Exogenous Ketones - Frank LLosa

We don't think that it's going to be banned. We do think that every single athlete, this is not an exaggeration, we think that every single athlete's left incorporates this as much as they incorporate sugar right now into their diet. It's just a second completely different pathway fuel source to glucose. They can run just on glucose, they can run on glucose and ketones on top of that.

Hey fitness fans, welcome back to the Future of Fitness Podcast and Interview Series. This is your host, Eric Malzone. And this is episode number 124. I talk to Frank Wilmis. He is a founder at KetoneAids.com. So, for all intents and purposes, this is the exogenous ketone episode. So I'd like to give a shout out to Kate Haramille and her podcast, the Straight Up Wellness Podcast. And she referred uh Frank to me. She also has an interview with him on her show, so you can check that out. But it was a great connection because I did want to talk about this a little bit more. And there's a lot of information, a lot of misinformation out there about exogenous ketones, uh, ketone salts versus ketone esters. We actually talked about that uh in this interview. Now, Frank sent me some of the product to test before uh we got together and did this show, and I did feel difference. Yeah, I mean, you know, I didn't use a lot of it. Um I'm not a I'm not in ketosis. I am a lower carb guy. Uh but before my workouts, I felt a nice sustained level of energy. Um I didn't feel that shaky like caffeine feeling that's sometimes when I open myself with caffeine. Uh also during days of high productivity in my desk, you know, doing content, working with clients, uh, I tried it then if FOCAD as well. So there's something to it. You know, I can't explain the science, but that's why I brought Frank on. So we're going to talk all about it. And before we get into the interview, I would like to read a review from Chuck. So Chuck says, Eric is a highly informed, passionate, and presents well on a variety of fitness topics. I enjoy the variety of guests and believe his interviewing style lends itself to an entertaining and educational conversations. I highly recommend. Thank you, Chuck. Very appreciated. And if you haven't gone over to iTunes to subscribe or wherever you listen to this podcast, uh please do so. And then leave me a nice review like this on iTunes, and I'll I will read it on air. Yeah, my my word. Um it goes a long way, really helps uh my show as it grows uh and allows us to get even more great guests like Frank and the people we've had on so far. So, one more thing. I like to talk about certifiedcoursecreation.com. So I am part of this organization now, and I am really excited to be doing it because uh we are truly helping fitness professionals take the next step, fitness and health and wellness professionals take the next step in their career. If you have a specialty, if you have a deep knowledge of a specific area, it could be your opportunity to do something very, very big. And what I love about being part of this organization is that we help dreams come true. We help people realize bigger things and develop the online courses and certifications that help them take that next step, become an expert in their particular niche and make a ton of money doing it. And it's awesome. So go to certifiedcoursecreation.com, check it out. You can book a time with me if you'd like, and if you want to just uh you know talk about your idea, see if the concept has legs, I'm happy to do that. I've interviewed over 500 people uh in the last year and a half within this industry, and I can probably with with strong certainty tell you if it's a good idea or if somebody else has done it, or uh you know maybe you should take a step back and revamp it a little bit more. So go do it, go check it out. Just don't wait. There's no point. If you keep waiting, then tomorrow will never come and you won't have this opportunity to do it now. So today is the best day. Go to certifiedcoursecreation.com uh and check it out. And now, without further ado, episode number one twenty-four with Frank Lomas of KetonAid.com. Enjoy the show. All right, and we're live. Frank, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so this is the uh official, unofficial, exogenous ketone episode here. And we'll yeah, we'll we'll be diving deep into some of this. And um, you know, you would have um been nice enough to send me some samples of what you guys have. So I've been playing around with it the last uh week or so. Um before, but let's do this, man. Give us give us your story, give us a little background on who you are.

Sure. So my name is Frank Yosem. I'm the CEO of KetoneAid. I started this about three years ago, and the way that I got into it was my wife's godfather is Dr. Richard Beach, and he's the one that is his name is on every single important paper relating to ketones, well, maybe not every single paper paper, but the most influential person in the ketone space. He works for in NIH for the last 40 years. He used to work under Hans Krebs, and you know, I've been married to my wife for maybe 12 years, but didn't really know much about what he did. Started hearing rumblings about how he should be given gold medals for you know performances in the Olympics and stuff because of you know this drink that he made. And one day my friend wrote a blog post about taking a deep dive, going down the rabbit hole on a ketogenic diet, a high-fat, low protein, uh, low carb diet. So I started learning about ketones, and then I met up with Dr. Beach at an 80th birthday party and started talking to him about ketones, and usually he's pretty exhausted in the sense that he doesn't want to talk to people from scratch of what are ketones because it becomes a two-hour you know podcast, right? So normally talk about it, but then I was actually able to converse with him because I had done you know 10 hours of studying beforehand, and that's where it started, and now it's you know three years later, we're finally selling the product. Um and you know, it's been a crazy, a crazy ride. It's been highly successful. We're selling every single drop that we can make. We can't make enough of it. Wow.

Wow. So, you know, um for our listeners, right? If they're not, if they've been living in a bubble, they don't know what ketosis is, especially in the fitness industry, right? Fitness and nutrition. Um, let's just give from a 30,000-foot view what what is ketosis? Um, what does a ketogenic diet look like, and how does that start to affect your physiology from a very high level, right? Right. And then we'll get into an AD grating.

