Look, when all things are equal, same calorie diet, everything else being equal, training sleep, all of it, a high protein diet is superior. Check this out. Studies show you'll have better glucose control, in other words, better insulin sensitivity, more muscle, less body fat, and then here's my favorite one, more satiety, meaning less hunger and cravings. Across the board, a high protein diet is superior. So don't let those media headlines fool you or confuse you. When all things are equal, healthy diet versus healthy diet, a high protein version is better across the board. What's your thoughts on this one today? Just it's, I think we need to continue to communicate this because protein containing foods continue to get demonized and I think, I don't think people quite realize the health benefits. In fact, I didn't even mention this, longevity is better with a high protein diet and studies were in the best, well-made studies. So I don't think the average person knows that protein is a healthy macro nutrient to aim for. I think they know, we have bodybuilders like protein, yeah, maybe it builds more muscle. They probably don't know. It'll help them lose body fat. They probably don't know. It'll control their hunger better. They definitely don't know that it'll control their blood sugar better or it's better for longevity. Those things are just not known. Isn't that interesting how it's been promoted to us so long? Vegetables are a health food. That's like, if you think of, I'm eating healthy now, it's always like the amount of consumption of vegetables that you're including your diet, which is important, right? There's a need from a lot of those nutrients of micronutrients and fiber and they serve a purpose, but nobody says meat as a health food. No. Do you think, Sal, there's a correlation with a lot of the research and studies that support what you're saying with, if you target a high protein diet, most likely you eat a diet that is predominantly meat in there in order to do that. Most meat is whole food and that you naturally are eliminating processed food. You think that there is, so that less of it has to do with like, oh, it's just because you're hitting your, which we know, obviously the values of that, right? And there is, I know there's research obviously to support that, but you think that there might be a high correlation with just the simple fact that if you eat a high protein diet, most likely you're having to eat more whole foods than you are processed foods. And so then you have this kind of carry over to satiety, fat loss, healthier, longevity, all the above. No. No. So for a while we weren't sure what the correlations were or if they were actual like legit correlations. For example, old studies showed that eating a lot of protein was connected to worse health, but really what they did is they didn't control for calories. And so people eat the most calories, ate more protein in those particular studies. I'm talking about the studies where they control everything. Literally, same calories, same calories, whole foods, whole foods.  So all things being equal, the same calorie diet that's high protein results in more muscle and less body fat, okay? So even though they're both eating, let's say, 2,000 calories, more protein equaled more muscle and less body fat. But we also know that protein produces satiety.  That's number one. Number two, like you said, Adam, protein containing foods or should we I guess speculate or say that the average person who eats a mostly processed food diet, the proteins that they get are often are from whole foods. There's not a whole lot of processed food foods that are really high in protein. There's a high protein processed food market, but that's usually sought out by consumers who tend to be either health conscious or muscle building conscious, like go in the high protein processed food segment of any health food store or grocery store and what you'll find is protein bars and protein pancakes and they're all like pointing to or attracting like the health conscious individual. For the most part, people who aren't health conscious to eat heavily processed foods do so because convenience and taste and protein doesn't taste good or not as good as fats and carbs do. We know that, right? So if you're going to choose processed foods because of flavor and convenience, I'm not going to go with the, you know, whatever low carb high protein chip. If that exists, I'm going to go with the regular chip, right? I'm not going to go with the high protein candy. I'm going to go with the regular candy or whatever or pizza or, you know, pancakes. You ever have high protein pancakes? Like, yeah, they're okay, but the regular high, you know, non-protein ones always taste a little more, you know, what would be that? Pork rinds would be sort of the equivalent to chips. There's not a whole lot of options there. Doug was actually eating chicken chips today. Yeah, I've had those. Yeah, I've had those. They're actually pretty good. I just tried one. They're made with chicken and I think they add cassava flour to them. So there's some carbs, but it's all, it's, it's a lot of products. Actually, I think these are a hundred percent chicken. Just chicken. I think you're sure because I had some chicken. You had the wrapper, right? You just had them. I threw the wrapper away. Yeah, he was just eating them. The whole bag is like 40 grams of protein. And it's low calorie, like a hundred calories, right? Yeah, 100 calories, 14 grams protein. 14 grams of protein, 100 calories. That's a really good one. But it did, okay, but hold on. But like, think of the average person. Forget us because we're like, oh, cool. I'll try it, right? Oh, yeah, they won't. Oh, they think it tastes terrible. The average person.  Hey, you want some chips? These are chicken chips.  There was only like a couple of people. A lot of people agreed that. Yeah, I know. I mean, I agree to, but there's always somebody like when you say things, I can always tell when someone comments on, when we recommend like a true chocolate donut. No, what?  Yeah, exactly.  And then you get introduced to some of these, you know, treats as I would think of them as like, you know, a chocolate donut flavor type of protein powder.  If you're the opposite, like the people too that hate on like magic spoon to, oh my God, this is terrible.    Yeah, it is. Yeah, and by the way, context matters. By the way, this is coming from a place I like, and the reason why I can speak to that is like, I was the same way. Like I remember feeling that way about fruit and vegetables and people talking about, oh, make this recipe. And I'm like, oh, this is terrible. Yeah. Well, my diet was full of like process foods. You're not going to fool me with a protein shake and actual milk shake or ice cream shake or something. Obviously. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to know. So I had the same conversation with my kids about when we were trying to just drink some of those mineral waters that have like a little bit of like a fart of flavor on it. And I'm just like, I like it.  And I'm like, it's not even the same universe as that.  Now, here's what's cool though. I believe the opposite is true and trainable, meaning like once you have like, my son is a perfect example of what we're watching unfold right now of being so consistent with not allowing these things that if you give him like a taste of like a soda or something that's like, like sugar, like high overwhelming, right? It's overwhelming and he prefers the things that says other people would be bland and dry, but that's like a massive treat for him. So he would prefer us. So we've done all the healthier choices his whole life. Like even a treat that we would do would be like our, you know, protein peanut butter ball or things like that. And so he's been, his palate has been trained for that what someone else would call it, a dull, boring, sweet, like magic spoon. Like that's the only cereal my son has had is magic spoon. So if you were to give him like a bowl of Lucky Charms or one of the, you know, frosted flake, it's too much. You don't like it.  Then he'll, then his palate will change. Yeah. That's what, I mean, and I've watched his first hand when I've, I've been on a diet for a long time. I introduced something that is processed or not very good. And then I keep doing it. And then before long it changes. And then then all of a sudden I crave it. It's wild to watch that. Today's program giveaway is maps anabolic advanced. Here's how you can win. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comments section. We also have a sale going on this month.  If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below. All right. Back to the show. You guys remember that doc was a, it was like a documentary, Supersize Me? Yeah. Where the guy just ate McDonald's every day. That's all he ate. Just to remember he said like at first he was like, oh, it's kind of like whatever. But then he started to crave it. Yeah. And he's like, oh my God, I feel terrible, but I want more of it. I still want more of it. I mean, that's what'll happen because they're so well designed.  Didn't he do that experiment again? I feel like he did another documentary follow up. He did do another one, but I don't remember. I feel so bad for McDonald's. What was the second one? I know what's just picked on a lot. I do. You know why they get picked on? Because they're on the top, right? They're the biggest food chain. Yeah. That's what, but the reality is they're all like that. They're not though anymore. Well, they used to be.  They haven't been for a long time though. But they're iconic. You know what I mean? Yeah, they're iconic. Like, could somewhere king just kind of skates underneath them? You know, like, yeah. You take all the heat, dude. Yeah. Like somebody could literally do that documentary again with Burger King or even in and out. Taco Bell, dude. Oh, it was part two. It supersized me too. What did he do on the second one? With chicken. With chicken, it looks like. Oh, fried chicken. Yeah. Yeah, he could do that with fried chicken. I mean, he could do that with any fast food. What was his desired outcome in the second one? He just, the same thing, right? I'd say how much weight I gained.  It was exact same concept? Probably, I don't know. No, there's got to be something different. No, it's called Pay Attention to Me 2. Pay Attention to Me 2. Read what it says about it, Doug. What was the? Explore. It says explores what? Yeah, so it's a sequel to his first one, obviously. Explores the ways in which the fast food industry has rebranded itself as healthier since his original film. Oh, so he's just like, OK, no, I remember. Don't you guys remember that? I'll never forget the first time they stopped. When I was a trainer, I used to get KFC like early on, like thinking that like it was a good choice because of the high protein. If you actually looked at like. There's more fat than protein. Yes, it's and it's it's worse for you than like a Big Mac. Totally, yeah. And I remember that like, remember, we didn't have any of these like great calorie things. Like I got, I remember, I'll never forget getting in my calorie king book and then looking at KFC. I'm going like, what am I doing? Yeah, I should get a Big Mac then. And how funny is that? That's the logic. That's how even as a trainer, that's how my brain. I was eating KFC for a period of time thinking that I was making a better choice. Open the book, recognize it. This highlights your point that you make about how calorie showing people their calories don't make sense. You know what it does to me? It doesn't make me go, oh, I shouldn't have KFC. It makes me go, oh, I may as well have the Big Mac. Yeah, it's only a couple hundred calories. It's like it's actually a couple hundred calories less and I get as much protein. That was literally the logic behind it. I told you guys why I can't eat KFC, right? I ruined it for myself. So, you know, the club we all managed that was next to that KFC. Yeah, I don't know if that's the like KFC. Me and so my fitness manager, myself and another trainer. So DJ, Ryan, you guys know both of them and then myself went on this like, we made a bet. Let's see, you could bulk the most over the next 60 days. And we all worked out together too.  There was also that driving, right? So I went nuts. I got up to 240 pounds and at one. Oh, that's where that started that road. I was so like right now I weigh about 212. Okay, so imagine me 240. Walking bloat. I was a literal meatball. Yeah. Okay. Strong as hell. Body fat was way high though.  I'm like, I got to win this contest. I got a family size bucket of KFC. And I ate the whole thing. Yeah. And then it's gross, but I smelled like chicken for like two days. Oh, gross. Like, yeah, people were like, I believe it.  