Jay Feldman  0:00  
This bodybuilder fixed his bloating, fatigue and sleep issues with the bioenergetic approach after years of low carb dieting, cleanses, fasting, supplements and various other unsuccessful interventions, we'll be discussing his health journey in this video. And so with that, I'd like to introduce you to Sean Ferguson. Sean has been a competitive bodybuilder for 30 years, and he's won four world titles, and I've been wanting to feature more people on the channel who have seen benefits from the bioenergetic approach. It's something that many of you have been asking for in the comments, and Sean reached out mentioning how much improvements he's seen in these various areas of his health since implementing the bioenergetic approach. So I decided to have him come on to the channel to share his journey. So with that, I hope you enjoy this conversation with Sean Ferguson, well, Sean, welcome to the channel. Thanks for coming on. Why don't you tell everybody just a little bit about yourself and your background, and we'll go from there. Yeah, sure, Jay, thanks for inviting me.

Sean Ferguson  0:59  
Very honored to be on a podcast. Been following you for quite a long period of time, so you and Mike

has been inspirational, really, on everything you say, congratulations. Q on that brilliant and yeah. So going through my history, my history and my background is bodybuilding, so I started in 1988 at 17 years old, and I, as everyone does, started in the garage training, just ridiculous amounts of hours of training. So I trained for about four hours a night, thinking that more is better. You know, the more exercise I do, the more training, the bigger I'll get. And actually made myself quite ill. After that four month period, I got glandular fever, which unfortunately took me right back to the you know, I actually gained a bit of mass, believe it or not. I, after about six months, I I almost looked like a body lover. You know, the games were pretty good for natural state. I was just taking some amino acids at the time and and taking protein powders, etc. And, yeah, I did reasonably well, but I soon found that excessive exercise is not the key. My immune system obviously shot to pieces and ended up very, very sick for a year. But yeah, so I went back into training in 1989 1989 and I built myself up again and competed in 1992 23 year old a local show, got second place in a natural show, and kept progressing with that. I didn't compete, then to 2001 and I won my first British natural body driven title in 2001 and Yeah. Then carried on 2003 I was a British natural body building champion in another Federation called the bnbf, and then in 2007 I stayed with that Federation. Didn't compete for a few years. 2007 I had a bit of a break and went into 2007 I had a really great year. I came first at the bnbf final. Actually came first at the Mr. Wales, and I came first at the very first classic body garden championship. So this is the one that the famous Chris bunstein is famous for classic body building, and it's more on shape esthetics, etc. And I was the very first British champion. And then proceeding that, we went to create the iro in Spain, and of 70 athletes. So I got six play, which was a major achievement, and I was really, really and really could see, you know, the progression and the way that I trained was really working for me. So, so then I think 2000 the many competitions after that, but the probably the pinnacle was 2016 I competed in a fitness Federation. So it wasn't bodybuilding, really. It was fitness, but they just bought out of what a given category. So it's called Pure elite. And I won the world championships with them. I won a pro card with them, and then I won the overall title in Europe and the world, which no one in that division had done. So that's against men's physique, all the men's categories. Basically, I won the overall, which is never, I don't think it's been ever done before, and still hasn't been done to this day. So that was quite an accomplishment. And then in so I would say that was, that was really the pinnacle of my of my training. I. And my competition, and then I've competed ever since, till present day. And 2025 I've, I've, I've competed seven times this year, 56 now. So, yeah, I don't want to go too far down this path, because there's a lot to talk about. I've probably done 70 competitions. 70 competitions, so, yeah, be all night if I had to run for every single one of them, but, but, yeah, that's, that's the main ones.

Jay Feldman  5:32  
Gotcha, yeah? Obviously, quite a history there. And, and, you know, with the fact that you're still competing, a lot of demand on on your body. And you know, as you mentioned, even from early on, recognizing some of the issues with overdoing it over training, and obviously that being something we talk about a lot, and I know that as an adjunct to, you know, the body building endeavors and other athletic endeavors, you've trialed a number of different diets. You know, we've talked a little bit about this. You reached out sharing some of this, and a lot of the diets, a lot of the approaches that so many people are trying, not only for athletic endeavors and trying to get lean and build muscle, but also for, you know, health for gut, health for sleep, for autoimmune issues. You know, when we start talking about fasting and keto and different cleanses. And I know you've kind of been through it all, as so many of us have, before we end up in a place, you know, in the kind of bioenergetic sphere, which, you know, is we, you know, I'll often joke, is kind of the last stop in the health journey. So tell me a bit about that. Tell me a bit about the history with the different dietary approaches, what the goals were there, and how they worked for you or didn't work for you. And then we'll, we'll lead that into what's led to, you know, kind of present

Sean Ferguson  6:51  
day, sure. So I would say 2016 I won that world championship in 2017 with a turning point. I suddenly started to get some distention on the stomach, which I'd never had before. You know, always had a very small waist, 2827 inch waist at one point, so very, very slim in waste, and it started to distend. And I was getting problems with I think it was a startup practical disease, to be honest with you, to a certain extent, I think even though I was healthy, or considered myself healthy, I was still eating processed food. I was still not really keeping to a complete diet plan. I was forever binging, going on a low carb diet, keto diet, fasting, carb cycling. Tried all these avenues, and I think it made the condition worse and worse, to be honest with you,

Jay Feldman  8:03  
you would try those out. So at that point, Sean, you were, you were noticing distension after not being as a two, like not being as dialed in with your diet. And then after that, was when you started trying some of these approaches to try to remedy the issue, right?

