#712 Nick Gullo | Really, Really, Really Ridiculously Good Looking

Sevan Matossian (00:00):

Anything over six hours. And I, and I wake up stiff as a stiff as a board. Bam. We’re live.

Caleb Beaver (00:08):

Is that all the sleep you get normally?

Sevan Matossian (00:10):

Yeah. Normally I sleep, I go, uh, yeah, normally, uh, maybe, probably seven hours. I normally go to bed exactly like 11 on the dot and get up like at six on the dot. I usually get up like at 5 58, 2 minutes before my alarm goes off. But then, so, so yesterday I didn’t set my alarm at all, and I tried to stay in bed as long as I could. I tried to stay in bed till eight, which was just crazy. Like for the last hour. I just was just like,

Caleb Beaver (00:38):

You don’t know what to do with yourself. Catch

Sevan Matossian (00:40):

Up, catch up on sleep. Well, the cool thing is as Avi was just there laying next to me the whole time,

Caleb Beaver (00:45):

No, perfect.

Sevan Matossian (00:46):

Yeah, kids just wake up and they just, they just turn on. There’s no like, gradual

Caleb Beaver (00:52):

<laugh>. Oh, my dog does the same thing. I don’t have kids obviously, but like, as soon as I open the kennel door, it’s like, it’s time to go. Like, yeah, no time to drink coffee, no time to sit on the couch and just like contemplate my fucking feelings. It’s like

Sevan Matossian (01:05):

There’s no acclimating.

Caleb Beaver (01:07):

Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (01:09):

Um, one minute after I got outta bed, he’s like, Hey, come over here and help me build these legos. I’m like, what? Are you kidding me? I can’t, my eyes aren’t, don’t even work yet.

Caleb Beaver (01:16):

You didn’t even got the crusties out yet.

Sevan Matossian (01:18):

Yeah. Jetro. Good morning, Eric. Good morning. Uh, Jeffrey Burchfield. Good morning, David. Good morning. Uh, very interesting guest today. There’s, there’s guests. Sometimes I, well, not sometimes half to guests. I just take a stab at the, in the dark, right? I just see their profiles on Instagram and I’m like, Hmm, I wonder what this guest would be like. Oh, I better tell this guy. He needs to be on Chrome, um, uh, Chrome browser if you are on a computer. And so this guy, so, so, um, I don’t, I don’t know if you guys remember the guest. There was a guy named Paul we had on the show. He was in, I don’t know, I can’t remember. We had two guys who were in a coma. In a coma. Is it a coma or a coma? Two guys who were in coma or a coma com

Caleb Beaver (02:14):

Or in na coma, or were in na coma

Sevan Matossian (02:17):

Comatose. Two guys that were in medically induced coma. Right? That’s, it was medically induced for both of them, right? Paul and, uh, Phil Kelly?

Caleb Beaver (02:26):

I think so. Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (02:28):

And, and Bo both of them had severe, some sort of severe case of Covid. And basically, I, I think, uh, Paul was out for like 60 days. He was the one who was saying, having all the crazy dreams and terrors that his family was dead when he woke up, he thought his family was dead. Anyway, he is a, uh, a fr a friend of a friend, and I’ve hung out with Paul a bunch now and, uh, have built a friendship with them. And he goes to a jujitsu gym in, um, I think goes to Mesa or Newport Beach, and it’s called a O j. And if you’re a practitioner of Brazilian jiujitsu, and you’re pretty geeky about it, you know that gym, it’s like the gym. And so Paul goes to that gym and practices, uh, the art of Jiujitsu, and I believe that’s where he ran into Nick. And, uh, I started perusing Nick’s, um, Instagram account, and I was like, Ooh, I gotta get this guy on the show. Good morning, Nick. What’s up, brother? What’s up guys? How are you? Thanks for doing this.