I was like, I ate it two days ago. Sweating out of your pores. Oh, I can't eat it no more. I believe in my roommate at college, like he ate. They literally had like chicken wings for an entire party of like 50 people and nobody ate all the chicken wings. I mean, there was just way too many. And so I went to pick them up because like he was there bouncing and him and my other friend were up there just eating, eating, eating. And there was a stack of chicken bones like this high and literally like smelled like chicken for three days. So what's so gross? What is it? What is it that butcher box is doing with the chicken nuggets for not to be in that KFC category? Then is it because they're just breading it and they're not deep frying it? Like, why is it way less on the on the fact? It's the oil. It's what they use in the batter. Because I tell you what, that's a home run. They're, they're, they're, to be clear, the macros on the nuggets are not going to be as good as like a chicken thigh or bread. No, of course not. But I have yet to find a nugget, whatever a nugget is. That I was like, where's the nugget on the chicken? It's a gizzard. I, I have yet to find a nugget. Now you know how they make that, right? That tastes that good. So they take all the meat and the chicken and bones and cartilage, everything. And they blend it up. Natural collagen protein. But I don't know, like, so what would be interesting is to know if butcher box doesn't do that because it doesn't taste like that. It does not taste like that gummy, no, like McDonald's chicken nuggets, how they make it. I mean, everything they do is health conscious, which is why I'm so surprised with how good like those nuggets taste. Actually the best I've never had a friend. No, they're phenomenal. And then passes the kid taste test too, man. Oh, like in comparison.  You're eating them again.  Did you see that? Did you see the meme that Chokey posted? No. Oh, you didn't see it? No, it's on the main IG. Yeah, this guy doesn't think. Is it me? No, no, it's just, it's little. Oh, yeah, I did. Yeah, she posted that because of all the parents that now we've got that are eating their kid's chicken nuggets right now. Yeah. No, but these, you know, protein has been, at first it was kind of demonized. Not, it's not explicitly demonized, by the way. Although there are some people who do explicitly try to demonize protein through really bad science, but that hasn't gotten any steam. But what has happened is they've sideways demonized protein by attaching it to animal foods are bad for you. It used to be saturated fat. Now it's bad for the climate. Don't eat animals type of deal. Plants are better for you. And so it's kind of like attached to demonization of other things. And so people are not prioritizing. The bottom line is if you eat, if you aim for your target body weight and protein, you will eat less calories and you'll be leaner and you'll have more muscle and you'll feel better. That's just the fact. And most of the ways that you'll get the protein will be through Whole Foods. You can definitely do through protein powders that doesn't really count the same. It does count, but it's not the same thing. In terms of like the satiety, you're not going to get the same satiety function. It's funny how much easier it makes yeah, like cutting and restricting calories. Like it's just like so much easier once you like fill up and you get that all satiated feeling. It's so easy that people actually run the risk of not being able to eat enough. It's fact. Try it. Most people like I can't eat my calories when I also eat my protein. For the audience, it won't be out yet, but I know it's coming soon. We just had a great conversation with Sean Stevenson. Oh yeah. And you know, classic example of somebody who's been doing this as long as we have or longer and trained and been in the trenches with everyday people forever. What were the two things that like he distilled down like talking to his clients about was hitting the protein and taking sleep. Sleep, yeah. So like literally and I made the comment. Because of all the other things that affects. I mean, I've made that comment in the interview. You'll hear it when it comes out. Spoiler alert, it literally, if you're listening to this right now and you've got family or friends or you yourself are struggling on where to start with you. Like two things, focus on getting good sleep. So put together a sleep routine. Some good habits and behaviors. Going to bed earlier, shutting TV out, whatever that is, okay. Eating two hours before beds that are right before bed or in bed. Like make an effort to significantly improve your quality of sleep, getting better sleep and hit your protein intake. Don't do anything else. Like literally just hone in on those two things and I bet you you will. That's cause of all the other dominoes that affect us. You will, exactly. You will, and then the very next thing after that add a little bit of resistance training. Just a little, don't go crazy. Add a couple of days in. It almost like wipes your slate clean so you can actually start like painting. Dude, it is, if most people. It took me 10 years to figure that out. I know me too. If most people just focused on that, hit your protein intake, get better sleep than what you're used to. And then when you're ready, the third step, add some resistance training in there. Two to three times a week full body. It'll, it would radically change your life. 100%. So crazy. Doug brought up the ingredients. By the way, can you scroll up, Doug? So we can see the ingredients to the, it's all organic. It's all stuff we, you know what it is. Like chicken breast with red meat, water, organic rice flour, organic yellow corn flour, organic corn meal. And then like corn starch. Which is basically, that's the, that's the, that's it. Everything else is less than 2%. So it's pretty straightforward. You know, the thing that really people need to pay, the thing that people need to pay attention to when they, when they're aiming for protein, if they are, if they do have one of those polymorphisms that respond poorly to certain types of fats, or if you just eat a lot of red meat is just eat grass fed meat that handles it. Like grass fed meat, the fatty acid profile is really good. And if you, I eat at least a pound of red meat a day, and it's grass fed meat, it makes a difference. That's pretty much it.  And if you're, like I said, if you're, if you've got one of those polymorphisms or saturated fats affect your cholesterol in ways that are not so great, go grass fed and you're gonna be okay. I mean, that's just the bottom line. It's crazy. It's crazy. I just made it a habit of like trying to make, when I make my food at home, although I will admit, lately I've been going down to the butcher and getting some really corn fed, grass grain fed type of. Isn't that funny? How much more palatable it is. Oh God, it's like. Isn't that weird? It is. It's radically different for sure. I mean, ButcherBox really nailed it with like being able to make grass fed tasty meat because I think they do it better than anybody else by far. But again, there's another classic example of something we talk about, like we tell people, oh, it's, you know, they do a great job.  That's like, no, it's gonna taste leaner. It's just not gonna taste the same. Like that's what they're expecting it. You know, what's interesting is our cravings were really the result of thousands and thousands of years of evolution. And they drove us to seek out certain flavors and textures because they came with important nutrients and our drive to get them is also influenced by the difficulty of getting them, okay? So if we did not have this strong drive for let's say fat and meat, we probably wouldn't hunt as much because it's dangerous. It's dangerous, it's hard. You gotta chase an animal. You might get killed type of deal.  We also craved sugar because it was rare. Sugar is actually quite rare in nature. You'll find tribes will go to beehives and go through crazy extents to get honey because sugar is hard to come by. And why did you crave it? Why do we like sugar so much? It's super energy in the real world, not this world that we've designed for ourselves with agriculture and all that stuff.  But it's rare, you're ain't gonna find pounds of sugar. The point you're making right now, the point you're making right now I think is the best case or the best argument for why there's value in more small meals throughout the day. I think that when we have these longer periods of time where you don't eat something, those alarms and natural signals get louder. And I think that that's part of the, and that makes it more challenging for someone to make a healthier, better choice than just going to the craving. Whereas if I'm, if I constantly am letting myself get a small meal every two, three hours, I don't feel like those alarms are as loud. I know a lot of people are like that, some people are the opposite. Really? Yeah, if I fast, my appetite starts to go away actually. I can, if I fast long, it's gone. Okay, so yes, yes and no, okay? Intentionally fasting, different point. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about how most people live, which is, you know, they have these, They just wait? Yeah, they just, well, unintentionally, most people, life happens is what happens. Most of us have trained ourselves that you have breakfast in the morning, you have a lunch and then probably have a snack and the dinner, if all things go well, but then what happens to a lot of people is they get busy at work or something. And then that three hour, when they, four hour point, when they normally would have something, it gets, it gets beyond that. And then when they finally get to a meal, they're all those cravings have been kicking up and they overindulge versus having small meals planned out to where they're kind of like grazing all day. You know what's hard about that? If you intentionally fast and you have the mindset of, I'm not eating till three or four in the afternoon, totally different. Cause you know why? Cause at like 10, 11, you go through those same things too, but you've already told yourself, I'm not eating all the way to the end. And then it, then it passes. And then it's not bad. You know what's tough about that, what you're saying?  I mean, I- Protein's hard to get to kind of like- They would have to really meal pack on. You know what I mean? Because otherwise- This is why I was always such a fan of it though for my clients. Cause otherwise what are you going to do, right?  This is what people will do. Okay, cool. I'll eat, I'll eat lunch and dinner. Breakfast is this package thing. And then my snacks are these bars or package things. And those are my snacks. I mean, I always found- Then nobody's going to bring- I always found getting my clients to have- Tupperware. Two meal, two prep meals in the middle of the day, done easy. If you're pretty disciplined, you could, you could have a, and you can do either one heating up like I've recommended on the podcast before you could do things like, you know, creatures that have an oatmeal or a magic spoon cereal. So those are quick and easy like protein sources. So you have your breakfast like easy like that. And then it's midday. So it's either whenever you eat around 11 or noon time and then again around, you know, two to four range or like that, that where people I feel like either one, they skip unintentionally and then dinner, they overindulge because they got so, they feel so hungry in that time period or they could go eat, but they use something drive through fast because they don't have a lot of time that didn't have anything to prep. So having two meals a day, either prepped or this is where I think there's, I mean, we've had it- Just the planning alone, right?  You know why too? When you're planning for the next day or two days later, you're typically more in this like conscious- Yeah. Self-aware state versus like in the moment, I know I probably should be healthy, but I'm hungry right now. I mean, there's an argument for that too, Sal. That it's a lot of it, maybe half of it has to do, not just that you simply have a meal, but that you're conscious- Totally. That you're just aware. Totally. Because you are making the effort to prep it and do that. You're more aware and more likely to- You know there's studies on that, right? Where you're better at how your future self should be, the further away it is. In other words, when people set goals, the further the goal is, the more like ambitious and like, yeah, I could totally do that. You know, like, do you think you could write this? Would you be able to do this project, but you know, I want you to do it down the line. Yeah. So if you tell someone, can you eat healthy on Thursday and prep your meals? Now they're like, yeah, I know what healthy is and they'll put it together. Yeah, this will be good.  Ooh, that's gonna be, that's really hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, did you ever watch that video I sent you about repairing after arguments and stuff? It was that woman- I sent it to every family member- How amazing is that? Amazing. I sent it to everybody in my family to listen to because not only it's the, what's wrong with it is it's titled like for parents, but it's like 101 on how to repair any relationship. I think every married couple or anybody in a relationship with another person should watch it because it's incredibly powerful. The repair is everything. In other words, the story you tell yourself about what happened can be radically altered with the repair. So she uses the example where she says, you know, think of your parents and maybe you have a bad relationship with them. Imagine now if your mom called you and said, hey, I know I wasn't the best mom when you were a kid. I had a really tough time. I was young and experienced. I know it was really rough for you. I'm really sorry. Like how that would change, it wouldn't have fixed everything, right? But it would change quite a bit about how you view the whole thing. It's not even a question. The reason why I sent it to my sister is because that is the greatest challenge that we had with our mother was not it's less about what happened.  