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Typically, football doesn’t come up often in my work, but I’ve recently had the unique opportunity to partner with NFL player Markus Bailey of the Cincinnati Bengals. Markus picked Global Food Justice Alliance as his non-profit of choice in the My Cause, My Cleats campaign. Until December 31, 2022, all donations through this link will be used to purchase Paleovalley’s 100% grass-fed beef sticks (at cost) and send them to Freestore Foodbank in Cincinnati.
As a professional athlete, Markus is dedicated to optimizing his body for peak performance and high-quality protein, like red meat, plays an important role.
Markus is on the podcast today to chat about our joint initiative and his journey to the NFL. Listen in as we get into:
- How Markus reframed adversity on his path to the NFL
- How Markus and I got connected
- Why meat sticks are a great way to get healthy foods to kids
- Snack culture and today’s food landscape
- What Markus eats in a day
- And some of the biohacks Markus uses to stay game-day ready
If you are moved to join in our effort to get meat to kids in need, you can donate here: globalfoodjustice.org/donations
Resources:
Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine
Sustainable Dish Episode 184: Dr. Pran Yoganathan
Connect with Markus:
Instagram: @MB__21
Twitter: @mb_boiler21
Episode Credits:
Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connelly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And, of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Patreon supporters, and listeners.
If you’re ready to take your support for a nutritious, sustainable, and equitable food system to the next level, join my Global Food Justice Alliance community on Patreon. You will have access to ad-free podcasts, exclusive videos, a discussion community, and much more. Go to sustainabledish.com/join to support my work.
A big thanks to the sponsor of today’s show, LMNT. Do you often suffer from headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue, or sleeplessness? It could be from an electrolyte deficiency, and drinking plain water may not be enough to replenish lost electrolytes. LMNT is a drink mix that has everything you need and nothing you don’t – no artificial ingredients, food coloring, gluten, fillers, or sugar!
Now LMNT comes in Chocolate Medley, which includes Mint Chocolate, Chocolate Caramel, and Chocolate Salt. It’s great mixed with warm water, or check out my Chocolate Matcha Mint Latte for a healthy winter beverage perfect for cold-weather sipping. To give this new flavor a try, visit sustainabledish.com/LMNTchocolate and get yours while supplies last.
Another big thanks to our episode sponsor, Annmarie Skin Care, a company committed to creating the best natural skin care possible and doing it sustainably. While I’ve always been picky about what goes on my skin, this product goes beyond that, feeding the skin with high-performance seed oils, antioxidant-rich botanicals, and synergistic plant stem cells that deliver skin-supporting nutrients. My skin feels fantastic, and these products smell so good.
For a limited time, you can receive 30% off your order at sustainabledish.com/skin with code DIANA30.
Transcript:
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connelly, who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance, an initiative advocating for the inclusion of animal-source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at global food justice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now, on to our show.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. Today I have with me a really unusual guest, Markus Bailey, and he is an NFL player for the Cincinnati Bengals. And the reason I’m having him on is because he reached out to me to do some work with Global Food Justice Alliance trying to get meat to kids. And so we’re going to be talking about that. But before all of that, I just want to welcome you, Markus. Thank you so much for reaching out to me on Instagram and being willing to work with me.
Markus Bailey
Yeah, thank you. I’m really excited to be on the podcast. This is, you know, from the time I initially reached out to you, I couldn’t have foreseen that we would have gone this far with the relationship and been able to get all the things in place that we have. But it’s really cool that we’ve been able to get it set up. And I’ve been able to kind of leverage the programs they have available to us in the NFL and be able to, you know, reach out to you incorporate what I’m passionate about and what you’re passionate about, and be able to do something positive and bring some education and bring some light to your organization through the initiative that they offer. So thanks for having me on. I’m excited to be able to talk more about it.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So yeah, and I am, you know, through Global Food Justice Alliance, one of my biggest passions is making sure kids have the right nutrition and the right building blocks to grow healthy bodies and healthy brains. And clearly, as a professional athlete, you’ve been able to optimize both your genetics and everything else in your life. I’m sure many of my listeners are super curious about how did this happen for you? How did you… was it always football? Were there other sports that you loved when you were younger? You know, was there someone in your life that was pushing you and encouraging you to get into football? Like how did this all happen for you?
Markus Bailey
Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely been a journey, wasn’t easy to get here. It’s several bouts of adversity, injuries. But I guess I’ll start from the beginning. Like you mentioned other sports. It wasn’t always just football. I was like a multi-sport athlete growing up, I feel like most kids are. I played basketball. I played baseball growing up. I was really big into martial arts. Like that was something I was super passionate about growing up and getting my black belt. And then I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Arnold Schwarzenegger competition, Arnold Sports. It’s like a kind of a big, like weightlifting competition in Columbus, Ohio. They have like martial arts there too. And through like the elementary school that I went to, they actually offered a really intense martial arts program. And so I’d kind of got into that when I was like six or seven, and then progressed with that. And then it was up getting my black belt and competed and like, learn how to use weapons and spar and everything growing up. So that was something that was like, pretty foundational for me from I guess, like a movement standpoint. I started playing football when I was seven years old. And my uncle got me to start playing. He was one of my coaches. So he’s one of those people that kind of started to push me. Because when I first started playing football, to be honest, I actually did not like it that much. I did not like contact at all. I was you know, I remember hating it. I remember when I was young, like hating go into practice. Because I mean, I was seven years old, and I’m out here putting a helmet on and shoulder pads and hitting another kid. And my uncle, he would always like he was pushing me a lot. And he would, he would always want me to go against like the biggest kids or the fastest kids. And so he kind of exposed me to like that kind of like that competitive nature kind of early in life. And, you know, I know that like people say that, like you should allow your kids to decide what they want to do. And that’s true. And I don’t think that he pushed me too hard, but I am glad that he did kind of like push me a little bit to continue playing because that next year kind of turned around for me. And I started falling in love with it. And then growing up. I wasn’t one of the greatest or most gifted players on the team but I was always a guy that like the classic like hustle grit. Always played super hard. Always knew what he was doing kind of thing. And then transitioning to high school. I remember our high school was like, we’d just won two state championships before I got there. And so I knew that the like, the pedigree and like the expectation for like a high level football was up there. So I was excited to be able to go into like a program like that. And you came in as a freshman. No freshman play varsity. So I played freshman football, and then, you know, ended up being a standout in freshman football. Which was cool. And then…
Diana Rodgers, RD
Were you bigger? I’m just curious, were you like physically larger? Or did you did you have your growth spurt like before a lot of the other kids or?
