Shawn Baker

Cameron: [00:00:00] Flow unleashed. Unleashed.
Why do you eat the food you eat? Is it habitual? Have you just become accustomed to the food you grew up with, or the diets and recipes that you've had for years or that your peers have recommended? Stay with us as we explore a radical alternative to what we are told to consume.
Welcome to Flow Unleashed. I'm Cameron Norsworthy and this is your podcast for human performance.
In the 1870s, Italian physician Analo Tani prescribed an exclusive [00:01:00] animal-based diet to his diabetic patients. A controversial approach that stood out even in its time. Since then, the idea of eliminating plant foods entirely has remained a subject of debate among doctors, nutritionists, and the general public.
Yeah. Despite skepticism, many prominent individuals, including Joe Rogan and Bear Grills have publicly championed the carnivore diet for its supposed health benefits. While some researchers linked diets high and red in process meets to an increased risk of certain diseases such as cancer, comprehensive and conclusive studies on the carnival diet itself remain limited.
On the other hand, anecdotal evidence continues to suggest dramatic health improvements among its followers, from enhanced Energy to better weight management. Carnival Diet is as straightforward as it is polarizing. Eliminate all plant [00:02:00] based foods and focus exclusively on meat, fish eggs, and select low lactose dairy products like hard cheeses and heavy cream advocates of the diet.
Describe it as. Less of a restrictive plan and more of a sustainable lifestyle by removing the need to count calories or track macros. Many find it easier to stick to than even keto or other low carb diets. One of the primary motivators for trying this way of eating is weight loss, but its uses extend beyond shedding pounds.
As concerns over sugar related conditions like type two diabetes continue to rise, many individuals turn to the carnivore diet as a method of reducing carbohydrate intake and managing insulin levels. Our guest today is Dr. Sean Baker, and Sean is one of the most prominent voices advocating for this unconventional way of eating.[00:03:00]
A medical doctor, combat trauma surgeon, and former chief of the orthopedics, Dr. Baker's expertise extends far beyond the clinic. He is also an elite athlete, world record holder, podcast host, and the bestselling author of the Carnival Diet. Through his work, Sean dives deep into the evolutionary historical and nutritional science supporting a meat focused diet.
Not only has Sean placed first in the Texas strongest man competition and fifth in the USA strongest man contest, but he's also been a professional rugby player, a semi-professional row, and a Highland Games Master World Champion now as a proud advocate of the carnivore diet. Sean continues to push boundaries in both athleticism and health, shaping conversations around the potential of meat as medicine.
Join us as we explore the science controversy and real life stories [00:04:00] behind the Carnival Diet with Sean Baker, the true pioneer in the space, and whether you're curious about nutritional therapy, human performance, or simpler way of eating. This episode will give you food for thought. Quite literally flow unleashed.
Unleashed. This chat I had with Sean has been remastered from several years ago, so please excuse any discrepancy in audio quality.
Shawn: Welcome, Sean. Great to have you on the pod. Hey, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. You're part of the world. I'd love to talk a little bit
Cameron: about your. The challenges that you faced, you are probably most well known for your carnivore diet, and I imagine that probably wasn't all plain sailing.
How did you get into that and what are the challenges that you faced along that road? I.
Shawn (2): Yeah, well, I mean there was no point in my life prior to where I'm at now, where I thought, Hey, I'm gonna be the sort of the face of a crazy al meat diet. I mean, that was [00:05:00] never on my mind. If you would've asked me about that, you know, I got maybe, maybe 10 years ago I would've said That's just absolutely insane.
And I certainly, I. Get that, and I still get that. Fortunately, there's more people that are starting to come around to see that there is, you know, significant amount of validity to what I've been doing. And I've been validated many times. But yeah, early on initially I did that just for my own benefit. I was looking at how can I be a better athlete?
How can IF function better health wise? And I had already went down this kinda low carbohydrate. Rabbit hole after going down low fat and, and playing with diet. Like I said, I've been an athlete, as you've mentioned a little bit my entire life, and I've always looked to have a performance edge with regard to training, sleep, lifestyle, exercise, and I never delve into performance enhancing drugs or anything like that.
But I, you know, as I got into my forties, and like I said, I'm in my mid fifties now, but I got my forties. I was like, okay, wait a minute. I'm starting to. So experienced some negative health, uh, consequences of, of my lifestyle. And I was training extremely hard. I mean, I, there was never a point, there's never been a [00:06:00] point in my life where I didn't train extremely, you know, hard.