The thing, and I've talked about how I'm grateful for the stuff we went through. The hardest part that we've had as adults in our relationship with her is that that's the part where she's struggled with.  I did a bad job. It's just, there's always an excuse. There's always a reason or there's always somebody else who had it worse than us as she's always had this reasoning behind it. It's like, and all my sister and I think I've ever wanted as a kid was our mom to go like, man, I did a bad job. That was hard. Yeah, versus always justifying why or saying that it could be worse or all these other things like that. And so of course that hit home for me like on how much as I know what it's like to be the kid and to feel that. And so very, very mindful of that with my son and how we're gonna, and then also even with Katrina. Like, I think that's why I think it's so valuable not just for parenting. I think that we're all humans. We all get emotional and irrational in the moment and say things that we regret or do things that we regret. Totally.  So she, yeah, so she has a whole course and I've been on it for a while and she talks about how powerful this is for kids. So like, look, as a parent, you're gonna snap.  Just fact, okay? It's just what happens. But when afterwards, when you've calmed down, you know what happened? Oh, I yelled at my kid. Oh, I did that thing. They saw me, whatever.  You talk about it. And not like this. This was cool because she says this too.  But you did that thing that made me yell. She's like, no, no, no, that's not the same thing.  I got really upset and I lost control. And that was probably scary for you, I'm sorry. Boy, so I've tried some of this. And Jessica's really good at this with the kids. And man, does it make the kids emotionally intelligent, self-aware, and it changes everything.  Mom and dad, sometimes we lose control. It's really hard. I'm sorry that you had to see that or whatever. Then the kid all of a sudden was like, it's okay. Like I know, things can be hard. And then when they do something, I'll see this with my son. He'll do something and afterwards he'll come and he'll bring the repair and the apology, like the self-awareness. It's really remarkable. It's a really good video. You have to watch it. In fact, that should be the shout out today because I think that you should go check out that YouTube video for sure. The hardest part and the part that, and I've seen this play out, and I'm so glad in the video she does the example, is people have the right intentions that I need to go repair that, but they still are emotionally broken over it or they still have their issue. Well, they feel like it invalidates how they fell. That's right, that's right.  But I wouldn't have had you.  And that's where the goal is. The goal is, can you in a situation like that, no matter how wrong the other person is, can you take full ownership of your own emotions, reactions, and how you handle the situation, no matter how wrong they were, and own that and apologize. Yeah, exactly. That's hard to apologize.  Well, that might not happen. I actually had this conversation with my oldest son and he's in college right now and he's having some challenges with certain people. And I said, you got, and he has these assumptions, right? And I'm like, you gotta give people the chance to be assholes or good, but you gotta give them the chance.    I'm really sorry. It probably sucked to be around. And the person doesn't own their side. That's okay. You just know where things stand. You understand the boundaries, but you gotta give them the chance to be like, maybe they apologize back. Maybe they don't, but you're not gonna give it to that. You can't force them. I can't go up to them and be like, hey, look, I'm sorry, but you're sorry too, right? You know, that's essentially what people are saying. So you know that, I think I told, I don't think I talked about this on air, but I told you guys that I had like this in my Hampton group, right? The group that I'm a part of, like I had my superpower, like so each of us have been like nominated for like our superpowers and what you do. And mine was relationship building. One of the things, one of the key hacks when people are asking me like how I've developed a lot of these relationships is that I've trained myself to actually always default to giving people the benefit of the doubt. Meaning that they did something wrong. They're a relationship I'm trying to build. And I am my head instead of right away thinking of all the like, oh my God, the deceit they're probably doing this now. I spin it to like, well, you know, maybe they meant for it to come this way. And like I always will think of the, they have the best intentions until you prove me completely wrong, right? And that has served me because we're all human. We all get emotional. We all react. We all tell our own story in our head. And if you take a first impression, which not everybody's great at first impressions and you automatically judge that person, their whole character based off of an isolated scenario or interaction they've had with you or another person, very difficult to build all these relationships with people because that happens all the time. And so that's a hack that I've had to train myself to do. It doesn't mean you don't have boundaries either.  No, and you know that about me. I'm like, I'm definitely not that person. No, no, no, no, no, no. Definitely cut someone's throat. Whoa, whoa! I'm definitely that person who, but that's part of what makes me that way is because of that, because I've given you already the benefit of the doubt and then you've still come back and you've proven me that this is who you are. This is your character. And so that now, now we're done. Like now, because I know I didn't judge you out the gates. In fact, I gave you a lot of grace, but you've now proven me that that is who you are. And so then now we're not gonna have a relationship. So this is, so just needless to say, this is good stuff for me to watch. Cause you know, we're moving right now and that's the most stressful things in a while. Even though you guys have, you've basically contracted out all the labor. You still got to put stuff away. It's still, it's still stressful. And you know, things are all over the place and my clothes are here and that's over there. And you know, you got to figure things out. It's a new neighborhood. It's a new area. It's all unnerving. I think would be the right, the right word. I hate it. Oh, I hate it. But yeah, I did. I had people move stuff too. I still hate it. Still, still not fine.  Dude, yesterday I went to go use, they have an outside grill, you know? And I went to go, so I'm not a good, I'm not like you and, you and Doug and even Justin, you guys are great at grilling. I am not. So I bought these nice steaks. I'm like, I'm gonna do a good job. I'm gonna do a good job this time. I got a nice outdoor grill. Had my parents over.  Charcoal.  I'm so mad. Justin was trying to be nice to me. Oh no, they're good. Oh no, it's still good. I'm like, babe, no it's not. It's not good. You can write on the sidewalk with that. What do they say about that? What do they say about how you just said that? It's like, how you frame it so important, right? You said, I'm terrible at that. You got to get rid of the verse they're saying. It's like, I could be much better at grilling. If I practice more, right? Versus saying, I'm bad at grilling. What identifying is a terrible grill. Or I should say, this is why you should grill, honey. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's the last. Especially the ultimate husband. Bro, I don't care how long you've been doing it.  I was so mad. Like, I'm always... How do you stop the flake? You know what it is? I didn't do a good job. I didn't clean it first, right? Because otherwise it'll flare. Yeah. Katrina likes that, right? Yeah, but she's easy to make a stay for. Yeah, she is. You know what? So, what I screw up always is my steak trying to make her perfect burnt steak. So, I'm always trying to time dinner, you know what I'm saying?  And so, I'm always like... The time difference... Her's on the bottom and yours is like way up the top. Yeah, and I like to slow cook. So, imagine if you slow cook and you have that much discrepancy, her steak's an hour and a half later. So, I'm always trying to figure out how to time hers because I want her to have the best experience for her steak all the time. And meanwhile, I ruin my steak all the time because I'm trying to figure this out. How do you guys all have a good weekend? Did you do anything? Yeah, I mean, I was just watching basically flag football all weekend. Who's playing flag football? Ethan. Oh, cool. Yeah, so he... I mean, they had their first game and they did well. Like, they have a good team and I got roped into coaching a bit too. What? One of those things, it's just like I just... Me standing, I can't just sit and watch. Like, everybody knows me in the valley and like we... You know, I grew up there. Are you like a local celebrity? I don't... Is it football? I don't think so. I mean, that's weird to think about but it's like, yeah, we had like... That team was like the team where everybody talks about. So, it's kind of like... It's kind of like that. Justin's the superhero. Yeah, I never signed more than three autographs to get to practice. So, I would say that. Every gas station... If Tommy saved Tom Cruise was there, there would be a lot more. They got my jersey in every gas station. It sounded like VLB. Oh, that's Andrew's 24? Oh, yeah. That punt return you did was incredible. 36, like, yeah. What was it, 36? Yeah, 36. Sorry. Yeah. No, so I'm like there and I'm helping out and I can't help it. I get involved. But he did great. It's interesting to watch him now kind of doing conventional sports, you know, from that transition and to see like his movement. Because he's definitely... Man, he's progressed like crazy with the way he can throw the ball, he can move, he can catch and all that. He's just, you know, still got to work on the running and stuff. And I'm trying to kind of... So, I got in a little bit of like... I was getting frustrated because this kind of brought back a lot of things I'm seeing from the whole landscape out there in terms of like kids and like just their overall resilience.   It was like, oh, my ankles. And so I'm like, I had to like bust out the old story, you know, as we're walking. And I'm like... Up hill both ways. I'm telling him about... This is when you had the flesh hitting back through your nose. Yes. I brought this up in the podcast a long time ago.  Like who is out there teaching kids how to be tough anymore? Nobody. It's embarrassing. That's my little rant. So here's my story. Okay. I stepped on a nail and... Matt Holder, you paint the picture here. Okay. So I was like, I was 12. No, I was 11. I was 11. Yeah, little guy. Little guy. I stepped on the nail. I do the whole thing where you go do the epsom salt bath and this was supposed to cure everything in the 80s, right? Just epsom salt bath everything. Robotestin. Yeah, robotestin and epsom salt. Sit in the epsom salt, soak it out. That's the 80s, right? I'm sure. Yeah.  Get on the bus, you know?  Yeah, I'm like, okay. So it healed the next day like the wound itself was kind of healing and I put my shoe on and I go to school and I'm walking on it all day. It's not feeling good. It's irritated. It's inflamed. I believe I, to that point I'm telling my parents, I don't know, it doesn't feel any better. It hurts a lot and they're like, ah, just walk it off. Walk it off. What does that mean anyway? It walks something off. And I don't know. It's just going to go away. Eventually you'll be fine. Yeah, some science to that. Blood, oxygen, nutrients circulating. Yeah. And so I'm like, okay. I didn't know you. I only know is like what my parents tell me like, I'm like, okay, I guess this pain is going to go away. And so I'm walking to school. It really hurts. I'm trying to do recess. I can't like I was real big into kickball.  I started sitting down. My friends are like, what's wrong with you? My God, my foot's killing me. Got to the point where my foot just blew up like a beach ball.  Basically almost to the point where I was going to have to cut my shoe off because it was expanding so fast and my foot was just like this. These are all terrible. Pust filled beach ball. These are terrible sides by the way. Yeah. That you need to go to the hospital. And I'm still walking on it. No, but I'm just like thinking back.  And I'm like, listen. So I basically had, I got back on the bus and I'm like, and no adult, like I'm like no adult having good advice for me.  You know, hopefully that, that works itself out. You know, okay.  And to the point where I get off the bus, I get to the bus stop and my friends just like, because I was so slow, they just dispersed and went to their houses.  