So the ketogenic diet is similar to the Atkins diet, but the difference is Atkins tends to be higher in protein. So when you lower the protein and you make it approximately 75 or 80 percent fat, which for some people that's just you know ungodly and unheard of, but yes, that's what people do. 15% protein and 5% carbs. The number one mistake people make is they actually take on too much protein and the protein actually converts into carbs. And when you do this diet, your body goes into this emergency state. Some people might say, Oh, that's unhealthy, but the body's body's actually designed to do this. It's kind of like a hibernating bear. Your body's designed to go to your go into the state of ketosis, which burns your fat reserves and uses that that burned fuel is called beta hydroxybutarates. It's a ketone. So you burn fat to make ketones to run your body. And if you go on Instagram, you'll see hundreds and thousands of people that are losing 50 and 100 pounds on this diet. Even though mainstream you like r rank the best top 10 diets, they still might rank you know the ketone uh ketogenic diet as number 10. The results are out there everywhere. So what this uh ketosis is defined two different ways. One is when your body is burning fat and making ketones, uh, that's how I define it. It's endogenous, your body's making ketones. But it some people incorrectly define ketosis as you prick your finger to test your blood, and there are these meters that will tell you how many ketones are actually running through your you know through the blood. Some people define that as ketosis. I define that as exogenous ketosis. If you just drank a drink and the ketones are now flowing through your blood, that's exogenous ketosis. Your body didn't make it, your the drink made it. And it's an important distinction because some people will confuse the two concepts and think that they just drank this drink, test their blood, and then suddenly magically they're sitting on the couch and then they're just burning fat. And it's just not true. And there's a lot of companies that are marketing that misleading message, and people think they can just drink their way into a diet. You still have to eat healthy. This doesn't just negate McDonald's. This isn't when you see people at McDonald's drinking a diet coke and they're eating you know a crazy amount of food, and somehow they think that that diet coke is helping the equation.

Yeah.

It's not like you can have a ketone ester drink during that McDonald's food, and and somehow think that's gonna, you know, negate the garbage that you just ate.

Yeah. Well, if you're telling me this is not a magic pill, Frank, then we should probably stop the interviewer here because you know I think that's what everyone wants.

Manage expectations. Yes, everyone wants something super, super simple. And you know, this is simple, but it's you know there has to be work.

I've I've had so I've had two you know personal experiences with uh with ketogenic diet and ketosis. One was for my own personal health reasons because I had get uh some gut issues and I had a um after testing, it was like I had a big candida overgrowth. And candida is you know naturally occurs in the gut, but it can be you know it's a gut bacteria that can overgrow and then feeds off sugars. So I had to completely cut down sugars and kind of starve this thing until I got better. Um so I used that for health reasons. It worked, right? I felt better. Um it took about two and a half months, really, to kind of get back to full health. And so I know from you know that standpoint of a healthy, you know, um, versus going on a bunch of medications and all that stuff, you know, I could have done a full-blown, like strong antibiotic uh assault on my system, but I I know what that does overall over time, right? Really messes you up. Um, the other thing is my wife. So my wife started um uh you know January 1st, as many do, right? Uh she started a uh a ketogenic diet. And um, you know, what I've seen from her, you know, and I I kind of call it I'm kind of ketoing, you know, I still have uh you know a cocktail uh every once in a while, um, but I do it to support her. Um, right. And uh I've noticed her? No, well I do I do everything else but the cocktail to support her, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. I do the cocktail to support me. Um but what she did over you know a five five week span, you know, she um completely changed her diet and uh went full on you know ketosis and uh she saw great results. I mean, I think she's back wearing, you know, number one, she's sleeping way better. She used to like it used to be really hard for her to wake up, right? Um now she kind of springs out of bed sometimes before me, which is shocking. Um she doesn't have the uh the swings of energy and mood throughout the day that she did at one time, right? And she's you know, wearing um, you know, she'll probably kill me for saying this, but she's back wearing pants that she hasn't worn in like 10 years, right? Um and she's really excited about it and she she loves it. And now she's kind of adapted it more into a sustainable lifestyle um as she moves forward. So, you know, there there's two anecdotal cases for me saying that um, you know, I we're definitely on to something here, right? Uh for sure.

I've been doing it now for two and a half, three years, and mine is a vegan keto diet. So at another level, it's more difficult. Yeah. And you should have your wife try some of the ester because if she's already keto, take even far less, and it has a much more profound effect, even though the drink was designed for non-keto people. Yeah. But I I can go with the the general category of what you know this exogenous ketones, what that means break down you know what's within there.

Please.

So the general category is called exogenous ketones. Exogenous means taken outside of the body and you're drinking ketones.

Right.

