BTG 86 - Remembering Iceland

Hello and welcome to the Breaking the Guard podcast. I'm back. I've been away for the past two weeks traveling through to Iceland. Uh I'll just recount that because I watched a few things. We'll recap some events that took place as well, but I'll start off with Iceland because I would say if you get the opportunity to go, I would definitely recommend you go. Just a wonderful country, very beautiful. Scenically, you have so many different landscapes that you encounter that it's almost overwhelming. Pretty much everywhere you go, there's some majestic waterfall that's pouring out the most crystal clear, very blue water that is just fascinating. And uh we cross so many movie sets apparently Prometheus, Game of Thrones, I guess Star Wars took place there. There's just so many movie sets that you come across and it's very understanding. Uh it's easy to understand why because it's just such a beautiful place. Uh my wife and I, we went hiking every day pretty much. Uh usually for somewhere around two to six miles in a day. Some days there weren't that many hikes. It was just driving because some places were easy to get to. You could just literally pull over on the side of road and there's just some beautiful landmark. Um other ones you had to hike to get to which I enjoy. I feel like there's a little more payoff when you have to put some effort in. Right. So, like for me, one of the best days was going to this canyon and I'll butcher the pronunciation, but it's in the south uh around Vic called um Mulgar Canyon. It's like a 3.8 mile hike uh round trip. So, not long, but you're going up about 1,400 ft, which definitely uh adds a little bit of challenge, although it's pretty gradual. I mean to me it was a easy slashmodderate hike. Uh did take about two and a half hours overall but just some some gorgeous views. You pass multiple waterfalls and uh you get to see the canyon in its entirety. It's just fascinating. Uh there is something restorative about being in nature that cannot be mimicked or replaced in modern life. And even though this trip in particular, we did what was called the ring road route where you know Iceland's kind of like a big oval and you start well I guess for you guys it would be on the southwest part and typically people go around the south in a counterclockwise fashion. We went clockwise this way. So from Rakevich, we just skipped the big city and went straight to Snafllis, which is a peninsula on the northwest, which is pretty remote. And one thing that I noticed right away about Iceland is that all the towns are really far from each other, and there's a lot of nothing in between. You don't see many homes or anything when you're driving around this ring road. Uh, and it's a two-lane road, pretty easy to travel, no traffic of of whatever whatsoever going this way. And we got to see uh seals, u lots of horses all over the place there. Uh, a good amount of birds as well from ducks, geese, swans, seagulls, and sheep of course. and we went around the whole island pretty much spending about one to three days in each uh part. So, a lot of traveling and we switched I think probably like eight or nine different hotels as we went around the island. But, um it's the only way to do it. Some people stay in Reikovich and do like little day trips, but you're not going to be able to see all the cool stuff if you do that. you have to really commit and work your way all the way around. So that takes two weeks. It was 14 days. And honestly, we could have done it in 13, which would have been better. Personally, my wife and I, we really don't care for the big cities too much. And Reikovich is just like any other city in my opinion. Uh just not for me, right? And we spent like two days there. And I could have done it in a day and got home the day earlier and that would have been perfect. But other than that, all the planning was great. We got to see everything we wanted to see. We got to see the the rare animals of Iceland that most Icelanders haven't even seen, which was the Arctic fox. It's a little white fox like this. If you saw my stories on Instagram, you'll see it. It's just it looks like size of a small cat. And normally it's in the northwest part further northwest that we went. Uh it's not place people live. There's the the western fur. And apparently that's the one the largest native mammal of Iceland is the Arctic fox. And it's a small little guy and it hunts birds and all the birds are in that area. So that's how it it eats. Somehow we saw it on the south next to a glacier cave in the middle of a volcanic field. So it was pure white on black sand. So it was very easy to spot and it didn't seem like it was scared. I think it was probably being fed by somebody cuz it was very comfortable with us not that far, maybe like 10 yards away. So, that was super cool to see. We also got to see the reindeer, uh, which was nice to see. They're not, uh, native animals, but they've thrived a little bit over there. And I got to eat reindeer as well, which was delicious. Um, and we also got to see the puffins. And the puffins are like a small little bird like this. Super cute. It looks like it's wearing a penguin suit, but it can fly. And it's got a really little curved beak like a parrot. And they live in little holes in the ground and