This is Bodybuilding 101. Today's topic, bulking and cutting, how to do either one. Let's go. Yeah, let's do it. Let's go. This, you know, popular topic. It is.  I'm gonna work on my bulking one of you guys to get a sandwich. Yeah. I'll get some coffee. No, you know, I want to talk specifically around the, because as you think about this, right, we've been doing this for a long time. I think, oh, bulking cutting is very simple. But there's a lot of myths around both bulking and cutting, in particular, how you combine training with bulking and training with cutting and all that stuff. So I think this would be a good episode. I think that there's, one of the things that I thought I was, that I thought was going to be the norm when I got into the space was like just this brilliance around nutrition and exercise programming. And it was not true. And I don't say that to insult everybody. That's like a bodybuilder, because there's plenty of bodybuilders that are very intelligent that know what they're doing, that are nutritionists. Like, so obviously there's exceptions to the rule. But it was more often the rule that a lot of these guys and girls that were just not dieting properly for a show. Like they extreme bulked and they extreme cut. And there was a much easier and better approach to the whole process. And yet they couldn't figure out why each time they went into a cut for a show, it got harder and harder. And they can never bring a better version of themselves to stage. And they were until the point where they would run four or five shows like that. And I forget, there was a saying in the bodybuilding world that they call like show fatigue or something like that.  And it's like, well, that's what's not, it's not too many shows. It's not the getting up on stage and posing that causes this. It's the extreme dieting and bulking that is causing them to hit these hard plateaus. 100%. And by the way, I know this is bodybuilding, but bulking and cutting is important to understand for athletes as well. Athletes also, and we as we get into this, the same principles that bodybuilders typically are looking to to apply or the goals I should say that they're trying to get from bulk and cutting are similar to what athletes would get when they'd want to gain size or lose size. So athletes would want to gain size, particularly with strength. And some sports size can be advantageous. And it or if they're trying to get smaller, they're not trying to lose performance. They want to improve their performance while being smaller. So this episode applies to and then, of course, the average person who wants to, you know, approach bulking and cutting wants to do it the right way so that it's both sustainable. They don't have plateaus and they feel good why they do that. So bulking just loosely will define this as the attempt to gain muscle and size typically with minimal or no fat gain and or the pursuit of a fast metabolism. In other words, bulking is the process by which my goal is to gain muscle. And I say typically with minimal or no fat gain, because it's very rare where someone's purposely trying to gain body fat. Now, as cases where this will happen, I can think back to some female clients that would come to me after dieting for too hard and too long. And we needed to gain body fat to get the hormones to regulate.  In fact, they wouldn't need me for that. Well, you also say minimal because it's also almost impossible to be eating in a surplus, trying to gain and not gain some body fat with that. The goal is that, right? And then the other part is the pursuit of a faster metabolism. Bulking, when I first was a trainer, was pretty much relegated to just people who wanted to get bigger. Nobody else bulked. Now we're starting to see people use bulking as a way to speed up their metabolism so that it makes it easier for them to get lean, which I think is a great approach and we'll talk about. So bulking in this episode, and that's what we're talking about. When we say bulking, cutting is the attempt at losing body fat with minimal or ideally no muscle loss and no strength loss. So when people say they're cutting, they typically aren't trying to lose muscle or performance or strength. That's not what people are after. So that's the goal. Now, I guess we could talk about how to do it and get as close as you can to accomplishing those specific goals. Yeah, also that maybe some of the common mistakes in, you know, back to the original point I was making with the bodybuilding community. And I'm highlighting them because that's their sport. And so they're, they're the most professional at it. And yet they still make a lot of mistakes, which just in my, my, my point is that really highlights how much the average person who's trying to do what they basically do for a living, right? These, these people cut and bulk for a living or for, you know, for a hobby and then you have the average person who is, is trying to emulate what they're doing, whether they're trying to get on stage or not, they're trying to emulate that what these people have learned how to perfect, but the truth is a lot of them have not figured that truly out. And we see this extreme bulking and extreme cutting.  If you, if you, if you're okay with your current weight and you want to go through this process of, Oh, I want to bulk up and build some muscle. And then I want to then trim down, say for summer and lean out. And, and if you end up in the same exact position, lean body mass wise, so it's the same amount of muscle before you go on the bulk and, and then at the end, the end process of bulking all the way up, say 10, 15, 20 pounds and then cutting all the way down. And you're at the same lean body mass. Yeah. It was just like a lot of extra calories and a lot of extra work for the same body composition. And this happens all the time. I'm glad you said that.  And here's what cutting is not losing weight or muscle with very minimal or almost no fat loss. And that's what ends up happening when people do it the wrong, the wrong way. Let's start with diet first. Um, and believe it or not, this is where the confusion, uh, this is where I don't think there's the most confusion. Now there's confusion here, but I think there's more confusion in other, uh, other aspects of this, but with, with diet, there's bulking and cutting actually have one thing, uh, strongly in common, whether you're cutting or whether you're bulking, that doesn't matter. You still should aim for your target body weight in protein. Both diets need to be high in protein. A cutting diet that's high in protein will burn more body fat and, and lose less muscle and a bulking diet that's high in protein will build more muscle and will gain less body fat. Now that, that's true. But would you make the case when, when coaching a client that it's even more imperative that we're hitting that or above for my client that's in a cut? Yes, even more important. Right. Because if you were hitting your protein intake, 80, 90% of the time with a few days here and there that are under and we're in a caloric surplus, the likelihood that we're going to pair down or lose muscle in that process, saying that everything else is controlled, that, you know, stress is fine and your programming is good. Uh, we probably won't pair down to lose muscle, but in a caloric deficit and, you know, pushing the body, right? Stressing the body like that and missing a few protein days here or there could be a lot more detrimental. Yeah. A calorie surplus is protein sparing. Um, so you can get away with less protein, but still at the end of the day, if you compare two bulking diets, everything else identical calories or anything else identical, but one's high calorie, uh, high protein. And the other one is it the high protein one's going to build more muscle and gain less body fat in a calorie surplus, which this is actually how I used to control, uh, my dieting of bulking and cutting when I was competing is I really didn't move a lot of variables because I needed to be so precise with this and I had timelines and things like that. Yeah, I would be like, I would, when in a bulk, I was eating two, two and a half cups of rice with all my meals and allowing some fats, like butter and extra calories that would come from things like that. When I would go the other direction, I would pull it from carbohydrates. I really wouldn't manipulate protein. Protein would kind of stay consistent all the time. The only thing I would kind of manipulate is my, my fats and my carbohydrates. It would be the way I would manipulate. It was just an easy way to do it. It's like, if I have, if I'm eating five, six meals a day and I'm eating two cups of rice with everything on that, and now I want to cut, say three to 500 calories of the diet. I simply just cut those, you know, serving sizes of rice in half and maybe a little bit less oil or butter. And I'm, boom, now I've got a 500 calorie deficit. And the other reason why, uh, protein is probably more important to cut is because it's, uh, it's appetite suppressing. This actually might make it a challenge in a bulk, sometimes hitting your protein targets and trying to hit a surplus of calories. And we'll get to what the surplus and deficit should be. Sometimes it makes it hard to hit a surplus, especially if you're like a skinny kid, you got fast metabolism. You're one of those people that's like hard gainer.  But when I hit that protein, I'm like, so full. In that case, uh, liquid protein, um, like protein shakes can be quite beneficial because, but with a cut, it's great. Like you want appetite suppression when you're trying to cut. So high protein is like super valuable. I remember when I, when this light bulb went off for me as a young kid trying to gain weight, um, and the other kind of hack to this was too, that when I was, when I was a hard gainer and trying to eat more calories and I knew I had a protein, I would just eat everything in sight and that would be burgers for everything. Right. And I would get so satiated that I wouldn't, I couldn't get to my, my protein. I actually found eating lower calorie leaner meats promoted me to be hungry again sooner. And you were prioritizing the protein. Yeah. And so it was easier. I would have never thought that me switching over to turkey and chicken and these like leaner cuts would actually help me in a bulk, but I actually found what would happen is that I could eat that turkey or chicken.  Whereas if I had a big old juicy five guys burger, I would be full for the next four or five hours. And so I had an easier time hitting my macro targets by actually eating prioritizing the protein. That's, that's 100% what both of them have in common. I think that's very different about both of them is not carbs and fats or anything like that. Those you could play with, as long as you get your essential fats, you could play with both of them.  