However, what's commonly available on the market and uh the sticker price is a lot less expensive, even though we'll talk in a second about you know pricing for value of what you get, is something on the market called ketone salts. And the way that it works is when you when your body makes this emergency fuel source, beta hydroxybutyrate, BHB, it is technically in an acidic form. So this molecule, BHB, is is acidic. So there's two solutions to making it non-acidic so that it's you know palatable. One solution is to add a base, or some people might say a salt, to that. So potassium, magnesium, calcium, sodium. People think that sodium is the only salt out there, but there's actually four. And don't be confused by that because sometimes some companies will hide the magnesium and calcium in the fine print, even though you know it's important to know that you're eating two to four grams of salt, so the equivalent of 20 to 30 salt pills if you put salt pills in your hand. Wow. So the ketone calls are what are readily available, and the amount of ketones that they deliver is extremely small, and the salt actually inhibits the delivery of those ketones. The second problem with ketone salts is most of them are racemic. And racemic means if you've ever seen L-tryptophen on the shelves or D-ribose on the shelves, uh many molecules will have a positive and a negative, like a D form and an L form. And D-ribose happens to be the body the bioavailable version that the body can use, Dribose. L-tryptophen, the L form. Well, with the ketones, the D form is the bot is the version that the body can use, but it's far less expensive to import from China the DL form together. The problem with that is twofold. One, the L blocks some of the D even more, so some of the proper form. And also, because the L is also acidic, you have to load up a whole bunch of more sodium and salt on top of that. So the salt load that you get with these drinks can be you know three to four grams. And if you want to get your blood ketone levels higher, so if you're testing your you know blood ketones, if you want to get them up one or two millimolar, which would be the equivalent of a four or five day fast, you'd have to take five to ten servings of this stuff, which is like 20 or 30 grams of salt. So just a huge restaurant shaker of salt, it's just not possible. People get even on one serving, they get bloated, they can't put their rings on, and stuff like that. The salt load is massive. And as a side note, when you are entering into a ketogenic diet, you really do need a massive salt load because as your wife can attest, she lost five pounds within five days. And people love that, but what it is is water weight. The body just uh is getting rid of the glucose, and glucose holds on to water molecules. So when you get rid of glucose, it flushes your system of water, but with that, you also lose a ton of electrolytes, salt. And if you don't replenish that, you get something called the keto flu. And my wife was in a fetal position in bed crying, What have you done to me? I'm not your biohacking experiment. I want to go to the hospital. I made a couple calls to experts, and I gave her 15 salt pills, and within 15 minutes, she was up and around. So it can be heard of another woman. The doctor told her to go keto and didn't give her proper instructions. Two days later, she's in the hospital and took her, took them two hours to figure out what it was. And I told her, I bet you it was lack of sodium. She's like, How did you know? It took them two hours. I'm like, Yeah, you went keto and you didn't, you know, replenish. Not just add more salt to your food. No, no, like massive salt intake. So some people will like the exogenous ketones, the ketone salts, they'll like them when entering into the ketogenic diet to try to get back in. But the benefit is the salt content. So you could actually save a whole bunch of money, just buy a bunch of salt pills or buy, you know, you know, Himalayan salt, which is mainly you know sodium. You need some potassium and some magnesium at nighttime. So that's the ketone salt category. Most of them are racemic. If you're wondering whether it's racemic, it is racemic because it costs five times more to make the non-racemic version, so they're gonna advertise it as the D form. So look for D, uh, or sometimes it's also R. For some reason in science, the D is the same as R, and the L is the same as S. So you're gonna be wanting to look for the D or R form. In the next six to twelve months, if people are looking at this podcast later, it's gonna be the default on the market, the non-recemic. So the non-recemics are much better because it has half the salt load for the amount of salt for the amount of ketones delivered. Now, ketone ester, what we have is called D beta hydroxybutyrate, so it's non-recemic, the deform, and then it's attached to something called D13 butane diol. So instead of adding a base, we add something called D13 butane diol. This molecule, coincidentally, happens to go through the liver, kind of like MCT oil, goes through the liver and makes another round of ketones, makes beta hydroxybutyrate. So you have a when it gets into the gut, it splits apart. So you have a fast release, the beta hydroxybutyrate side, and then a slow release, the D13 butane diol side. So similar to MCT oil, don't mix MCT oil with ketone ester, no matter what you hear in any other podcast. Or go ahead and do it and then you know, post on my message board that I was right, that it will multiply the pains that people feel when they when they eat the super strong C8, like the brain octane. The C8 does not mix with the ketone ester because they both go through the same pathway, they're competing to get processed through the liver. So don't mix those. You can mix the ketone salts and the ketone ester, which is our next drink coming up called ketone water. Um but back to the ketone ester. So ketone ester also there will be other ketone esters that are coming on the market in the next five years. The word ketone ester uh is a vague term for something that is a ketone, which technically there's three acetone, nail polish, uh acetoacetate, and beta-hydroxybutyrate. So you can have an ketone ester by having any one of these three, and then the word ester means a combination of two molecules. So there is one other ester, ketone ester out there, which isn't commercially available as of today, but it's called acetoacetate, so the second ketone, uh, and racemic 1-3 butan diol. So some you know, Russian trollers out there that are anti you know, exogenous ketones will list eight different studies that have you know shown various degrees of success or failure and say, look, you know, exogenous ketone research is still up in the air. Well, if you look at them one by one, many of them are the racemic salts, and what happened? They didn't work. One of them is the headline ketone ester impairs human performance. Well, that's no good. But when you actually go to the paper, that is the acetoacetate and racemic 1-3-butane diol. So you have two problems. Acetoacetate has a fraction of the energy that beta hydroxybutyrate has, just how it works in the Krebs cycle. One has just more ATP. And on the 1-3-butane diol side, half of it is racemic, so the the part that your body can't use, the L is blocking the D. So it's just not as effective. Now, it's not as effective for sports performance. So Dom D'Agostino has been doing a lot of research with this aster on deep sea divers and NAFSA and you know helping people with seizures. Well, this molecule might work better in that instance because one theory is that it actually slows down the body, and that's what you want when you have a seizure. You don't want you know more energy, you want to slow down the body, and how it takes in oxygen is different. So your breath hold, I went from testing my baseline of 60-second breath hold. I took the esters expecting to double it, because that's what I heard on a DOM podcast, and it went to you know 3540. And the theory there is just the way that it uses oxygen is is different. So it impaired performance in that study. But if you look at the paper, they were only able to raise blood ketone levels of beta-hydroxybrie. Uh, they were only able to raise it 0.2. So we've got elite performers that are going, and by the way, if you wake up in the morning, some people will have, even non-keto people will wake up with 0.1, 0.2, because overnight you've fasted and your body's just starting to make you know some ketones, or a ketogenic diet person might wake up with a 1.0, and you know, we'll have athletes jump all the way to 5 and 6.0 on the ester. And this study, they went from 0.1 to 0.3, and then suddenly they're like, ketone ester doesn't work. So you have to understand the you know the different types that are out there and don't be confused.