Markus Bailey
Yeah, I was, I mean, I’m like 6′ 1″ right now. I was about my height. I was about the same, like, I guess from my, from probably sophomore year on so I was about 5′ 11″, or 6′ my freshman year, but I was only like, 165, then. But I think that was I was probably one of the bigger kids at that point. Right now, just so people have some reference I’m 6’1″ 235 right now. So yeah, so that my freshman year I did that and my sophomore year, going into that, that’s when like some of the real like work ethic stuff started to it became like apparent that I like, Oh, if I really want to do this, and like have a chance to play varsity as a sophomore like, I would have to do all these things that like that our coaches and everything in the offseason, they were having us do like, like, so I know, most high school programs around the country probably don’t do this, maybe more now. But back then, we were from January through like the whole like spring semester, we were doing like 5:45am lifts before school. And so we would come in, and we would like do some we had like, we didn’t have an indoor turf. We just had like an indoor basketball court. And we would go do like initial plyometric kind of stuff. And then we’d go into the weight room and have some pretty intense workouts. Looking back on it and knowing what I know now about like exercise science, it probably wasn’t the most productive, and then having kids like not get great sleep. But I will say that, like there was there was a part of it that was like, Oh, this is like the grind, like you’re learning about it. Like the stereotypical like, Oh, you’re getting up, you have to grind, you have to kind of go through significant discomfort, you have to be exposed to stress, things like that. Because if I remember it being like that, where we’re like, every, you know, kind of the, we’re kind of like messing around everyone that’s involved with this kind of growing through those experiences. Because you know, no 15 year old wants to get up at 5am and have to go lift. And then you like get done at 7:15 You have to like shower and change, and then go to class and you’re still like sweating in like first period. It’s like 7:45 and you’re literally dripping sweat. That’s like every day is just like, it’s not ideal. It was like kind of early exposures or early installation of like the sacrifice that it would have to take you have to like invest time, invest energy if you want it to get something out and there in the return. So after my sophomore year, at the time, my focus was just like being the best like high school football player I could be and it was kind of like tunnel vision on just that like for Hilliard Davidson High School, like my program there. But after the season, I had like my first college coach, come see me. And it was actually coach Luke Fickell from Ohio State was the first coach that ever came to see me and I was like, I was in disbelief. Now, the little caveat to that was my high school coach, coached Coach Fickell in high school, so it wasn’t like so there was like a little bit of a connection there. Yeah, so when I first went, I was like, Oh, I’m going to Ohio State like I’m a dog you know, I was thinking like um, but then it was cool either way to be able to have like a college coach say that like they weren’t ready to offer me then but it was like you can actually play in college. Like you have what it takes and so that was like the reassurance and confidence you have what it takes you just have to keep doing what you’re doing to keep progressing and you know you will get your school paid for it which was you know, that was that was the goal. So after that happened I remember there was like a big shift in focus of like, okay, well I need to try to maximize like everything I can do for my recovery, my performance. I started becoming like I was always someone that was like to do kind of research on my own and look things up about how to become faster, how to be stronger, certain things to do but I think it got put into like overdrive then. And I think I was a 15-16 year old kid doing the best I could trying to look up things or certain supplements to take you know, I had… I was a little bit misguided trying to trust the GNC supplement people but I was going to ask them questions. They knew what they were talking about at the time. I’ve definitely… some things I was probably wasting money on taking taking supplements back then. But it was I think it was just like, the point of me saying that as like, I think I’ve always kind of been wired to like, know that there’s more than just doing the bare minimum, like I wanted to try to find every possible way to maximize what I can do. And, you know, my abilities. And I know going into that season, I was able to find the facility that I ended up training at for the next seven years, but I was able to find those people. And those were the, they kind of like to help me harness like my motivations in my desire. And they were more educated, and they were able to kind of direct me and put me in the right direction in terms of programming and helping me develop more as an athlete, you know, certain exercises that I had it done before, things like that. And so then my junior year, that was like, our best year that my best year that I had in high school. We ended up going to the state semifinals. We lost before we went to the state championship, but we were 13 and 1 that year, and I had a really good season, after that season, like all the college offers really started rolling in. And so it was a really cool process as like, as a kid being able to, you know, as a teenager, being able to, to go to these different colleges and feel like, you know, of course, like they’re putting on the recruiting sale, but it was like, it was cool to be able to feel like, oh, they want me to come here to play and they’re gonna pay me money to go to school to do it. And so ended up going into my senior year, I decided that I wanted to go to Purdue. Yeah, I feel like I’m just kind of going really slow through this whole journey here. But basically, there was all these little incremental steps of like, realizing that I can play in the NFL, and then when I went to college, it was kind of the same thing. It wasn’t like, Oh, I’m gonna go to the NFL. It’s like, oh, I want to be the best college player I could be. And then my freshman year, okay, yeah. So I come in, I knew I was gonna have a chance to play early. I was competing throughout camp. I was playing, playing early. I wasn’t starting yet. But after about the third week of the season, I started playing a bunch more. That game, I had my first super major injury where I tore my ACL.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Oh!