Nick Gullo (03:28):

I’m not getting any audio. Let

Sevan Matossian (03:30):

Me, uh, take your

Nick Gullo (03:32):

Time. Let me, uh, see what I got

Sevan Matossian (03:33):

Going. That’s how this show works. <laugh>, guys, this is the sh this is the shirt that, uh, for Waap Polooza, um, the CEOs shirt from Waap Palooza. Go over to Vindicate if you wanna pick one out. It’s funny, he sent this to me a week ago, and I just thought, it’s not my color. It’s not my color. I’m not gonna wear it. I’m not gonna wear it. And then I’m like, oh, I should wear it so people can see it and buy it. And then this morning as I was walking into the podcast studio, my six-year-old said, you look good and pink. I was like, all right, all right. There you go. Matt Suza thinks I look good in pink

Nick Gullo (04:03):

Too. I got you guys. We’re good.

Sevan Matossian (04:05):

Yo,

Nick Gullo (04:07):

What’s going on,

Sevan Matossian (04:08):

Man? It’s a, it’s a, uh, a 54 year old man with a 23 year old man’s body. What the fuck is going on here?

Nick Gullo (04:15):

<laugh>? Everything is good, man. It’s coffee time. It’s a little early for

Sevan Matossian (04:21):

Me. Is that cgi, that body, yours,

Nick Gullo (04:24):

<laugh>

Sevan Matossian (04:26):

You eat for your gut bio, uh, bio gut, bio, bio, bio, bio. Yeah.

Nick Gullo (04:35):

Yeah,

Sevan Matossian (04:36):

Yeah. I, I, I I absolutely love that. And more and more I’m starting to really understand. I think, uh, one of the premises of that is, is regardless of what you’re going to eat, only eat one or two or three things and, and know what you’re mixing. So like, if you, if you are gonna eat a piece of meat, you know, just eat that piece of meat and give your body, body and, and you avoid meat too, right? Anyway. Yeah, for your gut biome, I

Nick Gullo (04:57):

Mean, it’s, it’s a long, it’s a long story, um, with the whole gut biome thing. But I would say like 15 years ago, I had a friend who, um, got sick and he took some antibiotics. I think he took it from his mom’s cabinet, and they were expired, and they only had like half a course, and he took them, and it created like a gut reaction to where he ended up, his, his immune system attacked his own colon, and he got colitis, and he got it so bad they thought he would die. This was ongoing for years. And, um, during that time, you know, my closest friend and during that time, um, I just started researching like, gut bio and what is this? What is, I didn’t even know what a gut was. What is the gut

Sevan Matossian (05:45):

You, what is the gut? I just think it’s your stomach and my love handles.

Nick Gullo (05:49):

No, it’s everything that it through your internals that goes from your stomach all the way down to your anus. And

Sevan Matossian (05:56):

So it’s to my, my cheerio, we call it the Cheerio on this show. We call it the Cheerio.

Nick Gullo (06:01):

So yeah, there you go. And so it, uh, the gut biome is all the trillions of bacteria that are inside of there. And then, you know, so the more I learned with him, and, and also he ended up, long story short for his saga is he ended up like two years later becoming one of the first people in the United States to get a fecal transplant, which the doctors at U C L told him was insane and would never work. And U C L A one of the top gi, you know, schools in the, in the world, and, uh, and they wanted to, the doctor was like, don’t do that. Let me remove your colon. So you have a bag and you’re gonna walk around with a bag. You’re 32 years old, you’re gonna walk around with a bag for the rest of your life. And so the doctor afterwards was like, you know what? I was wrong. You’re right. You know? But think about it. Sometimes you have to be on the cutting edge of, of where nutrition is going, because doctors Gino, they’re not all, they’re not all like that. Um, I still, so

Sevan Matossian (07:06):

Anyways, still Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. No,

Nick Gullo (07:08):

No, you go ahead. No. So then that saved his life. But during that time, during those two years, you know, I really started, I already, I had my podcast modes v where I was already, I’ve always been into nutrition and, and, and athleticism because I wrestled, you know, and wrestling is unlike, um, unlike, uh, football, you know, I played football also. You don’t have to lose weight, but wrestling, you have to manage your weight. And so because I wrestled from eight to 18, there was such a long gap in there of like six years where I had to really manage my weight and learn about that. So through puberty, you’re like, not only having to be athletic at the highest level that you can in your training, but you learn de discipline and you learn how to manage your weight. So anyways, um, from that, from him, I learned about the gut biome, you know, back to what we were talking about.