But I think in an efficient, thoughtful way. I've never really had injuries. I've always sort of taken care of the things I need to take care of as an athlete. But despite that, was experiencing a number of syndromes, symptoms of things like metabolic syndrome. And so. I went down the diet, nutrition, uh, rabbit hole.
I lost weight, lost about, oh, I think 60 pounds in, in the course of about three months by just dramatically dropping my calories and upping my exercise on doing that, which will work for sure. It's just the one I got there. I realize that this is not something I can sustain. It's not something I wanna sustain.
Had to find better ways to continue to feed myself and went down this sort of pathway from low fat. High fiber, almost vegetarian type of diet to a paleo, to a low carb ketogenic. And then finally started seeing all these people doing this all meat tot and thinking, this is sort of odd, but sounds interesting and experimented with myself.
And I just noticed really good results and I was just like, [00:07:00] this is pretty curious. And then when I started to see it happening with regard to diseases being improved significantly, diseases that otherwise I, I've never really heard of people. Improving outside of like, very rarely things like rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune diseases and things like that.
That got my attention as a physician because I was, you know, I, I, I know what normally happens for people with these diseases and to see what doesn't normally happen happen was pretty, uh, eyeopening to me. And so that got me really interested in just more than myself and started sharing it with other people.
And then of course, yeah, I mean, I'm talking about eating meat. Some people think that meat is bad for them. There's a lot of people in different fields that, that, that think so as well. I think very, for reasons that aren't basically factual, there's been a lot of pushback. There's pushback from people on the plant-based and vegan ideology.
They think that you're an awful person if you, how dare you eat meat, you know? And I think that's something humans have done ever since we've been [00:08:00] humans. And whether you wanna say we're 3 million years old or. Going back to Homo Habilis or 300,000 years ago, going at the beginning of Homoerectus or if you were, you know, a creationist, you know, 3000 or 5,000 years old.
We've always eaten it. And so to say that somehow now that is evil and awful is to me a bit bizarre.
Cameron: Hmm. So, moral stances aside, I just wanna ask a few obvious questions that I imagine a few listeners are probably thinking we're. Force fed a lot of content, a lot of it being eat your five fruit and veg day, and you get your vitamins from all the vegetables and so forth.
Where do you get those kind of nutrients from?
Shawn (2): That's a great question. So, first of all, and people may not think, might, may not have much, uh, belief that this is important, but I think where we come from evolutionarily is important, I think, to say that I'm gonna eat a real well-rounded, eat the rainbow, multiple colored fruits and vegetables diet.
Would've been very [00:09:00] challenging to do, not, not a hundred thousand years ago, but even a thousand years ago, or 500 years ago, or 200 years ago. We, you know, without the massive agricultural system we have into place today with, without the massive transportation, worldwide shipping, most of the food, if you look at the balance, that a lot of it doesn't grow in the same region, let alone the same continent.
So we've got this sort of belief that we're supposed to eat a diet that humans could not have ever eaten. Say for the last maybe 50 years. So you have to say that first of all. The second thing is that when we look at, there's a field called omics, and omics is a study of nutrients and, and compounds and molecules found in foods and.
If we look at beef, for instance, there are 55,000 compounds known to be unique in beef. Many of them are phytonutrients that are found in the food that the animals eat. So the animals out there grazing on a much wider diverse amount of plants and forages and Forbes and flowers and grasses and weeds and things that we [00:10:00] would never eat.
So they're, they are actually bio concentrating. Bio accumulating a lot of those compounds within their fat, within their meat, so you get some of that regardless. Now we don't have any sort of evidence to show that those are even necessary for survival. I mean, we know if we look at what does it take to run a human being, it require, the essential requirements are gonna be essential amino acids, essential fats, vitamins, and minerals.
And nowhere in there is these unique phytonutrients, the tannins and polyphenols and alkaloids and things like that people would say that are potentially beneficial to us Now. Are they potentially beneficial? Could be in some people, yes. And it could be conditional, the fact that we eat just garbage diet these days.
I mean, I, I, I don't think you would get anyone on any dietary belief system to say that the modern diet is not filled with, you know, chemical sludge and slop and garbage. And so I think when we remove all that, it's clearly beneficial. But where do I, you know, like, like for instance, I think the biggest thing would be where are you getting vitamin C from?
