In this episode of Mind Pump, we answer awesome fitness questions asked by listeners like you. We also talk about current events. We talk about our lives. We mention our sponsors. We have a lot of fun in this episode. We always do. The introductory portion was 40 minutes long. That's where we talked about those things. And then after that, we got into the questions. Here's how the episode went. We start out by talking about hydrogen cyanide. That's the stuff that'll kill you, but a company convinced influencers to sell it as a joke. And they did.  Yeah, exactly. Then we talked about influencing the uninterested. The one of the number one goals of fitness evangelization is to reach the people that are not interested in fitness. We talk about how we do that. Can we get Gary in the gym? Then I talked about the annoying effects of orange or red blue blocking glasses.  Not Felix Ray blue blocking glasses. These glasses don't change the color of the world around you, and they still block blue light. That's why we work with them. They're looking nice.  Look, we have a hookup for you. Go to FelixGrayGlasses. That's F-E-L-I-X, gray, a spell G-R-A-Y, glasses.com forward slash mind pump, and you'll get free shipping and free returns. Then we talked about Christmas shopping. Justin brought up the stocking stuffers. I totally forgot to get stocking stuffers now. Yeah, you're welcome. Freaking out. Adam talked about how he's giving magic spoon, high protein, amazing macro content, cereal to his friends and family. Now, this is a company that we work with. They make cereal that harks back to children's cereal, so like, like kind of like Fruit Loops and Cinnamon Toast Crunch or whatever. Anyway, the flavors are amazing. The ingredients are even better. A serving can be anywhere between 20 to almost 40 grams of protein, of high-quality dairy protein, and that's not even including the milk. So we do have a hookup for you. Go to magicspoon.com forward slash mind pump. You'll get an automatic discount to your product. Then Justin talked about Star Wars. He went to the premiere of Star Wars yesterday. Don't worry, no spoilers. He just talked about how excited I was. I wouldn't do that to you guys. Don't worry. Then we talked about the impeachment that's going on and how politics is quite entertaining when you forget how dangerous politicians are. I talked about studies on a synthesized version of curcumin and how it reversed alzheimer's in rats, and then I brought up exercises effects on the brain. Then we got into the questions. The first question was, how do I rid, get rid of bottom belly pooch? This is where the lower part of your abs kind of stick out a little bit, maybe some excess body fat there. So we talk about strategies. The next question, this person wants to know if men and women should work out differently. Are there differences with men and women in terms of how they should use resistance training? The third question was, this person wants to know what our opinion was on the following. Food is medicine. That's an old quote. I believe Hippocrates said that first. So we talk about that. And then the last question, this person's a brand new parent and a personal trainer and wanted to know if we had any advice on how to stay consistent with fitness during these difficult, stressful times. Best of luck. So this month, of course, all month maps aesthetic, one of our most popular workout programs has been 50% off. As of the time we air this episode, there's only five days left. So you have five days to take advantage of this 50% off sale. That's a massive discount. And this program is extremely effective. First off, it's all detailed and planned out for you. But then there's a component that allows you to inject body parts that you would like to focus especially on. So if you're saying, Hey, look, I want to work out my whole body, but I really want to make a special emphasis to train my glutes or I really want to work on my back or my shoulders. There's a component in maps aesthetic that allows you to do that. You put that in your focus sessions. By the way, focus sessions can only be found in maps aesthetic. So here's how you get the 50% off. Go to maps black.com and use the code black 50 B L A C K five zero no space for the discount. Did you guys watch that the BBC thing that I sent over to you about the influencers promoting cyanide? Every time I hear, by the way, hilarious before we get into that, every time I hear BBC, what does it remind you of the television show? BBC BBC. Yeah, East Coast family. Yeah, it's just immediately. What was that hip hop song? Yeah, Boys Demand. That's it. BBC BBC. Yeah, that's it.  I did stop. Yeah. Yeah, I went there. I went there. I did see it. And so what it is basically is they took influencers with half a million to two million followers, brought them in and had them all auditioned to sell a new product that the main ingredient is clearly labeled cyanide. Hydrogen cyanide. Like what they used to kill people with in World War One, right?  It totally works and it's great. And they're like, oh my God. Is this going to come to a screeching halt at one point? Like it's getting out of control like the influencers that just promote whatever. Like half of them don't use it. And that was what that was highlighting was that it's getting to a point now where they're already losing their power. Right. I feel the same way too. Like when I, well, the pages that I follow that have big, big followings like that, the engagement that they're getting.  It's like, I can't imagine that's doing that well for the companies. No, I don't think. And that's why that's why that's why they're losing money. They're losing money because companies are working with them and realizing this is a waste of money. Very few of them really have power and influence.  You know what I mean? They'll do anything for a dollar. You tell them to sell anything and you pay them and they're going to sell cyanide, which highlights two things, by the way, that highlights two things. So disturbing. Highlights. Thing number one is that they will do anything for a dollar.  You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Cyanide, hydrogen cyanide. That sounds tasty. It sounds like chemicals. That sounds, yeah, that's science. Yeah. They made it in a lab. It deets. Well, and that's an extreme, right? So that's the that's one in the spectrum where it's like over the top, ridiculous. And I know that. But there's there's a lot of stuff even in the middle that I try and tell kids that are trying to build their social following so that they can become, quote, unquote, influencers. And you've got to be really careful of just because you start to get your first offers, which I think when you've been trying so hard to get a following and you've been hustling and taking all the great angles for the last, you know, year to two years and consistently posting and you start getting the system, right? You start getting some traction, right? But it was from all the angles. Right. And then and then companies start reaching out to you. And of course, I bet you're really tempted to want to just start taking money right away because you've been working for the last year or whatever to get that attention. But you don't realize how much that can backfire by just accepting some random company because these companies, especially supplement companies, they're really smart because they're the margins and they do like a commission based deal. So it's like it's it's win-win for them. If you're if you're terrible, you don't influence a lot of people. You only sell five bottles. No skin off their back. They're paying you 10 or 20 percent commission. But then what does that look for you as a brand? One, if the product is crap or has things like cyanide and it can't be good or what if it just simply goes out of business? It's some small small brand that's trying to take off and they don't go anywhere and now they're gone. And then you switch if you continue to switch partners and switch partners, it just makes you look fake. Yeah, it's you know, look, if you're going to be an influencer in a subject, my advice is this, know what you're talking about. So actually be knowledgeable on your subject. You don't have to be an expert so long as you stay in your lane. You know what I'm saying? But be very educated. Well, that's what I mean. That's what I mean. So let's say you're a fitness influencer, but you haven't trained a lot of people.  