Where Does He Get His Protein? | Rich Roll Podcast

[Music] what's up guys thanks for tuning into the podcast this week it's all about this guy named eye Delgado check this dude out we spent most of this podcast talking about his protein deficiency right yeah we talked about oh man we went through the whole the whole story from start to beginning so if you want to learn more about where I come from my whole message my bodybuilding and nutrition strategies we touched on everything and much more too right I forgot to mention he's a vegan professional bodybuilder plant-based athlete advocate absolute beast beautiful guy and we had a great conversation so hope you guys enjoy let's do this man alright knee my in the house man so nice to meet you delighted to have you here today thank you so much for having me man I'm actually really really excited to be here cool man awesome this this is a long time coming there's a lot of people excited about this and just to kind of kick it off I wanted to say publicly like I'm just such a huge fan of who you are what you're doing the way that you're carrying the message and I think it's incredibly powerful and I've said this many times before but it's one thing for a guy like me who's the skinny endurance athlete to go and you know talk about the things that I care about and it's another thing altogether when it's a guy like you because you're I mean for people that are just listening on their iPhones or their mobile devices and not watching this on YouTube you should watch it on YouTube to get a glimpse of what this guy's all about cuz you are absolutely jack you have one of the most incredible physiques I've ever seen and when somebody who's so strong who is so ripped is speaking about the things that I've been shouting from the mountaintops for a long time I think it has the potential to land in a very different way and I think that that that is a very potent way of spreading this message and I applaud you for kind of taking that mantle and running with it so to speak wow that was like incredibly humbling to hear so I just want to say thank you for I mean the super nice words and even can me to have on the show because I've been listening you for quite some time now so it's like like you said it's a long time coming and I've been manifesting it for quite a while so it's awesome you were yeah all in all in I've learned to like trust timing on these things they happen when they're they're supposed to happen yeah I can play it's a good time you know here we are you were recently on the cover of Muscle & Fitness yes so that's that's a huge deal to be on the cover of that magazine as you know vegan or not vegan and also we're kind of as far as I know or on the cusp of the game-changer of movie coming out I'm do when is that is there a date yet for the release of that if I had a dollar for every time somebody asked me I wish I know yeah the moment I know everybody else is gonna know cuz I'll be the first one to be posing it all over social media but yeah I can just say that it's worth the wait right cool so yeah I haven't seen the movie yet but I know that you figure prominently in that for good reason so let's tell your story dude you have a really interesting back story about how all of this began yeah that goes back to Argentina yeah I guess it does I guess it does uh I'll just go back to the beginning from the very beginning so my heritage is Argentinian both of my parents were born and raised in Buenos Aires Argentina came from you know primarily Catholic families went through the whole system and my mom actually I guess she's the catalyst to this whole story coming about when she was about I don't 15 or so she had a very public boyfriend he was like the vice president's son or at I don't know the exact story but they owned a ranch and she went over one day and basically he slaughtered a pig in front of her and she was kind of traumatized by it as a 15 16 year old would be and made a decision right then that she wouldn't ever eat or touch meat again and yeah she just kind of lived her life from 15 on and that was it like she just it wasn't like it wasn't just in words only like she actually lived up to that know yeah exactly if you knew my mom she's probably the most compassionate person I've selfless person I've ever met in my life and I'm not just saying that I'm a mama's boy like I really do believe that and uh yeah so my grandpa he was definitely apprehensive whenever she decided to give up meat for many reasons that you and I hear every single day yeah well Argentina's a big meat culture yeah it's a big part of culture and just being social I would imagine yeah and they're very like five aja spew Argentinians you cannot wait I can always spot one from a crowd or if it's a group of Latino people on a talk show like you know you can always spot the Argentinian because they're so loud they're so full of energy they're they talk with their hands they're all like pedal chain you know like my grandpa was a prime example of that so as you can say as you can see or probably expect like she got a lot of slack for it a lot of I guess you know feedback from her friends family and concern but as luck would have it somewhere along the line she was introduced to another lifestyle and that was through the form of Hinduism mm-hmm so at that time I guess it must have been went late 70s early 80s Hinduism was getting a little bit more westernized I don't know if you remember that time or not I was I was born in 89 so yeah yeah in college when you were born okay yeah yeah so I don't know what it was like in Argentina but yeah me either but I think just basically in a general sense being more open to Eastern perspectives about spirituality in general yeah yeah I mean it was very small culture still at the time back then and she really resonated with a lot of the kind of the core beliefs of Hinduism and she still does and one of those beliefs was that you know you don't eat meat she basically the hymns that yeah exactly a hymns of the concept of do no harm live live a life of not causing any suffering any harm but also she almost basically renounced all material things as well and devoted herself fully to service to God and went to a Hindu temple and started living only in the temple and that's kind of you know the love story that happened between her and my dad and they so he was a renunciant also yes yeah for different reasons like robes in the whole thing oh yeah oh yeah like literally no money begging for your food kind of thing necessarily begging for you relying on the generosity of strangers yeah basically selling books that was their way of making money they were selling versions of the Bhagavad Gita in the streets and they would have a stack of books I'd go and sell them in the streets of Argentina try to convince somebody it'd try to convince probably the most stake heavy eating country to go vegetarian and come or maybe switch over be open-minded to another religion entire lease kind of like how you see the Hari Krishna's they actually is the Hari Krishna's that's a tribe that they went into yeah yes she had the orange robes yeah she cut her hair off and all that she didn't my dad did that's what the men do that Wow so that my man had so your grandfather must have been really freaking you oh yeah my grandfather's a super conservative too he's an airline pilot Navy guy so I mean you could you could you could just imagine what she had to go through and what he thought whenever she told him she's like hey I'm I'm leaving to go join this Hari Krishna movement right and basically devote myself to God and yeah that's kind of a love story that happened between her and my dad they met fell in love had my sister who was born in Argentina and just kind of lived that way for a certain number of years but then things in Argentina were a little bit tumultuous so they didn't feel like it was the best environment to raise their children and you know the universe would have it they went from a temple in Argentina to a temple in Brazil mm-hmm in florianópolis had my brother in Brazil and we're all two years apart so they lived there for a few years right on the beach was I see pictures of it and it was just a beautiful place but yeah like you're saying all bald my dad was all bald they wrote of the temple they had like a little vegetarian restaurant at the time that they were trying to you know keep you know sustain their lifestyle and everything and then as luck would have it their spiritual guru mentioned an opportunity to provide them with housing and a place to live in America so my dad was like I'll do it I'll go we've you know the American Dream is something that known all around the world and my dad basically went by himself didn't know how to speak any English went to landed in Miami started working as a taxi driver to get enough money essentially to move or to send back to my mom so she could have a plane ticket to come then that happened and my mom came with basically two and a half kids so she was pregnant with me pregnant with you ya were born in the States yeah I'm the gringo of the family that's what they call me gringo basically the only American born here and ended up in Miami in the late 80s wasn't there's a lot going on in Miami at that time so they ended up going to Central Florida to another temple in Alachua and then right outside of Gainesville then went to New Orleans because they heard about another opportunity their first day in New Orleans got their car stolen so they were like to America yeah so they're like yeah maybe New Orleans a little bit too crazy for us so they ended up having another they're like come on we already gave away all our worldly possessions like the car from their perspective it wasn't too much of an issue of their inconvenience right they weren't too attached to anything at that time but they were trying to provide their kids essentially with a better opportunity than they had yeah and there was another temple in Mississippi in south Mississippi and I'm gonna paint a picture for you it's in the middle of nowhere the middle of the Bible Belt and essentially it's it was a dirt road and they had a big like a big sign in the front that said welcome to new telephone basically International Society of Krishna consciousness this is one of their temples one of their farms and that's where I was born and raised Wow yeah so was it like a commune Kim um not necessarily but everybody that lived within the perimeter of the farm were Hindu right so it's a pretty well-known establishment within the community so this faith-based community essentially Hari Krishna's this is this is the this is the environment in which you're weird yes deep in the cell yeah yeah exactly Wow essentially I tell people all the time is just a bubble like I lived in a bubble are you talking about being raised in a bubble and not being a very unique different yeah yeah thank so that's where I grew up the first about six years of my life so every day I'd wake up 5:00 a.m. go to the temple with my mom I would be dressed head-to-toe in traditional clothing I would wear the the tea lock on my forehead I'd wear I still wear neck beads we'd go to the temple we chant mantra mantras and I lived in this like really cool little environment I mean it was it was essentially it was a cow rescue sanctuary as well so they would rescue cows from different farms in the vicinity and it was like in hims a farm so they wouldn't drink milk and have key and make yogurt and all these different things but from the cows that were treated with love respect and and everything else and we also had like a garden like a community garden that was like almost self-sustaining so they would have like feasts every day they would make food for the for the community members and every Sunday they would have a Sunday feast and it was welcomed to everybody just like most temples around the world anybody can come and have food on Sundays that's why yeah that's like its own little blue zone yeah Sencha Lee you know essentially and what was when you would venture outside the perimeter of the farm into the local townships I mean how are you guys received and and treated by the normal people that were living in the environment it was always like do you remember candy yeah vividly vividly I mean the place where we were living I mean we were well known within the outside community of who we were and we were weird in those harde Krishna's and their beliefs and you know their rituals or whatever they would call any is very foreign to the culture down there so we would go out and my we would venture out to the to the to the real world essentially and I mean it was it was different receptions from people I mean I remember vividly whenever I was a little kid that waking up to a burning cross outside of one of my friend's house and essentially it was members of you know the I guess I would assume the KKK you know I mean that's unfortunately still alive and real and racism's of real things still to this day you know so it wasn't it was challenging I'll say that yeah I mean it's it's quite different for a community like that to to find a community like that like in let's say like Big Sur or you know an environment in which you kind of you're not that surprised you know but in the deep deep south that's a whole thing yeah different altogether oh definitely is I mean it's its own little bubble like I was mentioning but that was until I was like six so my parents being the the kind of free thinkers that they are they wanted me to have more opportunities so they saw other kids that were being raised in that environment that maybe they were living more of a very humble faith-based life and they wanted us to get a proper education so they assimilated me into public school right and I went to public school at a very young age I remember like my first days at school I would go to school with the markings with the necklaces and this is this is the way my parents think my god she'll be fine but she tossed me in the water and said sink or swim right so and how old were you I was kindergarten through through the rest of high school uh-huh so I was like I'm a southerner like it doesn't something you don't have an accent oh I fought it oh you bought it yeah I mean my parents speak Spanish within the household but I never felt like I belonged essentially like I was saying I lived in a bubble so I was like I don't know surprising that that's how you felt I mean I would imagine even in kindergarten having some awareness of just being very different from everyone else yeah I mean it was it was made apparent to me very quickly so were you were you what kind of kid were you were you bullied as a kid were you a quiet kid were you an okay did you play sports definitely a quiet kid I was always an observer my grandpa used to call me the philosopher because I wouldn't really talk that much I was very observant but when I did speak it was like something profound or something with like some thought behind it so we don't you to be the next guru yes actually essentially so I would always you know I would I just kind of accepted from a very early start that I was different and accepted the fact that not everybody was raised the way I was raised because it was made apparent to me so I understood that kids were gonna have their judgments on me they were gonna say things to me and I you know to this day I asked my parents I was like what did you teach me as a kid to not be tempted to kind of rebel or you know just be one of the other kids and just like adopt that lifestyle and they were like we just taught you to to love yourself love who you are respect other living beings and we just kept reinforcing it and we trusted in you and we knew that you had understood from an early age that that was the way that we lived and you know we don't eat animals and I just kind of like knows like how that makes sense right yeah it is wild that you didn't have that impulse to rebel like it would have been very the predictable course would have been to say screw this man like you know I'm out of here I want to be you know the peer pressure I mean as a parent with I got a fourteen-year-old daughter of two older boys like I I know how intense that can be to conform and to fit into the flow of society and to be able to have the emotional wherewithal to to remain true to what you felt was your North Star instilled by your parents I mean that takes a certain level of self-awareness and self-confidence yeah I mean it's developed over time like things test you like just like anything in life people will pick and prod and kids can be really cruel I'll just say that kids can be really cruel I don't know how many times I've had even when I was growing up I'd bring my lunch obviously and you know I'd open up my lunch box and here they are I grew up on Indian food too right both my parents were really good chefs RJ I don't know if I grew up on Argentinian the vegetarian food or Indian food essentially essentially yes live there no no no I'll get to that yeah sorry so essentially I'd opened up my lunch box and like I mean the flavors that Indian food contained cumin turmeric all of these things are curry all these things are very have a very strong odor to them so I'd open up my lunch box and immediately the first thing everybody would say would be like like what is that like what are you eating me my and I'd be like no no my parents cooked it and I'm just gonna eat it and they would always like put burgers in my face chicken nuggets all this stuff they serve it you know in high school in elementary school and be like oh I'll give you a dollar to eat it or just try it and I never really understood that like why somebody would get so much joy out of me doing what they wanted me to do so I kind of almost like made a stance against it I was like now I'm just I'm not gonna do it to almost prove a point and just stay true to who I was and that kind of helped me build up that strength and that confidence that like I am Who I am take it or leave it and at the same time still wanting to be accepted so I ended up becoming a chameleon you know I learned how to deflect really easily and really early on so when people would ask me at birthday parties you know why aren't you eating hotdogs I would just say I just don't like him you know and I would just make make Dorito sandwiches so I could like do pieces of bread so I'm like cheddar cheese and put some Doritos on it and that would be my meal when I go to like birthday parties and stuff and even and so other social situations where parents would come up to me they'd be like the NEMA are you hungry let me cook for you and I just like I hated that pressure of being different and being like a nuisance so somebody had to like go the extra mile just to provide for me so I just like now you know I'm fine like I'm I'm just okay I only have chips but still