Okay, so now I'm gonna come in with my questions as if I'm a fifth grader, right?

So uh because my my fourth grade, my son who's he's homeschooled, but he's probably like second, third grade, he could probably explain this to you. I should almost get him on because he's daddy, you know, you know, if I get lightheaded or something, maybe you took too many ketones.

Yeah, yeah. How do you know that? So who are exogenous ketones for, right? Because I've heard, I think, you know, obviously it's it's a it's rocket fuel for people who are already in ketosis, right? But what about someone like like, excuse me, right? Because I'm a great test example because I've been trying it. I would say on average on most days, um, I consume under 100 grams of carbohydrates. So I'm probably not fully ketosis, but I'm I'm considered low carb, right? Oh, by most standards, right? Um and I felt, you know, during my time, like I've taken it twice right before training. Um I took it before I went to sleep last night, and admittedly I took too much, but uh I didn't actually read, I kind of read your instructions, but I kind of didn't, you know. Yeah, no, all that's stuff that drives my wife crazy. Um so yeah, you know, and I felt a big boost of energy, um sustained energy as well during my training sessions. Uh so it was great.

Um so who did you feel after the training session and towards the end? Were you are you normally zonked? Did you notice a difference?

Yeah, I would say I am. Um, you know, I just don't training, I also don't train as intensely as I used to because I just don't need to. But yeah, I felt fine. You know, I really felt fine. I felt like I came back home, I completed some more work. Um usually I'm just kind of like, uh, you know, I just want to sit down on the couch for a little bit and read a book. But um I felt great. And so, you know, if if someone's not at least monitoring their carbs, right, or they're still, you know, highly carb adapted or whatever you want to call it, is it is it worth their time, or do you have to have, do you have to put in some work inhead?

So this drink was initially designed with a DARPA grant for military use. And these military soldiers are not keto. So it's actually designed for non-keto people. A second fuel source. So you're already being fueled by carbs, let's just add ketones in as well. It happens to be that 80% of our clientele are people that are already keto, you know, in either low carb or keto. Why? Because they've already taken the seven-hour deep dive and know what ketones are. But if you go to a carb-based person and start talking about ketones, it's like, you know, go study it for eight hours and come back, like a little clip like this isn't going to be enough for them. So it's designed for non-keto people. But the lower carb you are, the more the fuel will work. So you can actually use less. So we have people using $2.50 worth on a daily basis pre-workout. Because these keto people, they go into the workouts completely fasted. They have no fuel. They might squirt on some MCT oil, or you might have, and if you're low carb, you probably also go into your workouts fasted. You have no fuel source. Meanwhile, these glucose-based people are chugging pre-workout drinks that are all sugar-based. So they're running on sugar as opposed to just muscling through the workouts. So you just sprinkle a little bit of exogenous ketones in these keto people, and they're shooting, shooting the moon. We've had ninja warriors double their hang uh how long they can hold on a bar, go from four minutes to nine minutes. The guy at the stop because his skin was peeling off of his hands. So it's just more massive of an improvement. And I think that's where the sport is actually going to be heading. They're going to find that when you combine the two, keto, and now the keto has a fuel, it's going to be even more impactful than the regular people, you know, with the two fuel sources. That's where I think it's actually going. Because the the keto world, they're they're all talking about, oh, we can get you back to baseline on keto. Well, I don't want baseline, I want an improvement. Well, this ketogenic diet will get athletes eventually, after a few months, back to baseline, but then now the ester, they actually have a fuel source and they can take off. But again, it's designed for non-keto athletes. And when you you can do two different ways, you can take it two different ways. You can take a small amount, uh, 10 to 15 mls, which is five to seven bucks worth pre-workout. And but sometimes the non-keto people will need a little bit more. But when you want to do a full-out sports performance, that was a fourth of a serving, by the way. If you do a full serving or even two servings of the ester, it drops your blood sugar so much that you actually have to carb up first. So you have to take a couple shots of, you know, gel shots, have your blood glucose raise, and then you take the ketone ester, it brings it down, and then you're you're humming, you know, with the two fuel sources together.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, we're at we're playing with a pretty complicated mechanism here, right? Of how our body produces energy and the various fuel sources. You know, what are what are the um what are the cautionary pieces that you tell people before they start trying out exogenous ketones or even just getting into ketosis?