That's OK. So long as you stay in your lane, if you stay in your lane, you're fine. In fact, you'll probably be more effective that way. It's when they don't is when they move out of their lane and act like their experts are super knowledgeable about subjects or not that it hurts them. I mean, the consumer gets hurt. But you know what's happening is the consumers are getting a little wise to it. Yeah. And they're starting to see that these and they're starting to get parodied. That's how you know the end is coming. That the influencer influencer is becoming a bad word. It used to be a good word.  Oh, that's cool. Now you're like, I'm an influencer. Yeah. I went from entrepreneur to influencer. Yeah. What's the next ear? Yeah. Influencer. Yeah. It's it's it's it brings me to another another point. I was thinking about this yesterday last night was doing some deep thinking. And I was thinking about how we could possibly influence the people that are considered unreachable. And really, you can break down and when it comes to fitness and health, right, you could break down the population into two different categories. It's the interested and the not the non interested. Now the interested, it doesn't mean that they're doing the right things. It doesn't mean that they're consistent. It doesn't but but what it does mean is they're seeking out information on trying to get in better shape, trying to improve their health, trying to burn body fat, you know, work work on the nutrition, whatever. Those are the people that I see the fitness space just constantly targeting is the people who are interested. And that's easy. That's an easy target because you can sell them off. Yeah, you can sell them with make them feel insecure.  You can sell them with motivation and inspiration. This is the day you're in control. You're in the driver's seat. You're never gonna do enough. Yeah, make a decision, right? That's the message. And then what ends up happening is you end up, you know, these people end up starting and stopping, starting and stopping, which is a big issue with them. So that's the interested. Then there's the non interested. These are the people that are unreachable by the current, you know, players in the fitness space. How do you reach the people that don't, that don't even know or don't even really care to know or don't really think about improving their health and fitness, those are the people that make up the majority. Majority of people out there who are just going about their lives and don't realize, they truly don't realize the incredible life changing benefits that health and fitness can provide to them. So what are the techniques that came to mind when you're thinking about that? You gotta bring them in without hammering them about fitness and health. Butt picks. So. That's part of it. That's one way.  By the way, protein has four calories per gram.  It's a real sexy pillow and then drop some heavy science right afterwards. Yeah, exactly. Not at all. If we use anybody's butt, you know. Helpies. We'll go back to helpies. Justin's butt. He's the best one. No, it's, you know, really it's, I think it's about being the example and then communicating to things that we tend to think are silly. Yeah. In the fitness space, you know, the stuff that we think is that, you know, trivial.   Do you guys remember the first time when your clients saw you like drink a beer or like have a burger and how powerful and impactful that was for your client? Yeah. As an early trainer, I thought to myself, if my client, if a client sees me drinking a beer or eating a burger or French fries, that's going to be terrible.  Then, you know, later on, I realized like, wait, that's way less effective. What's more effective is to show them that I'm real person just like they are. And the first time they saw me do that, you could see them open up more and be like, wow, this is somebody I could listen to. He understands me. He's not just a, you know, a fitness zealot. And you can have fun with it, man.  And like that fuels me to go do other fun things.   Here's a great example of what I'm talking about. Okay, so we've been talking about on the show and it's starting to go mainstream a little bit. And the fitness space it's been mainstream now for about a year or two is the potential benefits of reducing blue light exposure at night in terms of sleep quality, right? So. Oh, that's like becoming trendy now. Yeah, it's becoming a thing now. Like studies are showing that, reducing just light exposure in general but more specifically blue light and also green light, reducing the exposure about an hour, two before bed, increases melatonin production, improves sleep quality. It's got all these far reaching potential health benefits. Now here's what the health and fitness space does. They create glasses that are orange or dark red. Okay. How many average people are you going to reach with orange or dark red glasses? You know what I'm saying? As many people as showed up to the Star Wars movie, just like me. Well, they already experimented with us. They tried it in the 80s. That's right. Blue blocking black glasses were out in the 80s. And if I show my parents and I'm like, hey, wear these at night. It helps with sleep or whatever. And my mom's going to put on these dark gray. They're like, what? I'm not going to wear this. So, you know, that's why I accompanied because I was actually having this discussion with someone and they were trying to argue the effectiveness of the red amber glasses versus the more clear glasses. Like Felix Gray glasses don't really change the tint of the world around you. They're trying to say, well, it's more effective if they're super dark.  So with a blindfold. Yeah, exactly.  You're not doing it hard enough, bro. Exactly, but who's, how many average people are going to use that? Nobody is. So then you got a company like Felix Gray. They're stylish. They don't change the color of everything around you. And they still do a good enough job where you're going to get really good effects. That's what I'm talking about. That works with your lifestyle. You're not like changing everything to conform to that. Totally. That's how you reach the unreachable. Now, speaking of that, I actually did that for Christmas gifts. Have you guys done all your Christmas shopping yet? Yeah. Yeah, I finally got finished all of it. The hardest part was like trying to find all the knickknacks stuff, you know, for the like the stocking stuffers and all that.  I know that's like always the last minute stuff. And so that's easy though, isn't it? I mean, you'd think so, but it's just like do I really want to buy this? This is like junk stuff.  I was going to say, do you guys have like, so a lot of families have like different traditions of what they do inside the stocking? Like what's inside your kid's stocking? What's inside your kid's stocking? Typically. Well, typically it's just little knickknack stuff.  Exactly. What does that mean?  Yeah, they'll take it out and be like, wow, that's cool. Never look at it. Throw it away. Ours was always candy and then gift cards. It was a bunch of different candy, like a random candy. And then it was gift cards to, you know, Barnes and Noble and, you know, iTunes and just all your different. That's a good way to do it. That was kind of like what our stocking used to be. At least at my best friend's house right. That's not a bad idea actually. I think I'm going to buy a gift card for the movies for. Yeah, it was like that. Movies. Because I take them to movies all the time, so it'll be saving me money.  