← The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #23 Opening up about overcoming an eating disorder as a nutritionist, everyday pressures of body image, my diet changes and how I am finally ...
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All right, everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Gemelli podcast. So today's episode's a little different. There is no guest today. I am the guest today. But the reason being is it's time to discuss some personal things about myself that have been brought up over the years. The question that I've gotten year after year after year is what exactly is my diet? And so just a little background for those of you that don't know how I started and where I've come. I did many years, well over a decade really doing videos that catered more to the bodybuilding world. I discussed steroids, SARMs, peptides, a lot of performance enhancing aspects of things and that's the background that I've kind of been involved in. And now it's evolved and changed into where I'm doing a lot of biohacking, a lot of science, a lot of health, cellular health, cardiology, so many different wide varieties of things that I've enhanced my knowledge base onto the where I'm very, very comfortable talking about them. I've gotten credentialed, certified as a cellular health coach, integrative health practitioner, and spent so much time working with several doctors that you've seen on my podcast you haven't seen yet, that I've interviewed that will be coming. Anyway, I've been very much under the gun and criticized over the years of why aren't you bigger if you're teaching about all these steroids and the ones that I have used, because of course I use some and I've talked about that, I certainly haven't in many years now. And I've gotten quite good size over time, but never to what was pleasing to everybody else, which I never really cared about. Because I will be honest, I don't worry about what other men think about how I look. And I'm married, so it really doesn't matter about what anybody really thinks. Of course we all want to look good, presentable and feel good about how we look. And that's why I take good care of myself. But I, I guess that I've been hiding behind certain things or critical of myself in certain areas, I guess to where no one would really know or have any sort of understanding what was actually going on with within me. So one of the reasons that I've been hesitant to discuss my diet is because I'm a nutritionist. I teach so many clients and so many people about proper nutrition and health, but mine has been lacking severely. And one of the reasons why I never put on a ton of size was a As I got up higher in the 200, 205, 210 range, I didn't feel super comfortable. Even though I look back on pictures and think I looked great, I didn't feel great. And part of that, too, I think, was more of a mental thing because I've been battling with my self image and my eating since I was 11 years old. And, you know, that's been a lifelong battle with certainly an eating disorder and a body dysmorphia and being hard on myself. And I've been in so many situations, whether it was me being a fashion model, which I've done, all of the times I've worked, you know, in this industry and been criticized, critiqued, abused verbally, which really doesn't matter because it doesn't bother me at this point. But, you know, at times, it. You do take words in a certain way. And so when I was growing up, I was always, you know, with the more popular kids and groups when I was in elementary and in middle school. But I was always really, really overweight. Once I hit about fifth grade, sixth grade, right around there. And really, even before that, I wasn't super comfortable. And I knew it. And it was difficult. It was knowing it inside. You know, I was an athlete, but I was always struggling with my cardio and what I was doing. And I always was a top athlete that looked bad, which doesn't make sense. And I struggled. I struggled mentally, I struggled physically to keep up. And that one thing, the one thing, it wasn't lacking any skill set, it wasn't lacking desire, but it was the issue of my lack of conditioning because I was overweight. And, you know, it got to the point where I would be embarrassed to take my shirt off at the swimming pool around kids. I knew that I was never in my head, I was never gonna have a girlfriend. I was just always embarrassed. And, you know, as God bless my parents because they were so good and how they raised me, they were strict on things with school and everything. But the one thing is I'm a single only child in an Italian family, and so it's eat, eat, eat, eat, eat. And my mom would let me get away with the one thing she would let me get away with because she didn't anything else was, was feeding me whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it. And, you know, it got to the point where I still remember a trip that we took and I was going into seventh grade. So I think it was 11. I want to say it was 1994. So, yeah, I was 12, and I remember, you know, just. It was like these big dinners every night, ice cream, like, whatever we wanted for two weeks on vacation. And I came home and I cried in front of the mirror with how I looked. Actually sobbed and cried. And I thought there was no way that I could ever fix this. And it was. It was horrible on me. It was really bad. And I was about 5 foot 8 at the time. And then over