I'm just like, just like Quasimodo, you know, like just limping my way back to home. I had, I had like a half a mile I had to get to my house and it was all uphill and it was just really steep. I got to the point where it hurts so bad, I just broke down and I had, I started crawling and I crawl on my hands and knees. I don't remember this part of the, you crawl. Is this like the story? I'm just building a crawl. That's why it's hilarious. You just exaggerate. That's why it's hilarious to me. I was thinking about, I was crawling. I just did what I could to get home. Like I wasn't like thinking like this is ridiculous or anything. He's like, I still wasn't crying to this kid. No, I wasn't crying. I'm just crawling. I'm getting back and I finally make it home. And then I'm like, I don't know. Like there's something wrong. You know, I'm like telling my parents and then finally look at them like, whoa. Oh my God. And then I had to get rushed. So I went to the family practice doctor. He has to do this emergency like, he basically makes an incision on the bottom of my foot and the top just to drain it. And this is without any anesthetic, anything to kind of help with the pain just to cut it open and get it going. You forgot the crawling. He blocked it out. And then, yeah, I blocked it out. And then I go immediately rushed to the emergency room. And then so I ended up like having overnight surgery and then I was there for 10 days of them just draining and sticking things in the holes and damn, 10 days you were in the hospital? Yeah. It was flesh eating bacteria. Do you know what the odds are that he could have lost his foot? They're significant. That's what Courtney started bringing up.  And I was like, honestly, yesterday or it was two days ago, I was talking to this story and it didn't even dawn on me that I had all that, that like the worst possible things that could have been. How the amount of jokes I'd have for you if you were just a one-legged Justin. You know what I'm saying?  Yeah, you know what you're saying? If you had one leg, we'd be way more popular. I don't know. That just barely counts as a lot as white privilege a little bit, you know what I'm saying? It makes it even. Yeah, it's not enough. It's not enough. Maybe a wheelchair even. Did I complain?  You know, I just didn't even know any better. Like it wasn't like conveyed to me that like I needed to like cry about that. Yeah.  But isn't it the dad's job? Yeah. Your dads aren't stepping up and toughening up these kids, man. It's embarrassing. Yeah, so what are you gonna do? Take another food and shit? I was just angry about it, dude. I was like thinking, I'm like, man. Drop them off in the woods. Throw them in my bow and arrow. Throw them in my bow and arrow. Figure it out. If you find you went home. Drop some dirt on it. It'll take care of you. So anyway, yeah, I got a little fired up about it. And then I just calmed down because I was like, oh yeah, like everybody's got easier right now and blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, we can make excuses, but it just was like, I just remember playing sports and then like I was always injured playing sports. Like you just keep going. You just do. You just keep doing. Like you can't, I was trying to like, okay, that's ridiculous story.  And like, how do I relate? You don't even have to go that far. Just look at when your kids, you ever see your kids board when they don't have anything to do? They free, oh, I don't have anything to do. I had three channels on TV when I was a kid. And it was only kids TV and 9 a.m. on Saturday. So I always had to figure out what to do. You said, tell me what I can do. So do you think that has something to do though too, that this, our kid generation, do you have the amount of television and the amount of like gaming consoles and the amount of iPad phone stuff? Do you think that played a role? Because I'm watching, and the reason why I'm asking this is because I'm wondering if like, if I'm gonna be able to shift that out a little bit different for my son because of us not allowing a lot of that. Like, and I see him, he's really, I mean, he's got an imagination that's crazy to me. Like he just makes up plays and does characters. Yeah, but listen, listen. There's nothing we can do, bro, because. You don't think that we, you don't think that part of that is our fault for the way we shaped him early on? We do, but what I read was, the best data that I've seen shows that what you can do with your kid is to make them feel responsible for doing better in the world. That's the biggest impact. So like you have your kid volunteer or you tell your kid, look, we're really successful. We do really well. It's our responsibility to do the right thing and to help other people get involved. Well, yeah, sure, I don't deny that. But the challenges part. You're talking about, you're talking about some, you're talking about two different things. I'm commenting on your point of the kids being bored. Oh, you just let them. Yeah, yeah, the best thing to do is. I mean, that's what, so my point. Jessica helps me with that where I'll turn everything off and they'll complain. And she looks at me and she'll be like, they just let them figure it out. I think we train them to give them that crutch for so long. That's my point. So I think that that is, and I like to think that if you're, you've got a kid under the age of say five right now, we're more aware. So hopefully we're setting better trends now. Unfortunately, when you guys had your kids, it was all so new. So you kind of didn't know, like in your defense, right? A lot of parents just, oh, cool, new tech, new thing weren't really thinking. I was in my twenties too. And just, you just, you know. Right, you're not thinking about it. You're probably not thinking about that stuff. Like I mean, many parents probably are.  And my mom was like, no, they're gonna miss them. My dad literally got two garbage bags, filled them up with toys, took them out. And the bet was, I bet they don't even notice. Yeah, we didn't. We had no idea that he threw away half of our toys. Yeah. And he likes to tell us what he played. He had one toy. I told you guys about this, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a wheel. It was a bicycle rim that he found. A stick in a wheel. Why was that a thing? Why was that a thing? I don't know. That was a thing. My kid figured it out. Doug, you were doing that stuff back then, right? I think it's a challenge. It's fun. I don't know. Yeah. It's doing something going.  What'd you do? You know what's crazy, considering that he was born in the 40s, that he actually has a video of like. Born in the 40s. He has video of his childhood. He even has video of his parents. Oh, did he switch him over to digital? Is that what you mean? Yeah, so I had some old films and I took them to Costco and this was like two years ago. And I had these DVDs sitting around this weekend. I found them and I go, oh, I should check these out. Found old movies of me when I was like three years old. Oh, I bet.  I was a chubby, cute child. Yeah, for sure. I could see it. Adorable. But isn't that cool that I mean he has a little chubby baby. I know I tease him like he wasn't born in the 40s, but I mean, I don't have any video. I'm sure you guys don't have a lot of video. Oh, my parents have a lot of videos. Oh, you have a lot of videos when you're younger? Yeah, but they're all on VHS. And my dad, every once in a while, won't play them. He really has a stigma, or what do you call it? Stigmatism or whatever. Oh, because of the camera? Because the camera was that one eye that she was like doing the JVC.  I mean, he looked like he was making a movie, you know what I mean? That's how big they were. And he used to take a lot of videos of us and stuff. Oh, so you guys do? Yeah. I love that stuff. Yeah.  Have you sat down and watched? I haven't heard it. We haven't in a long time, I used to get mad when you put them on because you're embarrassed when you get older to watch yourself as a kid. Now I wouldn't give a shit, but I remember at one point I used to hate it. He put them on like, oh, fuck, I'm gonna do that thing on the kid. Oh, I'm way too many embarrassing ones. Like, and my mom will resurrect them every now and then. So you got them too then, huh? Yeah. And it's so jealous. Yeah, it's just, yeah. I thought more of you guys were like me. It's overrated, it's overrated, bro. It was like, I was always goofing and it was like, it's cringe. Like 5,000, you know. Jessica's like you, she has whole periods where like they lost half of their pictures and stuff because they moved and she happened so she didn't have a whole lot. Yeah, there's not a lot of, I mean, I could think of like one little album my mom has of like some pictures I have. Most all pictures and video that I have of myself is when I started. And I probably when I was, I want to say junior high-ish, like I got, that was when cameras were a thing. Now, these days, because it's so accessible, it's the opposite. I have, Jessica's constantly reminding me to not film. So I'll be at the park with the kids and she's like, stop filming everything because they know they're being filmed and it changes, it takes them out of being present. And she's right, it's true. If I put it on and he notices and the kids notice, it does change. Oh yeah, they just change things.  I was very cautious kid, but he's taking these risks and he's so proud of himself. So I'm like filming him, you know?  She's like, don't film him, like I already did. I mean, yes and no, right? I think there's a balance there, right?  Yeah, I still love. Do you do it? Yeah. Does it make you, does it ever make you super emotional? Oh yeah, already. You know what I'm saying? He's only four and I already get that way when I started, when I look back at all this, but I'm so glad I have that. Like it's literally a timeline of him growing up and I have all these clips and stuff like that. I wish my partner would divide the time, so I get to be somewhat present in some of these moments and then she video everything, but Katrina, I mean, of all that moment strengths. And you're the organizer of the videos. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Which I just adopted. I actually didn't want to be that guy, but I wanted it so bad that I knew if I want this done, she doesn't care about it. That happens. I have somehow adopted the I pack our luggage and I unpack our luggage and that's what I do. I don't want to do that. But that's what happened. I don't know how it happened, but this is what I do now. It just happens, yeah. That's just it. So she'll get everything together. It's all on the floor. I'm the packer. I was talking to Vicky today. We're talking about that. I was talking about relationships and you know how that, like one of the best things that happened for our relationship was of course having Max, but for other, for not obvious reasons. We've always had like, I'm a little bit OCD with like the house and things in order and also like that. Just a little bit. I'm like Jessica, right?  You know what I'm saying? And I wouldn't categorize you or Katrina as slobby, messy people. You just don't care. You just, she doesn't care about it or I'll get to it type of deal. And I'm more like Jessica where everything has to have its place. But what I have found for us that is just, I figured it out and I was just like, I don't know, I was telling Douglas this morning, we were talking, we were actually talking about this exact conversation is that I started to go like, listen, at the end of the day, she's right. It's not the end of the world if this thing is not in its place and our life can be normal. But it bothers me so much that I, and if it bothers me that much and I want it that bad, why don't I take initiative and do it? I just figured out there's a time that she really handles something that I don't ever have to worry about. I don't ever have to, unless she's not around for that day or whatever, make my son's meals. Like I don't, I don't make his, she makes all his meals, she bates them, gets them ready for bed. That's like an hour and a half process at night when you add in cooking the dinner, feeding him, cleaning up after him, getting him ready for the bath, getting him in the bath, reading to all that. So that's like- That reframing skill is so important. Dude, and so I just looked at it as like, okay, I need to, that's my time now to do those things that I care so much about. And what was beautiful about it was it just kind of naturally happened for us.  Could you take care of Max? Could you feed him? Could you put him down? Yeah, yeah, sure. Just make sure you take care of what I do when I do that. And it's not like she doesn't step up and do it. She's like, okay. And then she's realized how much she doesn't like doing that. So she'll be tired and doesn't want to do all those things- She'd rather do that. But she'd rather do that than actually muster up the energy to do the dishes. The reframing is so important. Like I feed our 10 month olds at night more often now because Jessica was so sleep-provided for so long it was affecting her health and everything else. And so I was doing it. And I love it now. Like at first I was like, I gotta do this. But I was like the other night, I was holding my daughter and I'm feeding her. And it's like 3 a.m., 4 a.m.  And I'm like, oh man, you know, I'd be missing out on that if I wasn't doing it. It's totally worth it. I know I agree with you.  Solve the problem. And then it's even switched to where I enjoy it. It's now become this very meditative type of process. I mean, I don't you believe that we can do that with all things in our life? Of course. I really believe that. Of course. You know, it helps with that gratitude. Period and a story. Like when you feel like complaining, like, okay, what am I grateful for from that person?  