maintaining that boundary you know I would think like a small child after a while you're like fine you know and also this idea of you like this sense that you have of this is who I am this is this is my set of core values did you ever have a reckoning like a moment where you're like wait a minute are these my core values or are these just the values that I've always known because my parents were impressing them upon me like is this what I believe or is this just what I've been told my whole life mm-hmm I think everybody goes to that at some point in their life at least those who do reflection find themselves at that position and that crossroads is like am I Who I am or am I who I was told to be right but for me I I I really did believe that it made sense like I'm a logical person it all made logical sense you know like when I was younger if I was presented with a few situations in front of me if I had an apple or like a you know a baby chicken I wouldn't rip his head open and start eating the baby chicken I would just reach for the Apple so that same concept kind of can be extrapolated and just because you're not the one that's you know taking the animal's life doesn't mean the life isn't taken so it just made sense you know I just kind of thought of it logically like that yeah that's interesting I think a lot of people sort of just think well you know that that chicken breast is already has already been killed and it's been boned and it's in the packaging at the grocery store so does it really matter whether I buy it or not because it's already there and somebody's gonna buy it like and it's easier to kind of be in denial or not you know solve that mathematical equation about where your duck what your dollars are contributing to yeah in a sense but I mean not all life is determined by dollars and cents I mean if luckily I was raised from like a car may expect 'iv too so that's kind of where I understood that I'm you know I believe I'm not this body you know it's just a vessel for me and one day I might be in that that chickens body so I wouldn't like that to happen to me so why would I do it to it when I'm completely fine living without it you've come this far yeah backwards yeah that cycle right yeah exactly so I you know the concept of a hit hymns at Karma all these things they add up over time and I figured if I can just refrain from contributing to it because even by buying a package chicken breast you basically pay someone that's sitting in an office that is their job to think how can we kill more animals more efficiently how can we extract from them more products and you're paying that person so yeah you still contribute to the you know the suffering and everything else yeah so never eaten meat in your entire life never not on purpose I've never have that one time I can recall where I ate it or I didn't like in my mouth on accident was I was in Taco Bell and got it I used to get a you see Taco Bell right like bean and cheese burritos cheese quesadillas and I ordered a cheese quesadilla bit into it immediately noticed the texture difference was like chunky and I just spit it out immediately I started like getting like nauseous and it's just like the thought of that just like kind of reinforced that I wasn't for me you know so that was that was probably when I was in like ninth grade or so so you know I've had moments where me and that's not the only you know scenario where it's something like that's happened but and I'm sure somewhere along the line maybe I've accidentally consumed it and just completely unaware of it but I just don't think I like I consider my body like I try to keep it as pure as possible and just just refrain from it right so high school rolls around you're still living in the community no no no so so it's moved out of when I was about seven years old and we moved to a more traditional southern community yeah I mean I wore normal like I went back home I don't know what I said to my parents whenever I was younger but I was like just just dress me normally you know and because my sister was like she was four years older than me so she was dealing with it on another level because because she was also the white Spanish speaking Hindu person with a weird name so I mean there's a lot of different things happen in there to stand out so she was like I just want to blend in just put me in normal clothes and I was the same way just put me in normal clothes and I'll assimilate right and you have it and your brother's older than you as well yeah my brother's too nice so they were kind of like the Canaries in the coal mine out there like you know this is wasted testing yeah so by the time you become of age like your parents sort of figure out like okay like we do that yeah right and my sister's very vocal too so I'm sure she let them know immediately like you need to stop this what did they do now so my sister ironically she works for cardiologists as a echo technician so she'll do heart scans my parents they have their own businesses as well as my brother and I'm out here in California just kind of figuring out life yeah so so when when you're in high school are you playing sports we are you athletic yeah I've always been athletic like I grew up and naturally I played soccer when I was younger I was like the young Argentine I had long hair too so it's like the d'argent teeny endued like Argentinians are good at soccer and I played soccer for quite some time and then was introduced to skating and I got hooked on skating when I was like 11 or 12 years old and I'm talking about like skateboarding or like it's like nah I figure skating like inline inline skating like aggressive inline skating so at that time it was becoming really popular was all over ESPN all the mobile skate parks I would do these tours and whatnot and I got I went to the skate park on accident I thought was going to a skating rink and end up at this skate park with these huge half pipes and bowls and all this stuff and I'll just immediately hooked and I'm a bit of a daredevil too so I got really good at it really quick and even I think by the time I was 13 or 14 I won some competition to like tour the tour the country with like a like an organization that did like mobile skate parks and there was like professional skateboarders professional roller bladers and professional bikers and I was doing that at like 13 and then skated all the way up until pretty much high school and just kind of started like you know venturing out just living a little bit more normal cuz I was like I do when I do things I'd like go hundred percent into it it's just like my my nature so I like figuring out how something works I like perfecting it or mastering the skill and then just doing it and yeah that was about until I was 18 but I mean even like in high school I kind of like would keep them keep my life separate like I have my skating friends and then I had my high school like normal friends cuz they even what were the high school friends like like what kind of crowd did you fall into like with the jocks or with like donors or the geeks like I do I'm a chameleon man I blend in with everybody yeah I I've always had friends that's like a survival it's a technique maybe you know coming from that environment and realizing like if I want to make this work in the real world like I have to be adaptable yeah yeah exactly like I was always like a little bit more like on the intelligent side lovely needed bands classes so I had friends with that were considered geeks and nerds and stuff and like I love those people and then I always like have the more social light crowd where they were going to parties and all this stuff and then the jocks the the Goths at that time there's a lot of gas my high school my guy I'd blend it in with everybody you know so uh III mean I'm sure you feed to ask hopefully if you'd ask like a lot of my high school friends I was pretty well-liked throughout high school but like many of them didn't know like who I was at the same time they knew who-who I portrayed you know but then they knew the guy that you wanted them to know almost they didn't necessarily know yeah well few people did a few of my close friends you know I had like a really tight inner circle of friends and they did and they accepted me and they that's why I became more comfortable being who I was with them but then outside of that and never really talked about like my background or you being a vegetarian or anything like that was there anybody else from the community in your high school or any other vegetarians in your high school um nothing I remember yeah yeah all right but the bodybuilding thing doesn't come until much later yeah right now you and you become this engineer yeah and do you start hitting the weights in college or what's what's the college experience you got a are you in you're in Louisiana or something like that yeah yeah so I actually started kind of I went to the gym for my first time ever was in my I guess my sophomore junior year of high school uh-huh and I was always a small kid to I was like a really like I was always the shortest kid in my class and it wasn't until like after high school that I had like a growth spurt and I mean I might have graduated high school at five five a hundred and thirty pounds under and Wow something like that yeah no football career oh no not at all I love football but I just knew I was kid destroyed and ate up if I if I played football so I went I I went to the gym but I had no idea what I was doing I'll just be honest I'd go to go it was like a social hour for me I'd see people I'd like to think I was working out at the time and then I end up going to college at LSU and studying engineering and majority of my time was spent studying for engineering because it's a it's a it's a difficult major to be in but at the same time I was enjoying college I was you know going to football games all that stuff I'm a huge LSU fan college football fan and then I started hitting the gym a little bit more cuz I was like hey maybe I'll get a girlfriend or something you know like I had a growth spurt - so I was like growing and it was nice you know yeah and I remember my freshman year they say you gain 15 pounds a freshman year I really did but not in the sense that you would like not in muscle that came into your body a little bit a little bit more - so I I lived like on campus close to a Taco Bell and I already had these things called like points it was like a point system you bought with the meal plan so you could use it at different restaurants on campus and I would go every night and get like four I might have been five five bean burritos cuz I didn't know how to cook and that was like my meal before I go to bed I eat like three bean burritos before I go to bed and wake up and eat - and take it with me to class so I was eating a lot of like a Fraggle yeah a lot of crap uh-huh essentially and I put on like 15 pounds whenever I was like a freshman just continue going to the gym but still didn't really get anywhere you know I had like a sort of athletic body and then it wasn't until my last year of college that I went through a breakup and they say breakups make body builders uh-huh that's essentially what happened you'd be surprised you if you do a poll ask how many body builders started their career because of a breakup it's a pretty high number yeah I get a high percentage so I broke up with my ex and started it was I gave up alcohol at that time too and I was like you know what I was at LSU yeah and with only lasted for so long but I figured if I gave up alcohol maybe I'd get her back or I don't know what my process was I just kind of do want to take a step back and really figure out who I was and I made friends with personal trainers at a gym because I was going to like the rec center on campus and my ex worked there so I was like I'm not gonna go there anymore and I went to another gym made friends with some personal trainers and then I really started understanding more concepts about training and I made like a huge amount of progress within a year and that was my last year of college and then I ended up accepting a job offer in Calif yeah so the idea is white sand beaches warm water palm trees girls and bikinis riding your bike on the beach right yeah oh yeah that's exactly what I was thinking so California I'm going to college like see you later sucktown like I'm going to California and I accepted this job offer with an oil and gas company mind you so I was a mechanical engineer and I got this job offer to do I didn't even know what the hell a job offer was for exactly but I was like I'm going to California and they pay well so I'm gonna accept it and because mind you I came from really humble beginnings as well so money was always like a topic of conversation and I'm not gonna be a renunciate essentially yeah because I saw how I saw you know growing up in a humble household you see how much your parents talk about it and struggle and worry about it and they did everything and they provided me with like a beautiful childhood and like I'm still amazed and how they did it but you know I made it to my I felt like I had a duty to them to find a great paying job so that I would fulfill their original plan of giving me better opportunity right so my brother and sister had their own paths there's you know they're they're successful in their own ways but they didn't follow like a straight line like I did and I was just like I'm going this way and this is where the money's at so I'm going there and I accepted this engineering job with the intention of working in Long Beach California I was like well it's not LA but it's close there's Beach there so it's got to be like you know cool in the hiring process they called me and they're like yeah position in Long Beach has been you know changed and we need you in Bakersfield so all right you don't quite know the difference oh not at all so I I respond back like what's Bakersfield and they're like that's just another job offer and I was like all right at this point I'd already rejected a bunch of other job offer so I was like committed this point it's like Google Bakersfield and I find out it's like you know it's got terrible air pollution it's big oil and gas town didn't know much else about it but I was like okay I'm going and graduated college packed up my Jeep didn't take anything with me and just move to Bakersfield mm-hmm and started working as an engineer right and realizing that you're in sort of California's version of the south yeah like it's you know it's farm its agricultural its rural yeah guys for sure - but when you for somebody who's never been to California when you think of California Bakersfield is a very different vibe oh definitely and and nothing and nothing against Bakersfield when I was there it's very familiar to me but I had the dreams of like the California you know like skateboarding along the boardwalk and stuff like that so I get there and basically come back to the south it's I think it's one of the only it's like the most conservative county in Kern County in California one of them at least and start working for the oil and gas company find out really quickly that there's not much to do there other than like drink in a farm I guess and not a soul not a soul but that's how driven I was to get out of the South and just like kind of find a place that was more aligned with what I believed in you know I knew that California a little bit more open-minded I was like hey maybe I could thrive there find more like-minded people I never had a problem making friends but I did have this desire to kind of find my tribe essentially and so start working as an engineer it didn't like it from the start I never liked it basically to not bore your listeners there to put them to sleep I was in charge of making sure pipelines vessels and tanks didn't blow up or leak so a lot of compliance a lot of regulations a very important job yeah very important a lot of non-destructive testing ultrasonic techniques and I was the guy that basically walked into the operations office the operations team and said hey we need to shut down we need to make a 10 million dollar repair we're gonna have to replace two miles worth of 16-inch pipeline which is like their main feeder for their power plant and everything no one wanted to hear from you oh no it was like the most least like department in the in the like in the company every as soon as my team walked in everybody like rolled their eyes on the garlic wrap here's these guys like we're the police essentially that oil company while I AG in the police department essentially yeah essentially so you could see like my frustrations like I feel like I'm doing a good job but then it's not well-received and I just got bored I got so bored about talking about corroding pipe and inspections and replacing pipelines and tanks and vessels and doing calculations all day and I just knew it wasn't for me and I at that time I would leave work I've worked nine hours a day I'd leave work go home change and just go to the gym and that's kind of where I didn't have anything else to do I didn't have much friends I was like I'll just focus on working out like I liked it that last year of college I'll just continue to do this because I make friends in the gym maybe I'll meet some gym buddies I'll get to know the town a little bit better and that's exactly what happened so I just made some friends in the gym started working out with more like I guess you could say advanced you know bodybuilders or there was a but like the bodybuilding community and Bakersfield's like it's a unique place I'll just put it that way so unique place a lot of big dudes with big jacked-up trucks big muscles and a lot of money too because they work in the oil industry too so so these guys become like your bodybuilding mentors essentially yeah essentially so I started hanging out a little bit of like training understanding from your last year in college but yeah you're just I'm just you're just going to the gym I'm gonna get jacked yeah right yeah same intention same intention a big truck yeah I have a big have a big Jeep so I almost fit into that crowd yeah it just wasn't the size that I wanted to be yes not big enough yeah so so you can see like my chameleon at work here because I fit in with like these big tatted up like like almost blue collar guys but yet in like the engineering world or the oilfield world like the blue-collar guys don't necessarily hang out with like the engineers too much because there's like a you know just like a hierarchy or whatever you want to call it like a social system within the community as well so I like blended in with those guys I haven't got along with them we go get drinks and all this stuff and work out together and you know naturally you got big when you work out what guys that push you and that's what happened and I remember distinctly what happened