Sean Ferguson  8:18  
Yep, that's, that's exactly right, 100% so what I found was that these diets maybe helped, initially with some of the conditions with a dissension issue, but after a while, it was just getting worse. It was just getting worse and worse and worse. And every single year it seemed to even though I did quite well, and I continue to do very well. It was clear his attention was getting worse and worse from year to year. I was I was experiencing worse symptoms, and as they say, that was I switched to low carb. I mean, when I was doing these early diets, I was probably doing more of a low fat approach, because the time, it was the 80s, wasn't it, and we were all doing low fat, low protein, low not low protein, but low fat protein. And that diet was in vogue at the time. And I think probably I got in shape, because I was quite Tubby when I was at school, I was very endomorphic, and I would put fat on easily. And when I went to 18, and I did that activity, even though it was a wrong activity and it was too much, it did actually work, to be honest with you, and I got in really good shape, and that was on the low fat. I think the fats were really low though, at that point, because no one was eating anything at that time. It's the time when we were concerned with not doing fat was the enemy, wasn't it at the time? So, so, yeah, so in retrospect, right? Was probably the way I should have continued, maybe. But with the dysfunction coming on, obviously, there was an issue, and I don't think that was to do with the low cut, because what I used to do, you see, I used to the old ad did bulk up in the off season as a natural bodybuilder. So I would eat very poorly, to be fair in the off season, and then 12 weeks before competition, I'd switch the switch and I go to the approach. But that didn't that didn't work after a while, so I switched to the low carb approach, and had some good results to be fair initially, but after a period of time that's not and the extensions started to get us, you know. So, yeah. So, yeah. So that, and that was the thing, even when I was dieting, I'd be on this low carb approach, you know. Do you remember the cyclical approach where used to do five days with very low carb, and then two days, one day was high cup, very high carb, and then half of it on the second day. So I used to follow that approach, but that completely seemed to muck me up, because I would then, on Monday, crave the foods that I weekend. So it's a vicious cycle, and it was very difficult to adhere to that dietary system. I've stuck with it for years. I reckon I stuck with that for a good 10 years. Game, to be fair,

Jay Feldman  11:31  
yeah, and, and, I mean, you, you mentioned to me you hadn't had food in 10 years, so you weren't somebody who was and even if there was maybe some falling off the diet on a weekend or something here there. I mean, you were, you were very regimented with this approach. And you mentioned you did, you know the cyclical low carb, but also full on carnivore, full on keto, at times, doing the fasting. When it comes to creating a diet for optimal health, there's a lot of conflicting information out there, and that's why I've created the energy balance food guide to help you determine exactly what to eat to optimally support your metabolism and help you lose weight, improve your digestion, get amazing sleep, boost your energy and so much more. The energy balance Food Guide is a one page infographic that organizes foods on a spectrum based on how effectively they support your metabolism, and it also has a separate spectrum that adjusts the scale for you in the case that you're dealing with various digestive symptoms, the food guide makes it extremely easy to get started with a bioenergetic approach to optimizing your health. So head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/guide to download your free energy balance Food Guide. And you know, the journey here is such a common journey, right? Where somebody is, maybe they're coming from the low fat approach from back in the day, which included also a lot of whole grains, a lot of vegetables, a lot of things that people don't digest too well and tend to cause, you know, gut issues and bloating. But also, at that time, it was a lot of margarine, a lot of unsaturated fats, you know, if you were you know, of the fat that that you were eating

Sean Ferguson  13:01  
recommended sources, healthy, recommended and, of course, trans fats, you know, most of those products, yeah. So I think the other thing was, was cardio as well. I mean, I've always been very heavily into cardio, and I think that stemmed from the fact that I had to use so much body fat when I, when I, when I bought a home condition, and then I had to use extreme methods to get my body back in shape. So I was, I mean, you know, even recently, within probably the last three years, I mean, my record was six hours on the bike. You know, it's just crazy to try and get in shape. And the more I did it, the more I seem to have to do. It wasn't a case of, well, I can stick with this regime for this contest, and that's going to work. It just wasn't happening, you know. And it got harder and harder, and I'd take the food lower and lower, I'd take the cardio up, and it was just a, you know, it's a circle that was just getting worse and worse and worse,