[00:11:00] Well. We know that meat has some, I mean, there's not a lot, but there is some. The USDA says there's none, but there's actually, there's independent labs that have shown that. We've known that. 500 grams of meat has about 10 milligrams of vitamin C, so that's enough to prevent quote unquote scurvy as it is.
I, I eat significantly more than that. But regardless, we know that a lot of these vitamins and minerals are conditionally dependent and context dependent. That is to say, I, I'll point to zinc because even the u SDA has now recommended this in their RDAs, it said, if you eat. A lot of phytates are phytic acid.
You are found in grains and legumes and beans and peas. You are going to need more zinc. Your zinc requirements just basically double. They go from 1000 to 2000 milligrams per day. Or then if you eat X amount of, I'm sorry, if you eat that much phytic acid, then your zinc requirements double if you 2000 milligrams of phyto acid, your zinc requirements and triple.
So these things are conditionally dependent. Now, I mean, I, there's a concept, a legal concept that that speaks for itself. And basically the question is, well, what about scurvy? I'm like, well, [00:12:00] I'm alive. I'm performing at a higher level than 99.99. Nine 9% of 54 year olds on earth. I don't have scurvy and therefore, and I, I eat literally no traditional foods or vegetables or foods that would contain any significant amount of vitamin C outside of meat.
So those questions are being answered by the people demonstrating that now, just because. We can't say exactly why, and I can talk to a lot about things. Carnitine, utilization from vitamin Cs, utilization in, in carnitine, uh, function. We eat carnitine with meat. You know, I can talk about the fact that red cells can recycle vitamin C.
We can talk about the fact that other antioxidants, things like uric acid may be elevated. They are also antioxidants, so they supplant the, the role of vitamin C. So there's all these different nuances that come out there and it's context dependent. And so the question is. Why am I not dead? I'm not. So therefore, what your preconceived belief system is has gotta be wrong.
Either that or I'm a ghost or you know, I'm something, something's going on.
Cameron: [00:13:00] Yeah. And super interesting. When you're ill, do you go even leaner or do you add things to your diet to help subsidize anything? You said when I'm ill, like under. If you become ill for whatever
Shawn: reason, a cold or catch a flu,
Shawn (2): you know, I, I, I got to be honest, I don't really get, I haven't been ill in goodness, about five.
You know, I would say I've had like maybe one or two days of maybe a mild cold in, in the five years or so I've been doing this and so I can't really speak to that 'cause it's not really occurred to me. I think that probably. I would probably think that I would probably want to eat more, most likely, depending on what's going on.
Sometimes your appetites suppressed when you're, I mean, if you've got a GI illness, you've got a gastrointestinal and, and gastrointestinal, uh, path pathogen, then you're probably gonna eat less and maybe some other thing where your, your metabolic rate goes up, you're producing a fever, you know, body heat requires calories and we're, we're mounting a fever.
In order to sustain that, you're probably gonna need to eat more [00:14:00] energy. So, so I just, I think it would depend.
Cameron: From what I understand and what I'm hearing is the meat contains everything that the body potentially requires and the body can adapt to, to meat, whatever the diet intake is. And generally speaking, there's, I guess there's an association in my head of people, generally people who are on the carnival diet are very active.
Shawn (2): When I started this, and it's been a little over, just over four years that I, I thought I started in kinda the latter part of 2016. People that were doing this diet, 'cause it's not something that the average person would think about doing. These were people that were at the end of the rope. They were mostly sick people.
That had tried everything. They tried and failed every diet, tried into multiple doctors, multiple specialists, so they weren't athletes. They weren't particularly active. Some of them exercise and as they felt better, they just naturally gravitated. That before I started that, this is what it was used for.
Primarily it was used for sick people trying to kind of trying to help themselves and, and. To that, to the, to to that degree. There still are a [00:15:00] lot of people in that category. There are more athletes that are trying, there's some very high level athletes and top rugby players. I dunno if you're a rugby fan, but guys like Sunny Bill Williams of the All Blacks and Qua Cooper who I think is an Australian perhaps.
And you know, Owen Franks and other all Black and I can't think of any Wallaby rugby players, sorry. But there probably are, there's NFL athletes doing it. So there, there are a lot more people doing. And like I said, I was able to set world records in my sport, which was competitive rowing, which is a little bit different and a lot of people aren't familiar with it, but.
And what it shows to me is the fact that these athletes are doing it and doing it well, you know, further validates the, the, the sort of thought that that meat is complete. Because what you see is when you are on a nutrient poor diet. You aren't able to perform very well as a high level athlete. And I will say that that is something that is interesting.