That's the difference between a bulk and a cut. Now the question is always, well, how do I know how if I'm eating more than what I'm burning or less than what I'm burning? The best way that I know that we know as of right now is literally to track your normal diet, don't change your diet. Track it for a week and then you get your average per day and your maintenance is probably around whatever that is.  Track everything on an app. At the end of a week, take your total divided by seven. There's your average. Now you know if you eat above that, you're in a surplus. If you eat below that, you're in a cut and that's a good place to start. Today's YouTube giveaway map sent a ball like advanced. Here's how you can enter to win. Leave a comment below this video on the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. Also, because of this episode, we put the two most popular bodybuilding style workout programs that we have on sale. Maps aesthetic 50% off. Maps split 50% off for this episode only. If you're interested, just click on the link at the top of description below. All right, back to the show. What would you say would be like the most common pitfall in terms of like being in a cut and now you're adding activity in excess or being in a bulk and not having, having enough stress and activity? I would say maybe putting the car before the horse in this situation, meaning that I would first want to figure out all this maintenance stuff before I started adding any more activity or anything else. And so, and I'll circle the entire back to the question that you're kind of alluding to, Justin, is that like you, one of the things that's important is that you track and figure this out because most people want to use like an app that guesstimates all this and I can't stress how often those things aren't precise. What's your age? What's your height? What's your weight? Here's your calories. And then they add in their exercise component and activity and all these things are going to start doing. And now they're having such a hard time figuring out where their maintenance is. So when I recommend the calorie tracking, I also tell them I don't want any, I don't want any outside activity that you would normally do. Yeah, keep everything the same. Yeah, I don't want you to go for an extra walk because you're trying to impress me. I don't want you to get on the treadmill after your workout. Like if you have been consistently forever working out four days a week, that's fine. You can stay doing that. But don't do any extra activity because I want to truly find this maintenance out. And so back to your kind of question is I think what a big mistake people make is they're excited. They're pumped up. I'm going to start this diet and they just start to do everything at once. And it's not how I want to do that. I want to slowly introduce activity and then eventually cardio and then cutting and we're kind of playing this game through the whole process versus trying to throw the whole kitchen sink at once. Now a good rule of thumb, I'm going to give a general number because this is really very widely depending on who I'm talking to. And in some cases I wouldn't do this. But generally speaking, a surplus or a deficit would be in the range of three to eight hundred calories, I would say. So three hundred to eight hundred calories above where your maintenance is would be your bulk three hundred to eight hundred calories below where your maintenance is would be a cut. Now, when would I not do this?  I'm not going to do that. I'm going to put you on the bulk and do what's called a reverse diet. So now, how do I know if this is the right bulk number? I would gauge it off performance. Here's one of the mistakes people make with a bulk. They look at the scale. Lean body mass doesn't come on very quickly.  That's not muscle. So it should be pretty slow. Like you should see your your weight go up a few pounds a month and and have correlating strength gains. That means you're on the right track. Don't make the mistake that I always made in bulks, which was, oh, I'm getting stronger, but I only gained three pounds. Let me double my calories.  It's crazy to think that we're having a whole, this conversation centered completely around bulking. So, you know, building or adding weight and cutting, cutting down or losing weight. And the scale is probably one of the worst things that you can use in both situations. It's not a good indicator of am I am I am I going about this the right way, which is also to back kind of back to Justin's point of our question is like, I want to get a really, and I can't stress the importance of the figuring out the maintenance first. And really sometimes I'll stretch somebody two weeks if we were really inconsistent for a week. It's like, I want to get enough data that we can confidently say, hey, if I just ate at 2,500 calories and kind of went through my life the way it is, I'd probably stay right around the same right around here. This is homeostasis for my body. Okay, cool. We know what that we know what that looks like. And I'm telling them to track steps to because I'm going to use this as a way to manipulate activity and the deficit. So I know that, oh, this person walks 4,000 steps a day on average, they work out three times a week, and they eat 2,500 calories. That is maintenance for us. Now comes in. And now that we know that, deciding whether we're going to bulk or cut is easy. Or like, now that's just a preference like what you said, oh, if it's really low calories, I'm going to bulk them in a reversed item. If they're in a healthy place, oh, we might might cut first. But finding that baseline out is maybe one of the most important parts of this entire thing so that you know how to kind of like methodically adjust. Yeah, if you base it off the scale, here's what you'll do. You'll overcut or over bulk, as will always happen.  If you're losing, you know, three pounds, four pounds in a week, maybe the first week because that can be water. But if that's consistent, you ain't losing body fat. And back to Justin's kind of original question, like the biggest mistakes, this is one of the biggest mistakes is and whether you're in a cut or a bulk, the initial feedback of the scale tends sends a signal that you're doing the right things when many times you're doing the wrong thing. Yeah. So you go in a bulk, you add in all these calories and you're going after it. And the scale goes up two pounds. And so you get this confirmation like, oh yeah, I'm doing the right thing. I'm bulking, you know what I'm saying? Or the opposite is true. You're like, okay, it's time to cut to brem of the cardio, cut the calories, 1000 calories. Oh, I dropped five pounds this week. I'm doing good. It's like, no, it's like it's the opposite. It's like, I don't want to see much movement at all on to the scale. It's like why it's not even something you should really focus too much on is if we're going for lean muscle mass and like that's like our target goal of like gaining but we're it's lean tissue with that. It's a very gradual process to that as you found out like you can't like you can easily overdo that to the point where you're gaining mass and it feels like oh, I'm gaining size.  And Sal's 300 to 800 per so I put you on 500 calories. And you're definitely eating 500 more calories. But the scale goes down a little bit. I don't care. If you tell me you're getting stronger, you're feeling you have you have energy body fat and I know that I've added 500 calories to your diet. Hold the line. Yeah, that's right. We're good. Let's stay on this course. Stronger part is important. Yes. The fact that you're if you're responding and I because I know we figured your maintenance out and I know we're in a 500 calorie surplus right now. And just because the scale stayed the same or even potentially went a tiny bit down, I'm not tripping. You're you're probably building muscle just a slow process. I think it's a good idea. You want to find out your maintenance. You want to hit your protein targets, either cutting or bulking, you want to go in this surplus or deficit.  That's the best gauge because then you can get a body fat test. And then you can weigh yourself. And now the weight is is a good metric because now I can relate that to my body fat and go Oh, I gained five pounds on the scale. My body fat percentage stayed the same or went down. Wow, it was all muscle or I lost four pounds on the scale.  I might have lost the muscle. I want to add to that. So I never wanted to course correct until I had two negative body fat test in a row. So don't don't swing the pendulum the other way. That's right. A second test confirms it. Like so let's say I do my first body. It's two weeks in. I did the adjustment to Justin. He's got the 500 calorie surplus. We do a body fat test. And it's it's not in the most ideal situation. He didn't put on much lean body mass at all kind of stayed the same or like that. Oh, should I add a bunch more like no, let's wait and see what happens on the next one. And if it still isn't in the positive direction and it's going the opposite direction that I want, then I will course correct. Because sometimes you'll just have an off week or two or a stale. It's just the body's interesting the way it works. The body doesn't just and that's you're right it go it grows and shrinks and spurts to just like how children grow. Yeah, it's so it's so funny it emulates that if you ever watched the chart on a child, it's not like it seems like it happened overnight. Yeah, it does. It does. Have it. It happens. Like it was a big study on the yeah, the doctors won't see that the kid for six months and he grew five inches. It wasn't like he did a fraction all the way every single night. I was like most of it was in a block. Yeah, like two or three blocks of these books. Yeah, I feel the same way our metabolism is true. Like when you're building muscle, it's like I'm in a surplus. I'm stronger, stronger, stronger, stronger, no scale, nothing on the scale. And then boom, three pounds on the scale. So the same thing we're getting leaner, which is why I want two negative tests that come in a row before I just my plan. Awesome. All right, let's talk about training strategies. Here's where I think everybody has it. I don't think I know everybody has this backwards. Everybody does this totally backwards. Here's what people do when they're trying to cut. They're trying to cut so they