Markus Bailey
Yeah. So I tore my ACL, I kind of got like, chopped, there was a contact injury direct to it. And I remember like, knowing right away, and then as soon as, like, I found out there was a torn ACL, I had heard so many stories of people who had had that injury, that were never able to come back. And so it was kind of like this, like anxiety and initial depression of my dream. It could be over, you know, but because that was the first time I had like, had a super major injury. I thought, like, I know, it’s gonna at least take me a year to get back, you know what I mean? But that was before I met the surgeons and I was able to, you know, they were able to educate me about the process. And then once I started to get that hope a little bit, I kind of like, put everything towards like, Okay, well, I mean, it is what it is now. So what can do now is try to come back as strong as I can. I ended up coming back and getting cleared after my ACL surgery that year, and three months, the initial clearing, like I wasn’t ready to play football again. But I was able to like start sprinting and running, running and cutting again at three months after surgery, which was super fast. And then I was able to come back that year. And it was my redshirt because I redshirted because I got hurt within the first three games so that you could like medically redshirt if that happens. So my true my freshman year, my redshirt freshman year, we were not good as a team. We’re like three and nine. But me personally, I had a really good season. And then after that season, I started getting contacted by agents. And I was like, Oh, wow, like, the NFL thing like this. This can really happen. And then I was seeing other players that I played against or like that watch long film that were in our same conference that I got drafted that season and I was like, Oh, I’m better than that guy. Because…
Diana Rodgers, RD
It’s your sophomore year in college?
Markus Bailey
Well, yeah, my academically my sophomore year, but like my, but athletically my freshman year, so it was my first full season of playing, like, eligibility-wise. And yeah, after that season, that’s when I like, it became a true reality to me, like, oh, I can play in the NFL. And I’m gonna do this, you know what I mean? So then I ended up having three straight years of really, you know, high level football, and I’m starting 43 games straight. So then going into my senior year, I was like, projected like second, third round pick. And so my goal was to solidify that spot and hopefully be like a second round pick, if not a first round pick. Because I knew I had the ability to do it. Then I tore my right ACL that year. Yeah, yeah. And so that was it was devastating, obviously, but I didn’t… after the right ACL injury happened. And, like, I’d already been through it one time. And it’s not because of the timing, but I didn’t like really have time to sit there and feel kind of sorry for myself about it. Because if I wanted to get to the NFL I now I had to, like start putting plans in place, had to sign with an agent, I had to figure out where I was going to train, where I was gonna do my rehab at, who’s gonna do my surgery, all these like little steps had to be taken if I was gonna even have a chance to be ready in time. And that’s exactly what I did. You know I had to, I got my surgery down in Dallas. They did a great job. Went Arizona to work with their physical therapist. And that whole process, like my rehab was great. The surprise, or the thing that we didn’t know it was going to happen was the whole COVID pandemic, that really like that threw everything off. Because then like the Pro Days, and everything got canceled because like Pro Day is when you go back to your college and the NFL scouts, they come to your college, and you do your 40, you do like you do football stuff basically. Your 40, you do all your combine testing. You do your position drills, and they basically decide if you’re good, not good enough or not to be able to play, right, what they’ve seen on film. But after when the COVID pandemic really blew up, that’s all that mine got cancelled. So I didn’t get an opportunity to really, truly show people in person that I was like, healthy enough to play. The good part that… what that was, like, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this before. But NFL Combine like it’s, there’s like, a weekend in like late February/early March, where it’s like, it’s like this whole televised event where all the top prospects, they get invited. They go to Indianapolis, and you kind of go through interviews in person, you do medical examinations, which for me was there were a lot of them, because I touched on both my knees. But I little tidbit here, I also had hip surgery on my right. But that was not like, I didn’t get like injured, it was kind of something that like I kind of had growing up. And I found out about it, like after my junior year. And then I had to get hip surgery. And that was a bit of a process too because it was hard to find someone that was able to do the surgery that I needed to get done on that. So that was just another example of like, something that was like, had to kind of overcome that. But the good thing about the Combine process was I was able to actually go and get evaluated medically and talk to the coaches. Because if that didn’t happen, and the pro days got canceled, and you know, I might not have even gotten drafted. So yeah, and then I was… I went from like, being rejected to second, third round to being projected for the fifth round. And then, you know, the draft came and, you know, I ended up getting drafted in the seventh round, which, you know, I was still happy to get drafted. But I remember being like frustrated because I was supposed to be drafted higher. And like, I knew I was better than the seventh round pick. But it was just, you know, there were some things out of my control, right, that contributed to that. So that was, you know, that was as quickl and as detailed I guess I could give you is like the kind of my process to the NFL.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Wow, that is so inspiring. I just finished reading a book called Positive Intelligence, all about just kind of how to, how to reframe things, how to look at things in a different way, things that happened to you. And your dad is an amazing story of resilience. And it’s just really impressive. And I didn’t know all that background about you. It’s really great.