was started getting more into shape so I started looking more into nutrition and I was like how was nutrition affecting my gains so that's when I started trying to optimize my nutrition in my way of optimizing my nutrition as a vegetarian at that time was I'll just take a lot more whey protein shakes because protein equals muscle right or at least that's what I thought right I can't eat the chicken breast ya know chicken breast eating eggs no eggs yeah no eggs at that time the only like animal-based products I was eating was Greek yogurt and a lot of Greek yogurt because I was like pretty high in protein not too bad at macros and calories a lot of whey protein shakes I wasn't too huge on cheese except for cheese pizza bean burritos that kind of thing and uh and what else I think knows about it yeah more protein the the more protein the better essentially yeah and if I'm not gonna eat meat I'm just gonna be pounding these shakes exactly right exactly and I quickly found out that my stomach didn't digest whey protein uh we wouldn't want to be around me if I drank a protein shake because it was just like I'd bloat and be gassy all day you know I blame it on other people I'll be like yeah that guy stinks you know but the truth was like I wasn't meant to digest whey protein shakes just never sat well and then I forget exactly how the chain of events happen but I I remember this part I went to San Diego to visit a friend I was driving back up the PCH ended up stopping in Huntington Beach because I always liked Huntington Beach for some reason and or the vibes there I just go along to Huntington Beach Pier and I had like a like the beach boardwalk that goes underneath the pier and I was standing up there and I looked down and there's a demonstration going on and happened to be PETA or some kind of animal I don't know if is PETA exactly but it was some kind of animal rights activist group and they had a huge plate and on the plate they had giant carrots giant Peas and people in like a nude bodysuit that and they'd look like chicken breasts you know if you'd like took a step back and looked from a distance and looked like a plate of chicken peas and carrots and they had the sign that said like how does it look now and you know I didn't eat meat it wasn't it didn't affect me that much and I was just like enjoying watching people's reaction to that that demonstration didn't agree oh yeah yeah they were yelling people yelling everything was it just wasn't a good scenario they were handing out pamphlets and as I'm sitting there leaning on the railing watching this a woman comes up to me and she hands me a pamphlet and she goes I don't know what the hell she said but I was just like politely handed the pamphlet back to her and I said no thanks I'm already vegetarian I don't eat meat and she looked at me and I forget this and she goes with like just like a super condescending voice and she goes well do you drink milk do you eat cheese and I was like yeah and she was like well do you know that that's one of the most cruel industries and it's even more cruel than the meat industry and you're contributing to that and like I then at that point I like handed the pamphlet back to I was like you know what I don't really care it's not for me and I left and I went home and I just thought it was a weird scenario and as the universe would have it again I was on Facebook and I think my mom actually posted a video about some kind of slaughterhouse of the dairy industry something like that and I like sat down and thought about it and I saw with my own eyes this video what was going on in like dairy farms and how the cows were just kind of like locked in a cage where they couldn't move their head and they just had these mechanisms hooked up to them and they were sucking the juices out and I just thought to myself I was like wow like I'm I'm contributing to that by eating it and I made a decision like on the spot house I can't do this anymore and I just decided to give up dairy together too like as ineffective as I thought that you know whole scenario was it it worked because it planted a seed in my mind and I just happen to see another thing that reinforced it and I just changed and I went I went plant-based at that moment Wow and before that you'd never flirted with the idea of going vegan or you hadn't developed any awareness of dairy industry practices her name I I think I like I knew a little bit yeah like come on man I've never eaten meat like mymiami alone yeah that was my argument I was like dude I'm doing less harm you don't kill the cow what's it like what's the big deal you know but yeah there was a big deal so I ended up I ended up giving that up and I was just like all right like now what like I guess I'll go vegan or I guess I'll go plant-based and I had known what year was this this was 25 so I'm 28 now or 28 or actually about to be 29 29 in a few weeks yeah almost four years ago and I basically started looking up plant-based nutrition because at this time I'm still you know very into bodybuilding and and whatnot I knew you could build muscle I knew there's a lot of myths out there about not eating meat because I was like doing it when I was building muscle without eating meat but I really did you know have my doubts about building muscle without any animal product without my my whey protein and my Greek yogurt mm-hmm and yeah I just kind of I was like well now I'm in it I can't go back I'll just make this work and that's when I started figuring out okay there's a lot of health benefits to not eating dairy and whey protein and all this other stuff as so I switched over my my way shakes with plant-based shakes I started incorporating a lot more like legumes and lentils into my my nutrition program at the time and yeah just went you know dough headfirst and what were the resources that you were looking to like was a YouTube videos or were you reading books or like watching dr. Gregers videos or like Robert Cheeke has his vegan bodybuilding site at the time I don't know how active he is on that now but there were some resources available yeah there were some at that time I think it would have been what he doesn't it was like 2014 the end of 2014 beginning in 2015 when that kind of transition happened and I I looked up vegan Fitness vegan bodybuilding that stuff and I did come across Robert cheeks website there's a lot of great resources there but I'm much more like practical guy I just like to be my own kind of experiment and to see what works what doesn't work you're gonna engineer yourself that engineer that's exactly what happened I like to figure out how things work optimize it and maximize it and I just started eating more learning that I can incorporate more carbs a little bit less protein I read a book I wish I could remember the name of the book it was called like vegetarian sports nutrition or something and I learned a lot about that book and I just kind of reassured that you know I can do this I can do this and at the gym one day I was walking into a gym and there was a guy that was selling supplements and I knew him he was living like a little giveaway any type of thing and he goes hey man you're looking pretty good you should do a bodybuilding show I just laughed tough like yeah right I mean did you look how did you look then versus like what I'm looking at right now so I was in good shape I was definitely good shape but I was about 30 pounds lighter so I may be not thirty pounds was probably out twenty pounds lighter so right now about 101 90 somewhere around there at that time I was like 160 165 somewhere around there and I literally laughed in his face like yeah right do you like you think I'm gonna get on stage in like a speedo and flex in front of like a crowd of judges like first of all would my like corporate job think of that like if they saw pictures floating around and me in a speedo yeah and the Harry Krishna community Oh at that time I had like at that time I I had completely kind of like almost disassociated myself with the Hari Krishna movement because I didn't feel like I belong to the time I had been spending so much time in my life suppressing it and downplaying it but I did become disconnected like there was a disconnection there so I stopped going to the to the temple for a long time I would go back to the temple when I'd go visit my parents and whatnot but I never really went proactively on myself and learned more or did more reading on it and kind of really understand the entire thing so I wasn't worried about the heart Krishna's and what they thought I'm just like I can't escape like the juxtaposition like the contrast of those two worlds like a Lodi building world and like the Hari Krishna community oh yeah I'll get into that later okay good I'll get into that later doing so so here I am at the gym and this guy's like can try and convince me to do his show he's like dude it's in Bakersfield like come on like it's in it's in two months you got enough time you look great I know a guy he can help get you stage ready and I was like no dude like that's just not for me like I could never see myself doing that and he he connected me with a guy either way and I like maybe I could learn something anyway and the guy was like hey I should do the show he looked great you have a good chance of winning I was like you know what like can we curse in here yeah yeah [ __ ] it like why not I I well like you got going on yeah exactly I was like I hate my job like I might as well find something that I'm passionate about maybe I like working out maybe this will give me a goal to strive for and I picked the date and I remember I trained for eight or nine weeks somewhere around there I contacted this coach and he had no experience with vegetarianism veganism especially and he was like look I can't help you with what to eat but maybe I can give you some guidance on like how much to eat so I was like is the coach is it is it is the focus really on the nutrition side of it or is it on the actual training aspect of getting ready for something like that so I thought it was on training but you quickly realized that it's all about nutrition hmm you know it's if you have a good foundation and you focus strictly on nutrition you don't even have to go to the gym and you can because if you can get lean enough yeah like it ever comes the fitness because you looked more jacked than you actually are exactly like we all have muscle under here it's just about trying to expose it right so if you just eat correctly you can expose that muscle a lot greater by reducing it on a body fat you have on your on your body so he helped me with how much to eat and I was just kind of left in the lab you know mad scientist I don't like picking different foods and experimenting and trying to see which foods work best that to yield the best results so like as you could imagine I'm a data-driven person so I would track everything and track my workouts I tracked how much I ate how many calories I'm the micronutrients micronutrients everything was in the nutritional program that I was following and I'm like spreadsheets oh yeah I'm a spreadsheet guru man yeah we're getting your your workout routines from this commutes at the gym a combination the combination so he gave me a workout routine and I followed it and then I did my own stuff like I always had my own routines and I would do because I knew what like worked best for me and you know eight weeks later go by and you know now we're here at the show day and I'm like terrified I'm like what am i doing like I didn't get up there and like a what do you call it a speedo I didn't get up there on a speedo I did a different division called men's physique and they wear the board shorts they waited like the beach even know that they were different oh yeah there's a lot of different these lot you don't know about bodybuilder man so this is a different subculture this is not IFBB no no so this was the organization called imba which is international natural bodybuilding association and hold on a second because I like this is like a subculture I know nothing about so do you like shave your body and do the fake tan thing and put the oil all over you and like and are you starving yourself for like a week to get as lean as Pike is it like a wrestler protocol where you're trying to literally lose as much not just fat but water content like what does that look like yeah so it's it's kind of similar to a wrestling protocol or like an MMA protocol but you want to be as efficient as possible so you want to reduce as much body fat you want to reduce as much water retention as possible in the final week well actually the leaks the weeks leading up to it you want to reduce as much body fat the final week you're more focused on reducing the amount of water retention you have so you can appear as lean and crisp as possible right and what are the techniques for doing that similar to similar to wrestling where you do water loading can we do a lot of cardio where like that suit that makes you sweat some people do Red Mill some people do I'm not a big sweater so I don't really sweat that much water out of me and it's not a really good approach because you just reintroduce water and you you store it again so the way it works is that like the week leading up to the show is called peak week and there's different strategies for it at that time what I was doing was water loading at the beginning of the week so I'd drink like start off at 1 gallon then I'd go to 2 gallons a day then I go to 3 gallons a day and then towards the end of the week I would I would basically sorry I'll go back out drink out water loaded beginning of the week and I would reduce as much as possible the amount of carbs I was eating because the theory is that carbs attract water you want to deplete all of your glycogen stores so all of this extra fluff and water that you have in your system you want to burn as many calories and deplete yourself as much as possible so you look really like a raisin like shriveled and flat and you can't get a pump in the gym is just miserable you're like you have carb head the carb fog so they call you can't think straight you get hangry yeah and it's so ironic because you feel terrible right but then your skin's like paper-thin exactly exactly as I tell me about this all the time like it's the guys on stage they look the best but they feel the worst yeah well you hear that all the time also you you know these guys will say and I'm sure you would mimic this that you can only maintain you you whatever that you know you get that photograph on stage and then literally like six hours later you you know when you when you finish and then you eat or you drink water then it goes away yes you can only maintain it for like the just tiniest finite amount of time exactly a beautifully put so like I said my grandpa was a airline pilot so I like to use this analogy it's like you're landing a plane so you see your target you see your runway and you choose that X amount of weeks in advance so you want to slowly lower there descend to that target so if you go you know 12 weeks out from a show just cut out all your food do as much cardio as possible you're gonna kill yourself you're gonna spin you're gonna burn out you know so it's about kind of timing everything to the exact hour of stepping on stage so you're trying to land this plane the final week would be the landing gears coming out and then touchdown would be stepping on stage so the final basically 24 hours before the show at that time what I was doing I still kind of do it now you so your water loading all week then towards the end of the week you taper off and then you completely stop drinking water the night before and what happens is that the theory is and I talked with some doctor about the kind of more of the metabolic process that goes on behind the theory and he confirms some of it that you know the more water you drink your body will release a hormone to dispel more water to kind of keep things going and if you do water loading and then you cut it off then that hormone will still be there so there's like a lag period and you'll just kind of pee out more water than you should so it's like you're draining yourself completely of water and then the body thinks well water's coming yeah Ben comment yeah so the gear is still going right so the wheel still turning and then you reintroduce carbs the day before and the day of the show so you gotta haul carb loading so guys will pound thousand grams of carbs Friday a thousand grams of carbs before they step on stage and what happens is it it basically the theory is that glycogen attracts water so it'll now that you're introducing glycogen to your muscles it's sucking all the water to your muscles so it's giving you this really good pump and this fullness right so that's crazy yeah I mean it's a really crazy concept to put your body through this amount of torture to to just basically appear a certain way for a short period of time you you train 10 weeks for 10 seconds on stage like that's how crazy bodybuilding is and yeah but but in fairness you know Usain Bolt trains years for however long it takes him to run Traylor meters it's not that different yeah that's a very good point it's just a funny concept to me still to this day it's a funny it is comical when you guys think about it yeah and then on top of that on top of that you put yourself through so much effort and you you end up paying to do these contests then you pay somebody who you've never met to judge you on how you look and there's a certain amount of self-worth that you get whenever people tell you that hey you don't look as good as that guy I'll just tell you right now so we're gonna place you at the end of the line a weird thing yeah and there's a weird you know let's let's face it there's a bizarre like strain of narcissism oh definitely no and it is a sport and I respect that and I'm super interested in hearing what you have to say about the world but it's it's distinct from other sports in a very unique way so you have to be a little extreme to be a bodybuilder like in some sense you have to be extreme as a person's personality there has to be something there in order for you to go through that same is all like elite level athletes I feel like we have this thing about us then what is that thing like is there is there a common like personality or emotional archetype that you see that drives people into this world I think a lot of it is the dream I think a lot of is that dream and then allure of being the best bodybuilder in the world having this like insanely attractive physique and something happens to that whole process to where that might be the goal initially but then a lot of people really do fall in love with it and it becomes their meditation their therapy to go to the gym and just work on yourself so I had respect to all body builders in all types and