ramp up volume, ramp up intensity, ramp up workouts. I'm trying to burn more calories. When they're trying to bulk, everybody does less trying to conserve calories. I want to conserve calories, whatever. Now, the opposite is true. If I'm in a cut, if I'm having less calories, my body can handle less stress, less volume. I can over train much easier. I don't want to try to beat myself up to burn those calories. I want to try and keep my body from overtraining. When I'm bulking, now I can handle the harder workouts. I can handle more volume. I could push the weights. I could push the intensity because I have the extra calories and the extra nutrients. Everybody does the opposite. You're looking at cutting workouts. I know they're like ridiculous, intensive volume. It's all from the calorie burn. It's seen off the momentum. A lot of times, people get caught in that sort of hamster wheel where it's like, I want to lose body fat, but really they want to lose weight and they want to do everything they can and add it all at once. But they need to preserve muscle and the only way you can preserve muscle is to do the right dose. The old adage in the fitness world in cutting workouts was all around calorie burn. It was that's what decided if a workout was for bulking or for cutting was based off of how many calories it burned. And so this idea of high intensity, supersetting, circuit training, hit training, all these modalities where you're burning tons of calories. Oh, that's going to aid in your cut. Well, it might aid in you losing weight, but it's also potentially going to aid in you losing muscle to your point because you're not feeding the body proper nutrition. Yeah, I mean it's it's anybody who's ever gotten a consistent cut or bulk will tell you like, you don't recover as fast in a cut. It's harder to push myself. My energy levels might be might be lower. And if you push it too hard, then you start to push your body into over training where it's going to want to hold on to body fat, it's going to want to ramp up cravings to make you eat more. This is a bulk. You get away with the volume. You can train harder in a bulk. And that's why you're stronger. You're by the way, when you get stronger, even if you did the same amount of sets better, your volume went up. So if all your lifts went up 10 pounds, that means your volume of training naturally went up. What made that happen? The extra calories? Well, and also we primarily use lifting weights to build muscle or send a signal to build muscle when it's most loudest and most likely going to isn't a calorie surface and a deficit that's going to happen. I used to tell my my clients that we're competing that, listen, the hard work, the body that's going to get up on stage and we're going to present that body that everybody is trying to cut towards is already built. If we're in the cut, it's already done. That part's done. The muscle is there. At this point, we want to preserve as much as that muscle we can while we just chisel away at just the body fat and there's a real art to that. Part of that art is knowing how to just stretch the body enough to where it carves away a body fat, but hangs on the muscle. One of the best ways of doing that is by doing it through diet and not through exercise, doing it through exercise, which is a stress and pushing the body really hard when you're not when you're not feeding it properly is you're sitting in a super loud signal for it to pare down. Right. So people are like, OK, well, high wraps, low wraps, which one's better for bulking and cutting? Both high wraps and low wraps build muscle and they'll build the most muscle when the most novel for you. So that that's true whether you're bulking or cutting both bulking when again muscle cutting, when at least keep muscle, you want to send a novel signal. So when you switch into a bulk or cut, it's a good idea to switch up your programming to send a novel signal. But the big thing to consider is when I'm cutting, I can't handle as much volume. So do not try to ramp up the volume at the attempt to try and burn more calories. That is a that is how everybody screws themselves up with their workouts when it comes to to cutting in particular. No. One of one of my favorite strategies, whenever I'm transitioning from a cut to a bulk or vice versa, is to switch programming to just for the for the novel stimulus. But when I'm in a cut, I'm the way I'm approaching the workout is like I've been training already for a while. I already came out of a bulk. I'm now in the cut. I've already built up all that muscle. It's like go in there, do the work, touch the weights. It's like it's the stuff that I've been doing consistently as far as how much weight I'm not trying to hit PRs. I'm not trying to stretch the extra set. I'm not trying to go to failure. I'm not doing any of that stuff like that. You go in there and you consistently touch those weights while feeding the body properly. You're going to hang on to that muscle. You will for the most part when you start flirting with pushing it and really stretching yourself or really cutting hard or really starting to ramp up activity like cardio is when you sacrifice. By the way, here's what here's the main theory is to why that happens when you push the body with lots of stress, exercise of stress, calorie deficit is a stress and you overcome your body's ability to recover and adapt to that stress. What it does is what it's it's it's like it's a you know, like commercial where there's like a button you push and it gives you the answer. Your body has this button that is that what it's the button that it pushes when it's under too much stress, which says get rid of muscle store body save energy. Right. Because muscle is calorically active in the sense that it burns a lot of calories, it's expensive tissue nutrient wise. Body fat's not body. That's also a great insurance policy. If I have a lot of body fat on me and that's just and we're starving or I'm under a lot of stress and I can't get food, I'll survive. So if you push the body too hard in the cut, you're already in the deficit now you're pushing it with training. What you're essentially telling your body is get rid of muscle hole on the body fat, which makes it very, very difficult to continue to get leaner. That's what causes most of the plateaus in that type of process. All right. So let's talk about mental hurdles. Here's where I think the discussion gets interesting because the mental hurdles, even when you do everything right, are really hard for bulking and cutting, especially because the people that tend to bulk tend to be insecure about being too small or too skinny.  And so that poses challenges. The reverse also poses challenges.  If you've lost a lot of weight, you're going on a bulk to speed up your metabolism, feel a little bigger, uh-oh, reverse gears. So let's talk a little bit about. So I don't, I can't speak for the other competitors out there, but I definitely looked like the stereotypical bodybuilder with the big old oversized hoodie over his head and headphones on and like just baggy everything. And I used to train this way. Now, I know why I was drawn to that. It wasn't like a fashion statement. Like this, the psychological game was so big and so impactful that I didn't, I wanted to fool myself. I wanted to cover myself up and not allow like the, how much my pumps or what I look like today or if I knew too, there was days when I would be carrying a little bit of inflammation. And so then it would look, I literally look when you start and the leaner you get, the more this is like this where you like, oh my God, I feel I'm doing everything right. But yet I look fatter today. Like I had those, I had all those challenges. And so I, I'm such a numbers person and I believe that I did the work. I did the work and figure out my maintenance. I've done the due diligence of like tracking my stuff. It's like, I know I'm hitting my protein thing. I know I'm doing it like I got to trust the process and part of trusting the process and getting over this mental hurdle. Knowing that you were going to mess with yourself if you looked in the mirror. And so I would cover myself up. I would stay covered up purely for the mental game of knowing that I would get in my own head and start to measure that the scale is the same way. It's like it's like another way of I think the scale and the mirror sometimes can lie to us and that can really get in your head and then make you course correct. And so I would cover up like that. Yeah. So with bulking, if you're the hard gainer, okay, the mental games with bulking that can happen, hurdles is wow, if the scale is going up, I must be doing good. That was me. Like if the scale is going up to the point, here's how bad it was. And this is just a little self-awareness. But as a kid, I would always weigh myself at the end of the day after my last meal because I knew I was heaviest at that time. I had to see that number go up. And if a particular dinner made me hold more water, it made me gain a little bit of weight on the scale. Well, guess which dinner I would have most nights, right? The most inflammatory meal I could eat. So for that person, bulking can be a challenge because anything going up on the scale is a good thing, even though it may all be body fat. And this is what would happen to me.  This is more common for women.  Now any pound that goes up on the scale is like nails on a chalkboard. It's like terrible. Uh-oh, I went too high in a surplus. Back out type of deal. So the scale can really, I would say is your enemy unless you combine it with other metrics and you're objective about the metrics. Scale, body fat test, once every two weeks, otherwise don't touch them at all. And then like Adam said, if you get two consecutive measurements that are going in the wrong direction, then you start to make some adjustments.  I think I want to get really lean. It's terrifying to feel yourself getting smaller. Uh-oh, I'm getting smaller. I'm weaker. This isn't good or whatever. And then you'll reverse out.  