Markus Bailey
There is yeah, I kind of owe my mom a lot of credit to this too because she was diligent and like, trying to help find people that could that would be able to help me out. It was kind of a collective effort. And thankfully, I was able to… my rehab was it was took a long time to come back from but ended up working out for me than where I was able to be where I am now, so…
Diana Rodgers, RD
Wow. So I don’t know how much you feel like mentioning how we got connected on Instagram. I was debating a nutritionist. We could just leave it at that. Or you could go…
Markus Bailey
Yeah, it was just I mean, someone that I also follow like a dietitian. I had seen her post. Like there was some back and forth.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, I mean, basically she was… we don’t have to say who it is. So…
Markus Bailey
It kind of intrigued me. And so then I went to your page.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, so I’ll just give a little bit… so she was saying you should never limit carbohydrates. There is no such thing as food addiction. No food should ever be limited, all of these things. And I was like whoa, and I don’t normally single out people. I don’t think that’s like a good look. But when someone’s egregious with their advice like that, and maybe doesn’t have the perspective that I have, like this person, only worked with collage athletes. And so there, I’m sure there were a lot of teammates on your team who could eat lots and lots of junk food and still perform great like you’re dealing with people who are at their prime in life and already are genetically gifted. And so I mean, that’s how Game Changers happens, right? Like you take young athletes and you know, there’s lots of diets that can support that for a period of time. But once we start seeing people who are older or maybe not as gifted or have some other issues, you quickly realize that that blanket advice is just not helpful. So, I did call her out just because I have a perspective that she doesn’t have. So anyway, carry on. That’s just the facts.
Markus Bailey
So after that happened, I was interested about who you were. So I went to your page, and then I saw that we had some mutual’s. You said, Pran. Dr. Pran. Right.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Dr. Pran Yoganathan, who has been on my podcast before. He’s wonderful.
Markus Bailey
Yeah. So I had seen someone repost him. And then I liked what he was talking about. So I followed him. And then when I went to your page, we had a couple of mutuals – he was one and there was a few others, but I just kind of like maybe start going through your page a little bit. And I kind of liked what you were… some of the things you were talking about, the way you were putting the message out there when it came to, like kind of combating the demonization of meat, because it was something that I had started noticing to just like, throughout social media. And it can be like confusing and frustrating for like, of course, I don’t have as much like academic experiences, you or you know, any registered dietitian who has actually gone through that. But I have like, I feel like I have… my degree is in sports science, I’d have taken some of those courses. Thankfully, I’m able to have access to some pretty knowledgeable doctors. And, of course, I asked a bunch of questions. So I feel like I have a little bit of a good baseline understanding. And some of the messaging that I’ve been seeing, and this like, huge wave of people that are like, extremely anti-meat, I just felt like it was just not fully correct. And I just, you know, I kind of had the hunch, or I had the intuition. I didn’t have like all of the research or everything. So I started going through some of your post. And you know, I saw that you… I see you have a book right there. It’s funny, actually, I got one right here, too. But yeah, thanks for sending that book. So I started looking through that and see the things you were saying. And I felt like it kind of aligned with some of the things I’ve been… I’d heard or read or been told that was that was actually true. And so I started following you, and just kind of seeing you post stuff. And so that’s how I started following. So then, the way that we were able to connect was because the NFL offers this initiative called, it’s called My Cause, My Cleats, where it gives players opportunity to partner with nonprofit organizations and bring more attention to them through the promotion, the social media promotions that the NFL offers. And by designing a pair of cleats, with whatever organizations designed logo, colors, however the player wants to do it. And for my first two years in the league, I didn’t partner with anyone. I didn’t do it, didn’t partake in it because I… what I didn’t want to do is do like just do it just to say I did it, just to make it seem like I’m trying to be a good person kind of thing, which is like, I just didn’t want to be inauthentic about it. But it was just you know, I didn’t plan on doing it again this year. It just kind of happened. I came across your page. And I really liked what you were talking about. And so I decided to reach out to you to see if there were any organizations that you knew of because you seemed like you had a pretty big following. And you were really into this space. And so I was like, Oh, she has to know some organizations that that would do something like this. Then as soon as I sent it, like I like looked at your page, and it said like Global Food Justice Organization, I was like, Hold on like this, you might actually have one herself. I went to it. And then I saw it. I was like holy crap. And then you send a message to me back and saying like, yeah, you actually had one too, nonprofit. We kind of education about this. We advocate for this and this. And so I was like okay, well, that might be perfect. And so I think we just decided to like, hop on a call and talk about it more. And you know, I kind of expressed how the way I wanted to kind of present it a little bit different than like, just I don’t want to… I didn’t want to go like full anti-vegan like, you know with it, but I like I wanted to just do it more like oh, just bringing attention to your organization. And so yeah, that’s kind of like… the little back story of how that happened.
(LMNT Ad) Diana Rodgers, RD
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(Annmarie Skin Care Ad) Diana Rodgers, RD
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Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. And what I really appreciated about chatting with you is that you were asking, well do you… do you do anything with getting meat to people? And I was like, Well, you know, so this is a relatively new organization for me. And for the most part for all of last year, it was really focused on education. And, you know, we thought about programs that might physically take us into schools. But we realized the way kids are consuming information right now we’d probably have a bigger reach if we just stick with Instagram, TikTok, you know, that kind of stuff. But then you brought up you know, what about getting meat to kids, and I love that idea because especially kid snacks are notoriously horrible, right? These like gummy, juicy things sold as fruit. You know, they’re usually really high in sugar, very low in protein, not something that you would fuel a kid with. And my main passion is really combating nutrient deficiencies through food, right? And even in the US, even in high income countries, we’ve got some hidden hunger that sometimes might look even like obesity, and these kids are just eating the wrong stuff. Yeah, sometimes they’re eating too much of this really delicious, wrong stuff. And so, meat sticks is a is a really great way because there are shelf stable because a lot of these food pantries don’t have the ability to take blocks of frozen meat and really distribute them. It just gets hard. And if we really want to get meat to kids, something shelf stable, and snack ish is really the best solution. So I reached out to paleo Valley and said, like, Hey, what’s your supply? Like, and what’s your cost? Could we buy them at cost and get them to kids? And they said, Sure, and so then we, you connected us with a food pantry in Cincinnati. So it’s great. So it’s close to you. You’ve got a connection there.