Now, some people will say, there's some vegan athletes, and I say that there's a high injury rate in those guys that do that, and we see that typically six months to about [00:16:00] 18 months into the career. I. Their performance starts to tank and they end up tend to giving that up. And so we'll see. And I think to be fair, I mean the folks who have been doing a carnivore diet, high level athletes is not been, we don't have a long history of that.
So we'll see. Maybe the same thing will happen with that. But I can say that I'm aware of people they've done this for in excess of 10 years, 20 years, 15 years on one, one fell an an Australian, or at least you end up dying in Australia. He did it for 53 years and died at a. Car accident at age 77. So he, he had done that for, you know, since the 1960s and died, I can't remember, 10 years ago or something like that.
Cameron: Are there many current studies looking at it, or are you involved in any that are taking a more longevity or scientific approach to any analysis?
Shawn (2): Yeah, so first of all, you put the word longevity in there. I would submit that there are no studies I. On any diet whatsoever, and there never will be any studies that are actual longevity studies.
You just can't do that, that that's not ethical. It's not cost effective. You can't actually do [00:17:00] a real scientific study. There are observational data sets, which are just, you know, hypothesis generating, but they're not studies. And I think the people that sort of look at I should eat this way or that way based on this population study, are going to be wildly disappointed when they don't live as long as they think they should have, because those studies cannot.
Show us what to do. Now, having said that, there are, there are a few studies in the literature that have already been done looking at this di Most of them are case reports. Uh, there is a study Harvard University just completed a few months ago. It's in the process of being written up and published right now.
So David Ludwig. And Belinda Leonard from Harvard University. I helped to organize that study and, and, and recruit participants for that. We, myself, in our company, is actively funding for a, for a large study. It's something like a million dollar study. We're gonna be doing a large intervention trial with this diet.
So there, there are coming, there are people, there are many physicians now that are on board with this. There are several in Australia. In fact, there are, uh, physicians around the world that are. Seeing [00:18:00] tremendous benefit for, for their patients, you know, and, and granted these are certain select patients with certain diseases, things like autoimmune diseases or GI diseases like inflammatory bowel disease, which it seems to be particularly efficacious where nothing else is.
That are using it. You know, it seems to work there. There's a lot of people that are studying the ketogenic diet, which has gotten a lot of press, and there are a lot of studies in place around ketogenic diets now in all kinds of health metrics. This diet will probably be in that position in about five years.
It just takes time to, to get enough people on board to look at that. But what I've seen, everything that, the benefits that a ketogenic diet seems to help with, whether it's glycemic control, whether it's infl inflammation improvement, whether it's fatty liver improvement, this diet does so and, and generally better.
And so I think we'll see that happening over time as well.
Cameron: And from what you've seen in practice, would you recommend this diet to anyone or would you, some body types would require more of a balanced diets. [00:19:00]
Shawn (2): Uh, I don't know that I would not recommend it to anyone based on body type or, or, or that, I mean, the question is, you know, someone need to do it. I don't think everyone needs to do it by any stretch.
And one of the things I think is interesting. I think as far as a, you know, if you want to, so I'll make a couple assumptions. One of the assumption is that food has an impact on our health. I don't think that's a very difficult assumption to make. I think most people would, would be willing to concede that.
Now the question is, well, what is the food and, and how does it impact us? Well, if we're gonna say that food impacts us and different foods have different impacts on us, the, the, it becomes very difficult to sort out. 'cause most of us are eating a very varied diet. We have maybe. A hundred different foods we eat on a day-to-day basis.
If we're eating any processed food, we've got 30 ingredients on the box. So which one of those is actually causing problems? And some of these things are chronic, and so it's not an acute reaction. It's not like I got sick and threw up. It's over a period of three or four years. The accumulative, slow, subtle damage is what, what occurred to me.
And so it's very difficult to sort that out, you know, with, with [00:20:00] allergy testings and food sensitivity tests and so on and so forth. And so what. You know, you can do is go on an elimination cell diet. And there are, you could argue, you can do an elimination diet with anything. You know, there's a potato diet, there's, you know, Twinkie diet, whatever.
But at some point that is not sustainable. And you, you know, you, you can't live on Twinkies for very long without getting sick with meat. You can do it. Well, I, I believe you can do it for a long period of time, years, if not longer. I've done it for four years and, you know, doing strong. So I think for many people that's certainly doable.