Any pound that goes down, I should say, is now a plus even though they're losing muscle. The irony of this is that even though these are two completely different individuals and are insecure about two completely different things, it's exactly the same thing. It's exactly the same thing that's going through their head. And that's why too, I don't like, the other part of this is recognizing that this is a really long process and slow process and accepting that. It's just not like part of why this is so challenging and there's such a mental hurdle here is that we're marketed to and we're constantly see these 30 day challenges and these before and afters. And there's always this example of somebody who did something crazy radical in three months or six months. And so we have this perception that, man, if I'm dialed, I'm doing all these things, I should see all this. And then when we don't, we assume it's wrong or we're not doing something right. And then we course correct. And when we course correct, we many times over correct and we just shoot ourselves in the foot. And so part of that, then this is why the very beginning of this conversation, I started off with how important the maintenance thing is, how important of really figuring out what do I, you know, if I stayed consistent with these calories and I did my daily habits, this is my routine. I go to work, I do this. It's like, that's pretty damn, that's like 90% of my life outside of random vacations and different stuff. Like that's what I do. And you know what it takes to kind of just maintain your body. That's so important. Cause from there, you can make these little adjustments and you just, it's a hurry up and wait. Here's your objective measurements that you can use. And I do not suggest you do these daily cause it will mess with your head. I think literally once every two weeks is a good place to look, but it's weight, body fat percentage, circumference measurements. These are all good. If you do all three of them better cause you can compare all of them. And then lastly, here's my favorite metric to pay attention to, which is performance in the gym. If you're stronger, whether you're bulking or cutting. First off, if you're bulking, you better be getting stronger. If you're getting stronger while you're cutting, you are crushing it. You're doing amazing. If you maintain your strength while you're in a cut, you're crushing. You're doing very good. So those four things are what should drive which direction you go. Not the subjective feeling of, I feel fluffy or I feel small or I feel big or I'm gaining too much or what's going on. That will 100% point you in the wrong direction.  It's like that was, and so that was really enlightening for me to go like, wow, how many of my clients go through this? Where they eat a food. They don't even know, they don't even know, they don't even know that they have an inflammatory response to a food. It's a food they eat all the time.  What it had nothing to do with actually body fat going on there and it's temporary and it'll go away in the next 48 to 72 hours, but you don't know that. And so you see that and you wake up after a day of what you thought was perfect. I did my walk, I worked out, I was perfect on my diet, anything perfect and then you wake up and you look worse than what you did the day before. You gotta know yourself. Like for me, if I felt bigger, then I was moving in the right direction. And so objective measurements would have really helped me quite a bit. For someone else feeling smaller might just be like, yeah, I'm going in the right direction even though they're losing muscle and getting weaker. So those objective measurements every couple of weeks are really important because read those, deny your feelings, look at those numbers and go, okay, here's what's actually happening. All right, last, let's talk about when to stop the bulk or the cut. Now for me, I think that with a bulk in particular, I think once you stop gaining muscle, once the body fat percentage starts to climb on its own, like muscle's not going up, body fat's going up, that's a pretty easy sign, but here's another good sign to stop the bulk. You just, you can't eat that many calories anymore. This is one that people run into. It's like, oh man, I'm eating 3,500 calories.  I'm force feeding myself. Like if you start to get to this mental state with your bulk, it's probably a good idea to reverse out of it because you're not, you're not training anything good by doing that. Now with the cut, when do you stop a cut? Well, if your performance really starts to decline in the gym, if you notice low libido, if you notice lots of fatigue, if you feel ravenous, not just like normal hunger, but like all you're doing is obsessing about food. And if you've never really done a hard cut, especially competitors, bodybuilders in particular, will tell you about this, they'll have dreams of apples and strawberries and stuff like that. You start to obsess about food. That's probably a good idea to come out of the cut. That's so you know you're getting lean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, when you originally put this, I was like, I don't know how I'm gonna communicate this because I find that there's a bit of an individual variance here, right? And mostly what that variance looks like is how long we've been cutting or bulking and or where we at body fat percentage. For example, if I'm in a cut for somebody and I'm cutting somebody who has, they're 35 plus percent body fat. They have a lot of body fat to lose. Taking a four to stay in a deficit and a cut for a longer period of time because they have so much body fat like that, that person I might allow to stretch out longer, three, four, five, six weeks in a row of doing a cut without interrupting that. If I have a client who is getting ready for stage and they're 8% body fat and we've been cutting for a week or two weeks, I'll probably have a refeed day in there or a maintenance to surplus week and then go back to the cut. So it depends on where somebody's body fat percentage is and how long they've been doing it on when I would probably interrupt that. I think what you gave with like the way you feel is a good general idea.   So another way to look at that would be like, again, going back to the original rule of the two tests in a row. So that would be a course adjustment, right? So let's say this person is like, you're saying 35% overweight and they do a body fat test and we don't really move the needle much. Again, we're not gonna course correct, stay the course, we do another one and they again don't. Okay, we probably need to reverse out of this. So that's how I would probably gauge that. It's like, again, going back to the test of I'm gonna, two bad tests, two bad tests means we're not moving in the direction that I'm supposed to be moving. If we're in a cut, we're supposed to be. I'm glad you said that because a bulk can be used as an effective way to break through a plateau in a cut and a cut can be used as an effective way to break through a plateau in a bulk. In other words, what Adam just talked about was somebody who was eating low calories. And so this is not somebody who's eating a lot of calories and isn't losing weight. They're eating already low calories. We're already down to 15 or calories, 16 or calories. And they're not losing body fat, two weeks in a row. The reason why he would reverse them is because now let's go into a metabolism boosting two or three week period or maybe even just a one week period to get that metabolism kicked up so we could start the fat loss process over. Same thing with being in a bulk for a long time. The whole feeling of I can't eat anymore. Oh my gosh, I'm so stuffed. One of the remedies to that oftentimes is to go in a small deficit. Small deficit for a week and then your appetite comes right back and you probably lost no muscle.  And again, I like using that kind of like, I know it's generic to say like two tests in a row but like that's a cool. I think that's a good way to do it is like give yourself that time that you're not just having a bad week or you just had some things that were inflamed you or like you've got enough time of consistently back to back tests that didn't move in the positive direction for you. Okay, now let's make a course direct adjustment. And in the case of where you're at calorie wise and how long we'd probably dictate that. Like you said, like if you got somebody who's got a long ways to go body fat wise but they're already down to 1700 calories or what about that? I don't have a lot more room to keep cutting that person. We might be due for a reverse diet and go the other direction for a little bit before we cut down and that really is dependent on where they're at. That's awesome. Now because this episode was titled with bodybuilding and bodybuilders or people who follow bodybuilding are the ones that really get interested in bulkhead cutting. Our two most popular bodybuilding workout programs are gonna be 50% off for this episode. So MAPS aesthetic, MAPS split both bodybuilding style workout programs 50% off. You can find them at mapsfitnessproducts.com but use the code body101 for the 50% off discount.


What's going on everyone? Sam here with late in sports cards. We're doing the right break now, luckily. You sure? 23 top tribute baseball hobby, six box case break number 15. Pick your team style. Let me read off the names of the list and the teams. Ada D with the Giants, Anthony C with the Royals who said Poisson in his order note. Brian B Cardinals, Chris F White Sox Nationals. Edward P Astros Dodgers and Metz Eric C with the Blue Jays. Graham M Twins, Jason K Angels, Jeff M Diamondbacks, Orioles Yankees, Mariners Rangers, Joe K with the Cubs, Joseph S Guardians, Justin M Padres-Fillies, Keith J with the Tigers, Kari S with the Marlins, there you go Kari. The Marlins in this one, which is the right one. Michael B Pirates, Mickey M Brewers, Randy R with the Red Sox and Reds, Richard L Rockies and Reyes. Silas A with the Athletics and Thomas J with the Braids. So good luck here everybody. Let's do it. Here we go, tribute baseball. Also there is a cosmic chrome break from last night over on channel two tonight guys. Let's fill that on up. All-star promo does still apply as well. Did the order drink? Yep. Beautiful, beautiful thing to hear. Here we go. Good luck everybody. Tribute. I was legitimately panicking for a second there. I was like dude what happened? Yeah, there's no way. It's also so late. Berry D. Give me one second Amber. That is going to be a Green J-Ram 299, Corbin Burns and Nick Castellanos 2199. That's the one there for the Phillies. Basically we usually, most days we break in order of different sports. So we'll go baseball, basketball, football. That's generally how we go. So that's the reason Chronicles draft picks. It was supposed to go last night but we had to move it to tonight because we didn't get the product in in time. Yeah. Goose Gossage for the Yankees, 82 of 99. Nice one there Yankees. Very cool. Then we've got Trout and O'Tonny. Game used dual jersey, 99 for the Angels. There is a scratch on that unfortunately. I'm going to send an empty box and wrapper. Yeah, so sorry about that Amber. We had, again the product