Markus Bailey
Yeah. So you had the reason why you’re able to reach out to paleo. You had already worked with him in the past, right?
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, they’re awesome. They have been supporters of my work. I mean, Paleo Valley, right. From when I very first met them, helped with my film Sacred Cow with a donation from them . They were one of the very early supporters. Yeah, so we ran some stuff on social media. I did a newsletter this past weekend. That was super successful. And we’ve raised 1000s of dollars for this. And so we’re gonna put a link in the show notes for this, or they can go right to global food justice.org. And I believe it’s slash donations. Yeah. Global Food Justice, org/donations, and every single dollar will go directly to purchasing a meat stick from Paleo Valley at cost and getting it to the folks in Cincinnati who are going to be distributing it to kids.
Markus Bailey
Yeah, the you know, I was before we decided to actually go through with it. I remember like, you gave me the contact information for the people at Paleo because I wanted to like try them myself before I was like, Yeah, let’s just send these meat sticks to people.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Oh, yeah. We haven’t talked about it. Did you get a box?
Markus Bailey
Yeah. I did get a box. Yeah. I had some last night. Yeah, I snack on them. Whenever I, if I don’t have time to, like, get a full meal in or whatever. I definitely snack on them. To me, they’re like, high protein, like, super healthy, Slim Jims, basically.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. And you know, I’ve always had them for my kids. And the funny thing is the kids some of my kids would sometimes be like, Oh, not meat sticks, because like you open the console a car and it’s just full of meat sticks. Right. But I also I think it’s good because I think that a lot of times people snack because they want like entertainment for their mouth. Or they want like, you know, it’s not really that they’re hungry. So if you’re hungry enough to eat something super healthy, then you’re actually legitimately hungry enough to have a snack.
Markus Bailey
Yeah, for sure. Or can’t you like, like if you’re craving like a carbohydrate or like sweets, isn’t that saying that like your body needs like? Maybe you need like, like serotonin or something like your body will tell you like you have certain cravings based on like, what your mood is. You can be you know, if you’re feeling like say, for example, people don’t get outside enough they don’t get enough exposure to sunlight. You know, they may be maybe more inclined to eat like sweets because they’re not getting like that exposure to like, you know,
Diana Rodgers, RD
That hit of, right. Yeah, definitely. micronutrient deficiencies can cause food cravings. You know, I’ve heard that like women crave chocolate around their period because it’s magnesium and magnesium relaxes muscles and like the uterus is a muscle and so, you know, that’s why that makes sense. And I just think that it’s so tricky. We’ve got this culture where a lot of people are working jobs they don’t like. And for some people, their evening meal that McDonald’s, you know, Big Mac meal or whatever it is, might be the best thing that happened to them all day, right? They’re delicious. Ultra processed, food is delicious. It’s hard to resist sometimes for people and like so for five bucks, you can have this flavor profile that lights up, like lots of reward centers in your brain, right. So I totally get, you know, if I’ve had a really hard day, I don’t want steamed chicken and, you know, roasted broccoli necessarily, you know, like a lot of you know, but at the same time, you know, we’ve got this snack culture. I wrote this, I was just talking about this the other day on another podcast, but I wrote this blog post for Robb Wolf’s website called It’s Not Your Birthday. And it’s because I was at… so my kids are athletes, too. And I was at a doubleheader softball game, middle school girls just see this more in the girls sports than in the boys sports, but it was it was halftime, 11 o’clock in the morning and outcome the brownies and cupcakes and juice boxes. And I was like, What are we doing to these kids? And the girls are like, the mothers are enabling it. And the girls are enabling it for each other because they’re like, I baked, you know, and somehow, like this idea that they maybe made this brownie mix at home makes it like homemade and healthy. Even though it’s just like chemicals that they just added water and oil to and like baked in an oven. You know, they somehow feel like they’ve made it themselves. And therefore it’s better than just like buying a box of Oreos at the grocery store when it’s the same exact thing, you know. And I think that it’s really damaging to have this sort of, I call it like cupcake culture. But you know, this idea that like eating foods like that are so normalized, and pushed even by coaches, you know, when we were filming for Sacred Cow, I think I might have mentioned this to you, but we actually filmed a lot in Lafayette near Purdue. Yeah. I don’t know if I mentioned that to you.
Markus Bailey
Maybe, maybe you did. And maybe I just forgot.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, we started out tracking patients through Dr. Hallberg clinic. So she’s like a low carb doctor who unfortunately passed away from stage four lung cancer having never been a smoker recently, but her work is amazing, because she was reversing type two diabetes just with diet, getting people off their meds completely with a ketogenic diet. And anyhow, we were following a lot of children that were in her program. And I remember this one girl that we were following. And she was in all these dance programs. And but she was really struggling with her weight. And she was in metabolic syndrome, right on the verge of type two diabetes at like age nine. And you know, the reward at the end of dance class was lollipops for all the kids. And that kind of thing has just got to stop this poor girl like completely trying to do everything right. The moms trying to do everything right. And this girl is getting sicker and sicker. And it’s not because she’s not moving. It’s because of the food environment. Right? Yeah. So I feel super passionate about making sure kids do not get the message that meat is unhealthy because I think it gives a free pass to cupcakes and lollipops and all that stuff. And not to, you know, the whole point of that post. It’s not your birthday, meant to show that like, there are times when celebration is cool, it’s fine. There’s Thanksgiving, there’s Christmas, there’s birthdays, there’s other holidays, but it doesn’t have to be an every single day thing. And absolutely, it should be seen as a special treat and not a daily reward for making a goal or getting an A or finishing a dance class.