Yeah, sure. So, well, with the exogenous ketones, more is not necessarily better, is what we're finding. And if you take too much, well, first of all, never take it on game day the first time. Take it at least two times beforehand. We had one guy, uh triathlete, lose $10,000 because he wanted to take it on game day. Because when this stuff works, it works. When it doesn't work, it doesn't work. This guy took it with a slightly different protocol. His blood sugar dropped so so fast that he had to pull out of the race. Like he was in the 50s and 60s and his legs felt completely flat, completely dead. It just doesn't work. So you really need to uh test out your body. Everyone has different levels of sensitivity. Sometimes I'll be working with a professional athlete, an MMA fighter, Matt Brown. You know, the first three times I was changing the protocol and said, No, I didn't feel that. No, I didn't feel that. I'm like, okay, let's try it again. Thanks for being patient. The fourth time he called me, Frank, you know all those things you talked to me about? Slow motion, you know, like being able to remember moves from high school. He was flattening all of his sparring partners, and no one knew what he was doing, and they're all just you know, jaw on the ground, like what is in you know, what happened to him. So it can take a while, and everyone has different levels of sensitive sensitivity, just like glucose. Some people, a small amount of glucose can you know make them crazy, whereas other people might be able to you know suck on two or three gel packs. Uh as far as cautionary, if you take too much, I'll drop your blood sugar too much, can make you lightheaded, can also make you hungry. There's a couple podcasts out there where people took you know four times too much and their ketones skyrocketed through the roof, but they weren't able to do as many push-ups as yesterday, which isn't very scientific, but they felt hungry and a little bit lightheaded. So that's you know, that's the drawback of taking too much of it, which isn't an issue with the salts, because you can't take, you know, unless you took ten you know packets of the racemic salts, you can't get to that ketone level where your blood sugar you know is an issue. As far as issues with eggs, you know, taking the ketogenic diet, uh one out of twenty people will get what's called the keto rash. My wife got that, of course. And she just got a whole bunch of rash here, and for like poor wife, seven days of non-stop scratching. So with her, she has to make sure she doesn't get too keto. She's gotta stay in a certain range of 0.5 to 1.0, and if she goes to 1.5 or 2.0 on the diet alone, not the not the drink, on the diet alone, you can get um the keto flu. And then we talked previously about the the sorry, the keto rash. We talked previously about the keto flu, which almost everyone will get, and it almost indefinitely is a lack of salt. A little bit of it is a lack of ketones because the glucose has gone down, so your brain isn't being fueled and the ketones haven't gone up. So one way around that is to tear off the band-aid and try to do a 24 or 48 hour fast with salt. And by doing that quick fast, you can actually get your ketones high enough to fuel your brain, as opposed to this seven-day slow transition into ketones where your glucose is down, your ketones aren't high enough, and your brain just isn't fueled yet.

Yeah. So, you know, I I've heard a lot of conflicting points of view. I mean, there's just going to be a ton, right? Whenever anytime you you get nutrition, right, uh opinions flowing around, it's just the carnivore diet. Um, you know, it's it's just so funny to me is like we've made all this progress um scientifically as a species, yet our basic nutrition is so misunderstood and so confounded and confusing uh to so many people because there's so many different ways to make a point, right? I mean, someone could right now pull up like 10 studies that verify everything you're saying, and they could pull up 10 that say that everything is total BS, right? Um and uh so when you when you're talking about ketosis and therefore um exogenous ketones, is it a lifestyle that's permanent? Do you suggest that people kind of go in and out of cycles? Um, or is it something that they just kind of produce as a lifestyle and that's it, this is the way you're gonna be.

You know, I've heard of the concept of cycling in the ketosis. There's two different ways. People do it sometimes every week, like literally after day seven, they load up on carbs and they go keto again, and all that's that's just doesn't work because the whole point is that you have a glycogen storage, glucose storage in your system, and it takes you seven days, unless you're working out, to deplete that storage, and the moment that you deplete it, that's when the ketones start to kick in. Some people after day seven, they feel groggy. Well, now it's just starting to work, and what do they do? They hit back some some carbs and they do it all over again. So that system I don't agree with. But there are people that will do a three to four months on keto and then you know a couple weeks off of keto. You know, I'm sure there's some science behind that, it's just not my thing. I just feel like garbage when I eat carbs, so I just don't want to do it. So yeah, I've been two to three years straight keto, you know, without having to go into the carb world again.

Why why did you do it? Did you have health issues? Did you just not feel good? What was your motivation?