wasn't in here in time on yesterday. These are like the perfect tick-tock breaks too. There's Mookie Betts and Christopher Morel. The 150. Color match of blue auto for the Cubs. Nice one there. Congrats Cubs. Very nice, very nice. On the next pack. That was violent. Oh, you haven't seen violent. But you might. Christian Yelich. Don Mattingly. Nice one there too. 199 on the Olympus Auto for the Yankees. Donnie Baseball. No, Wahoos. This is actually a basket weaving, basket weaving channel. Yeah. We open sports cars. Yes. We just sit there and open the doors. Super cars all day. Lou Gehrig, Alec Thomas. Nice one there. Fernando Tatis Jr. to 75. Jersey, Jersey, Jersey. I was going to say, that's like your boy right there, Wahoos. Last pack. Schmidtie. Jazz Chisholm and Jose, Honey Nut Berryost, 199 for Blue Jays. Even if we were doing that with this guy right here, it wouldn't be peaceful. It would not be peaceful. You can't even do basket weaving now. No shot. No shot. No shot. Miguel Cabrera and Mikey Stremski. Peter Lanzo, bat, bat, Jersey to 199. Nice polar bear. Verdi True. Verdi. Verdi. Verdi True. And if you're not following on TikTok, make sure to drop a follow so you know when we go down. Base Shane Bieber to 125 for the Guardians. Nice one there, Cleveland. And guys, 19 to go on select impeccable Teemo. There's a group break right here, Matthew. I don't think we have personals in stock yet. Make sure it's the right break number. Fair, fair, fair, fair, fair. Luke Voight to 25 on the orange for the Nats. Just a Jersey, I think, of Otani. That's been it so far. Luke Voight. There's a Green Oswald Paraza to 99. And Byron Buxton, Tori Hunter, dual Jersey to 199 for the twins. Bob Gibson, Nestor Cortez, Nasty, Nestor, two-colored Jersey to 99 for the Yankees. Nasty, Nestor. Let's go, Nestor. Sandi Alcantara, Jacob Igrom. Nice. David Ortiz, tribute to nicknames. Big Poppy. That's awesome for the Red Sox. Congrats, Boston. That's so sweet. Give me this one. That's so sick. So sick. Big Poppy. There he is on the tribute to nicknames. Oh, that's so cool. God, those are so clean. Play of game right there. Play of game, play of game. Ivan Rodriguez, Juan Soto, and a Sean Green. Another one to 150 for the Dodgers, for the Dodgers. Yeah, that was a sweet auto right there. Sweet auto. Big Poppy. Go from this side this time. See a logo, man. Or a cut. See a Babe Ruth cut. Right, Mount Castle. DJ LaMeju, basically the same thing. It's a 199. Triple Jersey. The machine for the Yankees. Game, used all the way around. Paul Goldschmidt. Nice. Jose Ramirez to 50. Nice one there. Parallel is that. That's awesome though. It's like heavier too. That is IPA. IPA. Not the beer, I don't think. IPA. Iconic perspectives. That's what it is. Yeah, number to 50. Got it, got it, got it, got it. That's actually a pretty cool thing. A leaf release, a new multi sport, has an Ortiz Cabrera pool. Triple auto. That's pretty sweet. That'd be pretty sweet. Right there. Pedro out to the Joey Vado to 50. Nice one there on the purple. And Duel of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and George Springer for the Blue Jays. Nice one there. That's Blue Jays. Again, guys, impeccable T-Mall basketball. We're looking to fill up next. Not breaking for a bit, but 19 spots ago. We also have Flawless, tiered random team style, and we have a full case of select. J-Rod, Miguel Vargas to 150 for the Dodgers. Nice one there, Dodgers. Congrats on that. Here is T-Mall again, guys. 19 to go on that. Again, this stuff is loaded. I'm telling you, it's very good. Very good. You got the Stainless Stars, red exclusive. There's bars in there as well. There's red bar autos, number to like 13, something like that. Am I throwing that on social really quickly? Thanks, sir. Garrett Cole, Mariano. There's a Mike Trout Green. Nice one there for the Angels to 99. Angels to 99. Green, Mike Schmidt to 99 for the Phillies. Joe Maurer and Oswald Paraza to 75. I have Rookie Otto for the Yankees. Nice one there, Yankees. My guy, Oswald. Oswald. Put up E-Trips. How you doing, buddy? E-Trips. There we go, guys. Antonio Cruz, Jonathan India. There's an Evan Longoria to 199 for the Giants. Nice one there, Higantes. Pujols, Jonathan India. Nice. Daryl Strawberry to 50, 7 of 50 for the Mets. Steve's losing it already. Is he? Steve's losing it. Officially lost it.  Wilson Contreras, dual for the Cubs, 192 of 199. Emoji Bann on Steve. Yeah, let's do it. Calendar, bot, trash. Good lord. Brian with some brave tribute spots. On to the next one. Again, guys, impeccable T-Mall. So we're looking to fill up next. That little T-Mall. Oh, god. Nolan Ryan, Kirby Puckett. That's awesome. Game used for the twins. Very cool. Congrats, Minnesota. 74 and 99. Yeah, he needs just to be banned, period. Both of them banned a period would be okay with me. Bobby Quit, Tom Siever, Danesby Swanson Otto for the Braves to 75 on the Orange. Nice one there. Yeah, last case we hit a judge redemption to 50. Patch Otto, we hit a Josh Young to 50.  Hit an Alvarez Rookie Otto first case. Yeah, there's been some good stuff. Been some good stuff for sure. There's a Boba Shat, gold to 75. Some more emojis. Oh, no. Andy's saying red card. Christian Costas Rookie. Nice one there. And Andy Pettit, Otto to 75 for the Yanks, part of the core of four. Steve, no excuses tomorrow to play. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it. I expect you on and I expect to play. I think Heather and I are doing a seafood boil again tomorrow. Or like monthly seafood boil we go to. The place, the crafty crab. Right by your crab. Yeah, right by your crab. So good dude. Oh my god. It's a little genetically addicted. Where they going in it? Shio, Tony. Mark McGuire. There's an Ichiro for the Marlins. There you go, Carrie, that's sick. It's a 199. Marlins Ichiro. Game used Jersey. Well, you can customize it.  We get crab legs, shrimp, like peel and eat shrimp. And we get enduy sausage in it. We get hard boiled eggs, which are actually really good. Potatoes and corn. It's next level. There's an orange Rafi devours to 25. And if I had to pick tribute museum or triple threads, personally, I'd probably go museum. But I think as a value wise, probably triple threads. God, Christian Yelichotto to 75. Nice one there for the brew crew. There needs to be instituted a serious ban on these two. They're out of their mind. Someone needs to handle channel two. Luis Castillo, Cedric Mullins. Nice one there. Game used Jersey to 75 for the Orioles. Stamp of approval. Shane's giving me some track wires of darts when I get to the bank. Good. Someone come back to start blasting people with them, people sleep on the spot. Salvi. There's Paul Canerco. Nice one there for the White Sox, 83 of 99. Paul Canerco. Yeah, thanks, Paul. And Wander Bobby Witt for the Rays and the Royals. This probably is going to be a random, let me double check. Royals, Anthony. Anthony C. And then Rays is Richard Ellesia. That'll be a random to those two teams at the end. Where do we get these packs? Where do we get them from again? Walmart, right? Streaks. Walmart. No, we got it from Walmart. We got it from Walmart this time. Yeah, we got it from Walmart. We got lucky to walk in. There was just one. Yeah, Wander Franco. Fergie Jenkins to 199. Nice one there for the Cubs. Rats on that Cubs. We managed to stalk the vendor. Just give it to the Rays. There's Acunya, George Brett, Rookie Oswald-Paraza on the short print, and Jesse Winker. Mariners. This is 50. Nice one there for the, again, for the Mariners. I want to see the Mariners. Can you say Mariners one more time? Mariners. Thank you. Mariners. You got that one right? 16 times. Mariners, right? Yeah. I just want to make sure you're not. Who was that one? Mariners. Yeah, yeah. Give me out of here. Jesse goes, Mariners? Question of the matter. Yes, it is the Mariners. It is the Mariners. In case you did not know or did not hear me, it is, in fact, the Seattle Mariners, where they held the All-Star. Green, Bob Gibson to 99. There's Mandy Machado. And Greg Maddox, game used for the Braves to 199. Here is your guys' link to impeccable Asia Team All. Got 19 to go. Two go. Xanda. Derek Jeter. There's another mark to share at a 120. Strange numbering on that, but very nice. Nonetheless, for the Inks, Tex. You just got texted. What? But John Sterling used to say on his home runs. Mike Trout. Corey Seager. There's Reese Hoskins. Reese Lightning. Nice one there, too. 99 for the Phillies on the auto. And then Alec Minoa. Two up 10. Game used. Two color patches. For the Blue Jays. Big poppy. Close. Correa. Another Jesse Winker for the Mariners. For 150. Going to the Mariners. Mariners. Blue auto. Jesse Winker. Cal Ripken. There's Raffy Devers to 75 for the Red Sox. Game used Jersey. Peter Lanzo. Purple. Ryan Mountcastle. Two at 50. Oh, nice one coming up here. Let me go into the Cardinals. Rookie auto. Nolan Gorman. Two of 25. There we go, Seattle. I mean, St. Louis. There we go. St. Louis. Nice one there. Cardinals. Brian B. Great way to end it there, Brian. Congrats, buddy. Nice Gorman. All right. You can mag that one, actually. Do a quick recap. Everybody's asking Mariners again. Oh, no. Do a random first. Do a random for the wit. I know I really can't escape Mariners. My God. Put yourself on the trash list, Sean, for those noises. Sorry, Jared. Yeah, that was rough. That's rough. Three Jesse Winker. Myself on the list. I'm on the top of the list. All right, guys. Again, Wander, wit, dual relic. Gonna roll the dice. Whatever team is on top after seven times, we'll get the card. Wander and wit. One, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. Go into the raise. Ray's picking that one up. Sorry, Anthony. Ray's getting that one. All right. Do a quick recap here. Jersey's first. We've got Raffy Devers. Hey, there you go, Jared.  There's Raffy Devers, Alec Mendoza, Greg Maddox, Cedric Mullins, Ichiro, Kirby Puckett, Wilson Contreras, Evan Longoria, Mike Trout, George Springer, Vladdy Duel, DJ Lamehu, Nessler Cortez, Duel for the twins, Peter Lanzo, Fernando Tapiz Jr., Duel Otani Trout for the angels, Nick Castellanos.  Oh, no. Autos. Now we have Fergie Jenkins, Jose Berrios, Don Mattingly, the 199, Jesse Winker, Miguel Vargas, Sean Green, Christopher Morrell, Shane Bieber, Mark Tashara, Reese Hoskins, Paul Canerco. Up next, we've got Goose Gossage, Christian Yelich, Andy Pettit, Danesby Swanson, Oswald Paraza, Jesse Winker, Daryl Strawberry, Jose Ramirez to 50. We have the Orange, Nolan Gorman to 25, and Tribute to nicknames Big Poppy to 30. What's up, Chad? Chad. I'll do it for the break, guys. Thanks again for the filth. Coming up next is First Random Team.