Markus Bailey
Yeah, there’s definitely a nuance to it. Because you don’t want to be one of like, extreme one way or the other where it’s like, oh, you can never have sweet, you can never do this. And that’s kind of what you were just talking about. Right times when the celebration is appropriate. And I think they’re like how you talked about it’s a whole cultural thing where there would have to be like, there needs to be a mass increase education, where like more kids are aware of it, where it’s not like so commonplace to have these sweets and snacks after certain things because now it’s just like a, it’s a positive reinforcement that you don’t really want and you’re getting this feedback loop. Where it’s like, now you’re craving that you know what I mean? Yeah, like I said, there’s nuance to it. It’s definitely a cultural thing. I remember being in Little League and it was kind of the same thing. I mean, like we’re where you would, after a game you would get you get snacks you get chips, you would get ice cream.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, all that stuff. I see it more in the girls sports only because the girls are making it for the other girls and and girls bake with their mothers as a bonding thing. And I’ve written about, you know, other ways to bond with your daughter other than making, you know, 24 Sugar Bombs isn’t a problem with baking stuff. And then you end up with 12 or 24, 36 things, right? So like, whenever I wanted to do a treats for my kids, we just go to a store and buy them and that way, we only had one, and it was gone, you know. But anyway, so that none of that footage made it into the film just because it ended up being a it’s not just about food. It’s not just about telling people what to eat these cultural ideas around food. It’s very, very complicated. And I think that’s, you know, part of what we’re trying to address through Global Food Justice Alliance is, you know, the messages demonizing meat are actually not okay. There’s never been any science to show that pulling me away from kids is a good thing. And you know that the kids snack landscape is toxic. And I’m so grateful that you came to me making this suggestion because I’m going to make it a regular piece of the mission of global food justice from moving forward, is to not only educate but actually get meat to people who need it, whether it’s kids or pregnant moms, or, you know, any number of initiatives moving forward.
Markus Bailey
I think something else too, that you talk about that, I think, is just a huge misconception, because it’s always that people come and joke about like, they’re looking at like the nutrition facts of something, they’ll say, oh, this has this protein in it, you know, when you talk about how all protein is not the same, like it’s a bioavailability thing. And that’s something that like people don’t understand where like meat is, for our digestive systems, it’s a lot like easier for us to digest it and to absorb the nutrients that it provides. And the certain vitamins and B vitamins or amino acids and things like that are more native to like our actual amino acid profile ourself, whereas you’re getting plant sources or these other artificial sources of it, you’re not going to even be absorbing it the same way that you would if you’re eating meat. That’s like people think all protein is the same. So…
Diana Rodgers, RD
Right, exactly, exactly. And speaking of protein, before we go, I would love to know, what do you eat in a day? And and how might that be different than some of your colleagues or what you’re seeing some of the other players eat? You don’t have to single anyone out or anything. But you know, do you feel like your diet at this point is higher in meat compared to a lot of your other team players?
Markus Bailey
Oh, for sure. I don’t know if I can say it’s higher than everyone but I think I mean, I have steak, or some type of red meat like three or four times if not five times a week. Honestly, I might have at least some red meat every single day to be honest, like I absolutely love red meat. Steak is probably my favorite food. And just kind of going back to what you said about like, I know what you said earlier about sometimes you have freak genetic athletes who like they can just get by with for whatever reason, they’re able to like eat sweets or, like I got guys eating like candy: Nerds, Laffy Taffy. Eating all types of things and they go out there and they ball out. Or they have like, Uncrustables like peanut butter jellies.
Diana Rodgers, RD
It’s so ridiculously absurd to me to see a football player eating nerds like popping in his mouth.