(08:02):

And, uh, and I was just shocked to, to, to learn that our, the gut controls everything from our immune system to our cognitive ability, to our sleep, to, there’s just everything. It’s almost like the real brain of the body. You know, this is the brain, this is the brain we think with, but that’s the brain that controls everything. So once I learned that, then I, it just kind of sent me down this path where I’m like, okay, I wanna learn as much of this as I can. Um, around this same time as when I saw a picture of myself surfing, I think I was like 39, and it was at Huntington Beach, and it was one of those really rare, warm days we’re in surf trunks. And, uh, and I saw a picture of me on a wave, and the wave was amazing. My board looked great, but all I could think about and kept looking at was <laugh>. The freaking fact that I was so overweight, it was insane. So when I wrestled in, uh, my senior year, I was 163 pounds and completely ripped. And, uh, that’s right. So this picture right here is how much I, I was weighing, I was even heavier when I was at, uh, Huntington Beach right here. I was probably weighing like 180 5.

Sevan Matossian (09:22):

If anyone wants to know what my body looks like, it’s one of those, I’m not gonna tell you which one, but it is identical to one of those. I swear to God. It is, it is. I, that’s, and that’s what my hair looks like when I don’t, um, shower <laugh>. I mean, I don’t wash my hair anyway. I bet you Nick doesn’t wa put soap in his hair either, but no. Um, no soap’s stupid.

Nick Gullo (09:42):

No. Uh,

Sevan Matossian (09:43):

Okay, so sorry. So sorry. So you, you couldn’t stop staring at

Nick Gullo (09:46):

Your physique? No. So I saw this picture of my, I couldn’t stop staring at it. I’m like, what in the world? I’m like, if I look like this at 39, what am I gonna look like at 49? What am I gonna get? 59? I’m gonna be that guy, right? And

Sevan Matossian (09:58):

I don’t want, yeah, my titties are starting to even sag a little bit.

Nick Gullo (10:01):

Yeah. I was like, that ain’t gonna happen to me, man. So at 39 is when I really was like, you know what, um, I need to get, I need to pull this together. Because what’s crazy is that, you know, when I posted on that post, so you can go, people can go through and read that po the comments, but quite a few people are like, oh, all you need to do is, you know, do more jiu-jitsu or do this. You don’t need to forget diet bullshit, man. What works for you at 18 and maybe 28, we’ll not work for you at 35. You know, I,

Sevan Matossian (10:35):

Or or at 50 or at 50. I’m 50.

Nick Gullo (10:37):

Yeah. It doesn’t snap back. So I wrote a book on the UFC called The End of the Cage Rise of UFC Nation, traveled with the

Sevan Matossian (10:44):

UFC collector’s item 134 bucks. Now collector’s item, God damnit, put that thing back in print. I need a

Nick Gullo (10:49):

Copy <laugh>. And so, um, so I’ve interviewed hundreds of the most elite athletes in the world who are in a sport where they have to lose weight, right? So I’ve been around weight cuts, I’ve been around all of it, you know, I trained juujitsu as, you know, I’m a black belt, this is what I do. I lose weight for tournaments, et cetera, et cetera. And so, um, when during this process, what I would see is that you had guys who at the beginning of their career in the ufc, they, it was very easy for them to lose weight. But then when it came time, when they got older, when they’re like 30 years old, 32, 33, and these are professional athletes, Hatfield Doos, uh, Johnny Hendrix, their body would not respond and they would miss weight. They had horrible weight cuts that almost killed them, you know? And so it just goes to show that there will be a time for everybody’s life where you’re no longer going to easily lose weight. Um, so yeah, it’s Cheeto ver one of the guys that, one of my closest friends, man, we trained together. And

Sevan Matossian (11:58):

You went to Ecuador with Cheeto, right?

Nick Gullo (12:00):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was amazing. Uh, taught seminar down there. It was great.

Sevan Matossian (12:04):

I love, uh, you are looking at Nick Uhoh. Here we go. Nick, the tooth Guo, did I say it right?