Hi everyone, my name is Patti Foran. This is a station in Palin Canard, the treachery of Hacker News. If you speak French, you'll notice I spilled something wrong there. Bonus points if you can figure out what. Ooh, I've got a countdown timer. This is really cool. Today I want to talk to you a little bit about Hacker News and communities and making things. My employer had me write a blog post for them, for our blog about, you know, using message queues. And as part of it, they want me to include an image because everyone likes images. So I had to include images, like it's a message queue. I want to use ducks in a line, like queuing up. Because ducks like queuing, so I used this image here. And there's giggles, so I can see everyone's, like, figured out what I have here. Those don't really look like ducks. And I thought about this and I was like, wait, I have to call them ducks. Because you see, on the Flickr page, the artist calls them ducks. And I knew, I knew if I used this image, there was going to be that one guy on Hacker News that's like, ah, the artist says those are ducks, not geese. So you can't call them geese, those are ducks. The artist has authority. And you know, you really need to respect the artistic integrity, like the authority of the author. And I was like, okay, so I'm going to call these geese, or I'm going to call these geese ducks. What's the worst that can possibly happen? Judging by the giggles, you all know what could possibly happen. The article hit number one on Hacker News. We got a bunch of comments.   But you would think there's paranoid for this. That's not actually the case. Like a year ago, I wrote some software, distributed hash table written in Go, actually. And I was really nervous about releasing it. And I kind of decided I was going to sneak it in under the table and release it to the Go community. And they were just going to give me feedback because distributed hash tables are really hard. Like there's a lot of math in those things. And I was an English major. So that was not like a real, that was the first time I've done anything that hard. So I was just going to kind of sneak it in under the table and let the Go community give me feedback and then maybe do more public release later. As you can guess, that also hit number one on Hacker News. And I got thousands of page views in a night. So, yeah, that also got a bunch of attention from people. So I was a little bit leery about this. But when I hit number one on Hacker News this time, I, of course, did not walk away unscathed either. Breakdown of the comments I received. 13% were, why did you choose that name? 57% were, why didn't you use Rabbit Arm Key or my other favorite technology? And then a good 30% were other. Probably like 15% were actually about it.  Like I thought that was part of my job is to enjoy making things. But people seemed really, really upset that I, like, made something, which didn't really make sense to me. I got comments like, why didn't you use something that already existed? And I was like, well, I made something and gave it to you. My bad. So, like, I kind of sat around and I was thinking about this like, okay, so how do I deal with this? So there's like this pondering, what do you do now? And I come up with a couple solutions. I'm going to kind of propose them here. But I think that's kind of the main purpose of my talk. This talk isn't really actually useful. I just want to defend it and the giggles may feel better. So one thing you can, you know, see no evil, just not read the comments. This is actually what I've done is I just no longer read hacker news comments and somehow my life does not seem any emptier than before. Which is a shock to me personally. But so, like, the way I don't read comments is that I, you know, subscribe to, you can't see it, that's a, there's RSS, which is this really cool open standard technology for subscribing to things. Hacker News supports it. Go figure. There's also a Twitter bot that you can follow and it just gives you the links. So you don't see any of the comments, which is really cool. The other thing you can do is if you actually want to read comments, you can be like the proverbial high five in the community. Like, yeah, you made something.  So if you want to try and combat the tide, then I would really encourage giving out high fives. But, like, the most important thing is this is Neil Gaiman, who's hideous cut off. Neil Gaiman gave an awesome talk like a commencement address at a university. And the point of his talk was really just that you should continue to make good art. And making good art just means that no matter what happens, no matter what bad things happen, just continue doing what you do, because that's what makes you who you are. So continue to make things, even if people get mad at you for making things. And that's really kind of all I wanted to get across today. I do have one more slide. This is my puppy doing a velociraptor impression. So I'm going to leave you with that. Thank you very much.


Hey everyone. It's Rachel Wolfson. Today I'm here with Margaret Rosenfeld. She is the chief strategy and innovation officer at Dell Tech. Hi Margaret, how are you? Hi. Thanks so much for having me on and really great to see Cointelegraph here in the Bahamas covering everything that's going on in crypto in the Bahamas. Yeah. Well, thank you for joining us.  Can you kind of discuss that with us? Sure. So with crypto, everyone focuses on the fancy words like Bitcoin, stablecoins. But underpinning this is a tech revolution that is going on called Web 3. And part of that tech revolution is looking at things such as the digital divide that we have in many nations everywhere. So I'll say in the U.S. everyone's familiar with this where you have counties that just don't have broadband access to Internet. Well, how can we move forward with crypto without that? That's part of Web 3. Also part of Web 3 are technologies like artificial intelligence and big data. The telecom has to catch up with this as well. So we're talking about what governments are doing to make sure they can be nimble, almost be ahead of the innovators, which is what we have in the Bahamas. That's the viewpoint when you talk to the different regulators here. They want to try to be ahead of where the innovators are so they can be ready to meet them and support them. So why are we seeing that mindset in the Bahamas versus somewhere like the United States, for instance? Sure. And I'm trained as a U.S.-based lawyer. So I worked with companies in the U.S. for many years. Public companies, securities lawyer, corporate lawyers. So I have a lot of background in exactly what the U.S. is grappling with. And the United States is the standard bearer in terms of regulation. And it's developed this by having lots of specialized agencies, the IRS, for example. Then you have the SEC. And our industry hits all these different agencies. So a coordinated effort among the agencies was really needed. And President Biden, with his executive order earlier this year, set that forth. So we're starting to see that coordinated effort. So it's a little harder for a larger country which has established domains for ownership of different things. For smaller countries, where they can be faster, they can be more flexible. And that's not to say they're easy. I will tell you that the Bahamas, I've worked in banking for 25 years. And the Bahama regulator, the central bank, is probably the toughest regulator I've ever had to deal with from a banking perspective in terms of compliance. So it's not that they're easy. It's just that they're more accessible. You're more closer to work with. You look at Christine Rohl, who is the head of the Commission of the Bahamas. She is at the leading edge, coming up with the DAIR Act. The white paper that has come out on digital assets. They're able to do this because they don't have as many agencies where responsibilities are divided as in the U.S. I see. Now, is the Bahamas looking at any other models being implemented in other places, like El Salvador, for instance, and what they're doing with bitcoins? The Bahamas looking at those types of frameworks already? Well, actually, the Bahamas had the sand dollar way before anybody else. So when I say the Bahamas in the lead, the Bahamas has been in this for a bit. And a lot of that has to do with Dell Tech. Dell Tech was here in 2017. It was really the first bank in the world you could go to if you had a blockchain or crypto company and say, hey, can I bank with you? I had clients that I was working with and I couldn't get them into any bank in the world just because they were working in this new fringe technology. Technology moves from fringe to frontier to familiar. And in 2017 it was fringe. Dell Tech, that's what we focus on. The innovators, the trailblazers. But we also are in a great country, the Bahamas, which has a huge regulatory system or a bank that goes back to the 40s. So we have all this compliance that you're not working with. You know that the bank has really vetted every single thing that's going on, every step of the way. But they were the first bank that banked people in blockchain and crypto, established bank. There were a lot of startup banks, some of them very shady that took money, but they were the first established bank in there. And that's what we like to do. We like to work with those people. So when you say banked people into the cryptocurrency space, what exactly do you mean by that? So if you, for example, you're a company, a startup company developing something using blockchain technology and you raise your first round of 10 million, and let's say that's in fiat, which is paper money, getting a bank account to put that in so you can pay your employees, you couldn't find a bank that would take you. So you would not find a established bank because what the area you were working in, it was considered fringe. Now that it's moved into what I call the frontier and you move into frontier with technology in technology revolutions when you start to see establishment come in. In 2017 we had, you know, Jamie Dimon, J.P. Morgan saying sham, never going to happen. Now J.P. Morgan has established they're in the space, they've accepted the space. So we're in that frontier space. I call it still frontier because people still want to grapple with understanding it completely. What is crypto? What is blockchain? How does it work? Explain to me in depth. We'll eventually get to the familiar. Think about like cloud computing. When you first heard, put your data in the cloud. You had to really understand how that worked. When it was early on, it was fringe, nobody did it. When it was frontier companies, you would spend hours explaining to them how it worked. Now it's cloud-based. Okay, it's familiar. That's how technology moves. So right now we're in the frontier space. And that's, it's exciting because there's still so many more opportunities for what we're going to see that this technology can do. Right. And what do you think we'll see next? Because right now we're in this stage that you just explained. So what are we going to see moving forward? One, I think we're going to start to see, and we've seen this with Ukraine, the breakdown of international borders that will occur with the move towards some kind of digital currency. And perhaps in, I would say maybe 10 years, we'll actually have a global digital currency. What does that do for freedoms for people? That's just amazing to think about. If I am no longer dependent upon my government and my government can't control me because government is mainly controlled with money and how money is used. And I can freely move with money, then think about Afghanistan and the women there that were left behind. A lot of them are getting supported by cryptocurrency right now in order to, they can't work anymore. They're trying to go to online schools but they can't pay for them. There are foundations that have been set up and all the money is being set via cryptocurrency because you can't send it via a traditional bank into a country like that. So I think the major thing that I'm excited about is the breaking down of these borders of totalitarianism that occur. But we'll see new industries. Health care is going to be an industry that can be majorly changed by blockchain technology. But it has a hurdle which involves data. So we have HIPAA in the U.S., we have GDPR and so we have all these data laws that developed but now we have a system that is going to let patients own their data. So it's a very different concept. What we can do in healthcare with blockchain technology could be amazing. Clinical trials, information where you're tracking that information and it's immutable and then can easily be shared. Taking AI technology on this immutable blockchain and tracing patterns and things, it's going to be pretty amazing what we can do in healthcare with not just blockchain, it's the triangle of big data AI and blockchain. Right, definitely the convergence. What are your thoughts? You mentioned the sand dollar. Yes. Now is that the Bahamas stable coin? That is the Bahama government. Yes, they issued that. So it's interesting. I think we're going to see a lot of coins issued by governments that will occur in the next year. Truthfully, my belief is that the private stable coins will be the most successful ones overall because they are arising because people do not necessarily trust governments. And also the dominance of a government over other governments in cross-border transactions, that could result. So I actually have more faith in the private stable coin approach. And that's what the sand dollar is? No, the sand dollar is not, but if you look at like Tether, USD, those are the examples. How do you obtain the sand dollar? No, I've been asked this question a lot because I don't know.  Okay, so we're going to work on that. We're going to get her some sand dollars. How do you get it? Well, you have to have a wallet. Do you have a digital wallet? Of course.  That's the start. Okay. Yes, and then we'll have to do some KYC-AML on you as well. Got it, got it.  Okay, and now you mentioned Tether and USDC. There's a lot of potential there. Can you explain why? So, cross-border payments, and this is really the great thing that digital currency can do. And it, you know, the stable coin pegs it at something that can work cross-border. Right. Quite simply. Right. Most of the payment systems have to use some sort of stable coin. So, that's why we're going to see the rise of the stable coin, even more so. Yeah, wonderful. And regulation, of course. Yeah, I was going to say, and the regulation that comes with it. Yes. Great. Well, Margaret, this has been wonderful. It's been so nice talking to you. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us. And thank everyone for coming to the Bahamas to listen to us. Yeah, thanks, Margaret.