Now do you have to continue doing that? Absolutely not. So I think what we do is find, as many people find out what. Fixes their problems, whether it's inflammation, driving knee and back pain, and they fix that and it takes three to six months and then they start adding food back in and then they find out the things that work and the things that don't.
And I think that's a fair strategy as well. I think that's, if we're playing a game where we're trying to figure out, like there's a game called Clue. Maybe you're familiar with it. Where, where it's basically you, there's all these different permutations of, [00:21:00] you have these characters in rooms and weapons and you know there's eight players and you figure out who did it?
Colonel Mustard, in the library with the candlestick. If you've only got one character on the board and one weapon in one room, it's pretty easy to figure out when something else is there. And so, but when you have too many things, it takes a long time to solve that. And some people never solve it. You know, it may, some people may spend 10 years trying to figure out what the hell am I supposed to eat?
And I think we, this is a shortcut for a lot of people. And so, like I said, it may be that you're fine eating fruit and rice and sweet potatoes and meat, and that's a great diet for you or somebody else. You may not be able to tolerate fruit and, and there somebody can do fine with broccoli and some people can't.
But this is a, I think this is a very effective way to do that.
Cameron: Are you looking to improve your performance stress less and flow more? Do you want to improve the human performance in your organization or team? If so, we are here to help. Our team of experts [00:22:00] specialize in helping individuals and businesses integrate a high performance practice and culture. So if you want to take your performance to the next level, or integrate the lessons and skills you hear on this pod into your leaders and teams, go to flow center.org today.
It sounds like there's, for yourself at least, it's not so much limited to a self-diagnosis tool, but also you've just felt fantastic and energized as a result of it. So you've chosen to keep going beyond any initial in mind that.
Shawn (2): I mean, this is, for those that don't know, January is, is World Carnivore Month.
And so we've done this, I, I actually started that in 2000, uh, 17, uh, four years ago. So this is the fourth year we've been doing it, and every year we have thousands, if not 10 thousands of people that start and they all, I. I wouldn't say they all, but the, a high percentage of them notice they lose weight.
They see significant improvements in their health. Many of 'em stick with it indefinitely for long periods of time. [00:23:00] But for me, I eat a meat-based, animal-based diet pretty much year round. I mean, very rarely. Like my kid will have a birthday, I'll have a piece of birthday cake usually, most times I'm fine with that.
Sometimes I don't feel particularly good afterwards, but it's not, it's very, very infrequent. So most of the time I'm eating eggs and, and steak and maybe some dairy, maybe some seafood. Spices on my food. I, I don't go outta my way to eat vegetables. I never like them and no desire to eat them. I don't, I don't eat breads and pastas.
I don't really eat fruit. But when January rolls around for the last couple years, I really tighten it up and I just drop back to pure red meat. And so if you look at my people that follow me on social media, look at my Instagram. Every single meal has been a steak. Every single meal, breakfast, it's usually two meals a day, and it's usually about.
Two kilos of meat every day. It's like two meals, two kilos of meat every day. Nothing else. A little bit of salt on it. And it is good and I enjoy it, but I feel great. I mean, like you talk about flow state from a dietary standpoint, this is when I feel my absolute best. Most of the time I feel pretty damn good.
I might feel at 90, 95% [00:24:00] when I'm doing this. I'm as close to a hundred percent as I can be. And so it's just, you know, one of those things. What, where do you want to be? What's sustainable for you? What trade offs are you willing to make? And the older I get. I feel privileged to be able to feel good because I know a lot of people my age don't feel good and can't do what I can do.
And I, I'm not bragging, I'm just saying it's because they're just not doing the right things. And they are, most of 'em don't know, and they don't know what it feels like to feel good, you know? And, and the unfortunate thing is we have children that have never experienced a day of health in their lives. I mean, they literally come outta the womb sick, and because of diet and lifestyle, they just.
I mean, we see with obese kids that have been type two diabetics by the time they're 15 years of age, and I mean, it's really unfortunate.
Cameron: For most people that have the intention or stick to a diet, and not necessarily this diet, but any diet or it might not even be a diet, it might be something else.
Often people miss that consistent resolve. Looking at you in your [00:25:00] past, you're obviously a high achiever and you've obviously got some sort of natural strengths or inherent strengths where you've either. Curated or you've embedded from your family and culture and so forth, what are the skills you think that have helped?
