Liver King's Ancestral Tenet #10: Lying Badly
Unsurprisingly, he was taking a LOT of steroids.
Despite Liver King’s body having several hallmarks of steroid use, he insisted that he didn’t use any PEDs. As the saying goes: "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and injects 10 IU’s of growth hormone a day, then it probably is a duck." Derek of MorePlatesMoreDates released an excellent hour long video that presents several leaked emails from Liver King to a body building coach where Liver King outlines in detail exactly the steroids he is taking when and in what amounts.
The funny thing is he in fact practices what he preaches. Stays in nature, does grounding, gets his sun, spends time with his family, eats very animal based and very clean … but he just takes a crap ton of steroids too.
Just two weeks ago, I thought it would be fun to play devil’s advocate and consider whether anything about Liver King’s lifestyle might nudge a person towards getting a physique like his. (The abs are right away super suspicious - I thought Coach Greg was right that he got something like “abdominal etching” done.) But as for the super full muscles and abnormal vascularity - the only thing that Liver King had supporting the possibility that he wasn’t blatantly lying about PED’s was that well… there’s nobody on the planet doing what he’s doing. Even the most primal mega alpha hunter in Paleolithic times would not have had access to a pound of liver and bull testicles for every single meal. As I explained here, while there are some mechanisms that suggest vitamin A could help raise testosterone (to a degree), but there’s not really any evidence that bull testicles would raise your testosterone. There’s also no research on whether getting 420% the recommended vitamin A every day helps muscle building at all either.
So what was surprising about the Liver King reveal was not that he’s using steroids, but how nonchalant he was about the lie. The emails from above were from a bodybuilding coach who basically broke Liver King’s trust and shared them with Derek of MPMD. What was funny was that he actually emailed Derek himself in 2021 and admitted right off the bat that he was looking to take omnitrope (human growth hormone).
Greg Doucette criticized Derek for exposing this email, saying it was unscrupulous to publicly share this email despite Liver King requesting confidentiality. But… it’s not like Liver King was like “I want to consult with you, will our discussion be confidential?” Then Derek assured him that it would, and THEN Liver King revealed this to Derek.
There’s a guy named atlaspowershrugged on Instagram I follow who summed up pretty well what is actually sad about all this:
…My issue is that this particular fake natty has attached himself to some genuinely good ideas, and I was concerned that when he inevitably made a complete fool out of himself, he would make them look bad as well.
…what I think is important to say right now is that liver is still good for you. I ate it before this clown came on the scene and I'm going to continue. Other organs too, although I've never tried testicles and never will.
Nose to tail eating is a genuinely good idea.
Meat is legitimately one of the greatest health foods there is, although there's no need to throw vegetables off the table like a toddler. Seed oils really should be avoided.
Sun exposure really is good for you, provided you build up gradually.
Spending time in nature is important.
…Keep eating meat, liver. Keep going in nature. Lift heavy, 45 lb plates not 10s. Reject Modernity. Embrace Tradition, the real thing that you have to seek out, not the fake LAARP that pays to be shown on your explore feed.
The “good ideas” he’s talking about here are of course the 9 Ancestral Tenets that Liver King preaches. As I laid out here, they’re generally good advice. So hopefully Liver King’s big lie will in the end be a net positive force to get people to make healthy lifestyle changes.
There’s two ways to spin this.
(1) Liver King is a big asshole who lied for fame and to sell his supplement line
(2) Liver King kamikaze’d his reputation to spread these healthy ancestral tenets
I wonder if Bill Burr would defend Liver King like he did Lance Armstrong
"I didn't think Lance owed anybody- He didn't do anything to me. You know what he did to me? He raised 500 million dollars for cancer research. …I hated how Oprah was interviewing him and acting like she was dumfounded that this guy would do this. Like, she’s been in show business for 35 years and she can’t wrap her head around some guy doing whatever it takes to get to the next level."
wrt the poll: I think both.
Seems like he genuinely believes in these tenants that genuinely worked for him for 40 years, but then he got old and entropy kicked in. He realized that he couldn't maintain the same figure, which drove him crazy because that was his whole life, and thought that people wouldn't want to take advice from someone who looked "weak and old" according to his standards. He had businesses to run and brands to maintain, a family to support, and didn't know what else to do.
I think he was sorely mistaken in thinking that he had to take roids for people to believe in his system/products. It would be much more impressive to see a genuinely fit, natural 50y/o and think, "hey, I could actually improve myself with this system he's peddling," than to see an obviously roided-up buffoon selling what one can only assume to be snake oil.
I understand Liver King's perspective here, but I still think it was counterproductive to his own goals to take steroids and then lie about it. The dude just couldn't accept that he was getting old, and assumed no one else would either. But we get it, dude, you're getting old and your body ain't what it used to be. That's okay, you were still crushing it. Until you fucked it all up with the roids.
Tell the truth, or at least don't lie.
(Spreading "good ideas" is not an exception.)