that summer, going into eighth grade, I grew to almost six foot one. And I remember it was like tackle football. And I lost, like, 30 pounds. And so going into eighth grade, it was like a totally different person. I looked completely different. And it was like went from, you know, popular but not really with girls, or, you know, you know that guys were taking shots at you behind your back. You just know you were being made fun of, even though. And then it totally changed. Everything changed. But then after several months of people making accusations that I really didn't do any of and didn't even know of, from whether it was doing drugs or to being anorexic or bulimic, then it got into my head and these thoughts got into my head, and then there was this, oh, my gosh, I don't ever want to gain the weight back. Which I was really good about and never thought about until it just kept going over and over and over and over and over. And that's when it hit me that, like, oh, my. I. I went from, wow, this is amazing how good I feel in the response and, like, how I was performing in sports to this utter fear and, I mean, just a daily thing that was eating at me. And you imagine at 12 years old and that's all you're thinking about. And then I started, like, reading food labels, which you'd say, oh, that's a great thing. You were studying. Then I was like, no, it was an obsessive thing, and I didn't even know what the hell I was reading at the time anyway. I mean, we know how many things have changed, but that's when it started. And so from there it was, I don't want to eat anything. Or then it was, I'm going to throw things up. And that was. Imagine being in middle school and then people knowing. I remember I played travel basketball, and I remember being in a hotel room one night with two of my really, really close friends, and they thought I had my earphones on, and I paused so that I could listen, and they were talking about it like, what the hell was wrong with me? And, like, it was disgusting and it was gross and like, they knew and everybody knew it wasn't hard. And, you know, I remember my parents getting so angry and my dad making a rule my freshman year. If I don't weigh 150 pounds, you're not playing basketball. And so that's when. That's what snapped me out of it at the time. And so, you know, and it was fine. I. Once I fixed that and got over it, it was like, okay, it was a really dark, like six, seven months, but it worked itself out. But, you know, once I got a little bit older, in my early 20s again, it started to hit me again. And then it's just been a battle ever since on what I see in the mirror and what I look at. And anyway, so we go through the modeling aspect. I had really good times. You know, a lot of these times I'm partying, though, and using drugs I shouldn't use. Of course I wasn't gaining weight. And it was a constant something where I'm always worried about if I'm, oh, I'm eating too much or, you know, seeing things that really weren't there and looking at pictures. Now I'm like, what, what, what was your problem? What were you thinking? I really look at things now and wonder, what. What was I seeing? But it. It still lingered and lingered and lingered all these years. And I always have this fear. And that's the main reason I never let myself get too big. And even using performance enhancing drugs, but not eating enough, you know, basically starving myself, because I have. I am such a data guy. And I mean, right now, even I. I do five days a week of cardio, even at 43 years old. I do about 15 miles on the elliptical. I run two miles, I walk two or three miles, and I stair climb another, I don't know, three miles. And then I also lift, and then sometimes now play pickleball and other things that are active. You're mowing the lawn, you're doing all of these things. Active things constantly. I mean, generally speaking, for me to just maintain my maintenance weight at 180, which is where I'm at right now, give or take, you know, sometimes 180, 2 or 3, depending on the day, I should be eating about 3,700, 3,800 calories a day. And all of this time, the last four or five years, I've been scratching the surface at 16 and 1700, living this mental thing of fats are gonna just destroy me, even knowing how vital they are. And good for you, they are. And I'm telling you for the longest time. Now it's been a five or six year thing. I've lived on 10 to 12 servings of vegetables a day, sometimes a little more oatmeal, Greek yogurt, egg whites and peanut butter. And the only source of fat I was getting was peanut butter. So, you know, I'm getting maybe 50, 15 grams of fat a day if I'm lucky, if I'm lucky, because I wasn't eating whole eggs either. And, and when I tell you that's what I was eating, that was it. No meat, no fish, no nothing. Very, very, very, very, very rarely. And I just. Oh, and, and maybe a quest bar here and there. And also a little bit of fruit in the yogurt, I guess, and protein powder. And that is literally the extent of what I was having. And so basically starving myself of nutrient after nutrient after nutrient. And what it does, it puts you in this state of mind where you're always hungry, you're always thinking about it, you're all, I'm always looking in the mirror, checking my weight seven days a week and scrutinizing a pound here or half a pound there or what did I do? Why is that? Not realizing, understanding I was torching my metabolism and body, was