then they fly out to see the fish. We got to see those and that was super cool. And like maybe one or two feet away from them. Uh they're not too shy. Also got to eat them. Not as tasty. Uh it was a weird uh texture. More like beef than I would have imagined. Uh but yeah, just a great trip. Uh if you like doing outdoor stuff and hiking, seeing waterfalls, going into a glacial cave, which was fascinating. Uh the the cave is such a pure blue and like all these different shades of blue depending on how much light is in the cave and it's so smooth. It's just alien. So we got to go to two caves like that. And uh yeah, just amazing. You know, as a kid growing up in Miami, it's very alien to me. And now I'm in Vegas, so it's not that much better as far as winter. And that's the other thing that you would go into these thermal springs were which was just amazing. Nice. Like it's like 42° C or like 100 102. And they have like minerals in them. And the water is almost like soapy. It's very weird, slippery texture, but you come out rejuvenated. But some of these thermal pools, you'll be in a pool and then it's snowing. So, you're in like steaming water and there's snow coming on you. You know, it's just a weird dichotomy of hot and cold. And likewise, there was one that I really enjoyed. We were in a frozen lake with just some open water and then the thermal spring is like a floating in there somehow. So, I was able to do contrast therapy of jumping into an ice lake and then um going into the thermal water and doing like three or four rounds of that, which was very uh interesting. I also got to test myself because, you know, I did a cold punch here at home and I usually have it around 38. I've done it as low as 34 degrees Fahrenheit, which we would be like 2° C. And I and scientifically I know like it doesn't get much colder than that because ice would be 32 degrees or 0 Celsius. Uh so being a couple degrees up it's not really going to make that much of a difference. And I got to put that to the test because the lake at that point was 2 degrees Celsius, you know, so two degrees above uh ice and more or less felt the same. The one difference I will say is that since there was a good current on that river, it definitely hit different, right? Uh, normally for me, once I get past the first 40 seconds, I can then have conversation and be normal and stay in there for as long as, you know, the most I've tried was 11 minutes. Uh, but you could definitely stay for a bit with the lake, with the current moving. definitely didn't feel like I could stay there for 11 minutes. And uh it took like a minute and a half for me to kind of get used to it, but even then it was still a challenge. So I will definitely say the moving water definitely makes it harder and to get comfortable in the uncomfortable situation of Arctic ice water. Nevertheless, great experience. Um and I also got to flex my diet a bit, right? As you guys know, I've been doing carnivore diet now. I'm over two months in, and I actually just got home a couple days ago, uh, filming it today, and I'm actually the lightest I've been now in four years, right? I'm as of this morning, I was in 194.8 pounds, right? I left vacation at 196. So, I lost weight in two weeks of vacation. Now, I wasn't I was walking every day and hiking, which is somewhat strenuous, especially for a few hours, but it's not as active physically as I usually am with the the weightlifting and the jiu-jitsu and the other stuff I do. And I normally walk an hour every day anyways. So, the fact that I still lost weight on the road and my diet definitely flexed, right? The first three days I stayed relatively strict. I was eating horse, which is also delicious, and cheeses, bacon, eggs, butter, like what I was doing back home. After a few days, I got tempted because Icelandic cuisine turns out to be pretty good and very carnivore friendly. And I they started I started seeing desserts. I'm like, well, this is not too far off. You know, like a chocolate mousse is technically, you know, eggs, cream, milk, butter, and obviously some sugar. So I'm like, that's not too far off, you know? So I'm like, I'll try that flowerless chocolate tart, a cheesecake, and like after 4 days, I was having dessert every night. And uh being as I would say now that I've made the switch to what is called animal-based diet where now instead of what I did before, which is strict, which was just meat, salt, right? And then I was adding eggs towards the um in that as well. Animal bases, meat, eggs, dairy, which you know includes cheese, milk, butter, um honey, which is a big uh game changer because now we have some uh carbs in there and a very limited amount of fruit, right? And by limited amount, I mean a couple berries or strawberry. I'm not eating like a a plate of mango or something like that. And the only fruits I had to be honest was the ones they serve at dessert, you know, which is just like, you know, you have a cheesecake and there's a strawberry there. I'm like, "Okay, I'll take that." Uh, and I lost weight, felt great. None of the benefits that I was receiving during doing strict have changed, right? So, I'm very happy as a result because now this makes a diet pretty much ideal for me. Like I I was already going to do carnivore as long as I could anyways, but now that I've