Jay Feldman  14:01  
yeah, and there's a huge cost to that dieting cycle too. That's again, speaking of things that I think so many people experience to different extents. I mean, the the weight cycling, the dieting, the going really hard on the cardio while cutting the calories, and the cost that that has physiologically, and how much more prone we are to regaining weight after that, how much harder it is to continue to lose weight after that, and the chronic down regulation of our metabolic rate or thyroid or our gut function, or, you know, reproductive hormones, all of these things that come with that. So we had this kind of classic dieting cycling alongside some health issues that cropped up because of not the carbs themselves, but the types of carbs we were eating, plus the diet cycling, plus probably, you know, some bad fats, and, you know, a number of other things that we then blame on the carbs. And so we say, All right, let's cut those out. We go low carb. We go keto, we go carnivore. Well, normally it's just low carb as a starting place, and we get. Some benefits, and then the issues start to creep back in, and we say, Oh, well, I It's those carbs that I'm still having, the 50 grams a day that are causing it, and that, or the one, the one day a week with the carbs. And then it's all right, full on keto. And then it's add fasting to it, and then it's add carnivore to it. And we just go harder and harder until the issues really kind of crop up and end up just in our face. And I know you mentioned one of the biggest ones for you, being the distension and the bloating, but I know you also talked about energy and sleep a little bit too. So what was like, what you know, kind of at the at the end point of, let's call it the low carb journey, what were you feeling at that point like, what was the experience? Like?

Sean Ferguson  15:44  
An energy guy, a real energy guy, but lack of energy, you know, I literally, I remember I was working two jobs where I run gym names in Georgia, where I live, and I had another job at the time while I was trying to get the gym going. And I was finding that I had a job where I have to go to the bank and take them, take cash from the bank and walk into there I was going to make it. You know, I just such a lack of energy. And it felt like every step he would trudging through mud. And, yeah, how absolutely terrible, really bad, to the to the point where, you know, I could just, easily, just stay on the couch all day, and I could do, but, yeah, yeah, that was a repercussion. 100% 100% no energy whatsoever. I think it's the biggest fact, there's no

Jay Feldman  16:42  
energy and and just to interject here for a moment, you're not someone who looks like you wouldn't have energy, right? People looking at you from the outside would assume you're the healthiest, right? Like you couldn't have you couldn't be struggling to walk into the bank like that's, you know, those two things seem incompatible to people, and I think that's a part of the issue too, is we don't often recognize that sometimes fitness and body composition can be independent of health, and a lot of times, some, you know, the things that we do to really get to the some of these physiques that we're envying comes at the cost of our health, but also the, you know, the when we try to remedy that cost by adding, you know, low carb diet on top of it, it just compounds. And so we can be dealing with these major, major issues despite having the ABS and having the look that that people think is is the epitome of health,

Sean Ferguson  17:41  
correct, 100% agree. So, so, yeah, so that, that was my experience with that. And, you know, I, I just thought that was the only way. That's, that's, you know, you've got to suck it up and just do it. You know, that that was going to be the only one. And if I either all wanted to do that or I quit, you know, so, so, yeah, I was on that wagon for a long time.

Jay Feldman  18:06  
Yeah, so. So tell me about the the the transition out of that, the, you know, moment of truth. You know, the light at the end of the tunnel. I know you mentioned the sugar diet when we were talking. So what? Yeah, what was the kind of transition out of that, like, out of this place of depleted energy, struggling with sleep and digestion and the distension as well, and what kind of brought you out of that? And what has been the experience more recently? Sure.