Well, first of all, I needed to understand ketones, so I wanted to really see the diet. This is when the drink used to cost us $500 a serving. So I I only took it twice over a one-year period when I was giving it out to professional athletes. I wouldn't even drink it myself because why waste it on me when I've got you know a couple of professional athletes willing to take it and do a testimonial for no pay? Um, so I was doing more of the diet, and I could hit 8.0 on a keto vegan diet, which is the maximum that the meter can do. The meter actually says high after you know 8.0 is very polite. Um so I was testing that out, but I lost 40 pounds without even trying. I was 180, but I had back pain and uh I was just losing weight and just not hungry. Like the ketones, your body burns fat, and that energy you know satiates you, makes you not hungry. If you start eating food, it makes you full faster. Some people incorrectly think that the ketogenic diet is an all you can eat, whatever you want. As long as it's fat, you'll lose weight. That's actually not true. You can gain weight on a ketogenic diet, but the idea is you're supposed to be less hungry and stop eating halfway through the plate. Don't be in the clean plate club if you're trying to lose weight. Think of it as every dollar of food that you're scraping into the trash can is a dollar less to the doctor or cocaine or whatever, whatever. So it's a good thing to throw away food or serve less, but you don't have to clean that plate up. Um so I was just doing it for that, and I got down from 180, it was down to like 143, and people were saying, you know, you the color of your skin is odd, you look a little green, and uh and I was like, I feel, you know, they felt like I came out of a cancer ward, but I was like, I feel great. My I have no back pain, my energy is great. I used to fall asleep, you know, reading to the kids at 7 p.m. Little you know, ducky walks through the park, you know, and the kids are like hitting me to wake up. And then suddenly my back pain's gone, and I'm able to read the books and keep energy throughout the day. So it just worked for me. Uh and you know, if if you're carb-fueled and you don't have any issues, then fine. And I think that you could probably eat a ketogenic diet is not necessarily synonymous with healthy. You can do a ketogenic diet unhealthily. This whole like bacon phenomenon, you know, someone I know one elite athlete eats bacon and eggs and coconut oil, that's it. I don't think that's healthy. And it's not just my vegan bias, just this deep fried, you know, meat is just not healthy. So you could be healthy doing a raw, vegan, with fruit diet if you wanted to, and probably have you know great results. But for me, the carbs just make me crash, make me fall asleep, and you know, all that stuff. And and one tip with the ketogenic diet the fruit, fruit is the enemy. Like that's the number one thing that I fight with people over. They say, oh, but you know, but fruit's okay, right? Like somehow the body doesn't know the difference between a candy bar and and a grape or a pineapple when it tests your blood glucose. Your blood glucose still spyrockets, skyrockets. So, you know, fruit is the devil, especially for people in a ketogenic diet. And you know, it's very hard for people to get over that. They say, well, what about what about the antioxidants and all the other benefits? And I say, if I told you that cocaine had vitamin C, are you gonna be like, you know, somehow cocaine is healthy? No, like sure there's antioxidants, but it's two steps forward and three steps back with all the sugar that's in there.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, there over my years of experience, I I believe there's two things that are true no matter what you come from. And ultimately it comes down to trying it and see if it works for you, right? I think that's the big thing is like whatever, you know, if if you know people personally, like I've seen benefits, my wife sees benefits, obviously you've seen benefits of you know a ketogenic lifestyle, um, then maybe it's enough cause for someone to go out and actually try it, right? Um but there are two things over my years of experience that seem to ring true is that you know, if you want to lose weight, um, or even just for just general health reasons, uh, unless you're a performance athlete, a slight um deficit of calories goes a long way, right? Over a period of time.

The other thing, it's like 100 calories left per day is very cumulative. Yeah.

It goes a long way for all types of health markers, not just your waistline. And the other thing is is fasting. You know, if people just implemented some periodic fasting in their lives, I mean you could you can name all of them, right? Ketogenic, um, paleo, uh, vegan, low carb, high carb, all of these, no one can really argue with the value of fasting, right? Whether it be intermittent or you know, any any scale of that. And uh, I feel like ketogenic seems to go the best, complement the most with intermittent fasting or fasting in general.