Markus Bailey
Then going out, like I know that some people feel like they, you know, saw, there’s some players that used to like, they would have gummies in like their socks. So they will put them in, like during the middle of the game. I feel like it gives them a little bit of a that like boost that little quick energy boost. So there’s definitely I think, because if you’re like if you’re not having a problem like it’s like if it’s not broke, don’t fix it right? So if you’re having success, like what’s going to make you want to you know, change your diet when you’re like you’re over here balling anyway. So it’s not like you’re going to you know, go look out and research stuff when it’s not something you’re passionate about or you’re not having any issues if you always with it then you’re just never going to think it’s a problem you know. I mean, whereas like for myself I felt like I wasn’t as like gifted as maybe some other people of course I have to be gifted some to be where I am to have the frame and everything like that, but you know, I feel like my like body composition and the way like my body feels now is better than it ever was before. And I think that’s just because of you know how much time energy I’ve spent towards like, figuring out what works best for me. And it’s still a process you know, like I experimented with a little bit of intermittent fasting throughout the summer and sometimes there’s some days I won’t you know, I won’t even eat breakfast even now because the I kind of like was trying to help with that insulin sensitivity a little bit or like, I know that like, sometimes fasting can be, you know, it can be good for having those initial ketones in the morning like help from like, a brain and cognitive function standpoint. And overall, like, if I’m getting my glycogen stores, I’m getting everything like through bigger meals throughout the day, I don’t always have to have that initial like, spike. I’m always want to have 14 hour feeding window. Sometimes I wanted to, you know, switch it up and see how it felt, if it affected my energy. And I’ve been able to do it sometimes. And I feel completely fine, you know, now I have like, really good essential amino acid supplement that I like will take and I won’t just have nothing, but I’ll just take that. But that doesn’t really, like it doesn’t give you a huge insulin spike because you’re not like really going through the digestive process. You’re just kind of just kind of being absorbed. So I’ll do that. I think in terms of like eating meat, like I definitely like I said, I eat meat pretty often. I have a meal plan service that I get from Columbus. Like I usually get it from Columbus, I go back and forth. It’s like an hour 30 hour 45 from Cincinnati to Columbus. So on our off days like to usually this week’s different because we play on Saturday, but usually we play on Sundays. And Tuesdays are off day. So I’ll drive back on Monday night. I have like a facility I go to that do certain rehab protocols like I have, like hyperbaric chambers. I do like the infrared sauna. You know, those are kind of things just like, those are external recovery modalities. Then I’ll pick up my meals and stuff on Tuesday, and they have some pretty good… I mean, I can buy stuff in bulk from theirs… I can buy like a pound of like cut up steak, a pound of chicken, like ground turkey. They have like brown rice, broccoli. They have all these things in bulk that I can just buy and stock up, kind of make meals on my own throughout the week. So that’s what I kind of do most mostly for my meals right now. And then at the facility I think that we have a we have a new chef that’s actually doing a pretty good job. Because I asked him like where are we sourcing this meat from? And he said to me, it’s all like grass-fed, grass-finished. So nice. So yeah, because like we still like it’s actually pretty cool. We’ll have for home games on Saturday nights for our meals like we have like a delicious meal. It’ll be like lamb, like these lamb chop things and they’re so good. He makes him so good. And he said that they’re all… it’s all grass-fed and everything. They’ll get… we’ll have steak. Of course we have like mac and cheese or like potatoes or something as well. But I think for the most part, they do a good job of providing us some pretty good options. There’s also like pizza and stuff too for guys who just want to eat whatever so there’s, if you want to snack and stuff there’s definitely those options too. But yeah, I think if you are trying to be relatively health conscious, you’re trying to make sure you’re getting different varieties of protein throughout the week. But of course like you know, I try to eat some type of fish throughout the week as well like good salmon or they’ll have like, like cod or something in there. I’ll eat it a couple of times. You know I have a good omega like a healthy fat supplement that I take it has borage oil, avocado oil has like you know omega threes and stuff in there. So I take that a lot of the supplements and stuff that I take was the decisions that decided to take those was based on…. I got, you know, everyone has the ability to do this but I’ve gotten bloodwork and everything done to be able to see where I can, you know have absolute deficiencies that I take this bB complex, it has a lot of folate in there. I know this summer when I got my bloodwork for whatever reason I was low in folate, so he advised that I take this one, boron. I don’t know if you know more about boron, but it because like you talked about with our soil being depleted, especially over here like boron is something that like people used to get in their food because it was in the soil. But some people like have zero boron and boron is like kind of important for like your bone health and it can help support like healthy testosterone and things like that. And so when I first met with my doc – this a couple of years ago when I got my bloodwork I had like zero boron, so he told me I needed to take one of those. I think zinc. I have like a joint formula supplement that has like, sort of curcumin and like glucosamine and chondroitin in there. But yeah, I mean, so I take certain supplements that was based on my bloodwork. And then I feel like for the most part, I have a balanced diet. But I would say I lean more towards like eating protein and fat. And I have obviously carbohydrates and vegetables like vegetables and stuff in there too. But I would say that I feel like my diet, the way I’m doing it right now is providing me with energy that I need to be able to play. I feel like I’m playing at a high level, my body feels good. And as you know, relatively happy. We’re like week 15 now so…
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, that’s excellent. I mean, it sounds like you’re doing everything right. A lot of the supplements you listed off are ones I take on a daily basis. I do a red light sauna also. Do you do the ice baths too? Or?
Markus Bailey
Yes, yes, yes, I do. But not for the purpose of like decreasing inflammation because like after, like a practice or a lift, like I wouldn’t go jump in the ice tub to like lowering, because it’s actually kind of, there’s some beneficial… you want to let your body to like, respond and like adapt to the inflammation or like the stressors that you put your body through during a lift, so that you can like, that’s how you grow, you get that… you don’t want to kind of inhibit that natural process. But I do use it for like cold exposure. And so like we have a sauna, and we don’t have like a red light one in our facility, but just like a dry sauna like a cole one. So I’ll go, I’ll do like a contrast with it. So I’ll do like, two minutes or three minutes up to my neck head in the cold tub. And the reason I do that is because it can like kind of teach your body how to better respond to stress. Yeah, so if you’re able to do that, you can expose your body to those rigid, cold temperatures. And you can control your breathing in a way. So like you don’t get into a sympathetic state. Right, they keep your breathing and you stay in a parasympathetic state while you’re in it. You kind of like your body doesn’t know the difference between that stressor. And like other stressors that could come up. And it teaches your body how to respond to it. Also, you get like, good boost of dopamine, norepinephrine from it. So like a focus boost. And so it’s really just the teaching your body how to respond to stress, when I feel like when I do that, I feel like this like tranquility or like calmness. So I’ll do that. And then I’ll go into the sauna for like 20 minutes. That’s I got 170 in there. So it gets hot. You stay in there for a little bit and you go back and forth a few times. So I kind of like doing that. And then before games, if I have the opportunity to do this, I’ll actually like put my face all the way on the cut and under the cold tub too. Because it’s like, that’s something it’s called like the mammillary dive reflex. And so when I do it, it like slows my heart rate down like a ton. And it like I feel like because when you when you get cold water on your face, you’re like, you can hold your breath longer, you’re like starts to reserve oxygen.