Did you see that clip I sent you about that? No. About, yes, you did. The clip or the, in the Bible, it talks about switching your mind from anxiety. Is it anxious? Anxiety and gratitude occupy the same part of the brain. Right. So the next time, so the next time, I thought that was such an unbelievable that that was something that- So if you- We know the research today. That was something that goes all the way back to the Bible. In other words, if you feel anxious and you focus on feeling gratitude, that part of the brain can't do both. And so then you'll start to feel- Such a powerful strategy. The next time you're feeling anxious like that and you're then switch it around and go like, let me think of the things that I'm really grateful for in my life and see how much that suppresses the anxiety with that. I think that's such a powerful habit. Hey, I wanted to bring this up because we talked so much about creatine and its value and it is the ultimate longevity supplement and the data now is super supportive of the statement. People still want to know are there things I can take with creatine to enhance absorption, make it more effective, et cetera, et cetera. Now, creatine monohydrate plane, perfectly fine. Studies done on it are typically done with pure creatine, no problem. However, you can definitely enhance absorption or its effectiveness if you take it with certain compounds.  There's some people that don't respond to creatine quite as well as others. In those cases, I would say it'd be a good idea. Do you think the people that are not respond to them that a big correlation of that has to do with their inability to absorb it? I think so. Oh, interesting. I think it might have to do with something like that because typically they'll have, sometimes they'll have gastro issues. Right, yeah, get a little sick. Some people, right. So, you know who I've heard talk about that? Who is the guy from UK we had on here? He's been in the bodybuilding world forever, tattooed. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, get them, get them. Yes, his creatine has something paired with it. For that exact, I heard him talk about that, but that's like his big thing on his creatine. See, assimilated better? Yes. Yeah, so the hammer on this would be like, just have it with sugar, spikes insulin, could drive more creatine into your system. Obviously not ideal, not a great idea. That was the original, those were like the first ways that people tried to improve the efficacy of creatine. So that's one way to do it. I don't necessarily recommend that unless you're bulking and you need extra calories, don't mind feeling gross afterwards. The second one would be sodium. Sodium could help. Carnitine, L-carnitine, in particular L-carnitine tartrate. Recharge from Legion has L-carnitine tartrate and then something else called corosolic acid, I believe, which increases insulin sensitivity. So it's similar. It would be like making your current insulin levels more powerful and what insulin does that drives nutrients into muscle cells. So recharge is an example of a creatine supplement that has a couple things. With Legion. Yeah, with Legion, that helps. So, okay, so I'm assuming, because I know Mike so well that, because, and Mike would be this, I think agree with us that, because we always talk about creatine monohydrate. It's like, it's all you need. So I'm assuming he's done that to cover all the base. Is that what it is? It's like, okay, for the small population of people that may have issues with uptaking the maximum amount, there is a people, and with like the chrysgrath gethins and people like that, there is gonna be a people that are gonna benefit from that. So may as well pair it with that. And now I've covered all the bases. Yeah, because carnitine is good for mitochondrial health, ATP production, which is what the creatine does. And then corosolic acid increases insulin sensitivity. So theoretically insulin would drive more nutrients into the cells, making the creatine more effective.  I always get messages like, okay, I know you say creatine monohydrate. I know you say just that powder. However, I'd like to add something to it. What are the things that could do? Those are the things that, so far the data shows might have a little bit of an effect. So I know that we talked about, do you know the name of the video that you shared? I think that's a great shout out today. No, her name is, let me find it. Her name is Dr. Becky. And I think you've talked about her before. So we've actually talked about her. The good inside is the course that I was taking with her. But the YouTube video that you sent, I sent that to more, I can't remember the last time I sent a clip to as many people as I sent that to you. I sent it to all my best friends. I sent it to my family. Like a lot of people got that clip from me because I thought it was such a good clip. Yeah, I'm trying to find it right now. It's a short video too. It's only like... Oh, here we go. Here we go. It's Becky Kennedy. The single most important parenting strategy. That's what it's called. The most important parenting strategy. Highly recommend the video. It's not just for parenting. It's just for relationships. Period, end of story. It's really good. Yes. Organifi makes organic supplements to support your health and wellness. They have superfood blends that make it easy and enjoyable to add variety and nutrition to your day. So they have a green, phenomenal for recovery, a gold juice that's great for rest and sleep, and a red juice for energy, plus much more. Go check them out. Go to organifi.com. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com forward slash mind pump, use the code mind pump and get 20% off. All right, back to the show. Our first caller is Izzy from Florida. Izzy, how can we help you? Hey. How are you? Thanks for having me on the show. So I'm just gonna read it verbatim to make things easy. In January, I started a 20 week prep for a bikini competition. And long story short, my body gave out to me four weeks prior to the show and I was never able to walk the stage. My coach started me off at 1200 calories for 10 weeks and nine weeks out from the show. He dropped me to 800 calories a day with an hour of cardio a day as well. I've struggled immensely with weight gain post prep and I'm having a really hard time getting my body back to normal. So I guess my question is, do you have any recommendations for this or any tips on how to get my metabolism back to normal? Because basically I feel like I don't have one anymore. Did you just now find mind pump? No, well I found it right after the competition. Well, I heard, so I heard a talk or an interview that Sal did halfway through and you were kind of saying that low calories was never the solution and kind of flagged the situation for me because I didn't know anything going into it. And but I was really stubborn and determined to walk the stage. So I was like, eh, whatever. And so. Okay, I wanna back up here for a second because this will help us as we move forward, okay? What made you continue with the process when you were going from 1200 calories which is already insanely low down to 800 calories and keep going until your body basically forced you to stop? What was it that kept you there? So my coach was my uncle and I think in my head I was like, he wouldn't do anything that would harm me and I also like, again, I'm stubborn. So I was like, I can just fight through it. It's fine. And then it was a fact of like, maybe this is normal and I just didn't know. Yeah, that's a tough position to be in. The reason why I asked you that is he, by the way, he put you on like what a POW would do. Literally 800 calories a day, working you like crazy.  That was, that's insane. That nutrient deficient hormones probably went terrible. Yeah, your metabolism didn't survive. Yeah, so, okay, so the reason why I asked you that is because I want you to use that same dogged determination to do what we're about to tell you to do because it's gonna require as much, if not more, discipline than what you did before because a lot of, there's gonna be a lot of things that are gonna tell you, don't do that, you're eating too much or I need to work out more or, oh no, maybe I'm gonna gain too much weight type of deal, okay? So you have to ignore those voices and you can listen to the health signals of your body but you're gonna have to really, really be disciplined at least in the beginning because it's gonna feel kind of weird to do what we're about to say. So I know in your question it says that you work out with weights five days a week, that you do 30 minutes of cardio three to four days a week, right now your calories are about 1800, which is good, you're gaining weight which is probably what you need to do at this point. Your body probably needs to gain a little bit of weight. I'm gonna take your strength training down from five days a week to three days a week and I'm gonna take your cardio away and I want you to just make sure you get 10,000 steps a day and that's it and keep your calories probably where they're at. Where are they right now? 1800 she said. They're at 1800 right now? Give or take, I'm probably hitting closer to 16 right now because of my schedule. I just don't know what to eat or like how to approach the diet part so it's kind of my struggle. Here's the two things I'll have you focus on and that's it, okay? Don't eat processed foods so make sure everything you eat is whole and natural and hit your body weight in protein. What's your body weight at right now? 128. Okay, so aim for about 125 to 130 grams of protein a day. So protein, hit that first, so 130 divided by three or four meals, that's what you have each meal, eat it first in the meal. Shoot for whole foods, not shakes and bars. Yeah, no, nothing processed, including bars and shakes. Only use shakes at the end of the day if you totally missed your protein. Okay, if you missed it by 20 grams, not a big deal. If you're below 100 grams, then go ahead and throw a shake in there. But hit your protein, avoid heavily processed foods. I'm gonna say, if you don't have MAPS and Ebola, that's the program I want you to do. Do you have any of our programs? I have split. Wrong one, I want you to do MAPS and Ebola. Follow MAPS and Ebola, do no cardio except hit 10,000 steps a day, do what we said and slowly you will regain your health. Slowly things will start to come back.  That's the idea is to not push your body. The idea is allow your body to heal and to build some muscle. The only thing I wanna add is I wanna put you in our private forum just because I know how challenging this can be to reverse out of this mentally. And we have several clients that are in there that either one, I've helped through a bikini competition or two have dealt with something similar to this. So you have a good community of people that are familiar with this. And then of course you have the three of us that are floating around in there. So I'm gonna get you in the forum and then what Sal's advice to you is perfect. I just stay focused on that. The hardest part is gonna be the mental discipline of sticking to it, trusting the process. A little bit of weight gain is not a big deal. So hopefully we're building muscle. So there should be a little bit of weight gain on the scale. I don't wanna see rapid weight gain, five, 10 pounds a week adding like that would be a big deal then we'd probably have to come back a little bit on the calories for now to before we could increase maybe we increased too much at first but that should be the goal. Slowly increase those calories, get stronger, stay the course. Focus on getting strong, how tall are you? Back two. Yeah, your body weight's fine. Just focus on getting stronger, doing the things we said, go through maps anabolic. At the end of maps anabolic you can do it again or if you wanna do another program I would go maps power lift because strength is gonna be really good to focus on right now because it's gonna mess with your head because of where you came from. So bumping calories, not doing all the cardio, not lifting every single day or five days a week. It's gonna mess with your head a little bit. So if you focus on strength and you start to see the numbers go up on the bar it's gonna feel very motivating and positive to you and that's really where you should be focused. I mean, if you were my client that's all we would focus on is strength. I wouldn't look at anything else. I would just look at how strong can I get you in the major lifts.  So you're gonna bounce back. Yeah, you'll be fine. I've worked with a lot of people like you. Was your uncle a bodybuilder? Did he compete before? Is that why you hired him? Yeah. Yeah. He had never trained a female before to be transparent and he didn't know, I don't think he was counting my calories. He was just giving me a meal plan. Like what specifically to eat. So it wasn't until I tracked them that I realized kind of what was happening.  I hate to say it. Yeah, the irony of that, that they're the ones giving out the most. Yeah, I mean, your uncle, I don't know how successfully he was a bodybuilding, but It doesn't matter. Oftentimes the people who succeed at a local level or regional level in bodybuilding it's in spite of how shitty their programming is and their diet. It's like their body can withstand the most abuse and they can keep the most amount of muscle with the lowest amount of calories. And they're the ones that tend to win. They tend to not be the ones that have the best strategy. And then what they do is they take that strategy that they did to themselves, which is probably what he did.  