I was like going to try and see how like some of the other kids and some of the other people on my other side of the family like, like it. You know, I'm just like, I'm going to kind of do that as their stocking stuffer to just test the waters. Put a whole big box of cereal in there. Not like inside it, but like adjacent to it. Now I didn't do that for Christmas, but I did. So I actually, one, two, three, four, five. Five comes next. Yeah, I'm just trying to see if I did five. Five different family members. And I sent it to my family members that don't listen to the podcast, you know, don't eat really, really healthy to try and encourage them a healthier alternative. Here's some protein.  It's a much better alternative than that. And I'm actually really curious and interested. Like no doubt in my mind, we talked when we first talked about Magic Spoon, like we were excited about it. It's amazing. We love it. I know all of my bodybuilder friends are going to love it. But I'm most interested in like my family and friends that, you know, yeah, they want to make better choices, but they're not making a real hard effort to it. Like a product like this, I see them. They'll get sold on the taste. Yeah, that's what I mean. Well, I want to see that though, you know, it is an experiment like at the end of the day. Like I don't know, like that side of the family too is a lot like what you're describing. Like they're not really that involved in fitness or like going to the gym. Yeah, I'm not getting them to wear blue blockers. Like that's too big of a step right now. It's like, here's some cereal. Yeah, exactly, cereal. People like cereal, right? They might think something's up though. They might look at it and be like, cereal. Wait a minute, you're tricking me. Except they don't know how to read the label. Except, you know, they don't know how to read the label. So they'll look at it and be like, what? I don't get it. It blows my mind. I mean, 30 something grams in a little bowl, dude, is a lot. Oh, that's a point, God, dude. Especially for macro counters. Yeah. If you're like a competitor and you're trying to get your protein in and you're dealing with like hardcore restriction, I could see it become... Well, I had at school some goofball who made a comment on how expensive it was on the forum. And I'm like, when you do the math, okay, if you take... Protein is expensive. Right, if you take protein bars or shakes and you break down what a bar per box costs you, $3 to $5 per bar, because you're getting 20 to 40 grams of protein in it. That's what you're paying for.  It'd be like comparing your protein powder to like Nestle Quick. Yes. I'm not gonna buy this protein powder. I got this chocolate Nestle Quick over here. It's way cheaper. It tastes bitter. Yeah, yeah. Defeats the whole purpose. Defeats the whole purpose. Anyway, I was a little worried yesterday and then I was like, what? Justin yesterday during the podcast was poor kid. He was... Getting sick. Oh, sick. And he's like, oh guys, I gotta go home. I don't feel good. Left work early. Headache. Terrible energy. I apologize to you guys. Barely talking. And then I was like, what's wrong? Poor Justin. I always check on him when I check on a story to see how he's feeling when I see that. Yeah, so that's why I looked at the story. I'm like, poor, I wanna hope he's okay. And big old, smiley, happy, energetic face at the... Like what is it? The nine o'clock showing of Star Wars? Yeah, this is Star Wars, dude. What do you want from my bro? We're 40, we haven't grown out of lying to get out of work. I went home, I took a little nap. He's like, you know what I'm saying? I think I need to go home early, guys. I'm off a clamp to be...  He's like, yeah, he's all flexing in the picture. Yeah, I'm here. It's like the healthiest picture I've ever seen of him.  It's all in your mind. Here, I didn't have that, there I had it. Yeah, well, how was it? How was the morning? No spoilers, please. Yeah, no, I'm not gonna do that. I definitely respect my fellow Star Wars-ies. What are the critics saying? I read a bad review. Oh, well... I read a review that said it was pointless, that it was all over the place. Well, I don't know.   And that's what I'm starting to realize.  And so, in terms of the stories, yeah, they're just negative to begin with. And I've talked to family members and friends that already have this preconceived idea that it's gonna suck so bad because of all this and the other. I'm like, yeah, well, it is. Because you came in there with that energy.    Maybe you turn that right back on you. Well, I think that's it, right? It's people that come in that they want it to be a certain storyline or tell what they want and then it doesn't play out. How frustrating is that? Well, here's the thing, too, I guess.  Everything I wanted to happen did, so I was so happy. I loved it. Now, can you share something that without spoiling it? I don't wanna be spoiling it. Yeah, yeah, who wins in the end? Let's just, yeah, let's just say it. Yeah, everything worked out. Now, was this supposed to close the book or is this opening it up for many other legs? Yeah, so I think that they're gonna stop that side of the story for years. And go on the other end. Yeah, they're just gonna, you know, Mandalorian, they're gonna do these side, you know, storylines and the stat and the other, but in terms of the Skywalker saga, like this was sort of the close out of that, but then they still left it an open ending to it, you know, at the end. So that's as much spoiler as I could describe, but there was lots of introduction of old past characters and things that they brought in. That's enough.  That's enough. Don't ruin it because I can't wait to watch it. But you're right about negative people. You reminded me of this one client I had that was the most negative person in the ever.  She went on vacation to Italy, okay? Italy. Italy is known for having the best food in the world. Everybody knows this, a fact, scientific fact.  She's like, eh, you know, the food was okay. I'm like, what? The food was okay. She's like, yeah, you know, she's like, I don't really, the ice cream wasn't that good and the food wasn't that good. She's like, I found a Pizza Hut in a McDonald's near the hotel, so that's where I ate most of the time. Oh my God. Italy? Yeah, dude, and I remember sitting there like, how do I not take this personally? I felt like it was an assault on my soul, you know?  There's no possible, that's the only reason why she wasn't that excited.  Those are like the complaints I told you that we get on here. Like I was talking about the other day at work because I'll be talking to Cassie and she'll tell me like, oh, because she sends me any complaints I want to see, right? And she'll send it to me. And what we can see now with HubSpot is we can track everything that they've done, right? So I can see, oh, this person came in on this free blog that Sal wrote that took him five hours. Oh, and then they downloaded this free guide that he also wrote that took another four hours. And then, oh, they watched these YouTube videos that took us X amount of hours and our editing team cost us money. And then they did the, and then they get, here's the complaint.  I don't know why. Why would I buy any of your guys' programs?  It's never the person that's bought two or three things or uses this stuff. It's somebody who's gone through all the free channels.  And then you realize like, oh, that was them, not me. Yeah, but it was great cause I was at that movie like I was there with amongst my people. You know what I mean? Like Courtney was uncomfortable. Yeah, so we're sitting there like me and Courtney and the boys and we got there kind of early.  