holding on to whatever it could and holding onto water, holding onto food, whatever it could. And that's what happens when you starve yourself. You don't actually lose weight. And in the process you slowly degrade your body, you degrade yourself mentally. I couldn't stay focused and sit here longer than 15 or 20 minutes. It's no wonder I never got anything done. And very short fused, bad attitude, very quick to be irritable, very, very impatient, which I've already been anyway. And that exacerbated it and it just made me as unproductive and really miserable as it gets. And so where I'm going with this is now I finally fixed all of this one really realizing and understanding the importance of fats in your diet and how vital they are to so many aspects of your health, especially on the mental side and the being sharp side, but also just in general, you know, and, and I was so scared when I was younger and in that low fat era when that was all that was given and really that's what created all of the disease and the problems. And that's where it all started. And what I've done now is so drastic and it has changed everything for me. So I told you I was about 15, 1600 calories a day. That's my workout days, my non Workout days, I was closer to 11 or 1200. So think about that, how bad that is. Now I'm 2500 or over, and I've gone from 15 grams of fat today to about 120 and about 260 to 270 grams of protein and about 100 grams of carbs. And I'm not fearful of carbs. I've just understood my body to. Because I've tested now so many different ways. Because I finally, I went into my wife one day and she was standing in the kitchen and I. And I know how much it's troubled her and how much she's prayed that I would break this. And one day I just said to her, okay, I've had enough. And she looks at me, she knows, like when I say that or what, I mean it. And I said, this is what I want to do. And I want. I started rattling off all these foods I won't touch. Avocado, salmon, ground beef, all of these things. I said, we're going to go shopping and we're just going to get all this and I'm just going to try it and see what happens. What's the worst that could happen? Because if I gain weight, I know how to lose it. And if it's bad weight that I gain or I'm unhappy, I can fix it. I'm sick of being miserable. And so now I'll give you a rundown of what I do daily. So first thing in the morning, I try to fast a little bit, generally a couple hours. And I, I will make a coffee after about 90 minutes of being up. But what I put in the coffee, SCT oil instead of MCT oil. So SCT oil is a short chain triglyceride oil. And it really releases cla. It really gets you going, gets the fat burning process going. Even though it's a. It's a clarified butter, it's a high fat. And I put some protein powder in there, about a half a scoop. And a little bit of organic amber syrup. I like the amber one for a little bit of sweetener, but the good kind. And I don't overdo it with that. And that's like my morning coffee. And I put a little bit of shot of this gut health powder I have in there. So that's the morning coffee. And start off, get going. So my first meal of the day, which will be a few hours after that, generally depending on my schedule. So I'll. I try to get so avocado sizes, I try to weigh them. So what I try to do is get about 120 to 140 grams of an avocado, which is, that's a large one, it's a big one. And I do one piece of Ezekiel bread underneath and that's the only piece of bread that I really have. I have one piece a day. And then what I do is we'll put six eggs. So I will do two whole eggs and four egg whites. Sometimes I'll do four egg whites with one whole egg, kind of scramble them and then put an over easy on the top. Or I'll just do like you know, the two scrambled with the four egg whites, mix them up, put them on the top and then there's plenty left over. And then I, I drizzle some olive oil on there. I cook everything in grass fed butter. I like the Kerrygold butter. And it is a great start. And I'm satiated for hours, not, not thinking about eating anything of the sort. Feeling damn good. And that's the first meal of the day. Now one of the, the snacks I will have throughout the day is I will take a, I take full fat yogurt because the low fat or the, the fat free, like plain Greek yogurt, stripped of all the nutrients, it's just no good and it tastes like crap on top of it. So I take a full fat plain Greek yogurt and then I put it in a big Tupperware, not a plastic one by the way. And so then two scoops of protein I put in there. Now I go make my own protein. At True Nutrition they have a little area where you can design your own protein. And I'll link, I have a coupon code if anybody wants to use it. I really go with the beef protein isolate with some beef collagen and some egg white protein is how I do mine. I'm really big on animal fats and I will do mostly that. I will have one set that's grass fed whey that I will mix in every now and then that I also design there. And then they have their true flavor. So it's stevia and instead of sucralose that's in there. So we try to avoid that. Obviously we don't want that. And I mix that all together in a container and then I pick a fruit. I either put in blueberries, raspberries, strawberries or blackberries. And I'll have a serving of that a day. So it's a nice boost of protein. And if you get a little hungry in the middle of the day there you got a