Shawn (2): Well, I, I think some of it's perspective when we talk about diet and we're talking about, you know, honestly restrictive diet. I think it's very liberating to me because I, I just, one thing I think the physiology is a little bit unique around this diet. If, let's say many of us suffer from. Food addiction, sugar addiction, and, and I think that's a real thing.
I think people seriously really struggle with that, and when you try to get free of that, it's very challenging to do that. If you can use the allergy analogy of an alcoholic or heroin addict, you would not suggest to an alcoholic to have a drink once or once or twice a week. Or your heroin addict, just shoot up once a week and you'll be fine.
That, that, that, that never works. And so the unique thing about this, particularly for that cohort of population that's struggling with addictions or cravings for these foods, is by completely eliminating it, it's easier than going [00:26:00] 95%. You know, going a hundred percent is easier than 95%, believe it or not, just because you just kind of get rid of that constant temptation.
For me, I mean, putting in perspective, like I said, yes. Well, one, I don't dislike my meals. I love what I eat. I absolutely look forward to every big, fat, juicy, salty, you know, just nicely seared steak. I mean, it's not like I'm like, oh, woe is me. I gotta eat a steak, but I can't have a chocolate bar. I am, first of all, very thankful that I can do that, and I, I look forward to it, but I get joy outta other things in life.
I think if your pleasure from life is derived from what you eat, only. Significantly. Then you probably have a life that you might wanna question what you're doing with your life, because you should be able to find value in so many more things and enjoyment. We don't complain about the fact that the air we breathe is generally the same air, you know, when we urinate, we don't complain that our urine is not pink or green or anything like that.
I mean, it's the same color and you know, most animals. They eat the same food every day. I mean, this, this is what wild animals do. They don't sit there and eat a menu. They [00:27:00] don't need a Fitness pal tracker, an app to figure out how to eat or anything like that. There's a food that works pretty well for them that is inherently, I would assume, satiating.
And you know, it's got proper feedback and it tells you what to eat and it tastes good. I think anybody that's on a diet where you, you have to eat food you don't like, or you're constantly hungry, you're gonna fail. And I don't find that on this. I mean, I'm, I eat till I'm full. I eat food that I enjoy. It works pretty well.
It works not just pretty well, but extremely well. And I think many people that come to that and they find that out, and I think there's two types of people. There's people that will comment on it, the ones that are aware of it, comment on it without experience. And there's people that do that. And most of the ones that do that kind of find out that there's something uniquely interesting here.
Cameron: And what in, I'm thinking more about your, maybe your athletic achievements here. What are the mentors that you've had to work at? Have you proactively worked on any mental skills to help you? [00:28:00]
Shawn (2): Well, I mean, I think there's things, different things that motivate us. Obviously, I'm in the public spotlight with me promoting a diet, and I believe you should be able to walk the walk.
It's not, it's one thing to, to talk and spout off science and all that stuff, but I think you need to be able to demonstrate what you're doing. If you want people to take you seriously, do that. So there's that pressure there and that, and that's relatively new for me, but I mean, as far as being in a public spotlight.
But prior to that, I always would find. Foil. Ideally it's someone else. You know, like if I'm like wanting to excel in a sport, I wanna know who my, who do I gotta knock off? Who's the Mexican, who's the king of the hill right now, and how do I knock him off? And, and you sort of vilify that person. They may be the nicest person in the world, but to you they're this, you know, horrible asshole that if he can do it, why the he can't.
I do it. And I put myself in that position a lot of times, and I've had sometimes. I beat him, and sometimes I don't. There's one guy in the Highland Games, we talked about the end. He would beat me every damn year and it barely pissed me off how I kept being number two in the world or something like that.
And it was just, and I, I remember I could beat him in some events. I couldn't beat him in all of [00:29:00] 'em, and he would just always out, out edge me. And so it was very frustrating. And other events, I ended up overcoming that person and, and, and becoming, you know, world champion in a couple different sports. But I find that, you know, and sometimes that person can be you at a different time, you know, it's like, Hey, I, I used to be able to do this.
Why can't I do this today? And I. I, I don't use age as an excuse. Maybe when I'm 70 I'll start to say, Hey, but I still in my heart believe I can beat myself when I was 15, 20, 25 years younger than I am today. And I, and a lot of times I do, I'm still setting individual personal records in certain type of things, you know, at an older age.