He like hood and everything over his face. He just like walks right past us. And I'm like, whoa, look like the grim reaper. And he like sits down and like, I'm like, whoa, you went all out. He's like, he starts eating his popcorn. He's like, I'm really excited. Like turn to Courtney. I'm like, we gotta watch out for this guy. Yeah, but he was a fan. I bet he gets. He was a real fan. I bet he gets. Hella girls. That guy must be a stuff. There was a guy in a Yoda mask, like towards the front. People were cheering.  You know what, I was watching last night. So, and I'm, and I know on the show I've talked about this before. I am not that out of the three of us on the least political. I don't care to watch this, but we are in a very, this is historical.  So it's piqued my interest enough to start watching and reading more. And just I'm curious like, again, because it's, that sounds way more fun. Right, it's historical. So I'm interested in everything that's happening right now. And so last night I caught myself watching, I think it's the final democratic debates as it was the final one of the year.  Yeah, well, that's because that's what they do. You're supposed to do that. Well, yeah, I get that, right? To a point, but they're all doing it like comparing how each one is more like Trump. They're using, like Trump's name came up the entire time, right? Which I feel like it's like rule number one, you don't do that, right? You want to take the mind, everyone's mind off of that. No, it's an effective strategy. Well, what they end up doing is they all end up drawing parallels to how each one of the candidates are like him in an area and then it just makes them all get lumped in the same category. So it's like, if you're trying to really draw a line and say, he's this evil, awful person, then I think you have to, you should all stick to that narrative and we're all way different, right?  Yeah, they were more Trump than me. The whole thing was like that. I'm like, at the end of watching it, being somebody who like doesn't pay attention to this, all I looked at is like, Jesus, they're all the fucking, they're all the same. You know what I'm saying?  No, what you have to, what the thing about, you have to realize about these debates where the Democrats are fighting over who gets the nomination to run against Trump is that they are speaking to the strong Democrat base. So those who's watching that, who cares about that are Democrats, hardcore Democrats. So what they say in those debates is different than what they're gonna say when they're debating and trying to sway vote. Trying to win. Yeah, but I feel like if you're, cause again, I'm not in bias coming into it. I'm just watching more for entertainment and I'm trying to put myself in those shoes. I understand what it is. I understand who's probably watching this debate, but I feel like if I normally vote Democrat and I'm watching this, I'm like, I don't know who to pick out of these assholes. You know what I'm saying? Like I'm like, you know, and so I could easily be persuaded over to the other direction, just simply based off of where the economy is right now.  Well, you're more independent. That's why. So we have to understand is for the base, Democrat base, Trump is literally Satan, right? They literally cannot stand them. They hate him. So what it's comparing other candidates to him is an effective way of shutting down your opponents and they're fighting each other. What's just what they're supposed to do. They're fighting over the nomination, but it's what's funny to me is when you look at these, these, when you watch the Republican debates against each other, fighting for the nomination of the Democrat debates where they're fighting for each other, you see more of the extremes. Like with the Democrats, it's who can give away more free stuff? Like I'm going to give away this much free stuff. Oh yeah. Well, I'm going to give away more free stuff. And I'm with the Republicans. It's like, who's more American? I'm so American, I do this. I'm way more American than you are. I believe in God way more than you do. It's absolutely, it's absolutely hilarious. But my opinion, and I consider myself independent, my opinion is that the Democrats are fucked. They have terrible candidates. Biden is their best option.  They have nobody. The economy's crushing. The impeachment happened. And you know, do you know what happened? They don't want to bring the article. They're not going to bring it because they know it's not going to get passed to the Senate. So they're trying to stall it. They're trying to stretch it out because they know it's a strategy to attack his character and they want that strategy to be around for the whole election. Now they're saying it's because they want to wait and see how the Senate's going to approach the trial and all that stuff, but really they just want to stretch it out. And they know if they bring it to the Senate, they're going to lose because it's completely on party lines. This is how you know it's a partisan issue. He got impeached almost 100% on the fact that it was all the Democrats that voted yes and almost every single Republican voter knows totally partisan. When it goes to the Senate, it's going to be same thing. There's more Republicans in the Senate than there are Democrats. So it's not going to go anywhere. But here's the thing, if they wait and stall it out, A, it's their Hail Mary attempt at beating him because they know economy's crushing or candidates are weak. We need this strategy. And number two, maybe what they're hoping for if they can stall it long enough is that the Senate loses enough Republican seats that when they do have a majority in the Senate, then they'll bring it to the Senate knowing that they can actually make it happen because they'll think you'll win. So if he wins, we can stall this, but maybe we'll win enough seats in the Senate, then we'll bring it there. Then as soon as he wins, we'll kick him out and then we'll start. So it is a smart strategy in my opinion, looking at what they're working with. I can't blame them for doing this, but here's the dual side of it. It could backfire bad. I think it already is.  It smells way too fishy. Anybody that has like half a brain that's paying attention to it's just like, oh, this is fucking. And Pelosi looks, have you seen her talk about like when she's being interviewed by reporters? It's uncomfortable. I almost, a couple of times I'm watching her. She's having a stroke. Oh no, she's just tripping over words. Yeah, dude, it's rough. It's an interesting thing. It's really fun. Well, it's actually got me, it actually has me watching and reading some stuff. So that's why I had to bring it up. I know Doug cringes a little bit when we go down the political rabbit hole. But I feel like this is, we have to talk about this. You absolutely love and follow everything like crazy. It's even piqued my interest. I got to think that a big portion of our listeners have to be paying attention or curious about it. And I'm paying attention to the galactic empire. And I do like to hear your opinion on these things because I do know that you're independent. I do know that you're non-biased with that. And I mean, I openly probably have leaned more conservative in the past, but I still, I don't, the reason why I don't vote, I don't know enough. So I stay away from that stuff, but I'm finding myself paying attention more than I ever have because it's like- Dude, Trump's drawn into the circus. Yeah. So after Trump got impeached, right? This is a big event, third time in ever. After he got impeached, Stock Market hit record highs. And he, I think he generated, I don't remember how many millions of dollars in campaign funds from, so he got impeached immediately. I don't know if you guys noticed ads in Facebook and Instagram. Immediately after the impeachment went through, there were ads with Trump, support me in fighting the switch on or whatever. So he's spinning it to generate- Oh yeah, oh yeah. You know, I meant to tell you too that, I agree with something that you had brought up before. I just confirmed it for me. I think you made a point that you, you think that when Trump is done, regardless of its this year or the, you know, four later, that he's gonna start a media company. I totally think so. Oh, he pretty much said that. He's setting himself up. Yes.  