Sean Ferguson  18:39  
So yeah, like, I say, every year I competed, and every year I did okay. I always thought, You know what I should be doing better than this, this guy, I used to beat him back in the day. Now he's beating me. You know, something's not right here, and everything else was perfect. You know, the rest of my body, my legs, my apostles, or everything's perfect, but it's just the waste. The stomach was the problem, and it came to a this year really was when it came to a head. So I competed, as I say, seven times this year, and 2000 Yeah, 225, seven shows. I'll explain a brief story if I could about what happened on the show before the seventh one. So this was the sixth show, and I was, I was supposed to be competing in Bristol, and we had an arranged driver who was supposed to be taking us very early start. So looking 630 morning kit and shaver, eight o'clock, the driver let me down two hours before I was due to go. So of course, I got to my friend said, sorry she's not coming. Great. Okay, so I have to drive myself to the event. Cortisol, don't get me wrong. Might just. Engine was really bad anyway, so, but as you probably can realize that the stress and the cortisol response to that it was immense. So when I actually have arrived at the event, I was stressed, you know, I was het up. I was, you know, not in a good place. So it wasn't a good starting place to do it. And I did the show, and the president of the Federation came to somebody surely said your stomach was out of control. He said it was awful. He said, I'll tell you how it is. I'm not someone that was sugar goat if he said it was terrible. He said, Unless you sort that out you're not going to place on the body movement show you know highly ever again. So I took that aboard, went home. After that, did my research, looked at everything to do with weight, which I'd already done, to be fair, but it was just at the time when Mark Bell was coming up with the sugar diet. Rob Cole was on there. You know that everyone was was hitting on the FDF 21 and yeah, so I saw that, and there was another, there's another bodybuilder Chase irons that was doing it as well, that I followed. So they were all switching to this diet. And I thought, How bizarre. How strange. You know, they're switching from low carb approach, which I've been on, and now they're all doing this and, you know, portraying this low carb diet as the best thing ever, and then completely turning on its head, which, but, you know, with all the things that I was watching, it seemed like the waste, particularly, was coming in on these traps. I mean, they didn't have the potential problems that I did, but you could see a lot of evidence there that this was productive in terms of reducing the waistline. So I researched it, and I think a lot of it was obviously digestion. And my my digestive system, I think Jay, to be honest, was absolutely, completely clogged with protein, because I've been eating within the region of three to 400 grams of protein every single day for 10 years, you know? And what happened is my stomach had become like the intestine had come like sludge. In fact, when I had a scan on my intestine years ago, they, they, they pointed out that my digestion track was one of the longest they've ever seen. So, so in that respect, very efficient if you, if you're on a desert you want to survive, but not very good for bodybuilding, really, because you're very efficient, unfortunately. And any food that goes in and the transit time of me was very, very so this is another point when I used to do the shows. Initially I wouldn't go to the toilet for a week, you know. So that was because of the calorie restriction, the exercise and, yeah, looking back, it was awful, digestively wise. And what happened was, over a period of time, that protein built up it, I think it created a sludge in my in my stomach, in my intestine that's almost impacted to a point where it was just solid, you know, and absorption of food in that intestine wasn't being absorbed. So I had to do something radical to try and implicate some of these problems. So yeah, that that high carb diet seemed the way to go, because it easily digestible. Foods that were quick would go through the system fast. That made sense to me. Number one, also protein. I had no protein for a week, which you know, considering someone that's had three to 400 grams for that period of time, it it was, it was quite a turn for me in that respect. So, so, yeah, so reducing the protein to nothing, putting fruits in, as you said, I'd never had an apple for 10 years. So I actually had an apple. I was like, You know what? This is really tasty, and not only tasty, but very satisfying, you know, I had three apples. I forgot what? And then all these people were telling me, for years, No, you eat fruit, you'll be hungry all day, and it'll boot, you know, push that blood sugar out, the insulin will come in, and, you know, major problems, which is obviously the train that we've all been on. So, yeah, so I implemented that diet. Alongside that I took out. And the other thing was, I'm a gym owner, and I train clients, so it's laziness, but number one, but the other thing was, it wasn't very professional, walking around with food in a tupperware dish and eating that in front of the client. So I would eat a protein bar, you know. And I would probably have about four or five of those deck, you know. And do protein bars, processed food, obviously just a glorified candy bar. Basically. And so, yeah, that was doing me no favors whatsoever. So I cut the protein bars out. I cut the protein powders out because I know probably at your age, Jay, protein powders weren't an issue. I could, I could, I could digest them at the point, but at the end of the day, they still process food, you know. So I took those out anyway. I took all dairy products. I took all wheat products out. I took, as I say, low protein, and it kept you really the fruits, the honey, table sugar, white rice, potatoes, things that were easily digestible. Okay, so, so and I access society. So I'd never done that. You know, all with all my career, bodybuilding was all about restriction, but I just as much as I wanted, you know, I lost weight. I lost like 10 pounds in a week. It was unbelievable. And, yeah, I got in my best condition through that. There was another protocol that I used to because, as I said, there was a sludge. There was a problem with digestion, so I had to do something radical to eradicate that. So on that angle, I introduced a lot of supplements to try and, you know, change some of those problems. They included a lot of detox tablets that had like, you know, milk thistle, dandelion root, you know, ginger, turmeric and some digestive enzymes, especially the ones that have fiber so unoline, activated charcoal, pumpkin seed, garlic tablets, White Kidney extract, B Corn extract, Burberry and alongside a few placatives, unfortunately, which, you know, I just thought was it was only going to be for a week. It was only going to be for a week. So anything, I think, as you discussed, and when, I mean, this is how I got to know about yourself, was when you did the video on the FGF 21 FTF 21 and discuss the problems with it. And you yourself said that you can see, you know, progressive athlete, that this would probably work, and we're going to benefit, but only for a short term. So I thought, Okay, well, I'll run this, because I know people probably should have that, running it for like, week, 100 days, or whatever. You know, create, yeah, and