forms but I feel like we all share that commonality amongst us all right so let's go back to this first competition so you're learning all of this as you go right first competition you train for eight or nine weeks or whatever it is you get up on the board with the board shorts on yeah what happens yeah so we go through the whole process - so the tanning is first time I'm gonna spray tan my life was just like not the last yeah definitely not the last unfortunately so I get spray tan I go on stage and I do my my posing routine and I entered I think two divisions at that time it was like the novice and then the open class because I was like hey maybe I might win the novice maybe I'll get destroyed in the open so I entered two physique or two categories ended up going on stage twice so give me a little bit more stage time more experience and I did my posing routine I had like my my girlfriend at the time a couple friends in the front row so it was like a hometown show for me so they were all cheering me on so I got like a lot more confident when I was on stage and you know you got you just skipped over the fact that you got a girlfriend in Bakersfield I did okay yeah yeah and so as a show would have it I ended up winning the novice division and then won the overall for the novice division and then I in the open division I won my class in the open and then won the overall for the open so I basically swept the entire show in my divisions and I walked home that day with like six trophies like it was weird I had like six trophies a plaque and this gigantic bodybuilder trophy that was like no I think he was like this like just both arms raised and I was like this is so cool like this is all the hard work that I've been working for insist big gold plastic trophy you know and literally brand new to the sport first competition ever yeah that's crazy so so a funny thing happened after that obviously I was really happy but the question that I avoided my entire life was now the most common question that I was getting and that is what do you eat so I was forced to tell them that you know I did it all vegan I did it all plant-based so going into that nobody knew that was just your thing I didn't know who you were any no no I mean amongst the gym members made some of people may have known who I was but Baker feels a pretty small town um word gets around really quick there and you know they were really shocked I had to two impressions whenever I tell people that I did it without eating this standard typical proto they're the the prototypical bodybuilding diet which is like chicken and rice egg whites in the morning wash it down with a protein shake then you drink you're eating your salmon and asparagus so all of these things are very heavily animal-based and they're consuming a large amount of it too so the fact that somebody just won a bodybuilding competition without eating any of that is a little bit like concerning or just like disbelieving to people so on top of that it's worth noting that you know a common thing that you also hear with people that are with vegan athletes or vegetarian athletes for that matter is yeah that's fine but he only stopped eating meat like a year ago or two years ago or five years ago he made all his gains he got big when he was playing football in college when he was eating meat all the time you've never had meat in your whole life yeah but yeah a vegan thing didn't come in until the lead up to this competition so you mean for this specific event mm-hmm totally vegan for the first time yeah so basically ten weeks before that I went vegan and I basically made it really challenging for myself was like I'm gonna train for my first bodybuilding show I'm gonna train as a vegan I have no idea what to do for both but I'm gonna figure it out and so I started telling people I was like look I you're not gonna like it but I did it all vegan I did eating like at that time I was like I was relying on like um alternative meats so I'd have like veggie chicken and what else was I having just like a lot of lentils like high carb foods which was kind of going against the grain too and people were just kind of like immediately turned off and they were like yeah that's cool whatever and then they just like go about their day but then I found out that I shared it on social media like I never once made like an announcement and like hey I'm going vegan like a lot of people do now I just kind of did it behind the scenes and then I just kind of came on the scene as like a vegan and I shared like pictures and I was like you know I just won this bodybuilding competition and people say you can't build muscle without me and I did it you know so I get a lot of like positive feedback from that from people and a lot of people asking me questions online not necessarily in real life some people are interested in real life but online I figured I could probably reach some people that were like me and didn't believe it was possible so maybe I can inspire somebody and I started sharing my journey a little bit more mm-hmm and that's kind of where this whole thing began right and we're gonna get into that but just sort of back in this lead-up to this competition I'm interested in your experience training for the first time vegan like when you made that switch okay I'm not doing the dairy anymore what was the experience in the gym like did you you know where your gains truncated by that did it help your training did it hinder it like how did you kind of navigate figuring out how to make it work so the first thing I noticed whenever I cut out the dairy products was how much better I felt like from a digestion point of view I didn't experience the the bloat the gas the discomfort that I felt quite often whenever I would eat dairy products and I just figured that I was lactose-intolerant never got tested for it I just figured I wasn't really digesting it that well so that was the reason behind it so as soon as I cut that out I realized that I had this like new sense of clarity a new sense of energy in the gym and I wasn't like I wasn't getting a sore anymore so what happened was is that I could train more frequently because I wasn't as sore the next day I was like well I guess I'm gonna train again like my I feel good like I'm just gonna do it and I immediately noticed that I could train more and that therefore you train more frequently you see better results quicker so it was immediate the the feeling and I was already eating really clean mind you so it was just that next level of cleaning up the diet even more yeah that's what you hear all the time it's not that going plant-based inherently makes you a better athlete but my experience and it sounds like your experience and the experience that you hear from so many people who have made this switch is that it expedites the recovery process you know the fact that you weren't sore means the body is repairing itself more expeditiously than what you were accustomed to so in turn you can push yourself a little bit harder you can train a little bit more frequently you can go a little bit longer you're less likely to get injured or have to take a rest day or to get sick because you over trained and when you protract that over the course of a season or a number of months or even years you're gonna have serious performance gains as a result mm-hmm so yeah basically when you train for a bodybuilding show you experience all those things like cumulative ly right so I noticed the difference and I feel like touching on what you talked about earlier is that people they don't know they feel a certain way because it's just their normal right so I never knew that there was another approach that I could feel sore less which couldn't allow me to train more because I just knew that I worked out I would get sore it would take me X amount of days to recover I just think that's how it was and now this vegetarian mind you so I always feel like everybody has their own sense of like homeostasis and there normality that they kind of always linger around right so imagine all the people that are out there listening and they are consuming this diet that they've been eating their entire life and it's just normal it's normal to feel like lethargic after eating a heavy meal it's normal to feel this way the entire day to have to take a nap or that you get headaches every day or that you know you just have this irritable bowel syndrome or whatever the case is it's just normal and then you cut something out and there's like a new sense of normal and you're like whoa I feel great like this is what it's like this is what it's like to feel this way I never knew there was possible so essentially that's kind of the transition that most people experience when they go plant-based because it's like they're they're experiencing this new energy this new sense of thriving and the performance comes after like you know you have better mental clarity you can think better you're happier you're more likely to be more productive you know go longer in the gym yeah it's all good that yeah so after that first competition are you thinking like hey maybe I have a career here like the universe was you know loud and clear like hey man you're pretty good at this no so what comes next no I would never say that I thought I had a career in it at that point I thought you know what I want a local show there wasn't that many people what did I really win you know like there was no it wasn't like a serious amount of competition there so that's when I looked at other competitions like coming up and I found one in Fresno and I was like okay this is a bigger show bigger city a lot like more established competition so I was like I'm gonna go for that one mm-hmm the difference was that it was non-tested so I knew going into it that I'd be going against guys that were probably taking stuff or so it's a different it wasn't it's not this isn't the boardshorts organization this is like a different no still be still boardshorts but different Federation uh-huh so it's like just different organizers different set of contest rules regulations and testing just means they're not drug testing yeah so you know these guys are gonna be jacked up on whatever yeah I mean that's not to say everybody but I knew that that was a very strong possibility that that I'd be going up against guys that were probably at a big advantage compared to me and I entered that show I don't know how many weeks later it was but I entered that one and ended up winning the overall there and at that point right then I was like okay there is no limitation to this there's I'm not restricted by this diet I can compete against guys doesn't matter what their diet or their lifestyle is I can compete and that's what it really are still brand new yeah yeah so I have so much potential out there waiting for you yeah I think when you win at anything it makes you a little bit more inspired of course to work harder and see what else you could do and that's that's kind of where I was at when I won the second competition and how does it work does somebody come up to you after the competition and go hey like let me take you to the next level or you should do this now or let me guide you or you know how what are the mechanics of how it unfolds know so they have like different it's like a qualification series so if you competed it like a national level show sorry a national qualifier you have to place in a certain rank to be able to compete at the next level which is all the winners so that's the national show and then the national show if you win a certain rank normally its first or second in your class then you get awarded a pro card so that's kind of like the progression there it's almost like going from like the high school to college to the pros and after I won that second show I was like man I I'm qualified there's a national show next year I think I can I think I can compete uh-huh so that was about my new bill right so then what happens there so I think like maybe a year and a half later I did a couple other shows and won some I got second and some and I was still qualified for the national show and then that's when I was like okay if like what's my goal here I was like if I can prove because I it goes in stages right first people say you can't build muscle without me mm-hmm then people say you can't win a bodybuilding show without me I did both of those people say well you can't compete against the pros and then it is like that bar keeps getting set a little bit further like okay well this floral because the cognitive dissonance is so is so deep that no matter how many times you continue to defy it that the goalposts just keep moving they've got a point to some other reason that that affirms their worldview exactly so I'm like to this point I was so kind of like watch me just watch me right so that was the drive that was not right I was coming from yeah in a sense and you start sharing this stuff on social media so now this is becoming like a public thing yeah so then I started like waving this flag and I was like hey I'm doing it this way like there's a different approach that I didn't know existed like I found that the secret sauce so those who were interested I want to learn more about it you know come follow because I'll be posting about it a lot more and following my journey and that's where the whole social media aspect started a kind of snowballing and getting a little bit more well-known within that community and you know it's like I said a year and a half later Here I am going into my first national show and it's the biggest show of them all in Las Vegas and I don't know how many guys there are per class but essentially each there's like six or seven high classes each one of the height classes is larger than most of the local cumulative amount of people mm-hmm so there's more people in a high class and there isn't a total competition right and a local level so and you're in the speedo now no no still in the bore short really yes same same division just different Federation and you're supposed to see the quads they don't they don't judge on this one so they're different there's different levels of bodybuilding goes like super heavyweight then like heavyweight and then like different weight classes and they go like classic physique which is like kind of like there's height and weight limitations then they go men's physique which is one that I'm in and it's more like more the cover model aesthetic kind of not so massive guys not like mr. Olympia no there is a do can't compete to be mr. Olympia but in that division but not like guys like Phil Heath that are just just huge like 250 pounds on stage dry and so there I am going to my first contest and I ended up winning my class so that meant I was award I was going to be awarded my pro card and I walked off stage at that point and I got like super just like emotional like I had reached my goal I became a professional athlete and it was it was just like overwhelming so I stepped off stage and I was just like wow I did it like I really did it and I was just thinking in my head I was like this is gonna do so much good for everything I represent because now people can point to somebody and say hey you can be a pro because that guy did it you know you can compete against elite level bodybuilders because that guy did it and that was kind of my like one of my reasons for doing it I love bodybuilding and everything else but it becomes much easier to immerse yourself in work and sacrifice whenever you're doing it for something beyond yourself okay because bodybuilding is a very very vain sport you have to be have to be selfish you have to be vain because the only way you can get to that level is by only focusing on one thing you know and that's building up your physique so the fact that I was doing it or I had this kind of like team behind me and I was representing them so I felt like I couldn't let them down now so I had to work hard I had to stick to everything and now that I went pro I was like we made it guy was just me making it was everybody making it and that's kind of where I like I decided like yeah now I'm really gonna be vocal about it because now you can't tell me [ __ ] because now I'm a pro so what's your Excuse now like what more do I have to prove and then now the the argument now the argument is like yeah but you can't make it to Olympia like all right watch me just watch me so give me some time that's what's next that's what's next and how big is that leap from what you've accomplished to Olympia not much not much so they changed up the the qualification for Olympia now but it was previously if you won an overall at an Olympia qualifier which is normally like a big pro show then you automatically get to go to Olympia like you won first and if you on that no I haven't done that yet but if you get second third or fourth fifth you get a series of points and at the end of the year the guys with the most points get invited so now since there's so many guys that are competing again they went to a point system so you have to compete year-round now and place in the top five consistently to get the most points by the end of the year and they invite the top thirty guys I stopped forty guys to to Olympia I see so you're now training for various events and trying to accumulate those points yeah yeah essentially so how how far or close are you to that so this year wasn't what I wanted to be there was a couple things happened between 2017 and 2018 so I moved from Bakersfield to Long Beach in California basically I went through this self awakening I was like I can't live here anymore like it's I'm capping out I'm like limiting I was in a bad relationship and I need to get out so I I went on a trip to Bali and just had this like kind of like self aligning moment where I was like what am i doing like I only live once why am I wasting my time slaving away for something that I'm just not bringing me any happiness or joy so I went back home went to my boss's office that first thing I was like look you need to find another place for me in this company or I need some time off to go interview for other companies elsewhere because I just can't do it anymore he was like don't quit there's a spot for you in Long Beach so as I'm transferring to Long Beach thought that would solve my problems as far as being unhappy with a job because it was a new location it wasn't close to LA all my friends a lot more to do I worked there for five months and I was more miserable than ever because now I was garnering a lot more attention on social media and seeing like firsthand the impact that I was making to the people that I was trying to reach and I remember I went to an event in London and I gave a speech in front of I don't know how many people 500 people something like that and afterwards a guy came up to me and said that I helped save his mom's life and I was like how's that