Would you say you meant mentioned fasting and caloric restriction? There was a paper that Dr. Beach did in 2017 where he analyzed all of these papers on all these animals talking about you know either fasting or caloric restriction and how all the animals live longer. And they all had like seven different theories for why they live longer. And Dr. Beach's paper basically says it's the ketones, stupid. And that's not the stupid part, but he goes into, you know, they gave exogenous ketones to the C. elegans and they went, you know, they were longer and lived longer. And his theory is that the same longevity principles that happen with caloric restriction and fasting will happen with the exogenous ketones. But you mentioned weight loss. So, real quickly, most of the exogenous ketones that are out there are sold for weight loss. Right. The ketone salts mainly. That's their number one pitch. And I've been saying for three years, what they market is an uh a ketogenic diet plus ketone salts helps you lose weight. And I've said a ketogenic diet plus clapping your hands helps you lose weight. It's the ketogenic diet. Now, sure, the the the ketone, the exogenous ketone salts might help you, like I said before, the first two weeks help you get into the zone because of the salt load. And some people have used the ketone ester for you know weight loss, but my wife says, I cannot sell this or the weight loss drink until she loses weight on it. Yeah. And and the but the reason that it doesn't work for some people is when she drinks it, she'll be eating keto and she'll drink the ester, and then suddenly she eats worse because she feels justified. Oh, I've got ketones, you know, I've got high ketones in my blood, so I'll I'll add that extra whatever. She'll kill me if I say ice cream, but you know, or even low carb ice cream, just adding more calories because you think that this is some magical eraser. But we have had people that actually did not want to lose weight, which is a great you know, test subject, and they had to stop taking the ester because they lost too much weight. So for whatever that's worth. But you know, I've gotten emails from someone saying, hey, you know, I I took this exogenous ketone and then I ate pasta that night, and then the next morning I woke up, you know, two pounds heavier, and I was like, there's so many problems with that statement, I can't even begin. Like, I would not recommend you buying you know our drink. But there are people that are using it for weight loss to uh enter into the ketogenic diet. So when the key glucose goes down and the ketones don't go aren't high enough yet, it'll replenish the glucose and the replenish the ketones so it reaches your brain. But um, yeah, there is no magic pill, but used alongside a good diet, it can be complementary to it, it can help uh it can help alleviate you know your carb addictions and help it make you so you're more full. I give it once before uh a triathlon, gave it once to an athlete before a triathlon, and I walked up to him at the buffet afterward and I said, Hey, you're in line because the food is amazing and free. But let me ask you a question. Are you hungry? And he looks at me and he goes, Oh my god, I've been doing triathlons for 10 years and I'm always ravished after triathlon. Yeah. I'm not hungry at all. Yeah. Yeah, he proceeded to you know load up on food because it was free. By the way, that guy flew 12 to 15 hours across the world and reported back to me that he had no jet lag. And we've actually had multiple accounts of people reporting reduced jet lag, uh, other things that it does actually for sleep. You took 10 mls before bed, but if you take five mLs, some people ten, but start with five, people recording one hour longer deep sleep in their, you know, using their aura rings, they're able to track you know deep sleep. So uh other people use it for recovery after their workouts. So keto.neo on Instagram, he admits to previously having used steroids. And he says that this is more impactful than steroids. And he's able to do a hard workout, take it afterward, and be smart during the workday, so not zonked, because you're talking about normally you'd read a book on the couch, but you actually felt motivated to get stuff done. Like, that's not a coincidence. That's an actual thing. And then he would be able to have his second workout. If he didn't take the ester, he starts his second workout and he's just zonked and he can't he can't work out twice a day. So, what does that do for you know long-term performance, you know, taking it uh so that you can do a workout twice a day? And you're talking also about lifestyle, the S the exogenous ketone can be taken every day. It's not one of those things that stop working, like my favorite supplement, Hooperzyne A, which I love it for a brain and crazy lucid dreams. It only works two or three days in a row. Caffeine. I'm anti-caffeine because what was that one again, Frank? Cooperzyne A. Dropping little nuggets. Cooperzyne A is you want to have crazy dreams like wolves chasing you and your Batman or flying around. Cooperzy A. Learn that from Tim Ferris, uh lucid block. Uh H-U-P-E-R-Z-I-N-E, Cooperzyne A. I take 400 milligrams, which is two tablets of 200. If you can't upset your stomach, so start with 200. Okay. But I have had a few people take that, and on day four, they're like, it stopped working. My adventures went away. I'm like, yeah, it's you know, certain things stopped working after a few days. So caffeine, I'm anti-caffeine because people have been drinking caffeine for 20 years. Why? Because it worked the first two weeks that they took it, but then it stopped working. And all it does is start you off at a deficit and hopefully you know bring you back. And people have actually used the ester to actually kick their caffeine addiction. Um, they don't get the withdrawals, they don't get the shakes, they don't get the you know, the the grogginess that normally will take 40 days to get you know get out of your system. Um, by the way, you can combine exogenous ketones and uh and caffeine, but there are some problems with that. You were asking about problems. It will multiply the effect of caffeine. So some people that feel no caffeine can suddenly, you know, their brain turns on right away, and I say, hey, that's not the I'd love to take credit for that being the ester. Well, that's the caffeine. The ester was like a delivery mechanism for the caffeine. And if you do feel caffeine and you take it with the ester and you feel jitters, that again is the caffeine, not the ester. The ester is actually supposed to be more of an anti-anxiety calming effect, which is a strange energy that maybe you can attest to. People are used to or expecting a jittery energy, but the opposite happens. It's a calm energy, kind of like a ninja. Ninja will be super calm, but then really, you know, ready to explode. So watch out with the caffeine, you know, combinations.

Yeah, good to know. Good to know. So um, you know, here's here's a product, um, right, ketone aim. So let's let's talk about this a little bit. And you know, I like uh you know, you're very honest. Yeah, I was gonna say you're very honest with it. Like it does taste like shit. It really does. It was shocking uh at first.

Well, it it's all relative, so you have to watch out. If you're expecting, it'll be horrible. But if I sent you the raw sample, which Ali Spignola, a comedian, I sent her some raw, and she drank the regular drink that you had, she's like, oh, that's bad. And then she goes, if that's not bad enough, how about this sample? Yeah, I bet you drank. Oh God. Just it was just you know, dry heating and you're vomiting. So if you also have to dilute it, did you dilute it one to two parts water? The second time I did. Probably first time I just shot it. Oh, okay. Yeah. Right. So if you dilute it with water, it's like cough syrup. So if you're expecting OJ and you get cough syrup, yeah, you're gonna be a little bit shocked, but it's really not that bad. Our next drink, we found that people were taking one-sixth of a serving. Like literally, we had this $30 drink, and people are taking one sixth because it was so expensive, and but then still having benefit. What we decided to do is take that one-sixth, put it in a 12-ounce bottle, mix it with some ketone salts, because there's some benefits to that as well, and that version is nearly flavorless. So we're working on you know heading in that direction. But if you dilute it one or two parts, you know, it shouldn't be that bad. And some people actually say that they like it, believe it or not. And I I tell them not to say that publicly because I want to manage expectations, but they actually maybe it's the They associate the flavor with it doing something, and then there's a circular loop where it actually they actually like it.

Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say it's definitely like, you know, there's a lot of things that I've taken over the years where it it initially was just very um it just not fun to consume, but then I started relating it to the actual uh experience thereafter. Um and we're not talking about illegal drugs or anything, but you know, supplements.

Like apple cider vinegar or ginger shots are two, you know, two things that people tend to take that aren't healthy. One thing we really need to touch upon, I mentioned steroids. So for your audience, the number one question might be you know, is this legal or will this one day become banned? So can we jump into that?

Yeah. Go for it.

So the Wada, World Anti-Doping Association, already has commented on a few articles saying that this is not even on their watch list. So first of all, it's not even on their watch list. Second of all, how would you test for something if you can just it would be in your system naturally after a five-day fast? If you just don't eat for a few days and you want to raise your ketones to five, six, seven, you just not eat, and it would be the same fuel source. Now it's a little bit different how you perform with esters at five or six versus fasting. We don't have time to go into that. But the second thing is they don't ban things that that work, they only ban things that are unhealthy, and people have that disconnect there. They think, oh, well, if it gives you a performance gain, they're gonna ban it. Well, if red beet juice came out and was proven to increase performance by five percent, are they suddenly gonna say, everyone, you know, put down your beats? Like, no. So, you know, this is actually a health-based drink. You know, it mimics longevity, which is all health-based. So it's a healthy drink that people can drink on a daily basis. So it's we don't think that it's gonna be banned. We do think that every single athlete, this is not an exaggeration, we think that every single athlete will have to incorporate this as much as they incorporate sugar right now into their diet. It's just a second, completely different pathway fuel source to glucose. So you could run just on glucose, we can run on glucose and ketones on top of that. And you know, once the word gets out in the bodybuilding community, for example, everyone thinks of exogenous ketones as an endurance drink. Tour de France, there's an epic video on my website about this whistleblower, talks about this guy dropping a bottle, Team Sky dropping a bottle on the side of the road, and oh my god, they freaked out for five miles, and then he finds out that you know that was a $5,000 bottle, and that's why they're freaking out. And then we give him the drink two years later, Greg Henderson, and he's recording 10% higher watts on his bike. And he's like, the meter doesn't lie. I've been doing this for 10 years. I just can't go up 10. This is crazy. But more crazy than that was the recovery. And recovery just isn't as sexy. But the next morning, his HRV reading, you know, his recovery meter said that he was he had taken the day off the day before. He just scratching his head like, oh my God, I can do a hard workout every day. Like, what does that do for performance? That's where it just skyrocket. So we do think it's gonna be the default drink, bigger than you know, when creatine hit the market. Uh, it's the default drink for every single sport, except maybe a sprinter, because sprinting is you know, glucose-based. He might not need it right before a sprint, but he'll need it for recovery, he'll need it for his workouts, he'll need it for you know, you know, throughout the week. So we think this is the the next frontier, the the big, you know, the big sport nutrition, you know, uh uh of the decade, actually.

Yeah, yeah. How cool, man. Well, there's a lot, there's a lot for people to think about here, and I hope um people start considering it as something that they need to have at least on the radar moving forward.

I think that it's the the misconception also is that it's expensive. So it was or is thirty dollars for one of those bottles, but again, people are drinking five dollars worth. And if you're low carb, some people are dropping down to you know two dollars and fifty cents worth, which is less than a Starbucks latte.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, good point. So uh if people want to find out more about this, Frank, maybe get in touch with you. They have questions about all this, because obviously, you know, you you put the time and and uh know what you're talking about. Uh where do you send them?

You can email me, Frank, at Keetonade.com. Also, our website, ketonade.com, has a lot of videos on there from uh elite athletes that were unpaid. Now, a lot of those videos are from high doses. I don't want you to think I'm misleading you, because that's where they that was two years ago when they were taking massive amounts. We're now compiling more videos of people taking the smaller amounts, and that content is mostly on Instagram where people are updating every single day what they're using. So Instagram is where we post our more recent stuff, but we have some archived stuff on on our website, keytonade.com.

Awesome. Awesome. Man, Frank, thanks for coming on. This is a lot of fun. Maybe we can get you back on in uh 6-12 and get a little update from you too. Sounds good, great. Yeah. All right, ladies and gentlemen, Frank Close up. Hey fitness fans, don't leave yet. It's your host, Eric Malzone, and I have a quick favor to ask. Actually, three favors. So, number one, if you're a fan of our show, I ask you to do something that takes under three minutes. Go to iTunes, please, and subscribe to our show. Please, please, please. It means so much to us, it's so important. And then give us a favorable review. We would really, really appreciate it. And uh, I can't tell you how much it means and helps us out. So I know it takes two minutes of your day, and uh it means a lot to us. So please do that. Number two, go to our YouTube channel, our Fitness Marketing Alliance, and uh please subscribe to our YouTube channel there. Number three, if you like this episode or any of the episodes that we've released, share it on social. That's huge. That's a big deal for us. And we're we put a lot of work into these episodes, uh, trying to give you great actionable content uh for the fitness industry. So that would mean a lot. And that's it. So we have some big plans coming up for this show. I'll be talking about that in the next couple episodes. But thank you so much for listening. It means so much. And uh if you have any questions, please reach out to me. I'd love to hear from everybody. Eric, E R I C at Fitness MarketingAliance.com.