Jay Feldman  27:42  
just so, just to interject here, because I do you know, we'll get to the conclusion here of how it did seem to work short term and then what happened after that. But I just want to highlight, too, it seems like you really benefited from the main things that I discussed in those videos. People benefit from what the sugar diet, which is one, it's a huge elimination diet, so we dropped a lot of those protein powders, the processed foods that you discussed that were definitely not doing your digestion any favors. You dramatically increased the easy to digest carbohydrates, so your body had that much more fuel and energy to reverse a lot of the processes you were you were experiencing. And then you did also seem to have the kind of short term stress effect of the extreme protein depletion, up regulating FGF 21 increasing the metabolic rate, which, again, there's a short term effect there that can, you know, lead to weight loss and things like that. But there's also a cost there, which is why I basically, you know, take the position that I think there's some really great things about the sugar diet, and one of them also being them also being helping people realize, who have been low carb for a decade, that the carbs aren't actually the problem, and that's huge. And so that's the other benefit, I think that there was here, which, you know, you know, I can't highlight enough, but, but then you did seem to see the stress effects actually take hold, I know, after the short period of time. So yeah, let's tell me a little bit about that again. Initially, we had this really great improvement, and for good reason. And then what happened after

Sean Ferguson  29:11  
it no point, though, Jay, that I think you will find quite interesting. So at the time, I was having massage, sports therapy, massage weekly, and I saw some videos about colon, like the anti clockwise massage for the colon. You ever seen that? So basically the Massa would move around your colon area and push on certain areas in a clockwise manner that would aid digestion. Basically help digestion by pushing on the colon and and increase pilot movement where, yeah, but parasite, Parasite daughters, so it would increase. Peristalsis, and I took that on, actually, Jay and I bought one of those electric stimulators. Now, you know that people buy those and they think, oh, you know, they'll get six pack with these. They didn't work like that. Obviously, you know that. But what I found interesting was, when I put the electric stimulator on, I found, after doing that several times a day, that I would have more bowel movements because it was stimulating the colon, and it works by electrical impulses. So it's, it's, it's pumping like this, pulsating rather and that's causing, well, for me anyway, it's only anecdotal, but for me, it seemed to definitely help in Peril Status, where, you know, the food was going faster through the transit system. So that was an interesting point,

Jay Feldman  30:56  
yeah, and that's a great intervention. You know, that's something I do. I recommend, sometimes abdominal myofascial release, which is the same idea, right? Massage. Often, you know, self massage, or, you know, you can have somebody else help you throughout the abdomen and kind of stimulating certain parts of the intestines. And also, for people who have had chronic digestive issues, you can have calcified tissue, you know, fibrotic tissue, and this helps to break that up and move things through. So, yeah, it can be a great tool, for sure. But I just want to circle back, because, you know, we were talking about the sugar diet. We had this, these great initial benefits. And I want to talk about, I want to, I want you to share what the kind of end experience was there, and then what the kind of steps have been since that point.

Sean Ferguson  31:39  
Yeah, sure. So, so, yeah, so that that worked, that worked for a week. And what was quite interesting was the over the week, every single day of that diet, I was changing, and the waste was coming down, down, down. And fascinating, really, because I've never seen it for 10 years. And then, you know, the day of the show, I didn't even cut, cut any water or anything. I literally just drank normally. Didn't do any dehydration, nothing which, which, you know, normally I would restrict water to a certain extent, didn't do any I just generally drank and ate what I wanted and went to the show. And people can believe it, they were like it was ironic, because it was the same judges that judged me the week before that judged me on this show, and they said to me, that's night and day difference. And there was people in this contest that I compete against the week before that I actually beat and they beat me the week before. So that's how drastic it was. They were absolutely gone. They said, whatever you've done, Sean is absolutely amazing. The head of the Federation that told me, you've got to get the mid steps came up to me, and he packed me on back and said, so that was amazing. He said. He said, No distension, flat stomach. He said, best you've been at the same 10 years, which I knew anyway, but yeah, that kind of spelled it out. And yeah, so there you go. It was such a dramatic change in a week. And people say that that pump didn't prove it can be done, you know. But as I say, I will stress, but that was very stressful and body. Oh, the other thing I was going to say my sleep actually includes radio as well. So, you know, under your recommendation, I was taking a few supplements, or has taken our thiamin at night with the

Jay Feldman  33:28  
unit or thymine theme,

Sean Ferguson  33:30  
sorry, and and zinc, tyrene and l glyce glycine, yeah. It's also magnesium glycate. And I've found that just going in the infrared sauna for about 30 minutes before bed as well seemed to help with sleep. And I was getting massages regularly as well. So kind of like I know that. I know the infrared sauna, they don't get as hot as a normal sauna, you see, so it haven't got that sort of intense heat. So it's, it's more of, I think, of therapy rather than, as long as you didn't send it too long again. So it's duration thing. So, so, so, yeah, so I was implementing those into which, which had to, Thank you, Paul, because my sleep's been terrible. So in a week contest, perhaps, normally, you don't set the door, you know. So again, with that aspect, you know, I think it was, it was a good thing,

Jay Feldman  34:31  
yeah, I mean, yeah, great benefits there, and that's awesome, and so, but I know you said there was a cost, there was a, you know, when we were sending, you're talking a little bit before this, you'd mentioned one pretty big thing that had thing that happened here with that, with the sugar diet, yeah.