You're smaller than me.  And then, oh, it's not working. Let's add more, let's cut more. Oh, it's not working. Let's add more, let's cut more. And that's just super common. I mean, in his defense, I don't think this is just bodybuilder guys like him. I think this is everybody. I think everybody thinks because they got themselves in shape that they can help somebody else get in shape. And it's absolutely not the case at all. Training other people and understanding the metabolism, understanding physiology, understanding nutrition, program, like there's just- That's a whole different skill set. That's a whole different skill set. And then knowing all that stuff is already takes a lot of education and practice. And then going and applying it on all different body types, different ages, different challenges that, I mean, it's just, people think that because somebody else can get shredded regardless of whether they did shows or not, is a good person to help us with. It's like, no, they're not at all. And this is a very common mistake that we make especially now that Instagram is so popular. I wouldn't tell him anything you're doing now because he may confuse you further or whatever. I wouldn't even let him know. And if he asks you, say, oh, I'm powerlifting now. I'm just trying to get as strong as possible and just leave it at that. Did you- Yeah, he didn't. He didn't even want me to reverse diet or anything. He just told me to go back to normal life and I gained 20 pounds immediately after. So that's- Of course. Did you lose your period during that period of time and all that stuff? And are your hormones back to normal? Do they feel like they're balancing out? I got my first period back today and I stopped in May. So- That's a good sign. This week. So it was been a minute.  But I guess my concern is, do you think that being lean again is still possible? Or do you think- Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but I wouldn't even do it the right way next time. Yeah, you got to do it the right way next time. And don't even try it until you're in a really good, healthy, strong, fast metabolism. I don't have to do tons of cardio to whatever to maintain myself. Izzy, there's a lot of episodes where we've talked about this just so you know. So I don't know if you've kind of gone through the old catalog. We've talked about this a lot. When I used to help bikini competitors, I wouldn't even let you hire me for a prep. I wanted you in the off season and you need to know this, whether you hire another coach or you do this yourself in the future sometime. When you go into prep, where your metabolism is before prep is so important to whether you're going to have success in prep.  You're also only eating 1,800 to 2,000 calories. That's a, you don't, you can't go into prep. I would not allow a girl. I don't care how much she offered me money-wise. I would say, no, you're just, your metabolism isn't in a healthy place for us to do an extreme diet and compete.  Like it wasn't enough to recover. It wasn't enough to produce hormones, catecholamines. It wasn't enough to support skin or hair. You probably noticed some hair loss.  Your skin probably start to change. Literally, your body didn't have enough to perform certain functions. And it was just relegated to the most basic functions which were stay alive. So- And then you're training on top of that, just exacerbates all that. Well, that's with all that. Literally, you put yourself in a situation like POWs where they're fed, you know, 800 calories a day and made forced to work hard labor. So- Make sure you, is he getting the form? Make sure you get in the form and introduce yourself. There's a lot of people that have been here before and a lot of girls that- Just get strong. I'm gonna tell you right now, you add a combined 50 pounds or 60 pounds of weight to your total of your squat, deadlift and bench.  I'm gonna tell you that right now. You're gonna be very pleased with how you look. But for now, just focus on getting stronger. That'll get you where you wanna go. Awesome, thank you. You got it. All right. Thanks for calling in. Yeah, thanks for having me. When she said it was her uncle, I held back. If it wasn't her uncle, I was in a rail. Yeah. Because that's just- But I mean, obviously, if he cares about his niece, right? He doesn't know any better. He's like, oh, this is what you do. This is what I did. But this is, listen, ladies, if your coach is starting you at 1200 calories at the beginning of your prep, fire them immediately. That is unhealthy.  I've seen damage so bad. I had a client, took three years. Took us three years to get things to come back to normal. And that was with dedicated work. So- If you can't imagine yourself eating 1,000 to 1,200 calories less than your current maintenance place, if that number isn't a healthy place to be, you have no business competing. That's right.  Okay, I could take 1,000 calories off of that to 1,200 calories and still be in a healthy place. Because you gotta keep in mind that over the course of a prep- You're gonna be dropping them. You're gonna be dropping and increasing activity. That's right. And so you need to have runway. And if you come in the show already and you're on a good prep and you're already cutting below 2,000 calories, get out now. You're not in a healthy place unless you're already, you know- One, two percent away from your goal weight, which that's a different scenario. But if you have any significant body fat to lose 10, 15, 20 pounds of fat, what are you doing? It has to be stage presentation sports, have to be, especially for women, the least, probably the most unhealthy thing that they can compete in, period. It's one of the most popular. Running a marathon is healthier. And I don't even think people should go run a marathon who don't know how to run or doing a triathlon who don't exercise. I think it's healthier for a couch potato to train for a marathon than it is for a girl who works out five days a week and whatever, to go enter into a competition where she's gonna present herself on stage. It's one of the least healthy things you could do. Yeah, Izzy, when you listen to this, I'm gonna shout out Rochelle Adair and then also Grace Barga, who are two bikini competitors, all natural, have gone and competed, won their shows, done incredible and have done that in a healthy manner. So those are great resources inside of our forum, two ladies that have done a great job. Our next caller is Tim from Florida. Tim, what's happening, man? How can we help you? Hey, what's going on guys? As always, wow, this is a lot more intimidating than I thought it would be. Ooh! I won't put that on you. So really real quick, I definitely gotta give a shout out to Doug because he's ruined a lot of other podcasts for me because of the quality that he's put you guys in in the studio. And to one of my former coaches, Katie Butler, a couple of you guys might know her. She's my former OTF coach, but she turned me on to you guys about a year ago. I actually started listening to one of the episodes. I was looking for a health and fitness podcast and started listening. I was like, man, what's going on here? I don't really know what this format is. I was expecting advice and all this stuff. And it's like, I stepped away from it. And she's like, no, no, no, no. She's like, give it a chance, check it out, listen. And I've been, I probably haven't missed an episode in about a year now. So I really appreciate it. So I'll dive into some background. So in about 2012, 2013, I actually worked at a big box gym for a little while with selling gym memberships. And yeah, it worked out okay, but I had a friend of mine who was a personal trainer, brought me into the world. Never really got into it, right? Never really could find my passion for it. Always felt like, oh, this is work. This is what's going on. So I left that in about 2015. I got into tech sales and then I went into actually IT support and kind of got a little heavy. And right before I moved to Florida in 2016, I got up to about 240 pounds and was having to go to the bathroom a lot and was like, man, why is vision blurry and everything? Well, one of the doctor, and they checked my blood sugar and I was off the charts, right? So they sent me to hospital.  I lost about 30 pounds just by changing diet and just kind of walking and everything. Still never really found my fitness lifestyle, but as everybody else always, a lot of times does, is I yo-yo dieted, right? I tried low carb and tried all this, tried that. And I gained some of it back and I kind of got defeated. I got lazy and finally got to a point where I was starting to try again and I was just walking and it's just been really crash dieting again. And my girlfriend decided to try to give me a try OTF and I was like, sure, I'll give it a try. I went in there the first day and it kicked my butt, right? I barely could even run on the treadmill and fell in love, signed up, did like two days a week first when I first started the membership. And then I probably got three classes in and I went unlimited. Well, I think that turned into really just overdoing it for myself because I really loved workouts. I loved being able to not have to go into a big box gym and be intimidated and go through and understand like, oh, I gotta wait on equipment. I don't know what I'm really doing. I kind of have a background. I kind of, I think I can deadlift. I think I can do this stuff, but the equipment's always there and they have benchmarks, right? It was easy for me to go, but really what that turned into is just really me finding out that I really just enjoyed kicking my ass, right? So transformation challenge came one year and I was like, all right, I'm gonna do this. And I did it, but as you guys always said, I did it in the wrong way, right? All I did was crash diet and by the time I was done on transformation challenge, I had lost probably a good 15 to 20 pounds, but I did the in-body scan and I basically either barely gained any muscle or lost at all. And I really came to the realization then that it was like, this didn't work, man. I didn't feel like I got stronger. I was weak. I was whatever. So I was like, I really struggled with trying to figure out like, could I build the body that I wanted to build at OTF, right? Without just always being in the cardio rut. So really what I'm trying to figure out and since I've sent in my question, I've kind of made some changes based on the subsequent episodes that I listened to right after I sent in my question. They all seem to speak to me, right? So we'll kind of go, we'll start there. And really my main question is, how do I take the skills that I've learned from having a few very good coaches at OTF and transition that into weights, right? Like I'm moving into, trying to move into anabolic, but I'm trying to move into barbell moves, but I've always been doing dumbbell moves and body weight exercises with TRX and stuff like that. So I'm trying to figure out how I take those skills and how I transfer, okay, what weight should I start at? Yeah, so the transfer or the change is pretty straightforward. Stop doing OTF. It's not working for, it's not good for you. Go to traditional strength training and just start slow. Just start slow with the weights, work by feel. You wanna pick a weight that helps you, that allows you to perform good technique and good form, but with a decent amount of intensity within the prescribed rep range. MAPS anabolic has a pre-phase. I would start in pre-phase and I would do that for about a month and then I would move into phase one and so on. But it's pretty straightforward. I would drop OTF completely and go 100% MAPS anabolic and then just track your steps on a daily basis. Make sure you get a decent amount of walking throughout the day. And that's pretty much it, very straightforward.  