And so I, I, I find that knowing that you can do something has helped. And I think. And, and it doesn't have to be directly com related to what you're doing at hand. There are other things you can draw on. I mean, there's an analogy of like taking a cold shower. This is something that is not particularly pleasant, but a lot of times I would start my day that way when it's like, you got enough?
Sort of mental fortitude to turn that thing on cold and hop in there and [00:30:00] it's, I've done it so many times, it doesn't necessarily phase me, but initially it was like, this is kind of challenging. I had to make a decision to, you kind of suck it up and do it. And the ability just to do that often gives you strength to do something else.
And like I said, in my life I've seen, like the time I was, you know, Afghanistan doing war trauma, I just saw the horrible, most horrible, awful things you can see as a human. Literally, people are just. You know, body parts off and it's just horrible stuff. And to be able to go through that and when I saw anything beyond that, you know, back in civilian world, I was like, ah, there's nothing I'm gonna see that's ever gonna be worse than that.
So it kind of steals you to that sort of thing. So I guess it's kinda like success, breed success because once you've had success in one area, or you've suffered or done what it's taken in one area, it's like, ah, this is. This is no big deal. It's like when I went to medical school, it was kind of funny. I, I started medical school outta college.
I left to go play rugby. I went to New Zealand. So I actually dropped outta medical school, went in, got a job, worked in the military, launched nuclear bombs, went through all that training, and then I went back to medical school and I was like, I. This is [00:31:00] ridiculously easy. You mean all I gotta do, sit here in class and take some notes?
I mean, it became relatively easy because of what I'd already been through. So I think you can, you know, like I said, the mental side is just knowing what you've done before, putting it into perspective and then finding something to compete. I'm just competitive and so if I find something, compete, you know, in the hospital when I was a surgeon, it was like they would put stats up, which was horrible because it was like how many surgeries every surgeon did for the month.
I was always the top guy. I always did the most surgeries. And then it wasn't because I was, you know, I mean I, and you know, I just hustled. I literally ran through my clinic from patient to patient to patient. I'd see more than other people's and not 'cause I was not providing best care that, that I was able to do, but I was just like, I am, I, there's a metric that I'm being measured by and I wanna be the number one guy and, and for good or bad, that's, that was ingrained into me.
And so I'm still that way with a lot of things.
Cameron: How have you been able to. Find an enjoyment throughout that [00:32:00] process as the, the schedule and the abilities get more and more and more hectic.
Shawn (2): I kind of enjoy moving and doing things and like I said, sometimes it, you know, sometimes it be challenge to manage that, but the, but the process is enjoying and quite honestly, with what I'm doing right now, I get so much.
Positive feedback in the sense that I see the lives that I'm changing in a positive way. I mean, that, that just gets me up every day. I know every day I'm gonna get up every single day without fail. Somebody's gonna send me something, says, look, you literally changed my life. I've lost a hundred pounds.
I've gotten off my medications. I'm, you know, this or that. You know, this has gotten better. You know, you know, so that makes it easier, that that's the, the part that you can't put a, a number on. There's no financial incentive with that, but there's just. Tremendous incentive. Like I said, at some point in my life, however long I have the fortune to live here, I'll know at least I've impacted a lot of people's lives for the better.
And that's, I think that's something that not everybody gets to say. Hopefully a lot of people can, but not everybody will [00:33:00] be able to do that. So that's something that really, really is important to me, particularly as I get older. And that's sort of the, the desire for material accomplishments or acquiring material things is not as important as the experiences.
I'd rather. You know, go visit people around the world and shake their hands and look 'em in the eye and hear their story and hopefully find out what I can learn from them. And then in, and in some cases, you know, that we've been able to help them, and that's a great type of thing.
Cameron: What would you say have been three helpful pillars to your success?
Shawn (2): I think first of all, consistency is important. This concept of overnight success is, is most people realize there's no real overnight success. There's a bunch of, an overnight success may take 10 years or more. So consistency, realizing that in order to be successful.
You not only need to fail, but you need to be willing to fail. If, if you haven't failed, you'll never be successful, because that just means you haven't tried. And I've [00:34:00] failed. I've failed far more times than I've been successful. I can, I, the easiest analogy is you can look at it in sports and performance.
There's far more times I didn't hit the, the goal I was wanting to hit, and that's just coming, being willing to come back from that, you know, over and over again. So I think those. Two are important. And then I think focusing on a goal and keeping that goal there. I mean, I've found like when I've fallen off of that, when I sort of got sidetracked by things that were kind of related to the goal but weren't the goal, and I focused on these side, go down these sidetracks, you can get obsessed about them.