Sean Ferguson  34:46  
So after after week, it was all good. And then I thought, oh, you know, let's not give up a good thing here. Let's, let's, let's carry this on, see how it goes. Well, yeah, I definitely lost the muscle mass in that week. Then we lost any. But into about Wednesday, Thursday, I didn't have the energy that I was having. Is good as before, it was, it was, it was definitely not as good. Cravings seem to be higher for other foods. And I was definitely the muscle mass for sure. You know, I was, you know, I'm very sensitive with my body. I know when it's things are happening. You know, visually I can see it. So, so, yeah, so I think it's good for seven days, but after that, I think I was getting a bit of FGF 21 resistance to it. So, so that, what, in my opinion, that was happening, yeah, and

Jay Feldman  35:43  
I think, you know, I have a feeling, because we'll, we'll get into what you're doing now, but I have a feeling if you were to do the sugar diet again, you wouldn't have those same benefits, because I think most of the benefits for you came from taking out things that you weren't digesting well, getting carbs in that you really needed, as opposed to the stress, which I do think led to a good amount of the weight loss there. But we saw the cost of that. We saw that after a little bit, it didn't continue and started to actually lead to major compromises with the things that you were noticing improvements in, like energy and, of course, muscle mass and so obviously we had some clear benefits there, but we saw those costs come up pretty quickly. And as you said, this is a parallel story to what I've seen with a lot of people who were taking that approach. And so what's been the what's been the approach since that point?

Sean Ferguson  36:31  
Yeah, okay, right. So, so yeah, after that, I decided we definitely need protein. Okay, definitely. Well, you need all the micronutrients. That's obvious. Carbohydrate was one that I'd avoided. I did the sugar diet. I've discovered that wasn't an issue, and that actually carbohydrate beneficial, especially for performance. So So yeah, so I went back. It is a bit of a cycle that I do now, so I'll do moderate carbs, moderate fats and moderate protein most of the time. Okay, so, yeah, more balanced approach there, but I find that just using some of that diet that I use for that week, if I just on the day before I train, and bear in mind, only train two times a week, so this is only happening twice a week. I would, I would titrate the carbs up about late afternoon the day before it went and my theory is that, you know, your glycogen levels, if they're lower, can be topped up through a little bit more carbohydrate. And you know, there's a limiting factor with carbohydrates in the muscles, so we can assimilate so many carbs before saturation point, or the muscles will not take any more carbohydrates. And obviously it's diverted then, isn't it, to body fat, if it is excessive amounts. So and So, what I was doing was I was titrating the carbs up and decreasing the protein just from about four o'clock through to the next day. And then I would switch actually, because what I found was, if I stayed on the carbohydrate before training, okay, it didn't seem so productive, I think because my glycogen levels were supported well enough by the carbohydrates ingested. But when I got to that point, actually the fat and protein at that point. So on the morning, I would generally just eat protein fats, and I found that I think it's stabilizing the insulin from your insulin response. Maybe this is my theory anyway. And so you get a more of a balanced energy, energy period where, when you're training, you can utilize the carbs that you had at night. And bearing in mind, I'm still had protein, carbs and everything before this, and then it was mainly carbohydrate. So kind of like how, in the old days, people would basically use carbohydrate before a race. They would David take but but to a lesser scale. So we're talking, you know, two or 300 grams more carbohydrates than on a non training day. But again, I do go by instinct. So you know, on that, on that thing, if I'm feeling hungrier, on that period, I'll eat more. So it's not a fixed level or anything like that. It's literally doing on how my body is feeling and what it wants. There's more of an indicator, or I'm just gonna have this amount. It seems to work better if I just, intuitively, just take those carbohydrates aboard, and then the next day, a really good workout, you know, so and then, and then, immediately. And also, I want to say it was a point that what I do is, before training, I'll take MCT oil. Okay? Okay, as a quick acting fact, with sometimes some carbohydrates, to be honest. I mean, if I do want, you know, an apple or something like that, I'll have that before training. But, you know, not an acceptable amount. And I just find that mixing some fat and carbs together at that point seems to benefit me in the MCT oil, being, you know, a little bit more faster acting. But again, as I say, my workouts are 30 minutes, and it's dose related, isn't it? So with exercise, as one of the pine is Mike Mendez said, he said it's, it's exercise is no different, really. It's just a dose related thing. So in other words, if you have to have an operation, you The anesthesiologist will give you just the right amount of drug to do the job. He wouldn't give you 10 times the amount, because obviously that would be detrimental. So so the same exercise, I think it's and I for Jones, used to say that. He used to say, maybe we were not taught to look at how much exercise we could tolerate, but how much do we really need, right? So, so very clever and way ahead of his time. So this is in 70s. And he said, you know, the minimum dose to create maximum response. And this is what I really point is, is is exercise that short, intense breathe, yeah, so there is a stress, but it's not excessive, and you're stimulating the muscle, which is all you need to do, send the signal to the muscle to stimulate it to grow, and then leave it rest and recover. I think that's an important point, yeah, that I do now, whereas I probably didn't think about that so much, you know, in previous, previous times, always thought more was better. You know, more cardio the better. You know, more training. Even, even when I was doing contests, I used to, oh, if I do some extra sets that burn a bit more body fat, you know. And all it was doing was depleting me even more and giving me, probably, well for sure, less muscle mass, because it was going over that dose that, you know. The analogy with the an etiologist that you're overdosing, you know, so you need to give, you need to get it just the right amount of dose. That's the point with exercise.