Nick Gullo (12:12):

Yeah. Guo,

Sevan Matossian (12:13):

Guo Guo. I pronounce the L

Nick Gullo (12:17):

Gulu. And so, so anyways, during this time at 39, I was like, I gotta pull it together. Exercise is no longer working for me. And so that’s when I really hammered home and started researching as much as I could of also about at the same time as gut biome about, uh, about weight loss. And what I learned was that what happens is the body ages is we develop insulin resistance. And so the body kicks out. Hormones are the most important thing in the body, right? Hormones are what take a child really right and change that child into an adult. It’s a hormone. Hormone dictates what happens with the body. And so we have an increase in testosterone, we get more aggressive, right? We get more shredded, we get et cetera, et cetera. Um, if we, but insulin is also a hormone

Sevan Matossian (13:11):

A hundred percent.

Nick Gullo (13:12):

And when we eat sugar, it triggers an insulin, uh, release. But insulin also tells the body, not only does it counteract sugar, but it tells the body to store fat. So the more insulin you release, the more f hard it’s gonna be to get, uh, to lose that weight. And so I realize, okay, my problem is not calories. Like I used to think of it. My problem is sugar, it’s not fat. I remember back in the day, it used to be numb. You gotta cut out fats and all that shit. Fat doesn’t make you fat. That’s nonsense.

Sevan Matossian (13:47):

Nonsense.

Nick Gullo (13:48):

And so, yeah, so I jumped on a, like low insulin, um, diet. And uh, uh, once I did that, uh, like a very, very low sugar diet, once I did that, I went from 1 95 down to 1 56 in 30 days. Wow. Wow. 30 days. And one of those days every week was a cheat day where I would eat cake and fucking donuts. And the worst shit you could think of,

Sevan Matossian (14:17):

You know, because Did you stop doing that now?

Nick Gullo (14:19):

Yeah, I don’t do that anymore because I don’t need it. I needed it mentally then, you know, because, you know, it’s a, it’s, we’re such creatures of habit that, uh, that, you know, to try and change everything inside of 30 days after that I’ve been doing for 30 years is impossible. You know?

Sevan Matossian (14:39):

What was the worst thing that you were eating? Um, what was the worst culprit you were eating in terms of sugar? Uh, bread. Bread, back, bread in the day? Bread. Bread. Were you a soda pop? Were you a soda pop guy?

Nick Gullo (14:52):

Oh, I’ve never drank soda in my

Sevan Matossian (14:54):

Life. Okay. So it was bread.

Nick Gullo (14:56):

I would never, I will, I don’t drink. I wouldn’t put soda or diet soda, any of that shit in my body, ever. I never would do something like that. So I, as you can tell, I, I’m relatively healthy. I was a vegetarian, um, occasionally eat fish. I was, the biggest problem I had was eating bread or pasta or whatever, you know, some kind of carbs, tortilla, those kind of things. And so, um, and that’s enough, you know, that is enough. And so, um, so anyways, once I went on that diet, I lost so much freaking weight. It was, it was incredible. And, uh, and then I’ve kept it off now for 15 years. And so a lot of people you

Sevan Matossian (15:42):

Don’t wear, you don’t wear glasses or contacts.

Nick Gullo (15:45):

No.

Sevan Matossian (15:47):

Did you ever,

Nick Gullo (15:48):

Um, I had LASIK back when I was, um, 20. Uh, what was I, no, it’s like 31.

Sevan Matossian (15:55):

Are you glad you did that or do you wish you wouldn’t have done it?

Nick Gullo (15:58):

Oh, it was the greatest thing I ever did. Yeah. Interesting. I loved it. Why?

Sevan Matossian (16:03):

Because, um,

Nick Gullo (16:05):

Shut this

Sevan Matossian (16:05):

Window. It’s no problem.

Nick Gullo (16:07):

Because what

Sevan Matossian (16:08):

People who eat a lot of sugar, one of the places that sugar gets retained is in your cells. And a lot of people who think that they have bad eyesight, it’s really cuz they eat too much sugar. Cuz when that sugar gets retained in your cells, it, it forces the lens in your eye to start bending mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And that’s one of the fucking interesting things. Um, and, but also I’d known other people who’ve gotten Lasix and then several years later, their vision just, it, it, it just got bad again. And so they weren’t sure if they should have ever have done it.

