#1110 - Zach Bitter

Joe Rogan (0:02)

Five, four, three, two, one.

Boom, and we're off. What's up, brother? How are you?

Zach Bitter (0:08)

Good, good. Thanks for having me on.

Joe Rogan (0:09)

My pleasure. Nice to meet you, man.

You know, it's funny that you just brought up Dr. Atiya. You know, when you were saying that you download the podcast, you were saying, I got to get that guy on.

Zach Bitter (0:20)

Yeah, yeah, it was funny. I was at auto downloads, and that one popped up. And I remember thinking about a week before that, I was like, well, when we first scheduled this one, I got to tell Joe about Dr. Atiya, he was one of the kind of first guys I really followed when I kind of dove into kind of the high fat approach to nutrition. So yeah, he's a fascinating guy. He was a great listen. I had to listen to it like twice.

Joe Rogan (0:40)

Yeah, he's a weird guy. He's one of those guys where you talk to him and you think, oh, this is like a normal, really nice guy. And then as he starts getting into the medical aspect of things, you go, oh, okay, you're a fucking super genius.

Zach Bitter (0:52)

Yeah, yeah, he's smart.

Yeah, I remember one of the first things he ever said that really kind of resonated with me was I think someone was asking him about like what the facts are or the ketogenic diet in terms of like micronutrients and what maybe he'd be missing based on kind of like that normal profile of what you're supposed to get. And he was just like, you know, it's interesting because most of those studies and recommendations are based off of basically a standard American diet or a higher carb diet. So he's like, well, you might just not need the same. We need to do more. And he's always looking to kind of push the envelope a bit. So cool guest for sure.

Joe Rogan (1:27)

Yeah. And you know, I'm fascinated by you and I'm fascinated by anybody who does the kind of shit that you do. I mean, please explain to people all the different ultra marathons you've done and like what you've accomplished.

Zach Bitter (1:44)

Yeah. You know, it's it's interesting because like I still kind of see myself as a pretty average runner because like I mean I competed in high school and made state cross country and state track and that kind of thing for a small school and then I went to a small Division 3 school and was you know pretty much you know average amongst a real good program at the D3 level and I always just did kind of like running longer though. So like once I got done with college, I kind of decided, well, let's let's see what's longer than some of those traditional like collegiate races of like 5k to 10 kilometers.

And you know, I started kind of just dabbling that stuff and then in 2010, I think I actually did my first ultra marathon, you know, partly because I was just like looking around and there turned out to be one in the state I was living in Wisconsin at the time. And there was one that was kind of in my neck of the woods and I actually had just decided to go back to grad school and that one had a thousand dollar prize purse on it. I was like, you know what, if I if I can win that thousand bucks go a long way during grad school. So I did that one and I ended up winning it and it definitely hooked me. It was like the type of thing where I was like, I want to do more of these. And by 2011, I kind of jumped all in at the end of the year and did 350 milers. And I think it was about a nine week time frame.

And that's so crazy.

Yeah. And I mean, it gets crazier. There's some freaks out there. There's guys who will do like a couple in a weekend and stuff like that. So I mean, it never ends.

But yeah, you know, it was one of those things where after that, I was totally hooked. So what is it that got you hooked? You know, it had to be partly just a little bit of success. You know, I wasn't necessarily used to winning. So like, I mean, I've had good races and good times relative to what you probably see like in an average person. But, you know, when I went to like a competitive 5K competitive marathon or something like that, I wasn't going to win unless it was kind of a local race. So kind of finding, you know, it's like anything, I guess, you kind of gravitate to what you feel you're good at, and then that kind of piques your interest.