Jay Feldman  42:26  
And so to kind of summarize here, what we've basically done is we've reached a much healthier level of energy balance, right? We're not overdoing the energy demands like we were before, in driving excess stress, which is catabolic, breaking down muscle, and also coming at the cost of digestion, which you had touched on earlier, you know, the stress even from that morning that you had a, you know, a pretty stressful morning, you noticed immediately that was causing distension, that was causing some of these gut issues. So we don't want to underplay how big of an impact stress can have. And along with that, we're also supplying our bodies better with the fuel that they need to produce energy to deal with the stress that we are putting it under, which is going to happen for all of us to different extents, day to day. That's, you know, part of life is the energy demands. You know, that are not only just our liver detoxification and our cognitive function, but also things like movement and exercise and environmental stressors. And so what we're what we basically have, is we've lowered those energy demands, we've improved the energy supply. And as you said, Come to a much more moderate approach where there's still protein in there, there's still fat in there, and there's still carbs in there, and we're using a little bit of extra carbs around training. And more importantly than that, is some intuition, right, listening to your body, paying attention to what it needs, and giving yourself that kind of freedom, which is, I think, for most people, the biggest difference, right, when we're coming from fasting over training low carb, it's restriction based, it's willpower based. It's trying to force your body into whatever endpoint we want, just like making it happen, and when it doesn't happen, we push it harder, as opposed to actually recognizing the our body signals aren't evil. Our body doesn't want us to be overweight. It doesn't want us to be sick. It's actually we're on the same team here, believe it or not, and so listening to it and giving it what it needs is actually the solution. And being able to get to a point where we can then have that intuition, I think, is a part of the the goal, right? That's where we want to get to. And it's beyond being so much better health wise, also so freeing from what most people are dealing with for, for years, for decades, sometimes for their entire lives. And that's, you know, speaking of stress, I mean, that's a big one too. Just this freedom from restriction, from chronic restriction, which, yeah, I think is, is something that's hard to put into words when you haven't experienced it yet. But, you know, it's so exciting to hear someone who's like. Right in that stage and experiencing those differences. So is there anything else you want to share Sean about, like, what you've learned, what, what you've changed in terms of your thought process? You know about health, nutrition, fitness?

Sean Ferguson  45:14  
Yeah, so, so stress is the biggest one. I think stress levels need to be addressed, because they're the biggest killer, I think, these days for anybody, and that is something that I have addressed and in trying to rectify. I mean, it's very, very hard in this sort of world to you're full of stress, right? And the whole world is stressed so and work stressful, etc, etc, but it's putting things in place that will eradicate some of that is massively beneficial for health. One thing that I would say as an athlete, obviously, I'm doing this carbohydrate thing just on the training day, and I tend to have a little bit more protein after training as well. So on that day, protein consumption will be higher. But this isn't really required for the general person. I would say to the general person, right? You just need to keep the macronutrients as I have it day to day. You don't need to do these, these things, because that's an athlete who's got goal, particular goals, and if you haven't got those particular goals, and they need to do that, so the even more balanced approach to them is better. So, yeah, so there is that. I mean, one of the conditions I've got to mention, actually, Jay, was that I have got Anglia spondylitis, which has incurred, unfortunately through part of the game, 30 odd years of weights, quite a strain on the spine, etc, and, you know, I've got some issues there. That does hold me back quite a bit with with my training, and also, yeah, with everyday life as well, which I have to say, has benefited from this diet. There's, there's no question that I feel better for doing this and looking into the literature, it does seem that avoiding wheat products and these foods can actually have a positive benefit for people with Anglia spondylitis. You know, your thoughts really down that one.