been able to switch this to like a more uh animal-based type deal, this is the ideal diet for me. Love it. Uh, the only things I'm missing out on that I would normally have would be bread and kombucha. And honestly, I think I can put the kombucha back in and it would be fine, but I'm just not going to. The bread would probably be the one that I'm going to stay away from, even though I would like to have it as far as flavor. But the longer I do this, I realize like the the other stuff that I'm not eating, like the vegetables and the bread are like, in my opinion, are filler. They're not really satiating, right? They're just things to take up space in your stomach. Uh because you can't get access to meat. I was eating, that's the other thing that was funny about Iceland. I was eating a lot of meat. Uh, I would go to dinner and the first few dinners I was kind of starving and I brought lots of meat chips with me like uh beef jerky and stuff like that to help supplement me because I was realizing at dinner they were eating very modest portions like 150 gram for a burger or like 200 grams for a steak and for the Americans that's like 200 grams would be like 7 ounces of meat. You know, 150 grams is like four and a half, five ounces. It's not a lot compared to the 16 ounces or one pound that I would normally do or like, you know, essentially half a kilo or 500 gram for the the metric folks. So, after the first couple days, I'm like, "Okay, I just got to double order everything." We had some funny stories about that because uh I went to have dinner with my wife and we went to uh it was like a a farm-totable restaurant which they literally had the cows through a mirror through a glass that you could see that you were going to eat. And uh I'm like I told the waiter, "Okay, I need four burgers just bacon and cheese and meat. No bread, no fries or anything like that." And then she looked at me and she's like, "How many people are coming uh to your table?" And I was like, "No, no, this is just for me." And she looked at me dumbfounded, like I didn't understand. She's like, "Sir, it's 150 grams. It's a lot of meat." I was like, "I know what I'm asking for. Bring it on." And I would I cleaned the plate every time I ate, you know. So um the the funniest one was probably the last dinner which was a similar deal where it was my wife and I and very beautiful restaurant called Apotech on Rekovich and they had two pl sharing platters that they called it which was a meat platter which was you know ribeye a beef tenderloin and a rack of lamb and then they had a duck platter which was duck comb feed fra duck breast and then shredded duck and these sharing plers were designed for like two to four people each. And to me, I'm like, this is perfect for me. So, I ordered the both of them that me and my wife could split. And again, the waiter's like, "How many people are coming?" I'm like, "No, no, this is just for uh me and her." He's like, "Sir, this is like one and a half kilos worth of meat. You know, you're not going to be able to finish this." And like, I did the math. One and a half kilos, it's like 3.3 lbs. I'm like, "That's the perfect amount of meat." because especially on that day, I didn't have breakfast. That was my only meal of the day at 8 o'clock at night. And sure enough, clean out the plate, the guy's like, "Bravo." I I never expected anyone could finish that. And I also had dessert that night as well. Uh so I've learned some things as well about myself where initially, if you guys watched the earlier videos, I talked about how I was eating very lean. Um and I'm not used to eating a lot of fat on the first few days. uh carnivore diet when I eat very heavy fat content, I would get kind of nauseous. Not nauseous, but like I wouldn't feel great, you know, like I would be a little slower. That has totally gone out the window. Uh cuz that meal I had 250 grams of fat in one meal and I was fine. We went walking for like about an hour afterwards exploring the city and uh didn't even feel like uh you know, I'm stuffed. And that was after eating at least two and a half pounds of meat and dessert, you know. Uh so the whatever the metabolism obviously has changed quite a bit because I found now that when I'm eating now I'm seeking the fat. There was like cuts in meat before like I had this brand of meat jerky called carnivore snacks and they have this brisket Wagyu brisket where it's just like it's like meat bacon and then it's mostly fat. And the first time I had it before this diet, I didn't really care to have it because I felt like it's so much fat, you know? Um I I wouldn't eat it. Now I was desperately seeking it and I went through my first bag pretty quick. I'm like, crap, I should have got more of this. And I had a lot of leaner cuts and I'm like, these are not as desirable anymore for me because like I really want the fat out of this. I don't need the protein as much. So, the priority of my diet has changed quite a bit where before I was very protein centered and then like trying to limit the amount of fat. Now, it's more like I want to try to get as much fat as I can and just have enough protein, you know, to fill up the gaps, right? So, that's an interesting shift. I will say also for the carnivore folks people um or people are pondering it that at least here in Vegas