Nick Gullo (16:34):

No, my, my vision it’s been, you know, probably 20 years and my vision’s still great, so no, I don’t, but you know, I, I like people ask me, it’s not just about losing weight. People also ask me about, um, people also ask me about, uh, you know, sting young. How do you look young? How do you this, I I’m a big proponent in not only with my clients, do I talk about health, but I talk about, you know, optimum health. You’re not just trying to lose weight, you’re trying to be healthy. You want to, the goal is to live young as long as you can, right. Because once health starts to deteriorate it, you’re done. There’s no, all the money in the world. It doesn’t mean anything. And so, um, so I, I really talk to clients about stress. And stress is what ages you without question. And dietary stress is one of the biggest culprits of stress. Um, and so

Sevan Matossian (17:33):

Too fast,

Nick Gullo (17:34):

Uh, every day. Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (17:36):

Do you ever do, do you ever not eat for a whole day? Like, do you have like a Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Nick Gullo (17:41):

Yeah. And I, and I think that that also from with dietary stress, I just think people eat too much food. Right. You know, when I go, when I, I was, I just spent a year in Europe and, uh, in Europe I really wanted to study the Mediterranean diet, and that’s what I did. So I moved to Sicily and I lived in Sicily for a year. And, um, it was an incredible experience, but more so I got to go to Sard, which is one of the blue zones, and see how they eat and see how they live and study Mediterranean diet Sardina is right next to Sicily, so they’re like Sister islands. And so, um, I was there teaching jujitsu, and I got to see, I got to live a, eat a real Mediterranean diet, and I lost, I came back three weeks ago and, uh, I went from, I left here like 1 65, 1 64, which is my normal weight. And I came back at 1 53.

Sevan Matossian (18:33):

Wow. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Wow. Did you roll when you were over there in Europe?

Nick Gullo (18:37):

I was teaching jujitsu. Okay. I taught, I taught seminars around, around Europe, all around Europe. From Poland. I was teaching in Poland, Spain, bill Bao, France, everywhere, all throughout Italy. Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (18:51):

Um, Nick, by the way, the gentleman below you is, uh, Caleb Beaver

Nick Gullo (18:55):

Caleb.

Sevan Matossian (18:56):

And, uh, Caleb is deployed in an undisclosed location, um, where there is a lot of sand.

Nick Gullo (19:02):

Oh man. Is it hot <laugh>

Caleb Beaver (19:05):

Currently, but it was, it was pretty toasty.

Nick Gullo (19:08):

Really?

Caleb Beaver (19:09):

Yeah, it was like 120 at one point.

Nick Gullo (19:12):

Oh my gosh. Oh my. That’s great. Gosh, I don’t

Sevan Matossian (19:15):

Know how you do it. He didn’t get any color. He stayed the same color. He didn’t get any color.

Nick Gullo (19:19):

So I was in, so, so when I was in Sicily, I was, uh, you know, Sicily’s like, what? I’m, I’m gonna make a guess, but it’s almost like you can look from the south of the island and see Africa. So it’s like, you know, 30, 40 Mediterranean is not that big. And so it’s the southmost part of, uh, of, uh, of Europe. And I was living in a medieval castle, like a palace, an old palace. It wasn’t a castle, but it was a palace, an old hunting palace that was built in 1100. Okay. And the walls were like, th they’re three feet thick. Yeah. You could see, see how close that is? You’re right there. Tunisia’s right there. And so if you want to talk about, there’s no air conditioning, there’s no insulation. It is so effing hot. I just, I was right there in Palermo in, uh, the topmost, uh, the northwest, uh, region. And that’s like the main city. Kaan and, uh, PMO are the main cities. Palermo is amazing. But I lived in a city called, uh, Montreal, which is where my grandfather was born. Right there, right? Yep. Right there. That’s Montreal. That’s right. And Imo, are

Sevan Matossian (20:35):

You sure your grandfather wasn’t Salvador Dolly

Nick Gullo (20:38):

<laugh>, let me tell you something. In this little village where I lived in, it was beautiful. All the most amazing architecture you’ve ever seen. And, uh, I was the only person American that had ever lived there. They tripped out on me. They like tattoos. They just couldn’t even imagine. And, uh, it was great though. I, it was the greatest experience of my life for sure. I had to learn Italian, though. There was no one spoke a word of English, not a fucking word, <laugh>. And they were, they basically were like, dude, you, you have to learn Italian cause we’re not learning English. And so I had to learn Italian.