Jay Feldman  47:19  
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I've worked with people with, as, with ankylosing spondylitis, and interestingly, a good handful of them are athletes, you know, and are into fitness. But we've been, you know, I've, I've been able to help people who have been on medications for decades, you know, the injections that are used biologics that are used for as and we're able to completely get off of them and and stop flaring entirely by addressing the foundations. And you know, I've had a couple of podcast episodes on autoimmunity that I'll link back to. But as you noted, there's a strong relationship with gut health, with foods that we're eating that we might not digest well, that can lead to inflammation and irritation in the intestines. So it's absolutely something that we can essentially reverse, of course, when it comes to healing tissue that's been damaged chronically over years, that's where some other therapies could be warranted. You know, red light therapy could be something to consider. And, you know, there's some others I might consider there as well, but at the very least, yeah, I mean, when it comes to the condition itself, like other autoimmune conditions, we can see incredible improvements in reversal just from the dietary change. And it's not just the diet, but it's, it's the energy, right? The Chronic stress actually drives the inflammation, that drives the damage, that drives the auto immune state. Gut issues tend to be a major cause of that. But it's not just the gut. It's also the lack of nutrition, and the lack of carbs, lack of calories, the overtraining, all of those things all all play a role here.

Sean Ferguson  48:56  
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. So, so, yeah, that's, that's something that, you know. And I think what happened was, at an early age, you know, I was ego lifting, you know. And I was finding that those early days, if I knew what I knew now, and I see youngsters in the gym, I say dead lifting and squatting, ridiculous weight. I know that that causes issue for sure. And if I could go back, I would train like I am now, which is slow, controlled, etc, but you can't put that those shoulders on a young man. That's problem. So of course, yeah, there were errors always in their best spot for this of doing things wrong in the very early stages of your life. And I think that goes with diet and training that if you could, because I was brought up in a busy household, a mother that was teacher, a father that was a policeman and. A busy life, and I lived off processed food when I was coming up, and I think that had a big, you know, issue on what's happening now. So when you say, there's a consequence, yeah, there is, there is, and unfortunately, I'm bearing that now, so it's Yeah, but hopefully, you know, as I say, even at this, anytime you can reverse what's happening. You know, as we say, permanent damage, no, but some of it, if you're partially damaged or whatever, you can certainly reverse that, you know, certain extent. Yeah, yeah,

Jay Feldman  50:33  
absolutely, absolutely. I want to circle back here, because I want to hear some of these sentiments, you know, kind of where you're at. But I guess the way I would say it is, you know, are there any takeaways that you have, maybe for somebody who's a little bit hesitant about making some of the changes that you've made? You know, you've talked about some of the benefits you've had, but what's changed in terms of your mindset and and how different is it now from before? And if you were maybe talking to yourself six months ago or a year ago or five years ago or earlier, like you were saying, what kinds of things come to mind.

Sean Ferguson  51:06  
So trying to keep life in general, stress, exercise, diet in a complete balance and moderation, you know, moderation is the key. Is the key to healthy life and a good life, you know, and I don't think I had that before, you know, my feeling was, yeah, the more I do, the better I'm going to be but, you know, and I established that very early in training that that wasn't the case, and moderation was better, but I hadn't discovered that with with things like cardio and diet so and not being scared of some of those mechanisms, especially carbohydrate, which you know, were deemed as is the enemy. And clearly, you know, I've understood and learned that clearly it's not you know, and it's actually your friend, and you need to, as you say, not be scared to try this approach, which, you know, I've proved does work, and as someone that's pretty much done every diet on earth that you can think of, and tried every single approach that you can think of, that's that's pretty high, to be coming at that conclusion after those many years of doing all these different things and coming to this solution that in the end, it's, it's really very simple, isn't it, that everything's got to be balanced, everything's got to be moderation. And if you can do that, then you're on a winning you're on a winning level, for sure, you know? So I am going to continue with it. Jay, it's definitely something that long term, you know, I'm just going to keep to, you know, I'm, I'm deemed as this health person. In reality, I see myself now as not being a health person, because my whole life I've been processed food, which, of course, is the worst thing I can dump my health, you know? And it's only coming to reality now that this is, this is gonna be the way forward, you know, and I'll continue the rest of my life and and the principles are about will continue.

Jay Feldman  53:13  
Yeah, I love it, and I love sharing that idea of, kind of not being a health person anymore. I think part of it is because there's this kind of association with that of restriction, you know, in different forms, and kind of, you know, you're someone who's at the gym every day bright and early, and you only eat salads and things like that. And there's also, I think, with the experience that you've shared here, and that so many, many of us on this other side, have experienced, is you kind of shed the dogmatism a little bit, because you recognize that all of these things that we were feeling we you know, these beliefs that we held so tightly we recognize weren't actually helping us. They were holding us back the whole time. And that's something that's also associated with the health person, is they're going to tell you, here's what you need to do. But the reality is that sort of rigidity and dogmatism kind of falls away when you get out of the restriction, and you also reckon you have kind of the evolution and the learning. And so I think that's a great way to put it, something I definitely resonate with. So yeah, thanks so much for for sharing your experiences, sharing this, this journey, and we'll chat soon. You.