What do you think about how many calories he consumes?

https://youtu.be/dR1FCJS8DoM

I would like to have heard more on how much energy he expends through exercise to better understand the impact of a 1,000 - 1,500 calories a day. Dr. Amen Ra seems to be very knowledgeable and committed to his way of life. He's doing a 24-hour fast daily with his meals providing a small amount of protein, carbs, and enough nutrient-dense elements to provide satiety. He's very aware of the generation of IGF, HGH and BDNF through fasting, and appears to be eating and working out to increase this dynamic. I'm struck that using a vegan approach to encourage the production of these beneficial hormones and end products and limit AGEs through consistent eating (dramatically limiting protein, eliminating glucose sources) and fasting. As many have stated in this forum, there's no one approach that works for everyone. And there are certainly several approaches that could work for many of us. I've always believed that drastically limiting protein during periods of time and complementing a WOE with IF is key. While many here are low/no carb, low/ and periods of no protein may be as important.

Thanks for the link. Do not have any knowledge of Markus Rothkranz, but the interview was sufficiently intriguing for me to go access the website referenced by Amen Ra. His approach is plausible enough for me to seek more information to better understand another approach to achieve a similar end goal.

This I Like.

After visiting Dr. Amen-Ra's website (http://www.amentaeliteathlete.com/index.html), I found the following (accessible for a price) published articles:

Humans are evolutionarily adapted to caloric restriction resulting from ecologically dictated dietary deprivation imposed during the Plio-Pleistocene period.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16406387

How dietary restriction catalyzed the evolution of the human brain: An exposition of the nutritional neurotrophic neoteny theory.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17445994

His hypotheses are very interesting when contrasted to those by Cordain et al, in that, as much as I can tell, he believes that the human brain evolved positively due to dietary restriction and not the consumption of animal fat and protein as many Paleo researchers have proposed. I haven't and don't plan to pay to access the full studies. He has very interesting hypotheses that appear to be plausible and should not be discounted.

Depending on where humans lived and developed over the human evolutionary period, they had access to a variety of dietary sources, and it should not be ignored that some flourished on animal sources while others had better access to plant sources. To me, this makes sense. It's not a zero sum game where thriving on one WOE does not eliminate the ability to thrive on others.

Again, there's more than one way to skin a cat (apologies to cat lovers and Dr. Amen-Ra). It's more food for thought . . . . yeah, that's bad but couldn't resist . . . .

As for his daily limit of 1000-1500 calories, wow! Considering his workout regimen and his physique, it's impossible to confirm unless one is willing to donate and start as an Incipient Amen Adherent to explore an N=1 experience.

He's definitely an interesting person. I can get behind most of what he says but I just can't wrap my head around eating 1,000 - 1,500 calories and looking like he does. He does meditate and looks very calm/low energy so perhaps he's learned how to slow his metabolism?

He stated in the interview video that he slowed his metabolism. He didn't elaborate beyond a passing statement. I'm still trying to figure out how he can maintain the feeling of having energy and doing the work he must do to maintain his fitness while slowing his metabolism. Yes, very interesting.

Vegan? Lie. Can't possibly get all essentials, deficiency is inevitable. 25:36, and I quote "I promote the ingestion, the use of essential multi-mineral multi-vitamins supplementation." Can we stop the pretense once and for all, please? Well, at least I don't have to advise the guy about that.

For the rest, some of it makes sense like the hormones for example but for lifting it's a bit different than he explains. It begins with hormones for growth, then the lifting itself, while it can stimulate growth does not actually cause it, this remains the domain of hormones. What lifting does in fact is improve strength on the neural side of strength, i.e. strength is neuro-muscular in nature. I've seen some small guys lift tremendous weight, there must be something more than just muscle size.

Basically it's practice. The more you repeat a motion, the more efficient you become at performing this motion. This translates into strength. This makes strength a skill, not merely a function of muscle size. There's several reasons, for example economy of motion so that the same size can produce greater force, or sequencing muscle fibers so that a better sequence can produce higher overall output for any given motion, etc. For example I've seen a comparison of large versus smaller rowers, where both produced pretty much the same output in spite of significant differences in muscle size, and that's all to do with muscle fiber sequencing, i.e. the larger guys' output was spread over a shorter time while the smaller guys' output was spread over a longer time producing the same overall output. I've seen one video where they compared kids to adults as they performed physical tasks. The kids' motions were jerky and unrefined, while the adults' motions were deliberate and more fluid. I've also seen another video comparing bad golfers to better ones. The difference is mostly in the application of force. The beginners apply this force somewhat randomly while the better ones applied it much more smoothly. Total force isn't that different, it's how this force is applied that makes all the difference.