Do you feel like you're always distracted?  We've got some tips for you today. Welcome back and congratulations on taking one more step towards becoming one of the great leaders of tomorrow. Distractions are just a part of life. We all have them. We have people in our lives who want to talk to us. They want to do things with us. We have our phones going off. Distractions are everywhere. But the good news is we don't have to let them keep us from doing the things we need to do. And honestly a lot of this stuff, a lot of distractions we do to ourselves. And I'm going to talk about three kinds of distractions and how we can do our part to keep ourselves from being distracted when those distractions are going on in our lives. So the first kind of distraction we run into are people distractions. And these aren't always bad. These are our friends. These are our family. These are the people in our lives who want to talk to us about something or do something or be in our lives with us and help us enjoy our lives. And I will say if the people in your life are distracting you, it may be a sign that you're not taking enough time for yourself. So give that some thought before you start to file this in the category of distraction. Maybe you do need some time for yourself and for your family and friends. However, let's say this really is a distraction. The best way we can deal with our people distractions, our family, our friends who are looking for our time or even some of our coworkers who might be looking for our time, is we just have to make a deal with them. We have to negotiate with them. I used to tell this to my Air War college students in the online program all the time. They would call and say, I just can't get this done. And the advice I would give them and say, look, I know it's hard. But if you can just, if you can just work on this an hour at night, you can get this done in just a few months. Talk to your spouse, talk to your husband or your wife, talk to them about, look, I just need an hour tonight or I just need two hours to work on this tonight. Can you handle the kids? Can you do that from after dinner from 630 to 730? Can you just give me an hour and I'll do this and then I'm all yours for the rest of the night. Negotiate, make a deal. The important thing is we've got to stick up. We've got to live up to our end of the deal here. So if we say an hour, we've got to live up to that hour and show them we mean the our side of the deal as much as we expect them to hold up there under the deal. So try that. If you've got someone in your life who needs your time, legitimately needs your time, but you've got to do something else, make a deal, negotiate with them and live up to your end of the deal. That's distraction. Number one, those very important people distractions in our lives. The second kind of distraction we have in our lives are the unnecessary distractions. These are the things we've done to ourselves as leaders. This is where maybe we haven't honed our leadership skills or followed through on things enough. These are to use a sports analogy. These are the unforced errors of the leadership world that result in our distraction. If you've got your team members coming to you for approval on stuff all the time or to ask you questions, it could be because you haven't delegated enough to them. You haven't given them authority to go make decisions on their own or you haven't set clear expectations. So the trick with this, if you've got your team coming to you all the time, I need help. I have a question. You may just, one, set clear expectations to delegate the, not just the responsibility and the accountability for what they're doing, but the authority to make decisions and be real clear about that when you set expectations. That should cut down on that. And I think we've got a video somewhere in the archive about delegating effective tips for delegating. I'll link that up here so you can just go to that. We don't have to go into all those steps about how to effectively delegate. Side note, open door policies. I don't advise them. A, because someday there's going to be a need for you to shut that door and handle something important and someone's going to be real upset because they wanted to come and they're not going to be upset about the thing they wanted to talk about. They'll be upset because you said you had an open door policy and your door wasn't open when they came to see you. But open door policies are ripe for this kind of distraction. So open door policy, consider strongly whether that's the kind of policy you want to have or not. All right. Last one. Distraction type number three. This is where we distract ourselves. This is where not the leadership things of our team, but the way we distract ourselves. Number one is our phone, right? All those notifications going off in our phone. And I think we're going to do a special video just on electronic distractions coming up here. But put your phone, turn it off, put it in a drawer. My phone's in the other room right now. That's how focused I want to be on this. I don't need any distractions doing these videos as hard enough for me as it is. So put your phone somewhere else. Turn it off, silence it, whatever. Turn your phone off. Don't worry about your social media. Don't worry about comments and likes. If you've got something important to do, get rid of that phone. Now the other thing is a little harder. It's a little more insidious in this type of distraction. It's these human nature things, these things that we let distract us. And a lot of this is either thinking back or forward in time, thinking about past successes, past failures, or the consequences of if this thing that we're working on doesn't go well. And or the successes or if it's going to be successful. And a lot of times we're thinking about the result of something, enjoying the result or worrying about the results of the thing we're working on instead of just doing the work. And honestly, the only cure to this is recognizing it and then doing the work. Taking one step, doing one little step.  And every time we catch ourselves thinking about the past or the future, just saying, not time to think about that, I got to do the work. I got to do this one step. So those are your three kinds of distractions with the tips on how to solve that, those people distractions, make a deal with them, live up to that deal, those unnecessary, unforced error distractions, delegate to your team, set clear expectations, and set the boundaries if you need to close that door and do some work without the team bothering you. And third, the way we distract ourselves. Get rid of your phone if you've got to work on something important. And two, don't think forward or backward in time. Just focus on the one step you've got to do right now. I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions, please email us at info at evilgeniusleadership.com. We're always happy to ask your questions or leave a comment. We love it when you comment. Please like, comment, and share this with someone you love or someone you work with, and you found this helpful and think this might be helpful to them. We're still doing our Q&As on Friday. I know we didn't do one last week because of a prior commitment, but we're doing Q&As on Fridays. So if you want to do a live Q&A with us and ask about how I have this specific type of distraction, and I really need some help with it. I tried the tips in the video. It didn't work. Please come to our live Q&A and we'll help you out. We'd love to hear from you. Thank you for watching. And remember, the future is out there. Lead the way.


Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and we are here with an addition of a tactical trick, just little tricks to make your life easier.  Now what I have done here is I've used the entire six rows of molly to attach six malice clips to the butt pack to the actual belt. Now that makes it one super secure, but the second thing is in this instance this isn't a place where I actually need all six of these. I could probably get by with four, just one on the outside then maybe two on the inside. So I have all six here so that if any of my other pouches should fail or some other problem should happen I have a redundancy built in. So I could remove up to two of these from this butt pack and still maintain my other pouches. This allows me some kind of expedient field repair process so that I don't have to completely ditch that pouch and I'm not out of luck. Hope that's helpful, do brave deeds, and endure.