Diana Rodgers, RD
It completely resets your whole nervous system.
Markus Bailey
So before a game, there’s obviously a lot of anxiety and kind of yes about now it’s… I’ve been playing for a while now. So it’s a little bit different. I don’t feel like as much but I’m, there’s still I can still feel the stress in my chest and stuff. And I’m getting ready. Right. And so there’s already going to be a lot of that inherent to this playing football, you know, you’re about to go out there and you’re fully competing, you have to maximally, like try to hit someone and try to win try too. You’re fighting basically. And your livelihood depends on it. You know, I mean, so there’s a lot of things that could make you stressed out, just inherent to the sport and the position that we’re in. And so me doing that before the game when I get out like I can tell my heart rate has dropped a ton. I feel like so much more like flow state-ish. Like I feel this kind of more locked in. Yeah, I think that’s something that really helps me out from a stress reduction standpoint.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yes. Yeah, I’ve heard that even taking a really cold washcloth and when you’re feeling stressed and just putting it on your face. I think that’s why my son is a winter surfer here in New England. It’s like he, in fact, we can’t even figure out how to celebrate Christmas with him because he wants to surf all day long because the waves are gonna be so good that day. Oh my gosh. So funny. Thank you so much for sharing all of this, you know, interesting, like biohacking stuff that you’re up to. It’s really cool. I know a lot of my folks listening you know do a lot of that stuff. Like I see everyone posting about all this.
Markus Bailey
Yeah. I try and do some. I know that like you know, obviously if you want to go true biohacker like listen to the Huberman podcast or something like that. I listen to that. I’m no like neurobiologist or expert but there are just these are these little things that like…
Diana Rodgers, RD
Well and it shouldn’t take over your life, right? You have to at the end of the day, you know do your job which is playing football, but everyone else has to do their job be a parent, you know, make it work for them and not let biohacking take over their life and I’ve met a few people where that line has been maybe crossed the runway a little bit.
Markus Bailey
I think I used to be that way a little bit when it came to like it because it can be there’s so much you know, and this is this kind of touches on what you do for your work too. And then anything about nutrition like there’s so much conflicting information out there so readily accessible it’s just really hard to have that discernment and be able to filter through like what is actually relevant, what is true, what is not because you know how you talk about there’s maybe less with nutrition but when it comes to other like research there how can you know if something is like is there’s no like agenda? There’s no…
Diana Rodgers, RD
Oh, it’s pretty bad. Yeah. And things like that.
Markus Bailey
You don’t want to go like full conspiracy, but it’s just like, there’s so much conflicting research you can find, for any belief you had, you could probably find something to support it. And there’s like, you know, there’s bogus studies that are posted in legit journals, like all the time, where they would take like someone going through and looking at every reference and like going to click on those and cross-siting everything to be able to do like, and people just don’t have the time for that. So, it’s just hard to discern for like a regular person who’s trying to enhance their lives and what is actually true. And I think that, like if you’re trying to, for me, I think I used to stress me out a lot because I would try to figure out what’s actually true, what’s the best. And sometimes you just have to kind of revert back to the basics and just think like, Okay, what would a human do, like in previous prehistoric times? Like, what would they do back before? This
Diana Rodgers, RD
100% If you use evolutionary biology as your kind of guide and worldview baseline for everything, I think that can really help a lot like does this actually just make sense? So totally, Markus, how can people follow you?
Markus Bailey
Okay, well, social media plug. So you can follow me on Instagram. At MB two underscores 21, MB underscore underscore 21. Or just look up Markus Bailey, MARKUS BAILEY. And it should come up. Yeah, I’m most active on there. I don’t really post too much on Twitter. I kind of just am very PC on Twitter, just kind of post support for the Bengals and Purdue and stuff. There’ll be some things every now and then. But that’s at MB underscore boiler. 21. So yeah, those are the two I’m most active on I would say so. Yeah. If someone wants to give me a follow on there, you can also check out you know, I know that we talked about me having the cleats here. They are at the facility right now. But if anyone watching this wants to come wants to go check out the cleats that we had made there on my page is it’s pinned on my profile so the post about my about the My Cause My Cleats, you can check them out. So I think they’re pretty, pretty solid.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, I was so excited when you came to me, I was like, finally some meat cleats. This is great. But they’re not meat cleats. They’re actually pretty awesome. They’ve got a cow and some grass and lots of vegetables, not just meat. So I think they’re awesome. Thank you so much. And again, the link for all you all, if you want to get behind this donation program. It’s global food, justice.org/donations, and every single dollar goes to a meat stick for kids. So thanks so much for the inspiration for reaching out to me, Markus, it was super cool to learn about your backstory. And I’m just really glad we connected. So thank you so much for your time.
Markus Bailey
Yeah. Thanks for having me on. Hopefully, I didn’t ramble on too much about it.
Diana Rodgers, RD
No, it’s awesome.
Markus Bailey
Yeah. I’m glad I was able to be on here. And I’m glad that we’re able to get this movement going on. So it’s awesome. We’ll stay in touch for sure.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, thank you so much. Happy holidays.
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Diana Rodgers, RD
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