And when he was doing it, he was basically saying, like it's only a matter of time before I put you out of business. Oh. Yeah, he like came out and said that. I was like, he's- Oh man. He's gonna have the- He is for sure setting- The whole fake news, this whole thing has been for him to set his business table up. Probably.  Well, dude, Fox News gets more viewers and attention, all the other mainstream news networks combined. And they're really the only show in terms of who's getting, in terms of getting press and stuff mainstream for the conservative side. I see him coming out with a media company that is gonna compete and maybe take away from Fox because of all the, because of what he's done this whole time, he painted the picture of the fake news and all that stuff.  And, you know, I wish people would look at it from that way. You know, step back a little bit, look at the games and the charades and you start to see that these people are good. They're just setting themselves up. Oh no. Oh man. Dude, I read a very interesting study. There's a pharmaceutical company that came out, this is a try, it's not an approved drug, but they came out with a drug that's based off of the curcumin molecule. So you guys know curcumin is found in, what's it called? Not ginger, what's the other one? Turmeric. Turmeric, thank you very much. I forgot for a second there. It's actually in turmeric? Curcumin is, that's where you get it. That's where you get it from. And it has, we know this, curcumin's got and turmeric has got anti-inflammatory process. I thought turmeric was a root in itself. So it's, is it a part of the root? In one of the compound in turmeric that is largely responsible for its anti-inflammatory. Oh, it's an isolated, it's an isolated, okay, got it. Yeah, curcumin's in turmeric. So it's got all these beneficial health effects that we've been reading about for a long time. So a pharmaceutical company took curcumin, modified it, synthesized it, modified it and made a drug based off of curcumin, used it on mice and reversed Alzheimer's in the mice. No, reversed it. They did it reversed. Now it's an animal trial. So, you know, that's, you gotta take it with a grain of salt, but holy shit, you know, because we have yet to find anything that could do that. Have you been texting Max over this at all? No, actually it's a good question. Absolutely should.  So he'd be a fun person to have that discussion with. Yes, yes. I think that's a good idea. I'm gonna ask him and see what he thinks about it because he's so on the up and up. But that's fascinating because Alzheimer's and dementia are, I mean, that's like one of the big, you know, three or four chronic illnesses that we're gonna have to really deal with. Is this like addressing the inflammation in the brain on some level? Is that like part of the Alzheimer's or fine? Well, there's that. There's it's reducing the amyloid plaques that build up in the brain. And I haven't looked into it deep enough to know exactly how it works. All I know is that this preliminary research came out and it's kind of making waves because, and now here's the thing curcumin itself has been shown to have lots of brain health effects, which is why they went and studied that molecule.  Yes. It's not super good. Yeah. Do you have a number for me? I don't, but it's not super good. Like less than 50 or more than 50% Yeah, no, it's gonna be less. Oh wow. It's gonna be less, but it's the first step. And Alzheimer's, you know, we have yet to really find anything that we have drugs that we've tested on animals that slowed the progression, that maybe stopped the progression. But I don't think there's anything that's been shown in a study to reverse Alzheimer's in animals. So who knows where this is gonna go, but this is kind of a first and it's pretty exciting. Very interesting. Yeah, it's a little depressing though that it's less than half. I knew it wasn't great, but I didn't realize it was that bad. It's a first step though. You know what I'm saying? Like if you don't pass that first step. It's interesting nonetheless. I mean, it's great to, I think it makes for a great conversation and it's intriguing, right? To pay attention and watch that. Yeah, because beforehand they had ideas of how to prevent it, but there was never any treatment of reversing it. So that's exciting. So here's another brain article that I read. I forgot where I read this, but it was about exercise and its effect on the brain. So we've now known for a while that being active isn't just good for your body. It's also very, very good for the brain, not just physically by making your brain healthier, but they're finding very consistent results that show that cognitive, that there's cognitive improvements. People think better, they think sharper, maintains IQ. This seems so obvious to me. It does, but check this out, right? So that's what we know.  We know all that stuff. But now there's studies showing that some exercise is much better than others. You guys want to take a guess? What kind of exercise is better? For sure. Anything that is actually going to change or challenge you, like I would think things like stability, hand-eye coordination things, that the more mentally challenging it would be, would make sense that it's better for the brain, right? Versus something that- You know, we could all- Like full-pound exercises that utilize more muscles versus, yeah. Right. So I think the more difficult it is both, I think, not just physically, but then also like proprioception too.  Those type of movements I think would probably exercise and train the brain the most in comparison. You guys are 100% right. So what they found in the studies that were that cognitively challenging exercises were far more effective than exercise that was not cognitively challenging. So here's a good example of what would fall under each of those categories, right? Exercises that are not challenging cognitively would be walking, would be riding a stationary bike, repetitive motion where you get lost in your thought and you're just moving over. Now, that's not to say that they're not good. They have tremendous health benefits for the brain. Right. But exercises that require thinking and concentration and focus. Problem solving. Like resistance training. Resistance training because of the complexity of the movements, because there's such a wide variety of things that you can do. And because resistance training is always, if you do it right, resistance training should always change.  With resistance training, exercises change. Movement changes as you get better. Things are constantly challenging. Resistance training is in that category. And although the study fell short, excuse me, the article fell short of saying resistance training is the best, they kind of laid out the parameters. And I think we're five to 10 years away from scientists saying the best form of exercise for your brain is resistance training.  No, no, no, this is, I belong to a lot of groups on Facebook. Sounds so funny when you say that. What do you mean? I belong to a lot of groups. Like I'm a dork.  Chess club. Yeah, exactly. The chess club. Dude. Community service. My crochet. This is a hack.  I get asked all the time. And we see under the qualmium all the time people are like, where does Sal get his studies? Where does he do his research? Here's the best place, okay? Go on Facebook and find groups in categories that you're interested in. So if you're interested in economics, type in economics and follow a bunch of groups. If we're interested in neuroscience or nutrition or resistance training, follow these groups. And then when ends up happening, some of them have to approve you. Some of them just let anybody join. But once you're in, people in those groups are fanatical. And they'll post articles and studies as soon as they pop up. And some of them are obscure. But here's why it's amazing. You can watch the debates of people out there. Then in the comments, I go in the comments. And there's this one neuroscience group that I belong to. So they'll post an article on some new drug or new breakthrough in neuroscience. I'll read the article and I'll understand some of it, but I'm not a neuroscientist. So I'm like, okay, well, that kind of is interesting.  