Hello there, my beautiful internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you so much for joining me here today. If you find yourself wondering, dear God, what is that incredible pillow sitting next to Joe and where can I find it? The answer is it's Nicholas Cage trying to seduce you and amazon.com. Yes, yes, I have posted the link in the description. You should totally get one.  If you don't know, Molly Burke is a fantastic YouTuber. She's blind, she talks a lot about blindness and disability and all different sorts of things that highly recommend checking out her channel. And in this video, she was gonna talk about being differently abled. That term, differently abled. And when I saw it pop up, I had to click on it because I was really interested to hear her thoughts because I've always had a certain feeling about that term and I was just kind of interested to see if she felt the same way. As we dive into this video today, if you wanna give it a thumbs up and or subscribe down below, that would make me very happy and would also help my channel. But without further ado, let's talk about being differently abled. So if you don't know, I am a person with a disability. I am a bologna amputee. I also deal with chronic pain and chronic illness. And ever since especially I became disabled in a visual sense as in someone could see that I was disabled, I've wondered about this term. A lot of people don't wanna call me disabled, don't wanna say I'm disabled, don't wanna like admit that or think maybe I'm not aware of it. I've wondered if it's okay to use the term disabled, disability. Like is that a bad thing? Is that am I referring to myself in somehow an offensive way? Like I'm still learning the language of my own people. But like any of us, I do have some natural thoughts and feelings on that word and I've never had an issue with it. I didn't like the word handicapped once I learned the definition because I'll read it to you. It means a circumstance that makes progress or success difficult. I don't think that having a disability makes success in general difficult. I think it just changes what that might look like or how you get there. Disabled or disability on the other hand means a physical or mental condition that limits a person's movements, senses or activities. I very much qualify for that. But differently abled is a term that I've heard in, how shall we say this? Especially woke circles. I've heard a few Ted talks about it that didn't go over super well with what I felt. But then I just wondered if like I'm ignorant and that's what I should be saying. Which is a funny thing to say about yourself. Like this is something that I am and I'm still like, I don't know how I should talk about it. I don't know how I should phrase it. So I watched Molly's video about her thoughts and feelings about the term differently abled and I was like, that's it. That's why I can't stand that term or any of the offshoot terms that have developed because of it. At the root of it, I think saying that someone's differently abled comes back to a discomfort with disability or someone being different. Cause you're not disabled. You're just differently abled. You still have abilities. They're just, you know, I feel like it's trying to put a blanket on top of an elephant that's very clearly standing in a room. Like you're not fooling anyone. You're not covering anything up. Reason differently abled bothers me more than handicapped is because the people who say it, usually say it because they think they're like woke. They think they're being progressive. They think that they're being like inclusive. They think they're being supportive. And in reality, I think it's the very opposite. The term differently abled to me is a term people use when they're uncomfortable about disability. So blindness, the B word as I call it. A lot of people are uncomfortable calling me blind. It's like they think I don't already know. Like they'll be like, Molly is visually impaired. She can't see as well as everybody else. And I'm like, no, no, I'm blind. I'm just blind. Though society as a whole has come a far away on how it views people with disabilities. I do think we still have some work to do. I remember when I first injured my ankle and when I got to a point that I knew that this was going to be an issue for the rest of my life. Someone very close to me told me, don't you ever think of yourself as disabled. Don't ever think of yourself that way.  Is that like something I should strive not to be? Or like actively reject, even if I technically fit within that label? And for the record, I understand where they were coming from. Like they didn't want me to feel different or like outcast or like I couldn't do things that I really wanted to do just because of this thing in my life. But the message that I got is that being disabled is a bad thing, but it's not. Being disabled in and of itself is simply a fact. Yes, I have a condition that physically limits me from certain things. I am different in that regard. Disability is not bad. Being disabled is not a negative thing, but I think we put this negative connotation on it by trying to tiptoe around it and call it different things, happier things. I must feel like it's like differently abled feels very much like too many stickers and glue and fancy bright colors and sparkles on top of something that really doesn't need that. It's like they're just really uncomfortable about disability, but they're actually trying to make it seem like they're super comfortable with it. They're so progressive. They're so about equality that they view everybody as equal. We're not disabled. We're simply differently abled. A point that Molly brought up is that she doesn't mind if someone uses the term handicap because they're probably just ignorant of the definition and its history, but using differently abled is a little different because it's not a common term. It means that someone is thinking about someone's woke.  I don't even know what it's supposed to mean now, but I do think to some extent that that is true. So I'm not sitting here thinking that I can speak for people with disabilities or disabled people at large, but I can tell you in my own personal experience, I'm very aware of the fact that I have limitations and restrictions that you may not if you have two perfectly good working legs. I'm very aware of the fact that I'm missing a part of my leg. You don't need to tiptoe around that. I was talking to a friend the other day and they asked me if people treat me differently now that I am like an amputee. It's very clear. I'm missing a part of my body, but you know, it's just a fact. And I thought about it for a while and I realized that my answer was mostly no. I think people still treat me like a person. People still have conversations with me. However, one thing I have noticed is that people I don't know, I'll see them like glancing to my leg and then looking back at me, you know, for having a conversation. Cause they like don't, they don't wanna be thinking about the fact that I'm missing leg, but they actually do have some thoughts and feelings and questions about it. But they're not, they don't actually see me as different.  And yes, I am a normal person, but I have a disability. For me personally, I'm a big fan of calling a spade a spade. When something is what it is, let's call it out as that, let's name it and then we can talk about it. Thinking about it now, I honestly think I have some unconscious disdain or discomfort with disability, that term, that reality. I've been taught by very caring people in society at large that that is something to be hidden, that it's not something that should be talked about. It's not really something that should be called out or talked about, that everyone's the same, even though we're not. My experience as a person with disability is unique to me. I wanna claim that. I'm going to own that because it's the truth. Sincerely, the last thing I need is someone trying to make me feel better about my situation because I feel just fine about it and in moments when I don't, I deal with it and then I move on. Thinking back to that experience I had growing up, being told to never think of myself as disabled, I realized that people's intentions in calling people differently abled are probably good, but I also think that they stem from discomfort. We are uncomfortable around people who are different than we are, generally speaking. Usually it takes some work and education to get actually comfortable around people who are not the same as you are. Disability in general is something that people have a lot of questions about, that people are unsure of, that I even don't know all the guidelines of what to say and what not to say, but I can tell you from my own experience, being a person with a disability, that calling me disabled is not a slur, it's not a bad thing, it's simply the truth, but trying to soften reality by just saying, you know, you have different abilities than I do, we're all the same, is at best not helpful and at worst kind of insulting. Like Molly brought up in her video that people will be like, yeah, you're missing your eyesight, but look at all the other things you've ganged because of it, you know, you can see with your heart more, which is just, oh God, I know that people say that, but it's very cringe-worthy. Some people, generally people who do not know me very well, have said similar things to me, but my reality, and again, just speaking for me, my reality is that there are some things that I can't do. There are many things that I am going to modify and do very differently than the normal person to be able to get by. That I am blind, I cannot see, and with that comes a whole host of challenges. And when you try to take away disability and replace it with differently-abled, what you're doing is taking away all the challenges that I and my community continue to face because of the lack of accessibility, because of the lack of true inclusion, because we stop having the conversation about the problems when we start having this conversation of differently-abled. My life experience is not gonna be the same as someone who has two perfectly functioning meat legs. Within that statement, there can be grief, there can be gratefulness, there can be all different kinds of things, but it is simply the truth. So if you've ever wondered what you should call people who are different than you, who are disabled, who are dealing with disabilities, I can share my own personal opinion and say that being disabled is not a bad thing. It's just a fact, and that fact doesn't need to be sugar-coated. Using the word handicapped is not my favorite because it suggests that I cannot get as far in life or cannot achieve success because of this thing, which is not at all true. And I would say at the very bottom of my ranking list of words to talk about what I am is differently-abled. Like I said, I think it comes across as well-intended, but how it is received is treating me like I'm a child who needs to be handled with care because maybe I don't know what's really different about me. I'm really grateful to Molly for making that video because she helped me realize why I feel the way I do. How we talk about things is really important. The words and terms that we use matter a lot, and I think it's important to understand, and I think it is vital that we listen to people who are members of groups of people that are not us about how they want to be referred to, how they want to be talked about, how they want to be interacted with when it comes to that thing. So that's my opinion on the matter, but what about yours? Have you ever used the term differently-abled? Does it mean something different to you? If you're a person with a disability, do you not like being called disabled? I think everyone has different thoughts and feelings on this, and I would love to hear yours down below. Also, I do want to note that I think the vast majority of people who talk about disability as anything other than that are very well-intended. Calling someone differently-abled is probably in its core trying to make them feel better. It's just that it's not necessary. So if you've ever said anything like this, please know that I'm not talking badly about you or suggesting you did a bad thing. I think there's a lot of education that's lacking out there when it comes to many different things, disability being one of them, and all any of us can do is learn and grow. A huge thank you goes out to all of my patrons over on Patreon. You guys sincerely keep this channel going. I can thank you more than I can ever say. I appreciate you being members of that community and to you watching this video right now, thank you for taking a few minutes out of your day to hang out with me and learn about disability and disabled versus differently-abled versus handicapped, it means the world to me. You could be anywhere in the world doing anything and you chose to chill with me for a few minutes, so thank you. I love you guys. I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Bye, guys. And her from the sky all about...


A figure more legendary than that of the Mahdi, the evaded savior, has not been seen in the history of mankind. The threads of the world events have woven many a fine design in human life, but the pattern of the Mahdi stands high above every other pattern. He has been the vision of the visionaries in history. He has been the dream of all the dreamers of the world. For the ultimate salvation of mankind, he is the pole star of hope and which the gaze of humanity has fixed. The Quranic prophecy of the inevitable victory of Islam will be realized following the advent of the Mahdi, who will fight the wrong, remedy the evils and establish devolved order based on the Islamic teachings of justice and virtue. Thereafter, there will be only one religion and one government in the world. It may be mentioned here that the movement for the establishment of the world government is already afoot and this point is engaging the attention of many prominent intellectuals. The setting of the United Nations is a step in this direction. In spite of the growing consciousness of its desirability, the unification of the world is still a distant dream. The vested interests and the mutual revolaries of the regimes in the various countries and the mutual animosities of the divergent blocks constitute a big hurdle in the view of its materialization. Hence, its consumption cannot be expected to come off automatically. It will need the activist struggle of a world performer in the person of Mahdi anyhow as thought has been made and as things are gradually turning out exactly as predicted by Islam 14 centuries ago. The belief in an expected reformer and a saviour of humanity is not peculiar to the Shia school of Islam. It is common not only to the Muslim sects but is also shared with all the great religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism and this quest for the truth about the Mahdi there is no distinction of any caste, creed or country. The quest is universal exactly in the same way as the Mahdi himself is universal. He stands resplendent high above the narrow walls in which humanity is cut up and divided. He belongs to everybody for all that and much more. What exactly is the Mahdi surely that is the big question which is thinking people all over the world would like to ask.