and he goes well you were the reason that I went vegan and my mom was a type-2 diabetic she couldn't get out of the bed and she saw how I was surviving and thriving on a vegan diet so she was willing to try it and since she went plant-based she's able to move around she like cured a lot of her her illnesses and I completely think that you helped save her life and it like brought me to tears not just like still gives me like going now and I was like what am i doing like why am I wasting 910 hours a day for something that I hate and technically you're a professional athlete yeah and like I didn't tell anybody at work like in Bakersfield people knew at in Long Beach I didn't tell anybody because I didn't want them to know and I was like so they kind of like going to this is a half a saw like go to events and like London and give speeches right without evolution well no that one was London veg fest that was London veg fest so like Here I am going to London travel different countries giving speeches about something I'm so passionate about and then coming home talking about happiness and talking about living your dream and I come home and living a nightmare so I kid I went to the office that Monday there was a 6:30 meeting and we start talking on the same [ __ ] corroding pipe compliance different projects and I I've felt this like I've never felt this before like such a state of claustrophobia that everything was like closing in around me and I had to like get up and leave the room and I knew that as soon as yeah panic attack yeah I started like hyperventilating and as soon as the meeting was done didn't go back in the meeting as soon as the meeting was over I went to my boss's office close the door and I was like I'm putting in my resignation like this is my last two weeks or week or something and he was like whoa like where's this coming from so so he was like you know what are you gonna do and I'll never forget this conversation like he's a pretty level-headed guy I try to explain to him that I have like you know this passion for spreading awareness about veganism I'm a bodybuilder he's like yeah I figured you were like something and I explained it to him and he goes he goes so you're quitting to become a vegan and I'd go perfect I go I'm already like in a sense yes a professional vegan a professional vegan yeah to talk about vegan professionally and yeah I didn't expect him to understand and he was like well you know congrats to you you know he was really receptive of it and I'd only been working there a couple months and he was like you got bigger balls than I do cuz you know I got like a family to feed and all this stuff so I can't make that jump but props to you for following your heart and following a dream then like it's a good man yeah you off with well wishes oh yeah we haven't we had a great relationship and great guy and everything and I really appreciate that conversation too but then it's like alright well like now how am I gonna make this work yeah yeah exactly so so I mean I'm going back to the London thing I felt like I was doing a disservice to the community and to so many other things by not fully investing myself into like my purpose that I felt like I had to and that was the main reason why I quit my job I you know I was like you know what I'll figure it out yeah I'm giving up like a really well-paying job like six figures at 23 you know so I'll make it work because money's not everything you know I have a ton of money in the bank account or I did whenever I was like working there sounds like I have a lot of money in a bank account what happiness is brung me nothing so but when I'm truly happy money doesn't matter because it's like I'm having a sense of fulfillment and I'm helping people and that's what I really it's your version of renunciation in the modern world yeah you know like that that that's what ever compelled your mom it's almost like that same trigger came up for you as I came full circle yeah is what happened I thought that all these things would bring me happiness you know having a title having a well-paying job having a condo on the beach you know the material things I thought it would bring me happiness but you know the more you work for it the more you become a slave to it and after I kind of renounced it and just kind of sat back and I was like immediately had like regret I was like what the hell did I just do right like I just [ __ ] this up that's gonna happen now yeah and well that and there's that like projection that perhaps some people have that they're placing on you like oh well he's a pro like he's getting paid in like like their sponsors and there's all this there's the reality versus the imagined reality that perhaps your social media following might have projected upon you yeah people have this idea that when you cam a professional bodybuilder the opportunity just come reining in and you get paychecks left and right like you don't get paid like you pay you pay them you pay them like it they put it this way if you win a bodybuilding show in my division you might get two to three thousand dollars to win first place how much does it cost you to go to Denver pay for a hotel room pay for a flight pay for all the meals like you break even like even though you might win a small purse you break even so people thinking that they're gonna become super rich from being a pro bodybuilder it's like you're going in it for the wrong reasons I'll tell you right now you got to find something else to go in it for like maybe self-satisfaction or whatever but yeah I think I I did have some sponsors at that point and that was kind of what was like sustaining me economically and I just knew that whatever I did I was gonna do it fully 100% and now I wasn't jumping like playing this teeter-totter game where I was like half in half out and I was just gonna see where where it would take me and that's kind of where I'm at now mm-hmm yeah so now you got you started the Generation V podcast and you do like online coaching programs right is that like the main source of revenue for you at the moment or how are you how are you making it work so yeah I mean you know you're like you're in social media as well there's many different ways to make money as a social-media influencer you can do it by endorsement deals you can do it by sponsorships you can do it by one-off posts you can do it there's a million different ways I had some money in the bank and I knew I wanted to start something and something that was my own be my own boss because I never really sat well with having a boss telling me something to do so I decided that you know I can train people because I'm a you know I know the process and the system on how to make it work because I'm like other people before but I never had time to train somebody when I was working as an engineer so now I'm at this crossroads and I'm like okay do I want to become a personal trainer like no because like you can train maybe nine ten people a day and then you're capped out and I was like it doesn't make much sense so I figured that I wanted like my goal has always been big like I want to reach a lot of people and have the biggest impact possible so as a universe would have it I got connected with another guy and he's like a software engineer and we put together a system to where we could scale coaching and help a lot of people at once become vegan or try you know go plant-based and research fitness goals and we were trying to come up with a name for it we didn't like any of the names and we have all these names on a paper piece of paper and he's like into web design and SEO search engine and everything so he's like what about what about this one I was like yeah right we'll never get that and it was called vegan Fitness comm and I was like that'd be beautiful but there's got to be 30 40 K at least and turns out he did a little search and shows who owns it and it was one of our good friends oh really that on that on the domain name I wasn't doing it wasn't sitting on it yeah just redirecting it to something else and he we told him we wanted to do he's also very philanthropic and all about the movement progressing the movement had big plans for it and just gave it to us at a very homey discount and that's amazing and we ended up with vegan Fitness comm and so now we're doing online coaching where we have really big plans for it as well we have we want it to be basically nutritionfacts.org meets bodybuilding.com and we want to reach the younger demographic because that's the generation that's gonna make the biggest impact moving forward and if we can convince young guys especially that being vegan is cool you know you can build muscle you can get the girls you can look a certain way you can perform as an athlete even better then we then we've really tapped into the the change right so it's about making vegan cool and approachable and doctors do such a good job of breaking down the science the evidence behind it but let's face it a 20 year old doesn't give a [ __ ] about heart disease thank you dude I'm 20 I'm invincible I could jump off this building and punch you in the face and nothing's gonna happen to me right so we want to appeal to that generation and say hey you know yeah you get all these extra long-term benefits but right now you can be a better athlete you can look better perform better and yeah we're just we're trying to tap into that demographic and make it cool that's the keys to the kingdom and what is your sense of like where we're at right now in terms of influencing that demographic reading close we're getting close I think with enough particularly athletes I feel like they have a lot more influence than other people doesn't matter if a doctor saying it to you yeah you know you eat this way you become healthier but if Kobe Bryant walks up to he's like you know you're a basketball player you love him you want to be the next Kobe Bryant he's like hey you know if you do this you could you could be me if that dude is gonna change that day right so we kind of have that mentality that approach to convincing the younger generation to give it a try not not to go fully plant-based just keep it a try you know I'll convince you to try it the diet will convince you to stick with it give it two weeks give it three weeks you know learn from the experts learn the reasons how to do it or learn the process how to do it and then the rest will just work itself out well like I said at the outset I mean you're the perfect you're the perfect person to be doing this you know you have the physique you have the understanding you have the accolades you're handsome dude you're jacked you know you're photogenic like you've got you have all the qualities to be able to penetrate that sector of the population and really shift culture in a huge way like I think it's exciting it's it's really exciting and that's kind of where it's a big responsibility to help it's gotta be that link or that bridge between mainstream and subculture but I'm willing to give it a try I'm gonna take it on and you know it's I think you mentioned Muscle & Fitness yeah how did that how did that cover come together for you man I don't even know I don't even know like I had shot for muscle and fitness before after Pro and I was like [ __ ] yeah like I'm gonna be a muscle and fitness like it was right after I went pro like the week after and I did this like eight hour shoot and with one of the best Fitness photographers in the game and it was like a agency that contacted me to do the shoot they're like yeah we like your look would you be interested in saying hell yeah we'll be so I did the shoot like three months four months later the issue comes out and I'm like dude I'm gonna be in it like there's gonna be pictures of me and muscle and fitness and you know maybe they'll talk about me being vegan or something I open up the article not even my name was mentioned like they even gave me credit for the for my name and I was like yeah yeah they just used you first I was just like a stock photo like it was like a whole program like it was like it was like a seven page spread so I was like all over this this edition and not even like one mention of my name at lea gave that they gave the hairdresser credit they didn't give me credit and I was like happy but like I had people message me maybe LaHaye they don't mention your name or anything and I was like what's me you know you can see me it's me and so that happened 2016 and then ironically somebody contacted me from Muscle & Fitness again and we're like hey we know you did a shoot with this guy John 16 wondering if you'd be interested in doing another shoot like as a model for a program that was you know they designed and I was like yeah of course I'd love to I was like talking with the editor and I was like you know I would also like to talk about this thing that I have going on here and you know I'm like one of the only I'm the only male IFBB professional bodybuilder in my division and I'm kind of helping carry the torch to show people what's possible without eating meat I'd love to talk about that and he was like uh yeah let me let me see what my like editor-in-chief says turns out the editor-in-chief or somebody up there was vegan and they're like run it really a muscle in fitness yeah they were like run it so the guy calls me and we do like a pretty long interview over the phone didn't think anything of it was gonna be like a little sub article or something and then the day comes with a photo shoot and again we shoot for like nine ten hours he's it's grueling to do one of those photoshoots I don't how many you've done but oh man it's not I've done I've done let me count zero body well I think this it's exhaust but here's one thing I will I will tell a funny story like I have I have shot with photographers that have shot bodybuilders like that have shot for muscle and fitness and I said so so tell me how that works you know there and they go through the whole thing like here you gotta like you know flex your stomach and like exhale all your air and like you know there's a whole thing to like make you look super epic right yeah yeah I mean we spent we spent an hour at least setting up lighting right he's like stand there shadows yes just fan there I think it's like you know hold the weight he's like stop when you get down and really show me some effort cool takes like 10 photos you do it again he looks at the he looks at the screen he's like not got to do it again your hairs your hairs off so you do it again do it again do it again do it again next thing you know 50 pounds feels like 300 pounds and you're like and on top that you have to keep like a you know somewhat of a decent face and contract muscles and be very conscious of everything ice make sure that every muscle you have is flexing yeah yeah so do that for eight hours for ten different exercises of 15 different exercises and at the shoot he was like oh we're gonna do a cover try and I was like what's that and he's like we're gonna try and shoot like maybe they'll take it for a cover I was like yeah okay well we'll go ahead and do it so we shot for the cover and that was that that was that it was like a week before I did the armor classic in March and I was really happy with the photo shoot because I was seen the pictures and I was like it's awesome it looks great and that was last thing I heard and he was like yeah the additional probably come out like you know a couple of months later and you know as luck would have it I was just sitting on the couch one morning and a friend of my another pro bodybuilder sends me a DM and it's a it's the cover of his muscle and Fitness's it's me on the cover and I'm like where did you get this and he's like dude I just got an email from them talking about how Muscle & Fitness is merging with another magazine company and you were on the cover and I was like again that sense of like holy crap like what just happened I got no notification whatsoever they didn't tell me I even told you never even toe and after that I was just like completely awestruck and didn't believe it was real like it's still surreal to me too and and on the front page it says something about Annie my Delgado vegan bodybuilding tips or something like that so even mentioned veganism on the cover of muscle and fit yeah that's a paradigm shift that's like a cultural moment it's a huge man and like I don't know I didn't do the research and go back to all their covers and everything I don't know if there's been a vegan athlete on it before but just for them to even mention the fact that you know the word vegan on the cover is a huge win for the entire vegan movement and then I get if I finally get my hands on a copy I open it up it's a ten-page spread first page says meatless muscle and it's got like a cow with like an X through it it talks about my whole story and how I've never eaten meat and how you don't need me to build muscle and I'm a pro bodybuilder and just goes through my whole story what we just talked about and it was just such a yeah such a like a fork in the road like a shift like a man if Muslim Fitness is catching on us is huge did it change things for you or what was the reaction to that article so the reaction is really positive online I asked all my my followers to like go buy a copy first because I understand how capitalism works you know if that copy sells more than the rest of the copies chances are they'll feature another vegan on the cover in the future or if we request more information on vegan athletes then they'll feature them because there's a demand for it so I convinced all my followers say go buy a copy take a picture with it tag me tag Muscle & Fitness let them know that we as a movement support each other and we want it and it was it was overwhelming how many photos dm's everything I got from that and since then they translated it into different languages as well so it's been it like I think right now it's in Germany as the cover it's in France it's in Turkey it's in Japan all these different countries and it's the same article just translated so like the whole world got exposure to the possibilities of a vegan diet that's amazing man super cool well let's uh let's bust a few myths here like I'm interested in how your nutrition has evolved and how it stands in contrast to kind of conventional wisdom about what a bodybuilder should eat right and kind of where you started and how its morphed over time into whatever it is now yes so the nutrition program that I originally started on was really reliant on kind of processed alternative needs yeah alternative meats and over the last like year maybe a year and a half I kind of started you know eliminating those and introducing more Whole Foods more less processed high protein foods like tofu and tempeh edamame some I don't I don't do seitan just because I I don't know it gives me heartburn and then plant-based