And then you learn everything through the discussion. That's smart. The best.  There's a study. There's like, click in the comments and I read. And it's a total hack, total hack. It's very, very effective. Anyway, along those lines, another study came out that tested the effectiveness or the impact of exercise priority. So these groups went in and trained full body. Some of them started with leg exercise. Some of them started with a chest exercise. We just talked about this. We did, we talked about it on an old episode. The study showed that most of the strength gains were go to the first exercises in the workout. So it's funny, it's an old bodybuilding principle, right? You know, prioritize what you want to work on. So for those of you who do full body workouts, for most of you, we recommend starting with the big muscle groups, just most bang for your buck. But if you've been training for a while and there's a specific thing you want to focus on, start your workout with that and then move into the rest of the exercises because that'll be kind of a hack to get there. For sure. Our first question is from Fit Allen. How do I get rid of that bottom belly pooch because it is really annoying? This was a common complaint or request I would get from clients back in the day. Very common. Especially women. Pooch. Yeah. And I'm going to assume this is a woman just from the verbiage. Yeah, I don't know many dudes that say my pooch. Yeah, bottom belly pooch. So, okay, a couple of things.  If you're talking about having excess body fat in the lower abdominal region, you just got to get leaner and if that's a place you tend to store, body fat, it's going to take longer. Last place to go. To get rid of it, which means you just got to keep getting leaner. So it may be a stubborn area for you because you're predisposed to store there. Now, there are some studies that suggest, and this is far from conclusive, but some studies suggest that if you're a high stress individual, for women in particular, you're more likely to store body fat in the midsection. So hormones and stress can kind of change a little bit, according to some of these studies, on how you store body fat. Again, they're not conclusive. My opinion is that's probably, unless it's extreme, that's probably a minor effect. I think it's largely determined by genetics. Now, if it's not body fat, and that can be frustrating. If you're lean, I've had clients like this where they're lean, and they don't have a lot of body fat in their stomach, but the lower abdominal region kind of sticks out a little bit. This was me when I could feel it, I told you it blew my mind. So here's what you need to consider. First and foremost, we're standing, gravity's pushing things down, their organs in your abdominal cavity, and they're going to push out the lower abs or lower abdominal area more than the upper, just because of gravity. So that's number one. Number two, there are muscles in your core that actually are responsible for keeping things tight. And one in particular is the TVA, the transverse abdominis. If you train just your abs and your obliques and you train your core all the time, but you don't do specific TVA exercises, especially after having a child, because when you have a child, the TVA stretches and atrophies, it has to. It's making room for the baby. It can't keep everything in tight. After you have the baby, that muscle will remain disconnected and not strong and you could leave you with where your internal organs push out a little more than they did before because you didn't strengthen those muscles. And actually, we actually did a video, so we'll put it, we'll make sure it's in the show notes. Did we do a video on this? We did a stomach vacuum video. That's actually, one of our more popular videos. That's right. Where I demonstrate an exercise that targets the TVA. It's not gonna be effective forever, but if your pooch is due to a weak TVA, especially after having a kid, it's an excellent exercise to practice. And I would say do that five minutes every day or every other day and you should notice some. Oh, I would say that's, I think that's one and two. One is just absolutely dieting to where you can lose the body fat. And I can definitely, I can totally understand where this person is coming from because I, when I competed, the first show that I got ready for, I remember being down, you know, 4% or 5% body fat.  And it was really weird to me that that had happened. And it took three cycles of me leaning out as lean as I could possibly get getting down to that single-digit body fat, going back to training, adding calories, building more muscle, then cutting again. And it took three full cycles like that of shredding as lean as I've ever been in my life to building, going back to building for a few months, then shredding to as lean as I possibly could. And then the third time was when it finally was eliminated. So it could be a very stubborn area.  My advice is to then reverse diet and go the other direction to, you know, focus on building muscle and adding calories back into the diet for a while and then come right back down. And don't let yourself, and the goal in this case is, and I think this is where it's probably hard for a lot of people is the consistency factor, right?   I had to get down to, I don't know what I got down to.  Oh, you're between three and five. Yeah, so I got really shredded and it took me to get that lean for that totally to go away.  I had to get super shredded to get there. Now, here's- I have a dream about that. Looky, that you were shredded? No. That I was shredded. That you can see you're winky. No, what you just described. Yeah, it was, yeah, anyways. Yeah, no. That was a joke that went wrong. We should let Justin just- Yeah, look, look, you're fat? Oh, yeah. Thanks for turning that around on me. I appreciate that. I was trying to say, I was like fantasizing about that and then you ruined it. Yeah, no, I remember looking down and seeing that it was finally gone, here's the thing to take away from that. It's not necessarily to get super shredded because I did get super shredded. It wasn't unhealthy, Lean. I honestly, because I was doing photos and I knew that I had to look a certain way to get any attention to sell MAPs and Ebola. This was of course before Mind Pump. I got myself to an unhealthy body fat percentage and in real life, had you met me, I wouldn't have looked impressive. I actually looked a little, I looked gaunt. I mean, if I took my shirt off and you looked at my abs, wow, but I wasn't healthy.   And it's funny because when I came out of that, that shredded state, I remember, I came out of it, I did everything wrong, I binged or whatever. I got sick for like two or three days, gained body fat, my metabolism was much slower.  And it took me a little while to get myself back to normal. But here's the other side, of course, is the exercise. Now I talked about the vacuum exercise, great exercise. Here's the other thing you can do. When you work your abs, you can also change your exercises so that you do focus on activating the TVA. And this is how you do it. Let's say you're doing a crunch. Rather than doing your crunch slowly coming up and squeezing the abs, which is still fine, it's great form.   