Granted, larger muscles have a greater potential output, yet I've seen bulky guys walk just wrong. One might argue it's what's called muscle bound, but no, look at Tiger Woods, he's bulky yet the most successful golfer in history, some of it due to his significant flexibility no doubt, and he was quite successful as a skinny 18-19 year old. I mean, the guy can take the club all the way back and keep his left arm totally straight while his eyes are still fixed on the ball, yet produce so much speed.

On the other hand, without the hormones, practice is seriously limited in its ability to produce skill. Consider two men, one with normal testosterone, the other with below normal testosterone. The one with normal testosterone will be able to practice longer and harder to produce greater skill. Even if we purposely match practice time and load, there's going to be a difference for other reasons like recovery for example. In fact, even without any practice whatsoever, hormones alone cause growth whether we want to or not - kids grow because of growth hormone, or don't grow because of growth hormone deficiency.

He says free radicals are bad for some reason. Well, I'm sorry to break it to him, but free radicals is the reason for his muscles, i.e. oxidation. He's got lungs doesn't he? Well, I guess we're designed that way so we can fight our tendency to breathe in oxygen, cuz free radicals are so bad for us. Free radicals are essential for the immune system, specifically white blood cells that work on the principle of oxidation. Antioxidants basically shut the whole thing down.

Caloric restriction is a problem with growth. First Law, remember. If something is used somewhere, then it's not used elsewhere, then this elsewhere must do without, i.e. things slow down. Also, surplus is the only way to make sure to get enough of anything, cuz deficiency can't do that, nor can equilibrium cuz there's gonna be some waste inevitably. Efficiency can't grow enough to compensate for deficiency - cuz there's deficiency, i.e. it's just not there, zero, nada, can't make up stuff from nothing.

The idea of caloric restriction is a little special. If it's because it stimulates an increase in efficiency, we establish low efficiency to begin with. That makes no sense. There's also waste disposal efficiency, and this can only grow by having more waste, not less. Paradox, ya? Not really, it depends on the waste. If it's toxic waste, no amount is beneficial, it's gonna keep running down the body until it just shuts it down completely. If it's normal waste like carbon dioxide for example, then the more we produce, the greater our ability to dispose of it, cuz we're fully adapted to deal with carbon dioxide cuz we're fully adapted to deal with oxygen. So are we increasing waste, or just increasing the materials we use to produce waste, and incidentally to deal with waste? We use oxygen for everything, including to get rid of waste. Thus in this case, the more carbon dioxide we produce, the more oxygen we must have taken in, the greater our ability to dispose of carbon dioxide. This works for other things like ketones for example that on their own can deal with waste like advanced glycation end-products through a process called chaperone-mediated autophagy. Well, the by-products of this process is also waste, therefore the more of this particular waste we produce, the more ketones we must have produced to begin with, and this is all good.

Oh boy. Anybody else notice the symbols on his stick? I don't really want to go all tangent on this, but do some research on those two symbols (eye of Horus, and tree of life - the intertwined serpents), it's quite a deep rabbit hole.

Jebus, here I was just minding my own business and there it is, some guy with some crazy ideas about stuff, and I find all kinds of wrong with it, again. My lot in life, I guess.

Quite a while ago there was a rippling scandal in vegan land, where several prominent voices and cookbook authors all revealed they had to eat meat for their health. And they have taken down their sites since because of death threats.

But what stuck in my head the most was the constant whisper they reported: "Just eat meat and shut up. We don't talk about it, but we all eat meat."

And that is what I think about every health promoting vegan.

To be fair, some just openly supplement and admit that it's necessary on a vegan diet, and there's the possibility that some that don't just haven't been vegan long enough to run into obvious trouble. And then there are the people who have been vegan for a very long time, claim to not supplement or add meat--and look the part (wretched).