protein shakes and a lot of beans a lot of less specific type that you like or for what for the protein powders yeah I'm sponsored by a brand right now and I like it and yeah there's many out there like I don't want this to be a plug but like there's just many other plant-based alternatives out there for I mean that you can substitute easily and has just as much protein probably got a little bit better digestibility from like a comfort level so a lot of people deal with that same discomfort that I had when they they drank whey protein shakes and a lot of people don't experience that when they go to a plant-based shake right and what is the relationship to protein in general and how is that kind of evolved for you like what is what's the conventional wisdom where did you start with it where are you at with it now like really specifically because this is I mean it's like number one it's the protein question right like we ought to answer this question yeah no I'd be glad to so originally I was one of those people thinking that you know you had to consume more protein and that would equate to more muscle more gains then I realized that you know everything I read from like a clinical study point of view not necessarily bodybuilding.com nothing against them they have a lot of great information I'll read from like a lot of other influencers or bodybuilders they go with like the more as better approach so you know 2 grams 2 to 3 grams sometimes every pound of every pound of weight so if I was 180 pounds I would need 360 grams of protein you know at least so that's a lot for a vegan that's a that's a lot a lot because you know to get that much protein through plants you got to eat a lot of volume so I started looking at it and just like it didn't make sense to me I was like everything I read said like there was like an optimal point and anything above that didn't really work to your benefit you know you might have extra calories but your body kind of just like urinates the extra nitrogen and you can't really use it like there's a limiting factor there so I go by lean body mass so just because somebody's 200 pounds doesn't need you don't need to consider them 200 pounds of muscle you know we have body fat so you don't need to feed the body fat you can feed the muscle so I always go by I calculate my lean body mass which is your total mass - your body fat percentage so if I weighed 200 pounds and I was 10 percent body fat then I would my lean body mass would be 180 I'm your lady granddaughter so then there's even another fraction that is like 0.8 to 0.9 times that and that's the number that I go by right which is that's really the like USDA recommendation right or it's it's like 0.7 grams per kilogram I think is what they recommend yeah yeah so I'm not sure exactly what it what it translates to in kilograms I always go by pounds right me too yeah unfortunately were American and I get this asked this question asked so much online and I give the answer in pounds and they're like well okay I guess I'll go convert it but but all right so so so I just put it like flat out like I weigh a hundred and eighty pounds right now I keep my protein at like a hundred and fifty grams uh-huh whether in bulking shredding 150 still long maybe yeah maybe a hundred and like sixty like somewhere around there so that's a typical bodybuilder is taking in about twice that yeah now more than twice that because I go by lean body mass so a lot of people calculate it by just total mass uh-huh and how did you arrive at that and why have you decided that that's what's optimal for you so there's there's a clinical study out there that references I don't know the reference the exact reference but there's quite a few out there that show that you know after a certain point it doesn't benefit you anymore so I figured why not like find out where that like I'll use that as a reference and just kind of find out what works best for me so like I said I do like a lot of data analysis tracking and optimization so there's like certain body scans you can do to track like how much your total mass is and how much of that is muscle mass so when you're in a deficit like a caloric deficit trying to lead up to a show means you have to eat less than what your maintenance calories are so you're gonna lose weight so you want to do that as optimal as possible because you don't want to sacrifice the hard-earned muscle that you just spent the offseason trying to gain so it doesn't make sense to build up two pounds of muscle just to lose two pounds of muscle before a show so there's there's a balance point there that you have to kind of hover around and like different scans like DEXA scans will tell you how much muscle mass you have in body scans measures like resistance muscle impedance or impedance and we'll translate that to how much muscle mass you have on your body what your bone density is so I track that and basically if I'm losing more muscle than what I want as I'm cutting down for a show I'll kind of like increase my my protein a little bit because that's not the goal like I want to maintain that muscle and like hold on to it and lose the body fat so I just kind of use that as kind of like nutrition is different for everybody I can tell you exactly my number somebody out there can go follow it they won't see the same results because everybody responds differently so that's kind of where I just use you know trial and error right gotcha and what is the relationship between sourcing your protein from whole foods versus supplements supplements are always going to be a little bit more processed so different doctors out there - Colin Campbell for one of them will tell you that you know when it's more processed an isolate in its isolated form your body doesn't necessarily absorb it as efficiently so it's always better to get the whole food source because it contains other chemicals that will help your body absorb that that vitamin or mineral or whatever so that's kind of where it led me to maybe I'll just go more whole food plant-based and see if if I see a difference and it's the same so I just kind of shifted all my like like more alternative meat style of nutrition to more whole food plant-based so that just means that I have to eat more carbs more beans more lentils all this stuff and I love eating a little bit more tofu and tempeh which I love as well and you see the same results right and you're in a sport that is terrified of carbs yeah so what's the what's the relationship to carbs and how do you you know think about the the low carb no carb craze and you know how there's a lot of talk about ketogenic diets and all different kinds of new ways of avoiding carbohydrates in your diet as a means of optimizing performance yeah I mean just from like a basic nutrition point of view like carbs or our energy source right so it doesn't really make sense to cut those all out there are times when you can manipulate carbs to your advantage but you don't have to like you don't have to cut out carbs like very much so people in the fitness industry or carbon phobic so they refuse it's like anything that says carbs in it they're like nah I can't touch it and anything has protein in it they're like I'll give me more so my approach is like first like optimize how much protein you need right figure that out first not people don't even have any clue they say you're vegan but what about wood like where do you get your protein how do you get enough protein and I ask them like huh how much do I need and they're like and how do you find out how much you need protein yeah how would you optimize that for yourself like if someone's listening to this they're fit they go to the gym whatever like how would they figure that out yeah I just kind of explained it so like the figure out your total mass figure out your body fat percentage or an estimated body fat percentage calculate your lean body mass and then get about point eight to 0.9 times that so if you a you know if you have a hundred pounds of lean body mass get about 80 to 90 grams of protein and just kind of use that as like a reference like you something it's not the perfect solution because it's way around like within that scale and see yeah yeah exactly and then the next thing you can do is calculate your fat percentage so normally I get about I don't maybe 20 25 percent of calories from fat and then the rest I just leave two carbs so that leaves me with like 50 to 60% of my diet comes from carbs and when you say car I mean carbs can be anything right carbs can be coca-cola and potato chips right so you say car if you're talking about what specifically I'm talking about like whole food carbs not highly processed sugary white bread or like I stay away from all that I don't even include oil into my diet either pretty cleaned I eat a lot of potatoes a lot of beans lentils legumes rice oatmeal cereals granola all those things contain carbs a lot a lot of green veggies like a lot like people like you can only see my fridge I go through like a 10 ounce bag of shredded cabbage like I eat like three or four of those a day just because like I use that as like a foundation for like my Big Buddha bowls that I make so I eat quite a bit of like green veggies too so you're getting a lot of micronutrients which help your body recover quicker right so the carbs that you're consuming or whole food plant-based and they contain other additional properties that help you perform better right and what about supplements other than protein so my supplement protocol is pretty straightforward I'm a skeptic when it comes to a lot of supplements I don't believe that people people put too much trust in marketing and not enough investigation in the evidence well it's a multi-billion dollar industry that that is completely unregulated yeah and preys on people's fears and lack of understanding and knowledge I think that's kind of how we came to this point right of like the protein myth in the car befo BIA and all these things so it's like the more they can push something to for you to consume or to buy then the better it is for them but they're not necessarily looking out for your your hell they're looking out for their pockets so I'm a big skeptic when it comes to anything I'll just like you tell me something I'll take it at face value then I'll go take a look and see what I can find for myself like trust but verify essentially and I was like a huge engineering thing that everybody used to say trust but verify dude like measure twice and cut once right that kind of thing so same thing goes with supplements there are certain supplements out there that work some that are complete phony [ __ ] you're just buying expensive urine as a doctor con would say you know you ingest all the supplements and all you're doing is pissing it out and I so I take protein I'll take B CAS I'll take vitamin d3 PCAs in addition to protein yeah what are those doing for you so basically DCA's for those that are listening or like essential amino acids so some of them we get from our diet some of them we have to consume through food and if you take BCA's during your workout you can prevent like if you completely deplete yourself from your energy source so normal that happens like I know different depends on your intensity but if you run out of fuel you'll start pulling energy from elsewhere so most the time that comes from muscle so if you have BCA's in your system when you workout or when you do something that requires a lot of endurance then it can prevent that a little bit so that's why I take BCA is not necessarily because I'm trying to build muscle I'm just trying to maintain what I already have with that and I'll take d3 which I think everybody should take d3 if you go get a blood test you're probably a little bit deficient in a lot of people probably the majority of people are vitamin D deficient yeah same thing with b12 so I take b12 as well which we can't really get in a lot large quantity from plant foods and I take DHA and EPA mm-hmm so that's more of your long long chain fatty acids right and there are those from like an algae source yeah yeah they're they're derived from algae so those are like my four or five main things I take creatine as like every now and then creatine is another lake synthesized supplement doesn't come from animals it's very easily available as cheap and the science backs up its claims I mean don't expect to be mr. Olympia by taking creatine but it does work so it will help with performance help with Durin's strength explosiveness that type of thing so I'll take a cake occasionally creatine but yeah is there a harm to taking that long-term honestly I don't know I think everything in moderation that's like the key when you do anything it's like you don't want to rely on anything it's like even like I'll go up I'll go like a week or so without taking any protein shakes I'll take a look at my diet and see what I can include that I haven't been eating that I've been getting from like a multivitamin you know so it's like it's about balance are you doing do you do regular blood work yeah yeah I do I do so I think that's another thing that most people don't do they they say that you know they feel crappy and they blame it on all these other factors but they don't necessarily know why they're feeling crappy and getting blood work is one of the most right easy ways to identify what's wrong what's going on right yeah so we referenced earlier that the more successful you get and every kind of hurdle that you overcome you know in your mind makes you makes you more bulletproof to you know the the voice of dissent but also there's going to be the people who are like yeah but yeah but yeah but right so I can't let you go without asking about the steroids because you're in a culture in which that is that's look it's ubiquitous right so I'm sure there are people out there like well he's not eating animal products but he's but he's doing steroids right so where do you come down on all of this there's there's a lot of people say that there's videos about it there's like I mean you name it there's articles there's like it's the Internet right remember that so just remember that everything on the internet isn't true you're right you don't know who wrote it so it's it's a sad truth that society has set the bar so low about what's possible and what's not so I get accused of it daily you know I even I think I blocked the word on my Instagram because it was just like every other comment was that and I was like I'm sick of hearing it you know not here to defend myself to anybody I'm here to talk about the benefits of this diet you know I mean like if you don't believe me it's not my job to convince you then like I'll just keep on living my life and talking about what I want to talk about but the the issue there is that people have set the bar so though about what's possible and what's not possible naturally and they think that they are doing like justice by accusing somebody of taking steroids and don't get me wrong a lot of guys do a lot of guys that are listening probably don't know that a lot of guys they know we're doing steroids because just because you do steroids doesn't mean that you're gonna blow up like it's always about the hard work it's always about the diet it's always about sacrifice and effort right supplementation all this other crap is it accounts for this much if you don't have this huge pyramid you can't get like this is the amount that supplements accounts for so that bar has been set so low and people are so easily accusing other people of doing it that it perpetuates that thought and the person but below that reading saying like oh yeah you only got this way because of steroids like now and that person thinks that that is the only way that you can get that way but they've never tried it they don't know their limitations like how could you possibly know your limitations if you never pushed yourself to your limitations and know how far that bar really is and I'm the type of guy like I pride myself on work I pride myself on work ethic I pride myself on optimizing things it's like I'm very analytical data-driven so I find out what works and I apply it and there's so much room for growth when you optimize your nutrition and you optimize your your exercise protocol your exercise programs so many people don't do that they think that they're gonna take a magic pill take magic juice or whatever and they can get there without doing all the hard work that comes before it so my answer is like it's really easy to judge somebody based off of a photo or one picture you don't know me you know you don't know where I come from you could look at me and never ever assume that I'm a white art and Tinian Hindu right like you don't know my story so how could somebody possibly know someone from one photo or one video when 99% of the time that person doesn't even know who they are right so it's like I've accepted it like I've just come to terms with it it's an argument I'll never win doesn't matter what I you will never convince anybody but it's just a sad reality that these people think it's impossible but they've already exposed the limitations of their own mindset because they don't believe it's possible for them so it definitely can't be possible for anybody else well it's certainly more comfortable to dismiss someone like yourself as a cheater because then it makes it easier to you for you to feel okay about not putting yourself out there you know I mean like and that's unfortunately a human quality it is it is uh yeah and you know I I think it's it's a weird thing because you are in a sport where like it's rife with that and you see these guys that have these physiques that you just know it's just it's it's perhaps not physically possible for them to look that way without some kind of enhancement I see pictures of you and you look unbelievable but it's not like otherworldly mm-hmm like it looks like it's within the realm of possibility you know what I mean like it's different from some of those other guys so you know III I believe you I take you at face value with that and I trust that you're you're telling me the truth and I appreciate your willingness to talk about it because it's got to be a sensitive thing for you especially when you make this decision to put yourself out on social media and you have this cause that you believe in and you're trying to kind of expand people's consciousness and awareness and then you know you have to be on the receiving end of that but I guess that's look it just goes with the territory and a part of this world and that's just part of it as well mm-hmm it's understandable to like I don't get mad I used to get mad because I was like hey come on like I did it the right way like you're trying to detract or slander my name or and say that it's like I'm a cheater or whatever else and like nothing against guys who do I know so many guys who