And what you'll find is, A, you're not gonna be able to do nearly as many reps, very, very difficult. And B, you're gonna be activating your TVA so it's gonna feel very different. And what that does is it simultaneously works the abs, but also starts to teach the TVA how to activate. If you're post pregnancy, just doing a standing vacuum is gonna be hard because you've completely lost connection to that muscle. Yeah, a lot of my clients, I think that was a very common thing of just posture. Where it looked like their stomach was a bit more distended than normally if they had proper bracing techniques and they were applying that and connected to the TVA. It really does make a big difference in terms of even just sitting down and standing up what you present. Next question is from Tyler Rowe. Can men and women follow the same strength in muscle building programs or should different approaches be taken? Can they? They should. This is one of the worst things the fitness space ever did, ever, was convince women that they need to train differently for men. The only good thing about CrossFit. Exactly, they did such a good job of that, right? We've been giving them way too much praise lately. I can't stand it. But it's so true. It's one of the worst things that they did now. Why did they do it? It's an effective marketing approach. Of course, yeah. Early days of resistance training in gyms. No woman ever showed up to the gym and said, hey, I want to look like my husband. Yeah, no. That doesn't happen. Or some do, but it's very few. It's back when resistance training became a thing and gyms had weights. It was mostly men that were lifting weights. And the gyms and the fitness space said, how are we going to attract women? And at the time, the spokespeople for resistance training were bodybuilders. Remember Arnold Schwarzenegger and the documentary Pumping Iron went mainstream. It went mainstream. It was the first time the American public at large was exposed to bodybuilders and lifting weights. And so it got tied to Arnold. So it's like lift weights look like a bodybuilder. Men were doing it. Women were like, I am not touching weights with a 10 foot pole. I don't want to look like that. So the fitness industry responded by saying, oh no, this is how you should lift weights. High reps, don't use free weights. Use machines, feel the burn, small movements. Don't use weights at all. I mean, one of the first gyms that I ever worked in, in 19, back in 1997, had a women's area. So it was like a general weight area with machines and weights. So disrespectful. People forget about it. It was all purple and pink. I know. You know what's funny? I remember, I went in there and first of all, the women's area, no free weights. Actually no, there were a few free weights. There were the pink, small dumbbells. Rubber coated dumbbells. Didn't go above 10 pounds. And the machines were the same as the machines out in the other floor, except the upholstery on them was purple or pink. That was the difference. And they had pictures, instead of pictures of like a male anatomy chart or whatever, it had pictures of female anatomy chart. And then the female one was posed kind of like, Oh, six. Yeah, and I remember walking in there being like, this is hilarious. And I wasn't allowed in there because I was a guy. That's a hot man again.  No, it's so dumb. The rules that make resistance training effective apply to both men and women. Now there's differences in the individual. That's the differences you want to look at.  So you may want to work on different things. You may have a different level of experience. You know, you may want to train at a certain intensity versus a different intensity.  Everybody should work out with weights generally the same in terms of effectiveness. Next question is from Denay Jor. What's your guy's opinion on the food is medicine notion? I love that. Yeah. Who is one of the first people to say that, Doug? Is that apocrates? Apocrates, yeah. Those apocrates.  It's true.  I can't think of a more clear, easy way of understanding that your food completely affects your health 100%. And how you eat is probably, it's gotta be one of the top three things that'll affect your overall health. I can't think of too many things that is above that. Well, I mean, I feel like it's so obvious too. We have all these different macro and micronutrients that do specific things in the body and make it run efficiently. And yes, we are incredibly resilient that if we don't have some of these things, we don't die the next day, we can get by. Just like if you don't change your oil in your car for, you know, a long period of time, it doesn't just die out of nowhere because of the oil ran dry. It'll keep running for a while, just not very effectively. And I feel the body is very similar. Like if we, you know, lack nutrients and we don't feed the body what it needs, we don't die the next day, but it starts to run less optimally and less and less and less.  So I think absolutely, I like that notion. And I think that more people should look at it like that. I think right now, majority of the population we look at eating is like a pleasure thing because we're there, right? We live in a time now where nobody is, worried about dying from starvation. And you can be so choosy, right? Yeah, it's all about pleasure. Oh, I don't feel like that. I want that. This sounds better. When we sit here and we go back and forth and argue over what we're gonna have delivered. Well, such a convenience now. Yeah. Like that's the thing, it's like we just have so much of it now that we've, I think we've lost track of the fact that like, you know, what we're actually consuming in our body, that's the raw materials. That's the building blocks for all the cells in your body. It's like, of course, you know, that's part of you. So, you know, in terms of like looking for quality, I've always thought that, yeah, that's the way we should go.  So why not try to, your best, you know, to always kind of look for adding in the best stuff. And training, this was like one of the things I really enjoyed about training and bodybuilding, right? Like because I had to measure and track and pay really closer attention than I ever have in my entire life. It really gives you an idea of like, wow, how powerful, you know, eating certain foods are and how it can affect the body. I mean, it really does highlight that when you can manipulate your fiber in just the slightest bit. And when you are so detailed like that, it's like instantly, I notice a difference in my stool or if I inject an extra 100 grams of carbohydrates a day, like, holy crap, all of a sudden my workout, it feels like it's 10 times better. And, you know, when you're really dialed in like that, you can really start to tell the difference of all these micro- and macronutrients that you're either giving to the body or taking away from the body. And I think that just highlights like how powerful that really is. And I just think that for the most part, most people are over consuming so much stuff that you're kind of numb to how much food can be medicine to our body. We don't value it because it's everywhere. When we were in Arizona, Adam, I took a Uber when we were going to the dinner or whatever when I came and picked you up. And the driver was, he was obviously foreign.  Anyway, the man was Ethiopian and he came here, he was older, he came here in the late 80s as a refugee. So he's actually part of a refugee program that brought him over. Anyway, he has five kids and, you know, he's talking about his kids going to college so then I asked him, I said, you know, cause I'm the product of immigrants. I said, what shocked you the most or surprised you the most about America? And he goes, you guys have so much food that you throw food away because I couldn't believe how people is like, we have so much, we just throw it away because it took me so long to get used to the fact that you guys are so much. And that's just the position in the state that we're in. Now, as far as food as medicine is concerned, look, there's, I'll give you a very specific example. If you, and we identified this a long time ago, for certain types of epilepsy, you could change your diet and stop having seizures for certain types. You can go on a ketogenic diet and we've been treating epilepsy this way way before we had drugs, change your diet. Wow, look, the kid doesn't have seizures anymore.  