Yes, I agree, Teaser. Also he doesn't seem to stress the diet itself, as if it was secondary to everything else he talked about. Another point though is that he certainly did not do what he does now for very long simply because he got the bulk of his information later in his life. For his athletic performance, his achievement has necessarily taken several years, maybe more than a decade. This isn't just competing, but first in class. Also, his class isn't heavy weight, it's light weight. The heavyweights are extremely heavy, some over 400lbs body weight, and not all of it is muscle, there's lots of fat in there too. Take one of the super heavyweight class champion, Rezazadeh, he's quite fat, but a champion nonetheless. In his case, Reza started very lean, then decided to compete in the super heavyweight class, so he gained a tremendous amount of body mass to do this, that meant growing fatter.

For weight lifting, geometry also matters. A shorter guy of same mass will lift a heavier bar than a taller guy of same mass. It's the lever principle, and also the travel distance for the bar from the floor to overhead. For the super heavyweights, it's a different principle, the counterweight principle where some mass is thrown in the opposite direction to serve as an extra source of momentum that is then transferred to the bar. All weightlifters do this with a simultaneous hips forward/shoulder backward motion, but the heaviest do it even more. For the deadlift, we're talking almost pure strength, yet even here some use unorthodox techniques like a sort of unwinding of the upper spine through the motion, or a sumo stance. Since it's almost pure strength, it pays to have almost no fat mass, and mostly muscle mass. On the other hand, the deadlift has little use for front body strength like the pecs for example, the bulk of force is produced by the back, legs and buttocks. On the third hand, the deadlift engages the most mass and number of muscles of all motions, except maybe the two Olympic lifts.

Hmmmm. I can't quite get past the language of his philosophy. But he's certainly convincing--and pleasant--to look at.

I'm not impressed. He certainly knows a lot of factoids and he's put them together in a way that has become his theory and he uses his theory to back up his practice but...but...there's no proof of anything. It works for him, for now, good for him. He has no proof of anything other than his physique. Will he live longer because of what he's doing? No way to know that. He just thinks he will. Doubt can be very helpful for it leads one to question and questioning is useful. He seems arrogant and without doubt. For whatever reason I had to turn him off half way through because I couldn't stand listening to him plus his diet would make me sick almost instantaneously. As I said, I'm not impressed.

Jean

For these reasons, I found him interesting. Let's have him check back in when he's 65, and then again when he's 75. I'm not focused on his weight lifting, I'm focused on his dietary approach and the few pieces of information he deigned to reveal to the masses. While I'm always interested in those claiming they benefit from a certain dietary approach, and his approach is certainly very prescriptive, I'm also fascinated that one who consumes food so differently than I do can seemingly benefit from this approach. Maybe we need to have Denise Minger spend some time with him to get the real 411 . . . For now, I'll file this under unexplained phenomena.

Anybody else notice the continuous back and forth camera sway? That's a trick used for all kinds of video, especially movies that aren't very good. It's not really pertinent but it certainly hints at some problem with the content as if it wasn't that strong and it needed a little push, i.e. "You will sleeeeeeeeeep.... when you wake up you will feel very good about a vegan diet...now wake up!!!".

I've learned to notice these things. Just saying.

I'm a bit skeptical of the calories, they seem a bit low. I don't know if 1500 calories a day is low enough to rule out as an ongoing possibility for somebody like him, but it certainly does seem to be unusual, certainly unusual enough that if he does have good results a couple of decades from now, it wouldn't be unreasonable to ask for proof of his calorie intake. The lowest metabolic rate I've seen in a study of young adult males is 1100 calories a day, that was in a Cahill/Owen study on normal weight divinity students on an extended fast. That doesn't leave a whole lot of room for what Amen Ra is claiming to be doing on 1000-1500 calories a day.

I've seen some guys on bodybuilding forums claiming that he must be eating 3000+ calories per day to get the results that he claims (and to be able to perform the deadlifting feats which he does perform, these are documented). I find the claims that he must be eating that much as fantastic as the claims that he's eating that little. A very high volume training schedule might make that high an intake necessary, but I don't see where he claims such high volume. If you think he's eating 3000 calories a day, you pretty much have to think that he's lying. I think a much smaller increase in calories over what's claimed makes things more plausible, occasional indiscretions being discounted, or just slightly sloppy calorie counting is a more friendly accusation.

I watched the video at double-speed, that made me feel that he was speaking in real time.