electrolytes is an issue. And I don't think it's just here. I think here it's probably the hardest. I think other areas electrolyte imbalance might be a problem as well. Especially if you're very physically active like I am because you're sweating all the time. You're not getting as many electrolytes as you would hope in the meat. that at least that I found in the on the strict carnivore. So, I've been using Hydrant, the brand that you guys seen me use before. They have an unflavored version which is absolutely abhorent, but it does the job. You know, it doesn't have any sugars or anything. It's just electrolytes and it's just very miserable to consume, but I have it every morning. Brought it with me on vacation and it gives you the same type of boost and not running into dehydration issues anymore. Uh, so that's wonderful. But I feel like on a pure carnivore diet, that would be kind of hard to replace zinc and magnesium. And uh although I incorporated a salt that's a lot more rich now in minerals, I was using kosher salt. And kosher salt apparently is devoid of any electrolytes really. It's just sodium chloride. Whereas if you get like very rich sea salts like Baja Gold and whatnot from Mexico, like they have magnesium and they have zinc and they have other minerals and trace amounts. So if you're using that to salt all your meat, now you're getting at least some of those electrolytes back while you're consuming the meat. But just to cover my bases, I'm using those electrolyte packets to make sure that I am uh covered. And honestly, I was using them anyways, even when I wasn't on the diet. So, I found that that's like the one supplement I guess I'm taking now. It's a, you know, it's electrolytes. And I have been for a long time, but I've cut out the multivitamins and the fish oils and all the other stuff. Uh, and I haven't, you know, seen any performance decline there, but the electrolytes definitely help. So, that's the one supplement I would still endorse entirely. So, that's uh update as far as diet and my trip to Iceland, which was wonderful. Uh, I did get to see the Who's Number 123, which I did a preview of, um, I think it was a week ago or so, and that took place on Friday night, and great night of grappling. The headliner of course is Maragali versus uh Bagnar and that went pretty much as one would expect uh which was Maragali. Again, I'll give spoiler alert. You're right. If you don't want to hear the results, skip this. But the Margalli dominated with his wrestling. Very heavy pressure, pushing forward the whole time and lots of collar ties. And this is kind of the problem with being the now Vagner Rosha older, shorter, and much lighter. I think he was 205 and Margalli's 230 something. And Margalli is 6'3. Vagner is like 5'9 uh or maybe 5'10. So, you're going to have a hard time dealing with that collar tie because it's coming over the top. You know, that's the the bane of a of a shorter man is getting around those collar ties. And he wasn't able to get away from them. So, it took probably like five or eight minutes, but he eventually started wearing them down. And once uh he wore them down a bit, Margali started getting better. And particularly he found that crossarm drag took him down and immediately passed his guard with a beautiful footwork uh under guard passing right into the mount and just terrorized uh Vagner going from mount to back mount mount to back mount ultimately securing an arm block at the end. um he made it look easy against a guy who's very tough and it's just showing the level that Maragali has and he's definitely stepped up on his game quite a bit. He's going to be a problem for anybody. His top game, this looks disgusting right now. This is massive uh pressure. His wrestling, you know, it's funny because Bag was making fun of his wrestling, saying it's very basic. It's not deep. And I'm like, most great wrestlers have very basic games. Like John Smith, head inside single leg, Jordan Burroughs, blast double, right? Like, you don't need a lot. If you got some basic stuff that works really well, you can just spam the hell out of it and you'll make it work. And Margalli seems to figure out his space, lots of collar ties, and he likes to give up the under hooks to try to throwa or he'll use the under hook to score the uchima. Uh, and for grappling where wrestling is difficult because there's no forced engagement. It's a solid game plan. It's the same game plan that all the new wave guys are using. It's effective. It's low risk and it works. So, can't really crap on that. Uh, so he had a good showing. There was then um not a great match, uh, Filipe Penna versus Rafel Jr., which turned out to be just a wrestling on the feet without any takedown attempts for 15 minutes. I think Felipe pulled guard at one point a couple times to try to get some engagement. Nothing really happened on the ground. Felipe ended up winning the decision and I think rightly so because he tried to make something happen. Even though he wasn't unsuccessful, he did make more attempts. I'm not sure what Lovado's game plan was. He kept going for the same things over and over again, but it wasn't working. Like you have to like step it. He never really committed to a takedown. Um, so yeah, it it's he his match almost looked identical to the match he had with