Sevan Matossian (21:18):

I learned Italian. Did they, did they call you the tooth or did they call you Nick

Nick Gullo (21:21):

<laugh>? No, you know what, they called me when I would ask, when people would ask me when I first got there. And I, they were like, what’s your name? And I would say, Nicolo. And they were like, no, that’s not your name. And so they had to teach me how to say my name. Nicolo <laugh> Nicolo. They’re very, and they’re very particular about it. Right? Very particular, they would correct me again and again. So my first order of business there was to learn how to say my name. And, uh, the good thing is on my last, my, my last name, because my family is from that, uh, that town in my last name is very well known. I would walk around like the village and there would be stores with my last name on it. And in America, I’ve never met anybody with my last name. And I’ve certainly never met anybody named Nicolo. But in my gym there were like three Nikos, so Wow.

(22:12):

Yeah. Very d very, very, very, very different. I had a, uh, a vintage motorcycle. And every weekend I would just drive around the island and just go to different, and everywhere you go in Sicily, because it’s such an ancient island, you would see like a crumbling castle here, a crumbling castle. There, there was a castle del on the west coast. Um, there is, um, it’s a castle. And because in Sicily had been invaded so many times that they would just put up like castles and walls everywhere and on with the castles and the walls they would use to put up, put out flares to let people know that there was an invading armor coming. And also to defend them. And, uh, in Castle del Lamar, there was a wall that was like eight stories high, and it looked like the, the wall outta the Game of Thrones. It was incredible.

Sevan Matossian (23:14):

Uh, yeah. Some of you guys are starting this guy. This is a real, uh, you hear people throw that term around Renaissance man. Uh, uh, Nilo Nilo, um, Nilo Nico,

Nick Gullo (23:25):

He is a Nilo

Sevan Matossian (23:28):

Nicolo Nicolo. He is a, uh, uh, uh, Brazilian Jujitsu black belt and world champion, multiple time world champion. Um, he is a, on a podcast, he has a podcast, uh, sci-fi podcast. He’s an author, he’s a father. Uh, he is a photographer. He’s a world traveler, uh, obviously a writer. Uh, here’s his most recent episode published in, uh, December of this year, episode 41, artificial Intelligence. It’s on the Infinite Worlds, uh, podcast. And he was on a, um, he’s, uh, close, uh, friends with, uh, Mr. Dana White. Um, it’s a, a hero of mine for what he did with the UFC during the, um, so-called pandemic. And, uh, he also was on a TV show with, um, Dana, um, what’s called looking for a fight, right?

Nick Gullo (24:17):

Yeah, yeah.

Sevan Matossian (24:18):

Yeah. So, I mean, he’s done it all. And I’m sure I’ve missed, uh, uh, uh, several, several things. I wanna go back to the bi the biome thing real quick. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I think, uh, by the way, the community that I’m really embedded in is the CrossFit community. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And we, the, the prescribed diet is the zone diet. And the reason why they’ve prescribed the zone diet is for one reason and one reason only to control your hormones. That was a big premise of what Greg Glassman would talk about. You want your hormones to just be just steady. You do not want fluctuations in your hormones. And obviously a ton of that is around insulin. But when I was, I spent a lot of time in India, and their diet was basically, they knew what to mix and what not to mix. And I remember one guy telling me there, Hey, you should never eat more than three different, anything, any more than three different ingredients. So if you were gonna have, let’s say, a meal, it should be rice, broccoli, and, uh, you know, a tomato, you know? Mm-hmm. You shouldn’t be like, and our basic, anything you pick up at the store now has 30 ingredients.