I think you have to be obsessive about your goal. I think that you have to live, sleep, breathe, eat, you know, drink all of that. Whatever your goal is gonna be, you have to be a fanatic about it if you really wanna be successful. And I think that's this part of it. And you've gotta be able to hopefully, you know, do that in the context of the friends, family, and loved ones and, and still maintain sane relationships.
But I think if you're going to be. A high [00:35:00] achiever or successful at the highest levels, you really need to be a little bit obsessive about things. I mean, that's just the way it is. I think the people, I think most people that are extremely successful also tend to be very obsessive about what they're successful at, and I think there's a reason for that.
Shawn: And what advice would you give to a younger version of yourself? Well, a younger version
Shawn (2): of myself, that's always a hard question because I, I don't know that I would've listened to myself, quite honestly. I, I think that you're at different stages of your life and what you're willing to do and, and you think is important at the time.
I think most people as they get older, become a little bit more, I hate to say jaded. I think being willing to question things, you know? You question sort of widely held beliefs, at least look into that. Not being afraid to question things. You know, I think some of that stuff I, I, and I might have been just too focused on, on a task at hand, even a look up, smell the roses, and to question things that are around me.
I think that would've been some advice that I would give myself. Now[00:36:00]
Cameron: is there a book that has impacted your life?
Shawn (2): Well, I mean, writing my own book was certainly impactful for me. I mean, in a different way, obviously as an author that it's not that I'm saying my book would is gonna be like the most impactful book in society, but individually that certainly impacted me. You know, the fact that it, it kind of, sort of got my message out to, to tens of thousands.
I think it maybe it's close to a hundred thousand copies sold. So I think really. I mean Gary Tale's book called Good Calories, bad Calories was a book I read on nutrition and more than anything it just sort of opened my eyes to say, wait a minute, maybe everything we've heard is not true. And it's not that I necessarily agree a hundred percent with everything he, he wrote in the book, but I just think that he just kind of pointed out that science is got a lot of problems and that, you know, anything that comes outta that we should at least be willing to say.
This may not be a hundred percent reliable, reliable science. So I think that opened my [00:37:00] mind up to thinking nutritionally and that led to just further questioning of nutritional stuff. And then, you know, it's hard not to question one field and not start to think about other things and say, Hey wait, maybe, maybe we're not given all the facts all the time, and it's not the Joe Friday.
Just facts ma'am. Maybe there's some agendas that are being pushed out there and I think. I can see, I can see that I'm not necessarily a conspiracy theorist, but I, I, I do see some financial conflicts and people are willing to craft a message in a way that benefits 'em financially. And I think that's, I think that's human nature.
So I think that, that, that's kind of the start of that. And so now I'm kind of a, I guess, skeptical person.
Cameron: Sean, thank you very much for your time and, and good luck with the, uh, the scope of that book.
Shawn (2): Well, thank you very much. Appreciate you having me on. You have a good, good morning. I guess this morning time where you are.
So take care now.
Cameron: Yeah, yeah. Enjoy the rest of what's left of your weekend. Okay, bye-bye. Thanks, Sean. [00:38:00] Flow unleashed. The carnivore diet challenges conventional dietary wisdom, flipping many of today's nutritional norms upside down, its simplicity. Focusing on what to re remove rather than what to add, makes it an appealing and surprisingly effective approach for many who try it from mating weight loss to supporting energy levels, the diet offers promising results, especially for those who thrive on a straightforward, no threes lifestyle.
However, the long-term effects of an all meat diet remain largely unexplored for individuals with pre-existing health conditions such as high blood pressure or EL elevated cholesterol. Caution is advised. Like any diet, it's not a one size fits all solution. Personally, I've found that including plenty of quality meats in my own meals, support my athletic recovery and performance, and breakfast in particular can be a great place to start [00:39:00] simplifying.
Your routine. Instead of reaching for sugary cereals or carb heavy spreads, try making a protein packed egg and meat muffin. Simply mix eggs with bacon or your favorite meat. Bake them in a muffin tray, and you're good to go. If you would like to find out more information about Sean Baker, please see the show notes.
Thank you for listening to Flow Unleashed. If you enjoyed listening, please subscribe to get notified when our next episode drops. The more people that subscribe, the better I can make the show for you. Equally, please leave a review. Your review will go a long way to helping others find this pot until the next time.
Thank you for listening to Flow Unleashed.
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