The goal should be to get stronger, but not sacrifice form and technique, right? So you don't wanna, and you hear us talk a lot about the importance of building strength, building metabolism up and that's a good focus. But I sense like this kind of like, concern of like, I haven't been deadlifting for a long time or squatting. Maybe I don't have the best form or technique or whatever. Form and technique is everything, right? So don't be afraid that you're choosing too light of a weight to get your form and technique that you're like in risk of not seeing results. You're going to see results, especially I know the format at Orange Theory, there's nothing in there that compares to a deadlift and a barbell squat. So you deadlifting and barbell back squatting 135 pounds, which I'm pretty confident a guy like you could probably do with good form and technique. Even that amount of weight is significantly different than anything you did at Orange Theory. Orange Theory is a rack of dumbbells that stop it like what? 30 or, oh no, they have the bigger dumbbells that you can use for some of the exercises, but you're not doing any big leg movements with anything more than at best a hundred pounds, right? There's everything is under that pretty much and body weight stuff and suspension trainer. You're gonna see great benefit from just barbell back squatting and deadlifting and doing it real light, go light, and get the technique down until you feel really comfortable and confident and then slowly start to build on that and trusting the process, hitting, hit your protein intake. That should be a major focus of you overall things when nutritionally is eat whole foods, hit my protein intake every day consistently, not every once in a while or only when you work out every single day, hit that and be mindful of the calories you consume. But I think just doing that you're gonna see a huge change. Yeah, I honestly don't think there's anything wrong too with just focusing on those big core lefts to his point in terms of like the mechanics of it, learning it's a completely new skill. If it's something that you haven't been doing or have never done, it's gonna require a lot of attention in terms of like understanding your body and every incremental inch of that lift. So, if you're bracing the entire time, if you're getting in a depth, if you feel like you're in any kind of like discrepancy with your joints and there's a lot for you to kind of work your way through mechanically. It would help a lot to maybe even have a coach or somebody or friend or videotape even you doing these lifts and then posted them in our forums. So we can kind of help guide or some other people can kind of give you some cues and feedback. But really like being proficient in those lifts is gonna take you so much further in the rest of your pursuits. And I love Map Santa Bale like it is a great job of building muscle and strength. It might be a little bit much in terms of like learning that new skill, adding a lot of volume on top of that and kind of like moving in that direction. That might be a good bridge is like, those five core like multi-joint movements just really hyper focus on those. Yeah, I think starting pre-phase do that for four weeks first. Look, if I had to label or pick one thing that defines strength training, it wouldn't be weights, it would be rest period.  OTF is cardio, all of it's cardio.  This is gonna feel very different. The rest periods are what make this strength training. So you do your set, good form, decent intensity, don't go to failure, but decent intensity and then you rest. You rest for two minutes. You're literally sitting there waiting in between sets. That's what's gonna make it strength training. I'm so glad you said that. And a great way to help you stay in that mindset and the app name is slipping me, maybe Justin will remember by the time it gets to finish my point, is I would be doing my deadlift and recording it with my phone. With your bar path? Yeah, bar path, thank you. And I would have the bar path app and I would video it and then I would sit down in my rest period and I would be looking at my form, watching my technique and going, oh, it looks like my hips lifted a little much there. Oh, the bar came a little forward and use that minute to three minutes minimum that you're resting between sets to really analyze your form and technique, go set prop the phone back up, go do another set again, go back, reassess it, see what you're doing. Like get excited about learning this craft and getting good at it and who cares? Like to Justin's point, it may be the whole workout ends up being just deadlifting that day. That's okay. That lift is so impactful for you're gonna be your overall result and laying that foundation and getting good at that technique. I wouldn't even mind if that's what your workouts look like some days is where all you did was deadlifting shoulder press that day. That's all you did was barbell, overhead press and deadlift that day. But you took your time and you focused on getting really good at it and working on it. Yeah, you're gonna build that confidence and really that's what it's all about. Once you get that confidence, then it's gonna be a natural progression of like, well, I can keep adding weight and then you can feel your way through that because, you know, the goal obviously to keep like progressively overloading is gonna be a completely different mindset shift. And so that's what we're really kind of trying to hone in on. What's exciting about this is if you do take the time to who cares about how heavy the barbell is right now get good at the technique and you start to go like, okay, this is say the, you know, 10th time you've deadlifted at the gym and you're like, oh, okay, this is starting to click for me. And then you start stacking the weight on watch how fast you get strong and watch how much the gains pile on when you get to that place. But don't rush to get there because along the way we're gonna see results you're gonna get better but really focus on just getting good at those core lifts that Justin's talking about and make that your main focus. Use anabolic as your base. Like this is a good program but don't be afraid to just spend a whole workout focusing on one of the two of those main lifts.  I kind of know my way around a little bit. Like maybe I don't need preface. Let me just jump right in, right? So I did, right? I jumped right in, you know, to week one. And you know, the first day I wasn't really paying attention to myself and I ended up doing pretty much exercises from both categories and I wrecked myself, right? I was sore for two days after and it's like, you know, okay.  I felt like I had good form.  But, you know, of course it's always nice to have, you know, somebody, somebody look. But I think I've got a little bit of ego, right? Like how do I settle the ego to, you know I really need to go all the way back and really, really tell myself to slow down and go through pre-phase or should I just be slowing down because every day that I go in, I would say that I feel great. The lifts feel awesome. I feel like I can, I can deadlift. I feel like I can squat and, you know, I've done probably three workouts out of the anabolic out of, you know, day one, day two foundation. And then it's just like, I just, I'm sore afterwards for too long. So it's like, I feel like I can put more weight and put more weight and put more weight. So it's like, do I lower the overall volume and kind of go for instead of six, you know, sets? Do I do like three sets but try to just stay in that rep range of one to four or do I lower weight and continue to focus on form? Either way is fine, but starting pre-phase anyway. Yeah, I like the idea of lowering the weight because you're going to benefit from the practice. So because we're wanting to get good at these squatting, deadlifting techniques and you want to master that craft, reducing sets means less practice. So I would rather see you go lighter weight but keep the practice up. And then again, get into the bar path app. I think it's a very valuable app to get into and just start to really geek out on your technique.  I always love to, when I'm home lifting video my lifts because I always want to see where's my technique at? Where can I tweak little things here and there? And get obsessed with that. Like get really focused on becoming a really great squatter and deadlifter overhead presser. And instead of like, oh, I need to add more weight to the bar or I'm not sweating enough or I need to get more sore. Like that's kind of the mindset. That's the orange theory mindset of hammering the body, pushing, scoring more points. Like get out of that mindset, be all about form technique. Take your time, assess it with your videos, get into it like that. Yeah, it took me a long time. I mean, talking about that, it took me a long time to break away from the calorie burn mentality, right? Like it was like, oh, I can burn a thousand calories. And I was like, after I, you know, listening to this podcast and doing a lot of other reading and say, man, calorie burn, it just doesn't matter, you know, during the workout. And I kind of, I came across that with, you know, with food and diet as well. You know, I've got my fitness pal. At this point, you know, I'm really just trying to focus on when I log, I just log protein, right? I think I'm probably floating around 22, 2300 calories right now is probably what I'm floating at. And I kind of got up to about 205 since my email. But I've kind of, I think I'm stayed about stable there and I haven't, I don't really win the weekends, right? So, but I'm not gaining weight, right? So it feels like it's okay that I've kind of stable there and I'm shooting around 179 for protein. And I try to increase, I try to hit that and go over top of it. But that was the other thing that I did when I used to diet that I really took a shift on is last time I lost all that weight, dude, it was all Atkins bars and protein shakes and a little bit of chicken. So I've been trying to not use any of that. And I think one of the only things I really, you know, outside of eating out some a little bit here, really my biggest processed food right now, and I don't know if we consider it processed and the creatures have it, right? That's the major processed food that, you know, I consume every day, but it struggles for me because I can't eat eggs in the morning. So I usually have, I usually choose to do that since I usually eat meat. I love that. That's fine, that's fine. You're on the right track. You are. Just start pre-phase, give yourself some time, rest in between sets, focus on getting stronger and it's gonna work out for you. I'd love to hear where you're at, Tim, in the next like three to four months. So circle back with us if you can. Yeah, absolutely, definitely would. Yeah, I mean, I've been knocking around the idea of getting into the forum and I actually just ordered, I just ordered after the Stephen Cabral episode, I was like, man, I haven't been able to tolerate eggs for about 12 years and we had sushi the other night and I think it had a spicy mayo on it. So mayo is egg, right? And now I think that it's gotten to the point where now I'm like, well, now I can't have mayo, right? So that really, but that episode was key and I know you guys talk about it all the time and I figure if I listen to it enough, right? It'll eventually sink in. And I don't remember if it was Adam or Justin. I was like, I'll say it a different way and it's gonna click, right? So yeah. Hey, yeah, definitely do that.  So we'll put you in the forum so you're in there and we have connection with you. So he'll send you access to that. Thanks for calling me. You got it, man. Right on guys. Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you, Peter. Yeah, but what's your favorite thing to say about group training? Yeah, it just is not. It got him in there, right? It's again, it was sort of a stepping stone. That's the argument there. But the transition to go from that to traditional strength training, you feel like you're not doing anything. Yeah, I know you weigh it out because now you have to sort of reverse engineer that mentality and completely do a new playbook. But it'll work for him. He just asked, it's the mental part that's hard. You know, the sad part, the positive thing I have to say about Orange Theory is it's a great business. So it's smart because it gets a lot of people. I mean, that's the part that is smart about Orange Theory. The modality of training for most people is just, it's just not ideal. You know, the only other person I see like, I love like, Brendan is a person who I think can do it, right? You're an athlete, you're already in great shape. He doesn't need to change body composition, doing that kind of athletic training all the time. Sure, that's fine. It's kind of maintenance at that point. Yeah, yeah, sure, it's fine. But somebody who's trying to make body composition change, I just, it's a terrible strategy. It's not a long-term, it's not a winning strategy. And just because you can show me somebody who has lost a bunch of weight, well, show me that person in three to five years. If the value of the workout is how hard it is, there's a problem. That's a red flag. Our next caller is Mark from Canada. Mark, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey guys, thanks for having me. This is really exciting.  So that's fantastic. Awesome. Deal, Mr. real deal. Unite, yeah, yeah. Awesome. So the question that I have, it's kind of a series of questions, and I'll try to summarize my letter here as best I can, is, so currently I'm doing five sets of 12 to 15 reps of Zercher squats, stiff leg dead, later spent over rows and incline dumbbell presses. I've also added in suspension trainer seated pull-ups. And I also trained Brazilian jiu-jitsu four to five sessions a week and Muay Thai two to three sessions a week. And so I'm trying to understand like, am I overeating, under eating? You know, trying to do like, I'm trying to work on the reverse dieting thing. So I'm usually around 35 to 4,000 calories a day. And I'm definitely hitting 280 to 300 grams or protein a day, because I've been tracking nonstop since May. And so I weigh around, I weighed 200, well this morning, 297 pounds. And I'm just trying to, like I don't think I look any leaner and I'm just trying to see if I'm doing this right. And my big concern is losing strength because of Brazilian jiu-jitsu because it's super important at heavy weight and not putting on too much fat. And so also trying to understand like, would a suspension trainer be a good kind of alternative to the two week training sessions a week? Like do one weight, one suspension trainer? So yeah, I've got all sorts of questions. Yeah, too much, Mark. Yeah, you're doing too much, too much. Real quick, what's your target body weight?  