Nick Gullo (25:18):

Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (25:19):

That was, I thought, saw you fit for life. I, I’m sorry,

Nick Gullo (25:23):

The book Fit for Life back in the eighties. That was a, uh, a big, a big foundation of that

Sevan Matossian (25:28):

Book. And is that a big premise for you too? I thought I saw that in reading about you, that like, hey, don’t, don’t wreak havoc in there. Like, if you’re gonna eat something, eat that and, and, you know, give yourself some time or only mix it with things. Well, I, is there an ideal meal for you that you think is just like, oh my God, really like something, you

Nick Gullo (25:45):

Know, I, I red fit for life back in the eighties, and it was a, it, it had a big influence on me. Uh, the premise there is that is you are trying to digest, you have to each different types of food. This is the premise is that requires a different enzyme. And sometimes the enzymes cancel each other out and the food goes ondi digested. It’s that simple. And so there are some foods that I like you, should they say you should never eat fruit with anything else. Fruit should be eaten alone. Right. But I don’t eat fruit because I avoid sugars. And so I eat, my ideal meal is, uh, salad. So I love salad. Are

Sevan Matossian (26:25):

You in ketosis? Are you in ketosis at all times?

Nick Gullo (26:28):

No, but sometimes it depends because, uh, trying to gain weight for the tournament, you know, that I just had last week. Um, I, I, like I said, my weight, I came back at 1 53, but my weight class was like 1 64, I think. And so I really wanted, I didn’t want to drop down another four pounds, but, um, so I just tried to gain weight. And so every day I was eating as much oatmeal and as much rice and as much like really clean carbs as I could. And, uh, so I was able to get back up to like 1 57 or something, 1 58, I think, on the day of the tournament. But, uh, um, that’s me back in the day, that’s when I first started Jiujitsu. I was 43 right there when I started Jiujitsu.

Sevan Matossian (27:16):

And, and, uh, the Mendez brothers aren’t, how old are the Mendez brothers now?

Nick Gullo (27:20):

I mean, they were so young then they had to be like 20 years old. They’re probably 32 now, you know, somewhere around there. So crazy. Yeah. They were so young when we first started. I was the crazy uncle in the gym. Without question. I still am. But now, when I came back, because I’ve been gone for three years, um, you know, traveling, traveling the world at first, uh, when the pandemic first started, I jumped in my sprinter van and just traveled the United States teaching Jiujitsu and, uh, and surfing up the coast all the way to Canada. And then after a year and a half, then I went to Europe and I, uh, spent the rest of the time in Europe. So I just came back two weeks ago. And,

Sevan Matossian (28:02):

Uh, you started jujitsu at 43?

Nick Gullo (28:04):

Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (28:05):

Yeah. And you got your black belt in seven years.

Nick Gullo (28:08):

Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (28:09):

Do you know anyone who’s ever gotten, and you got it from a oj

Nick Gullo (28:12):

Yeah, but I

Sevan Matossian (28:15):

Don’t anyone say anything stupid, like he got an easy black belt. Just, just don’t even think about it. Because if you don’t know what AOJ is, this guy did not get an easy black belt. But seven years is, do you know anyone who’s ever gotten a black belt in seven years besides you? I

Nick Gullo (28:30):

Don’t know. I mean, I know guys who have gotten, who are, who are professional competitors, who have, I don’t know anybody who’s, uh,

Sevan Matossian (28:38):

You mean like a fighter? Uh, you mean like a guy who

Nick Gullo (28:40):

I, I mean, I mean someone who starts, you know, who, who becomes, starts competing on the, like Gio Martinez, under Eddie Bravo, you know, but Gio became one of the top level, there’s a different path for people who compete versus people who are just hobbyists. And so I treated jujitsu as a competitor. Immediately, within three months I started competing. And so, and once I started competing, I never stopped. And so I did, uh, I won, I think I won Nou Worlds at Purple Boat when I, after four months.

Sevan Matossian (29:16):

Um, wow. So you, so you fought it as a, as a, as a white belt?

Nick Gullo (29:20):

Yeah. Wow. And I won, and I won the Blue Belt division. And so obviously they gave me, they had to gimme my blue belt. Right. And so I got my blue belt after four months. And so then I competed at, you know, blue Belt and I

Sevan Matossian (29:36):

Won. Would you do that on purpose just to like, so your instructor would see, and was that a, a way like, of like skipping a grade camera? No,

Sevan Matossian (29:43):

No, no, no. Compete so I can get the

Nick Gullo (29:45):

Bell? No, because it, it, for me, it was, I, you know, I love to compete. I love to challenge myself. Uh, but I started studying the Japanese concept, the samurai concept of Moen mind. And Moen mind means.

The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.

Check out our other posts.