Nice, satiating, you know, little almost like a mini dessert type of deal basically is what it tastes like depending on what flavor protein powder you put in there. So that's another little thing that I add in there. And then I either have 12 to 14 ounces of salmon per day, which generally is about four to five days a week. And then I will mix in cod or Chilean sea bass. You got to be careful that now the Chilean sea bass is, I could eat it every day, but it's a little bit higher in the mercury content and it's very, very expensive. It's like 30 bucks a pound. But it is delicious. So what I do with those is I put some, some chives on there and I will drizzle some olive oil on there. Half a serving of olive oil and then I'll either put a little bit of almond butter on there when I cook it or I will put another little bit of grass fed butter on there when I cook it. And it is tremendous. Some, some of those, like yesterday I had, I believe it was about 14 ounces of COD and that was 70 some grams of protein and only 325 or 330 calories to keep track of everything daily. And so that, that's a nice packed punch of protein. And with the salmon, really good fats. And the salmon will fill you up a lot more than a white fish. And I forgot I do cut green onions and the eggs also, by the way. So that was another meal. And then I generally do this and this will be one of my later last meals. And I do this like an hour or two before I go to the gym generally. So I will get, oh, about one green pepper, one zucchini, some onions, and we cook those up and mushrooms. And I will mix that in with generally a half a pound of either ancestral bison, ancestral venison, elk or ground beef. And that is normally 93,7 grass fed only and that's 100% grass fed. I do force of nature for the venison, elk and bison since those are, you know, more difficult to find and those are more exotics and I just rotate every once in a while. I'll treat myself to the 85, 15 ground beef. It is so, so good. But you know, I, I then we're getting a little bit higher on the fat content. So I, I will either cut something else out or still have those just a little less. But I like to have at least a half a pound. The venison's a lot leaner, so I normally go about 10 ounces of that when I do that. And yeah, I put just a little bit of seasoning on there. And then I have some primal kitchen organic ketchup. I'll put a little bit on there I like. And it's, it's really just a couple ingredients. It's just very basic water and tomatoes, and there's nothing added or no sugar or anything like that. It's a very, very good product. And I do their mustard a little bit on there and it's, I love it. It's super filling. I have that every single day. And so that, that's hitting my numbers generally where we're at. And that's normally a full day for me. And then I try to fast as long as I can there in the evenings and try to. I, I was eating oatmeal every single night right before bed for like 10 years, literally. And I'm trying to cut that back quite a bit. I, I really even cut back on having much almond butter or, or, you know, I was doing walnut butter and things like that. And I'll have them here and there. But generally speaking, I've cut that back a ton too. And not really having that all the time. Like I was either. I'm really focusing on good, clean foods. You know, like I say, I really am a little bit fat heavy on my diet. I found through data that my body just chews through fat. I got tested with the, the noe it's P N O E at a biohacking convention I was at and he was showing me all the data and it was just showing my body was eaten through fat. And I, I test myself with the lumen every day, see how I'm waking up and my body's always generally in burning fat mode. And you know, I, I, I'm not demonizing carbs by any sense. I just know for me personally, when I go higher carb, I don't respond as well. I do need them. I believe in them. I believe in fruits and vegetables. I just don't believe in, like, for me personally, going heavy on carbs. Now, there are definitely people that require that. And I am a nutritionist. I'm not one that goes, oh, well, it works for me, so it's going to work for everybody. That is just not how this works. Whether it be training, diet, whatever the case be, it is very, very important to be structurally sound and cater to each individual based on their circumstances and their body responses, their genetic makeup. There's a lot of factors that go into that. Take my wife, she's Asian. And, and I'm not. We joke about this, but in reality, a lot of times your genetic background will determine what you handle well and what you don't. But sometimes, you know, like, I went through that testing and they tried to tell me that I wouldn't that and based on my background, oh, you, you know, you can eat a lot of carbs and don't do well with fats. And I told the guy, well, that's the polar opposite. But my point was with my wife is Asian. She gets away with eating the, the most abundant amount of rice you can imagine daily and still under a hundred pounds. If I did that, I don't even, I, I, I, I've tried it before, and it doesn't work. So you have to be cognizant that everybody's different body responses are different, needs and necessities are different. And that's, as a nutritionist, that's what you have to figure out and learn. But I did want to share what I'm doing. And now I feel, even on the days where I'm sluggish or