do it and great people and it's just like me and my personal values this is like I don't want to sacrifice my long-term health for short-term goals short-term benefits like that's logically one of the reasons why I'm vegan you know because I'm looking ahead to the future like I want to live a long healthy life then spend time with my grandchildren have like be able to be active when I'm that age not be relying on all kind of prescriptions and everything so yeah who is that guy the bodybuilder youtuber guy that he just passed away rich Piana piano I don't know much about that story but he died of a heart attack or something like that or heart fell or was it drugs or was it I don't know I don't know I met him a couple times and he was actually like a really cool guy like nothing against anything his personal choices or his personal choices I don't know exactly what happened there but you can't help but wonder if that played a part you know to it so like I said if there's any guys out there that are considering do it just know that there's so much more room for you to optimize and different avenues like in approaches you haven't tried yet so just don't go resort to that you know because you worked out for a week and you didn't see any results like you haven't working out for like ten years you know and you only see you only have met me in my path in life at this moment but you didn't see me flanked way back when when I was just like you you know it takes time but anything that's like worth it takes time and if you're passionate about it you can sustain it you know you can get there just taste how bad do you want it most people want it but they don't want to give up drinking you know they say oh I work out I go to the gym I eat right but then you take a diet of like a deeper look and they're out partying every weekend you know they they're not willing to put into work so how are your parents doing with all this where are they they're not part they're not on the community more right no they don't live actually they're going back so so they they live in New Orleans right across the street from the temple in New Orleans yeah and they actually bought land back in Mississippi so they're going back they're going back Wow yeah yeah they went they went full circle too because and they like left it and now they're like getting older they want to go back and just live like a peaceful life minimalistic and just yeah yes and what do they think of this this whole world that you're in they they they all they're like my number one fan you know they don't understand it as I don't expect them to I try to keep my mom in the loop as much as possible and she's all like great honey like you're doing so many amazing things and I love her for it like she doesn't have to know like all I just need her support that's the only thing I need but they they embrace it and they're very proud of Who I am and especially now the fact that I'm like being more vocal about my background because that's something that they really wanted to instill in me so now the fact that I'm talking about it more openly on the show like this they're just gonna eat it up and it's cool how you've taken what you intuitive like what you learned as a young person you know as part of that community and and made it your own in a different way and and now you're translating it or sort of conveying the ethos like the spirit of all of those values are being channeled in a modern way that can connect with a young audience mm-hmm it's not couched in Hinduism or hymns or any of these things it's couched in things that are relatable to you know an 18 year old kid who just wants to you know go to the gym and get stronger and didn't realize when he clicked on your video or looked at your Instagram that he's also going to get blasted with the spiritual message but you do it in a very graceful like roundabout way where it doesn't it doesn't feel like that that's what's happening but you're kind of elevating awareness well you're providing these people with what they think they want on a surface level if that makes sense you are 100 percent right like I'm very I guess mindful of how I talk about certain things especially when it comes to spirituality comes a any ethical conversation anything about politics I mean they're all very touchy subjects for people so I wanted to appeal to the younger generation and just develop a new sense of consciousness because I feel like certain things come in different phases right if you developed a consciousness first like I had then it's very easy to follow this lifestyle but if you come into it for another reason maybe the more vanity perspective then eventually those thoughts kind of come over time so what do you mean like we're all where I am I doing this well we're all connected with our actions and our thoughts right one directly affects the other so initially people might think that hey I need meat I need it to look good that's just the way it is right I need to I don't like killing animals and stuff like that but it's just the way it is so then I keep living that life but if you come into it and just say hey I'll just change my actions I will just stop eating meat just to look good then the thoughts start to develop because they're directly related to each other and say maybe I didn't need it and wait a minute why is it this way and they develop a new sense of consciousness and then like the back of funny stories like some of these guys that you would never ever ever in a million years consider them to be like ever try going vegan some of those guys are like posting like animal rights videos and stuff nowadays so it's like guys back in from the gym in Bakersfield yeah a couple of them yeah so it's like wow like I never pushed that on anybody you know I just pushed the health message just because I feel like that's the foot in the door that's most like a common denominator across the board that people want to look better and feel better this is your way like this is an approach you know may becoming trendy now it's been around for a while but it may become more mainstream now but it's been around for a long time so if you try it you know maybe the consciousness will develop over time and I'm not saying that people aren't conscious I'm just saying they don't know what they don't know mm-hmm what do you think is the biggest myth or misunderstanding about you and about bodybuilding in general based upon what you've learned man I can I can be a pretty misunderstood person yeah from like people not yet I think we don't correct well we talked about the steroid thing but yeah there's other things I mean like I still expect that after this episode I mean as I've done yeah many interviews and stuff and like I'll expect it till the day I stop doing this but I don't know I mean it goes by anything just maybe just don't judge a book by its cover you know like I may come across as a person that's vain or post shirtless photos and whatever whatever but it's all a strategy to get you to read a caption that maybe change your life to help you you know so it's like if you know there's so many people out there that are willing to judge other people and it's just like I come from a big place of judgment so it's really easy for me to look past it and deflect it and just kind of understand that's how people are they journey like you have a lifetime of it yeah being judged yeah this is nothing yeah so it's almost like I was groomed for this you know to be like stand strong and my beliefs and everything and be a beacon of light for people and just be willing to take the shots you know but it's about understanding people as well and just understanding that people judge something they don't know same way that I was judged when I was a little kid and the way I was raised and it's okay you know you just have to approach them and help them understand so that's what I'm trying to do I'm not trying to convince anybody to go vegan like because I want them to go vegan or anything like that it's like I'm just trying to help you like I just want you to feel as good as I feel mm-hmm you know and if you know if you put all this stuff aside as ego and these like paradigms then maybe you can experience a different version of life that you never anticipated so it's just where I'm at yeah man I think that's a good place to wrap it up how much are you uh how much are you training right now I train daily like I said it's mine that's my meditation if I heard you say somewhere like 45 minutes in the gym right like I have this decision like I used to live on marine Street around the corner from Gold's Gym and I would go to Gold's Gym and then you know over I've lived in Los Angeles like 20 years and every Blue Moon I'll pop in over there and it's like the same guys it's 9:00 to 5:00 it is the same people I've been going there for 30 years and they look the same and they're litter it's like they check in in the morning and they're there they're there like all day long yeah the same like sort of aging bodybuilder crew yeah female bodybuilders and the like I always say it's like a mix between like a prison yard and a porn set you know but then when I heard you say like look if you can't get it done in 45 minutes like you're not focused essentially it's what it has like even when I was working as an engineer people thought I was a professional bodybuilder full-time they had no idea you know like I talk about that for that reason is that like yeah but it's easy because you have all the time in the world to spend three hours in the gym I don't have that because I have a job and all this stuff and I'm like wait wait a minute like I was an engineer for you know five years and I lived that same lifestyle and all you need is an hour a day you know like that is about like it's not like like endurance training I guess like where you have to go like like more times than equals so much better you know I'm saying like there's a certain limit there where you can't break down anymore you just you become useless at that point so there's no point in working out two hours when you know an hour and a half of it you're on your phone bullshitting talking to people and just kind of spinning your wheels like that's the reason why you're not seeing results bro like cuz you talk all day you know if you go in there with 45 minutes to an hour and really put in the work you walk out of there like crawl out of there like that's why like spend a day with like your gym buddy and then spend a day with me or spend a day with another professional bodybuilder and you'll understand why they look that way you know people think that just by being in the gym you're gonna get results it's a whole industry build upon that idea very much so very much so so you only need an hour max yeah you know but then think about this is that you're outside of the gym 23 hours which one do you think holds more weight for building muscle you know like yeah you break down in the gym but you build outside of the gym your daily habits outside of the gym hold way more value than what you do inside of the gym so if you can get your diet right you get your daily habits right get everything kind of just you ducks in a row mm-hmm then the results will really start to come in so that's what I'm talking about the extra growth and different aspects of people's lives mm-hmm and where are you on the whole like low weight high rep low rep highway like are you like how does all that work like I don't know anything about that stuff oh man there's so many different there's different theories right oh yeah you talk to one person it's one thing you talk to another another thing I'm a big believer in periodization training so you follow something for an extended amount of time eventually you'll plateau because your body's so adaptive and it responds like more efficiently the next time you do it diminishing returns to go to shake it up you gotta shake it up so I follow things for about four weeks at a time and sometimes I'll go in and do a completely new set of training routines just to kind of help create that shock value to my body so it'll help stimulate it to grow in another area because the more you work out the harder it is to figure out these new ways to stimulate your body so sometimes I'll do a high rep low weight sometimes I'll do the low weight high rep or did I say that right yeah yeah the opposite right so heavier with lower reps or lighter with higher reps there's many different people that will tell you that works there you can do a traditional bro split a bro splits like a five day workout split where you go like just not where you get mad at your buddy that's a different kind of youlet that's a bro rake up that's right break you know which does create bodybuilders - yeah so you know your five-day split would be like chest on Monday back on Tuesday take a rest day legs on on Thursday arms on Friday so it's like an isolation style workout yeah yeah then you have like your upper lower crowd which likes to do upper body one day lower body the next day take a rest date upper body lower body take a rest day then you have people to do push-pull where it's like you do all pushing movement so you do chest triceps done it's very affect all of them work all of them have their own uses it's like I tell people like same thing with nutrition you have a toolbox and you have different tools for different purposes if you use the wrong tool for the job you're not going to get the right result so same thing with keto same thing with you know the low-carb thing or high carb thing like it's all like relative to what that specific point in time is when your fitness journey right I like it man all right parting words somebody's listening to this they're like all right I'm motivated I'm going to the gym he might tell me what to do what's the one thing I should do what's the one thing I should eat everybody wants to distill it down into that you know little box that you can check but if you could impart like some sense of wisdom or empowerment for somebody who's just trying to like get a little bit fit or eat a little bit healthier perhaps believe in themselves a little bit more so it's a few different nuggets I got for these this crowd first thing is that you can't outwork a bad diet remember that get your diet in in check first then worry about working out when you go to the gym go with intention and go with a plan you have a checklist just just by doing the checklist you're doing more than what you would have done if you're just wandering around number three be intentional yeah exactly walk into the gym with intention and like you're clocking into a you clocking in to work I get the work done and then worry about your other stuff later number three would be focus on the bigger picture it's so many I get so many questions about what about meal timing what about if I eat this on in breakfast instead of lunch or eat too many carbs at dinner like think about the big picture like first worry about how much you should be eating and just choose a 24 hour period and make sure you eat that much in the day then break it down and say like how like the new next target would be like how many grams of protein you're needing and they just focus on the big things like it's like the 80/20 rule mm-hmm like if 20 percent of your effort gives you 80% of the results focus on that don't worry about the extra the extra detail that's not going to give you or yield the most results with the amount of effort that you're putting in so the the 20% that's gonna give you the biggest results is like I said fix your diet second thing go in a gym with intention third thing would be consistency just be consistent just be consistent there's no secret formula that's not sexy though it's not and people don't want to hear it but it's it's the reality and you know there's a reason why the guy in the gym that has been going to the gym for years like you say and they look the exact same is because they've been going into the gym and doing the same [ __ ] exercise they've been doing the last 10 years and they've been eating the same exact way they've been eating the last 10 years you know like they're consistent but they're consistent in the wrong approach so like fix certain problems first and then you start to see results Klein NIEM I was awesome man yeah thanks for talking to me beautiful super inspiring I'm really excited for the next chapter that's soon gonna be unfolding I think when game-changers comes out you know it's gonna it's gonna strike a major chord and it's gonna put you in another stratosphere in terms of public awareness and it's beautiful that you're carrying this mantle and trying to help people man so anything I can do to help you I think it's fantastic Thank You Man I really do appreciate that and I'm ready ready for the next chapter yeah or is there a competition coming up there was a few this year that I kind of started prepping for I did three this year back to back to back and just kind of got I needed to focus more on my business and write everything else so it's like it's really tough to juggle bodybuilding prep and traveling and speaking at events and then trying to start up a business and do that so it's decided to take a little break are you uh you have any speaking things coming up like is that on the vegan Fitness website or on your Instagram or worship people go - yeah definitely my Instagram I'm probably the most active so you just find me my underscore Delgado so that's and I I do you have other score did somebody take your name no I feel like I have a unique name so people always botch it okay so before it was just me my Delgado but they app people were like what am I looking at like they couldn't distinguish for the first and last you've started so I had to put the underscore in there uh and then vegan Fitness comm is gonna be a really exciting website for people to go it's gonna essentially be like an online resource for anybody that is interested and the plant-based lifestyle from an evidence-based perspective yeah that's exciting that's very cool yeah and you got the Generation V podcast recently launched yeah check that out yeah Generation V has been an exciting exciting project I like it a lot better than YouTube and that whole platform yeah it's cool it's a you know you could breathe you know yeah you get to know people you get to really share a story beautiful thing yeah like it and instagrams really instant instant gratification right podcast you're in their ear you're talking they get to know you as a person and I feel like that's more Vinson in a picture for sure all right ma'am piece implants we did it how do you feel I feel good man you good yeah I could go for another two hours all right yeah we went to ten man we rocked it awesome uh thank you so much come back anytime and talk to me man thanks man appreciate each other all right peace [Music] you