How tall are you? Six one. So you're six one. What's your target body weight? Like if you were to say like, I want to weigh this much, this would be a good, you know, athletic or whatever body weight for me. Sure. 275 is kind of what I'm thinking. Like a solid 25 pounds down would keep me still in that heavy weight. I could probably go lower. And I guess that's really the fundamental question is like, I want to cut down but I need to kind of maintain that strength. Yeah, of course. Well, you know, with jiu-jitsu you're competing with weight classes. So it's strength to weight ratio is what you're looking for. Not total strength. But he's a heavy weight. So it doesn't matter, right? Well, no, at this point it's in the limit, right? It goes above. That's what I mean. But my point is if you were to go below into another weight class, it's really strength to weight ratio. That's important. But I would aim for protein in grams for your target body weight, not for your current body weight. So if your target body weight is 275, I wouldn't go above 270 or 275 for grams of protein. As far as training is concerned, you're training a lot. I wouldn't do more than one day a week of strength training, maybe four exercises and that's it. Four or five days a week of jiu-jitsu, two, three days a week of Muay Thai. Anything more than one day a week of moderate intensity, basic strength training is 100% going to be too much for sure. So unless you want to back off on some of the other training, then your goal with the strength training really is just to maintain joint health, prevent injuries and maintain strength. It's going to be really hard to gain strength with strength training while training as much as you are with jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai. Are you doing MMA? Is this prepping for MMA or are you just like doing both out of fun? No, I was doing, I was competing a lot years ago and now I coach and so I just, it's part of my like day to day routine, right? Is, you know, I go to the gym, I do Muay Thai, I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I'm in my 40s now, so I'm not doing any Muay Thai competition and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I'm trying to strive to get that purple belt one day and, you know, and so I really am just trying to stay as active and as healthy as I can. I've got lots, I've got young kids and I'm trying to make sure that I'm, that I'm just in good shape.  Mark, you said, did I hear you write 3,500 to 4,000 calories? Is that how many calories you're at? That's what I'm at. And that's like, is that enough? Is that too much? Like, is that where I'm running into issues? Well, I think where you're running into issues more than anything else is just the overtraining. I think that's a lot, you're putting a lot of demand on your body and you're trying to ask it to do something for you and it's just, you're working against it instead of with it. So I think that's just what it is. I think it's hard for us to say like, oh, that's too much. That's not enough. It sounds like a potentially good place to be calorie wise.  What is your, what is it? No, no, it's nine. I would say I'm well into the 90% of Whole Foods. Oh good, good. I just, I eat, I don't eat out very often. It's the, you know, the wife and I have a date and I once a month maybe where I'll eat out. I even avoid, you know, when my staff and stuff like that want to go out for lunches and that sort of stuff. Typically not involved in that. So I'm very cautious about trying to eat as healthy as I can. Yeah, you're, I think you're, I mean, like I said, I would look at protein, keep it around 270. Over that is, I mean, not bad, but probably a waste and could take away from things like carbs and fats. But you're doing too much strength. Even when you look at like top level competitors, okay? And you look at their competition schedule. A lot of times people look at a competition workout schedule and say, oh, that's how I should train. Even top level athletes and top member with top level athletes at high levels, jiu-jitsu or otherwise, right? People who compete and win tournaments and that stuff. You're also looking at self-selection bias of somebody who has better recovery genetically, somebody who has better resilience. They've obviously been training for a long time. So they've got, you know, but they've got that combination of good genetics on top of it. Even those people don't train like that all the time. They train like that to get ready for competition. So, you know, like I said, with four or five days a week of jiu-jitsu, and I know how demanding jiu-jitsu is. I've done a little bit of Muay Thai, I know how demanding that is. One day a week of strength training is, is plent, and literally, literally. Trying to figure out where to fit that in. You're doing, you're doing four exercises. You're gonna go to the gym and do four lifts, three to four lifts max. Yeah. And you're gonna keep the intensity moderate. Just to stimulate the muscle. You're gonna keep the reps low-ish. I wouldn't go high reps because that's too much volume. I would keep the reps around six to eight. I wouldn't lift to failure. I would just go in, practice the lifts and get out. That's gonna compliment your, your training. But any more than that, you're, you're redlining.  You're doing too much. So, so then should I go into a cut? I guess it's really the fundamental question. You know, I've heard, I've heard Adam say before, like guys that are like super heavy, we just, we don't even bother with reverse dieting or any of that. We just cut and go, like start, start cutting. Should, should I start doing that? I guess is kind of the question. I mean, it depends. I do, I am trying to get a little bit of, I want to bring down my body fat percentage, right? If you did, if you did, I would make it a very mild cut. I would not make it an aggressive cut. I would look at my total food intake and I would like, maybe cut, let's say one of my meals in half, in terms of the, the side that just start there, you know, a couple hundred calories and just slowly do a cut because you're, you really want to maintain your strength. So you want to do it in a very slow kind of way. And I honestly think if you did the strength training the way I said, you're probably going to get stronger. Yeah. So, and that's, I want to add to that. So I really wouldn't do much different now that you're going to get advice from us right now. Cause if you just came from, say, training three days a week of late, late training and then all that Muay Thai and Jiu Jitsu and just scaling you back to one day a week, scaling back the intensity, you actually might start to build a little bit of muscle, speed the metabolism up and kind of naturally lean out a little bit just from that advice. I would first kind of make that adjustment for a couple of weeks, see how you feel, what's going on with your body and see if you notice strength getting up, see if you notice waistline coming in a little bit. You might already be on the right track there. Then I would go, okay, let me drop my calories, say three, you know, three, 400 calories from there and see what happens. But I would first take the original advice of just cutting back on the strength training and the volume that might already start to get, cause my guess right now of why your kind of, your body fat and weight is staying where it's at is you're just throwing so much, yeah, your body is throwing so much out, you're just giving it enough calories to basically survive and maintain all the abuse it's taking. And so you're really not optimizing what you're doing by feeding the body appropriately and resting. Are you getting good sleep too on top of this? What does that look like? I've got a two and a half, two, two and a half year old, I have a set of twins, so two and a half years. Okay, that answers another fact here. Yeah, which is like another three days a week of training. Three more workouts left. It's starving for recovery here is what it sounds like. Yeah, I think so too. I think your body just needs, it needs a little bit more, right? I mean, if you could, I would ask you to try and scale one of those, one of those jiu-jitsu days or we tie these back a little bit too. Yeah, just focus on one of them for a while. I know that's a, you know, easy thing to say for us, but are you, do you do them on the same day or are they different days? They're on different days. So, well, one day a week is same day. So like my Tuesday is a jiu-jitsu session and then a Muay Thai session at night. That's a lot of training, man. It is. I would scale a lot of that back. I wouldn't do more than, I would not do more than four days a week of combined. Combined, yeah. You know, if jiu-jitsu is your main focus, then just do four days a week of jiu-jitsu. If you want to maintain some of the Muay Thai, go three jiu-jitsu, one Muay Thai, and you'll feel better. And still only one day of strength training, by the way. That's how much we think you're overdoing it, is that even if you scale back on the Muay Thai and the jiu-jitsu to four days, we still would say only one day of lifting and that same, that recommendation. That's how far over I think you- You'll feel stronger, faster in your body, old change. I mean, why not give it that for three weeks? I mean, and just see what happens.  Literally just do what we said. Scale back on the amount of jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai, one day of strength training with moderate intensity and just let's see what happens to the body in three weeks. We'll put you in the forum so we can keep an eye on you. And then I'd love to hear your feedback after three weeks of taking that advice and tell us what you're noticing. Okay, absolutely, that would be great. Yeah, thank you guys. That's really awesome. I really appreciate it. I had kind of a sense that this was gonna kind of be the answer of calm down a little, but I thought maybe I could just like use enough calories to kind of make up the difference. You know, that's an unfortunate bodybuilding saying.  There's bodybuilders. There's no such thing as overtraining. There's only under-eating. That's right. And it's a terrible, steroid-ed-out person would say something like that, you know what I'm saying? If you were hyper-hopped up on a bunch of anabolics and growth hormone and all- It's not even true then. Yeah, even then it's not true, but still it's, only then could you possibly- Almost get away with it then. Get away with something like that. But yeah, we're keeping an eye on you, Mark. So join the forum. Doug will send you a link to that. And then take that advice. At least give us at least three weeks. And let's like revisit how you're feeling and then we can go from there. Absolutely. That's awesome. Thank you guys so very much. I really appreciate it. You got it, man. All right on, brother. Awesome. Thank you. Have a good one. You got it. That saying should be more like, there's no such thing as overtraining. There's only under-eating and not taking enough anabolics. So if you're overtrained and eat more and take more anabolics in the field, that makes more sense. People need to realize this, like this is what happens. They look at top level athletes or competitors in their gym. They go to Jiu-Jitsu and like, oh, that's so-and-so. He won the U.S. Open or they're really good or whatever. Then they ask them, well, how do you train? How did you train for this tournament? Like, oh, I've been to Jiu-Jitsu five or six days a week. And then I, and so then they emulate it. Even top athletes, people who are on the spectrum of genetics when it comes to recovery and adaptation are like way different than the average person. Even they don't train like that all the time. They train like that in season. And if you look at the injury rate in season in comparison to off-season, it's astounding, you explode and they need an off-season to let their bodies catch up. We're talking about genetically gifted people. Well, also keep in mind too, you're asking a body composition question in addition to all that too. It would be different if he's just like, I wanna be the best at Jiu-Jitsu. Well, then keep going, bro. Get rid of the weight truck. Get rid of the weight truck. Stop, stop, stop. Just do Jiu-Jitsu. Just get hell of good at it. And just, okay, I'm okay with you doing five, six, seven days a week at it. Just getting good at your sport. You don't care to lose 20 pounds. You're not trying to build any muscle or strength.   But if you say things to me like, hey, I'd like to lose 20 to 30 pounds in addition to I wanna get good at these two different, well, okay, well now we're asking the body to do a lot. And body composition change and getting good at a sport are conflicting. Doesn't mean they're impossible to accomplish, but it just means they're conflicting. And so it takes a very delicate balance of how do I do just the right amount of this training so I don't lose my skills? I don't eat the right amount of calories. How do I eat the right amount of calories? So I'm not putting on a bunch of bad weight, but yet feeding myself so I can actually recover from the sport that I'm doing. Like it's a delicate dance that you're asking to do. Most people overshoot. They think more is better and that that's gonna get them faster. And almost everybody I ever talked to that is trying to juggle both of these are just doing way more than they need to. Look, if you like Mind Pump, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out some of our fitness and health guides. They're all free and many of them can help you get more muscle and burn more body fat. You can also find all of us on social media. Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump. 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