tired, when I, I've got the right kind of fuel and I go and, oh, I, I did leave out, I have, I know they weren't the best, the Quest Bars. I have one a day, but I've kind of switched now. The Kirkland brand bars don't have sucralose in them. They're very similar tasting to the Quest Bars, and they have far less. That's probably the one thing I have during the day that you could say is kind of cool, questionable, but it's to the extent of what's in it. And it gets me that the extra grams of fat and protein with no sugar and those ones do not have that sucralose in there. And a lot of the other additives that the Quest Bars have. There's still a couple things in there that I wouldn't say are ideal. But if that's the worst, I'm doing throughout the day, because every other thing we buy is as fresh as you can get it. I spare no expense on our food. I cut a lot of other expenses out of my life that aren't important and focused it on our food, which we're putting into our bodies. And so, you know, sometimes I'll go over, like, the daily supplements that I take, but in terms of diet, that is what I do, and I'm very strict on it. I don't eat out. You're gonna, you're not gonna see, like, every time we Go on vacation or go anywhere for business. We have an Airbnb with a kitchen. The first thing we do off the flight is get a rent a car and we go find a Whole Foods. And we do that before we even go to our rooms generally and get everything set and ready to go so that, that is done, done and ready to go. And we've got it mapped out and planned out before we even go and we know where everything's at. Sometimes I will bring my own pants with me when I have questions on the places that we're staying in terms of how stocked the kitchen would seem. I'm, I, I live this life and, you know, I'm, I'm happy, I feel good about it, and I. Some people think it's crazy and some people think it's too much, and I just am used to it. And so that's, that's the way that we roll. And thankfully, you know, both me and my wife live that way and love to live that way. And I can tell you this, when you have any sort of problems where you view yourself a certain way, you've had any kind of disorders, battles, people that have had alcohol addictions or drug addictions, they can linger and they can be problems forever. And the more that you close that off, the more that you are dishonest with yourself, the more that you're dishonest with others and closed off, that you're not open and you're not admitted to it and know that you are weak in certain areas, you're never going to fix it. You're not. And that's not to say it won't be difficult and you won't have trouble regardless. But I can tell you this, doing what I'm doing right now, it's very freeing to me, and it doesn't make me feel any sort of way about myself. I'm not embarrassed or ashamed. People may take shots at me and that's cool. That's fine. It's not going to hurt my feelings. It's not. What I'm hoping for is that this helps some people that had questions about me, but also helps them with themselves and helps them to realize we're all human. Everybody's got issues. Everybody's got something that's going on with them in some shape or form, whatever it may be, and it's okay to talk about it. It's fine. It's not anything to be ashamed of. It's when you act like you're perfect and you don't have any problems, that's the actual problem. And I've spent way too long doing that, whether it was acting like I knew everything and my videos, not being honest with anybody about what was really going on with myself, whatever the case may be. And I'm a very spiritual guy and God's guided me through a lot of it. And if that's not what you believe or what you do, then I will pray for you. And that's fine. That's not what this is right now. But I was supposed to give these kind of messages. That's what I feel like I'm being led to do. And so that's what I'm doing. So I, you know, I just hope it helps people. It sheds some light on me, and I hope it makes you feel better about yourself or at least look within yourself and fix anything that's going on. Don't be ashamed about it. And, you know, I'm a nutritionist, I'm a hormone optimizer and I'm always, you know, taking new clients and I'm happy to share stories and help people on their journeys. So this was not nearly. If I tried to do this a couple years ago, it would have never came out and I would have never came out like this. It wasn't hard for me at all to do this with you today. So I hope this helps everybody. And it may not resonate to you at all or it may resonate a ton, but if I help just one person, something went right. And, you know, I helped myself kind of sharing it and talking about it and also giving you some insight on my diet and, you know, the structure and what's really working for me. And I will tell you this with the blood panels on the higher fat diet and you know how it's been demonized and you're told one thing. I've seen a lot of blood panels on people that have higher fat diets, think good saturated fats, not, you know, processed foods and seed oils and things like that. And they've got some pretty sharp blood panels. And I can tell you right now, mine looks pretty darn good as well. So you take that for what it is. Anyway, hope this helped. And I will try to keep putting out more content like this as well. So thank you again and stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Gemelli signing off.