscle. I won’t say how much because, again, it’s by individual probably. So, I’m excited to do this.

Dr. John Jaquish: How much quality protein are you going to be getting a day? Are you going to be getting a gram per pound of body weight?

Faraz Khan: I’ll do your recommendations.

Dr. John Jaquish: Good. Faraz Khan: I’ve been following the longevity recommendations, which are 0.5 to 0.7 per gram of body weight about.

Dr. John Jaquish: Year one.

Faraz Khan: But I’ll do more. Yeah, and we’ll go from there.

Dr. John Jaquish: Going to be great.

Faraz Khan: Awesome, I can’t wait. Now, Doctor Jaquish, where can people find you and get your book online? Please plug your URLs.

Dr. John Jaquish: I put everything on a landing page, so people only have to go one spot and get to me on social media, the book, you can find out about X3 Bar . It’s Doctor spelled out,

Faraz Khan: That’s easy. I think I’ve gone to the . I believe you have that one as well. And I was looking at the program. But if you’re a listener to the show, go to This is a great device, it’s high quality. And the results are being proven by serious athletes that are getting results themselves. They’re already elite and they’re getting results. So, if you’re serious about your health, you can’t go to the gym anyway. So, this would be a great investment for your time and money to get ripped in a shorter time. So, Doctor Jaquish, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Dr. John Jaquish: No problem. Great.

Faraz Khan: Yeah, I really appreciate you. And I can’t wait to share my results with you soon.

Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome.

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