Pedro uh Mourinho, but more boring this time to be honest. Not a great showing. And I like Lovado. I would have liked to see him win, but it's like he didn't do enough. he needed to take some more risks. He was playing too too safe in my opinion. Uh we also had Andrew Tacket step up there against um his name is slipping me but oh Tommy Langker and that was a great matchup but once again Tacket's a beast you know he put the pace on him and he was able to score at the end get a finish but pretty much dominated that match as well. He's looking great and uh he's definitely going to be one of those star. I mean, he's already a star, but definitely in the future, if not this year, he's going to be the next king, man. Because he as a young kid, he's very wellkilled. He's great everywhere. Uh very exciting to watch. Good personality, good-looking kid, too. So, he's got it going on, you know. Uh very marketable, right? So, love to see that. the the Roach has also had uh his Jasmine and Achilles and they both won in incredible fashion uh with submission wins. So even though Vagner may have not won, at the end of the day, I think he got the bigger victory, which he got to compete on a professional card with his children with both of his children being victorious, you know, that's an amazing feat in itself, right? So, uh, I mean, he obviously was the underdog in against Margalli, but the fact that he was able to get his kids to win and do as great as they did, that's a testament to his story, right? It's going to continue through his children. Um, so yeah, those were some of the takeaway matches from Who's Number One? 123 that I was paying attention to and got to watch. There might be one or two that I missed, but I can't think of them now. Uh, I will say just to cap this off, one of the things that I enjoy about going on vacation with my wife is being able to disconnect from the regular routine. uh we get into you know when you're at home and your home base you have a schedule that you're following for work for your workouts for eating and everything becomes uh kind of like a template because your days could end up blending in together where it's hard to distinguish the differences between the days if you're doing the same type of tasks where when you go on vacation particularly the type of vacation we went on which was very adventurous every day is completely unique and different. And there is no template, which my wife doesn't like as much because she likes having schedules and plans so that she knows how she's going to budget her time accordingly. Whereas my strategy, and I'm the one who planned this trip, was I'm going to have a general layout of what we're going to do. Basically, I know we want to visit all these areas, but I'm going to figure out how things work once I get my feet on the ground. And I know the first couple days um we got everything we were supposed to do, but I think it was a little rough on the schedule, but once I got the lay of the land and understood, you know, how people work there and the timing for things and getting place to place, the rest of the vacation went very smooth. And it's kind of something that I said like I can land in a chaotic area and then bring order to it. I don't have to try to I find it personally more difficult to try to plan something to a tea from a distance. It's kind of like a general trying to have a battlefield strategy without seeing the battlefield or having any intelligence on it. Like it's hard to do that even if you have a map and you can see things like until your feet on the ground. It's difficult to make solid plans. And our planning got better as I was on there because I was able to see what it's like to hike there, what the parking situation was, how far are the hikes from each other, and how long it's really going to take me to get from place to place. Because it turns out Google Maps has all the time estimates completely off. Like they overshoot, make things seem further than they were. I think it doesn't understand the speed limits there. Uh so but in g like again getting back to the main point just being able to break up the routine that trip felt very long. I mean two weeks is a long time for a vacation but it felt longer than that. Uh just because every day was very different. So like there was a lot of new sensory input. Um, and to me that was that's enjoyable because at a certain point in a trip you're like, I'm ready to come back home. And you want to get to that point. Like I feel like it kind of sucks when you're doing a trip and you felt like you didn't get enough, right? Uh whereas in our trips, we're generally like, okay, I'm ready to come back. like I've gotten as much exposure to this as I could and towards the end like we had seen like 20 or 30 something waterfalls and we would see another waterfall. We're like it's nice now. Like it's beautiful but like I don't really appreciate it that much anymore because I'm waterfallled out. Like I've seen so many waterfalls now. I'm ready just to come back home and see a desert. Uh, so getting a a little bit of a unique perspective on things I think helps. Anyhow, that's all I have for you guys for today. Hope you guys enjoy the rest of your Mother's Day. Although this is going to be the day after Mother's Day, but uh I'll see you guys next week.