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 305,637

Keywords: rich roll, vegan, health, fitness, diet, nutrition, athlete, podcast, inspiration, motivation, plantpower, plant-based, wellness, spirituality, self-help, self-improvement, vegan gains, nimai delgado, muscle & fitness, muscle, bodybuilding, bodybuilder, IFBB, IFBB Pro, hare krishna, ripped, jacked, weightlifting, shredded, gym, barbell, kettlebell, training, biceps, workout, strength, strength training, physique

Id: -ymuuOTbwOU

Length: 131min 59sec (7919 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 12 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Cold pressed juice.

[u/SweelFor]

Can we stop making that joke please, it's ok we get it, people ask "haha how do you vegans get your protein", can we get over it now please

[u/Viking___]

He tren hard and anavar gave up

[u/dawsonj20]

TL;DW?

[u/Turtle-Elvis-Express]

Listened to the podcast an find it very interesting, specially the part about protein and lean body mass. If you want to dig deep I recommend this episode of another podcast/YouTuber. It’s an interview with an durch researcher. Very informative!

https://youtu.be/wRehf1L231Q

[u/TLSword]

I have seen a lot of negative comments in this thread but until there is any evidence that he is using it's all mute.

[u/pochomigue]

Great podcast. Nimai has a really unique upbringing.

[u/vegan-weirdo]

I love the fact we vegans feel the need to prove we can get protein on a vegan diet by constantly bombarding non-vegans with unrealistic juiced up bodybuilders ....

.... it makes veganism look ridiculous

[u/[deleted]]

Juice