I know that food, their studies that show that food can, eating a certain way can reduce your susceptibility to viruses or bacterial infection.  If you have poor digestion, does that affect the rest of your body? Absolutely. Does changing your nutrition potentially improve your digestion? Yes, it does. So there are both acute effects from food where it's almost like Western medicine, like taking a pill. And then of course there's long stream, downstream effect. So the best medicine is food. That's the best medicine is general. And you do it every single day.  Well, and I think too, like why we've gone away from it is because it's interesting because we just consume food but we don't pay attention to how we react afterwards as well. Like we've talked to this, about this ad nauseam like, where I will eat something, be affected by it, won't trace back that, the food had anything to do with that. Meanwhile, if we're taking medicine like in concentrated form, like we're expecting to feel something. That's all we're focused on. Don't you guys really think this has a lot to do with it because we over consume so much that we get away with a lot of bullshit? Like if we lived in a time where like food was really scarce. Oh, we would value it totally differently. And like you needed the calories every time you ate because most of the time you were depleted. And then if you were also making poor choices nutritionally, like your body would let you know right away. Like if you only could get to 1500 calories and back then, right? That's all you could ever get to. And then you made the choice of it's always lemon heads.   We all were fine. We're okay. And we medicate ourselves with drugs and medicines and ibuprofen and alcohol. And then we start to believe that our condition is just a part of who we are. You know, I'm just having insomnia. I just have poor sleep all the time. Or yeah, I always take a laxative because I just have bad digestion or I always have heartburn. So I have to pop rollades all the time or whatever. Not realizing that your food can fix you. Sailors in the past would use lemons and oranges to cure scurvy which was a disease. So absolutely 100% it is food is medicine and we should definitely, you know, it's funny. When you look at modern hunter-gatherers, so what percentage of Americans would you say eat organ meats? Oh my God. I'd say less than 1%. Nobody eats organ meats, right? Nobody eats liver. Back in the day, they used to, moms were encouraged. That was the first thing you ate, wasn't it? Hot dogs. Wasn't that like the most prized stuff? Isn't that what you would go after first? Well, 60, 70 years ago, moms were encouraged by their doctor, hey, make liver for your kid. Or here, give them cod liver oil. You ever watched the cartoons where the mom is feeding the kid something in a spoon, the kid's gagging or whatever? That's cod liver oil. And they knew that because back then, kids had vitamin D deficiency. It showed up as certain diseases like rickets. And they didn't have synthesized vitamin D. They would give them cod liver oil as a way to solve it. Now, as far as hunter-gatherers are concerned, you, when they make a hunt, if you are visiting with the tribe and they kill an animal, they offer the heart or the liver or the kidneys to you first. Because it's the prized- Yeah, liver is most mineral dense, right? It's super, super nutrient dense. But we're just, we just have so much of it that we just, we don't, like that driver said, we just throw it away. Yeah. Next question is from Force Fitness Kyle. I'm a new parent and also a trainer. Do you have any advice on how to balance being a husband, father and trainer while keeping my own fitness up? You know, use fitness as a tool and that tool can be wielded in many, many different ways. Use the Force, Kyle.  It's in his name. Yeah, you know, years ago, I went through a very, very difficult time. Somebody very close to me was diagnosed with a, you know, a disease that was gonna take their life and my whole family was affected very, very terribly. And I didn't stop exercising. Now it's not because I'm a fitness fanatic in Zella and I'm not gonna miss my workouts for anything type of deal. No, no, no, that's not what it was. I changed my workouts. I didn't workout as often, but I stopped training to get stronger, build muscle and burn body fat. I started training to keep myself healthy enough to help my family during this difficult time. So really it was changing the focus. Fitness is an amazing tool. So if you're super busy, exercise can be an incredible stress relief, make you fit and healthy so you can handle more stress, modify it. It becomes a different tool. It's a tool that can be modified to your lifestyle. I think this is a really good question because I do know it's challenging as a trainer, right? Cause you are your own billboard, right?  I need to look a certain way to attract clients and it's part of my brand. And so I can understand how that can be a little bit more challenging. Cause personally, I just, my fitness has changed right now. And it's right in line with what you just said, Saul, is, you know, I'm less worried about PRs. I'm less worried about what my abs or my biceps look like. And it's more like about getting movement and staying mobile and making sure that I don't get chronic pain and getting my steps in.  Like I do things now and I'm very conscious of making this choice is, you know, I won't just go work out sometimes for an hour, but I'll make sure, hey, I'll strap the baby on my chest. I'll grab Katrina and we'll go for a walk for an hour, hour and a half. So he falls asleep. I get one on one time with her.  So I'm burning calories. So I do a lot more stuff like that now. And I feel really good about it. Yeah, it's not making my physique look impressive by doing that, but it keeps me healthy. It helps me work on my relationship with my partner. It gives me quality time with my son. I feel like I kind of knock out all those things that are what you just listed that are extremely important. You just gotta shift your goals a little bit this time and be okay with that. And right now I'm really happy if I get in the gym three days a week. If I get three good lifts in a week, that's solid for me. But that's enough that I know that I'm not gonna completely spiral out of control or aggress way back or put on a ton of body fat.  I just don't look impressive right now. But more importantly, the higher priority things, my time with my son, my time with Katrina, those things are way more important to me right now. And so I prioritize them first and find ways to fit fitness into that. I think that's great advice. I think that's the direction, I can't even speak, the direction I was gonna go, being more inclusive and having your partner in ways that you can incorporate the family involved in movement and being able to exercise. And for me, obviously we've talked about having a home gym and that wasn't as appealing for me like when I was just focused on myself and then my own self improvement, but that was a game changer for being able to have access to that.  It's just like you have less moments, less long moments to yourself, right? So you'll have short moments to yourself. You just figure out how to maximize those moments and also include people in your process. Yeah, you know, long-term fitness success is based on the following. Use it to improve and supplement the quality of your life. That's it, it's not supposed to replace life.  Instead, look at it and say to yourself, how can fitness supplement and improve or contribute to the quality of the most important things of my life? And so that means that your fitness routine is gonna look different, that's all. It's just gonna look different. Sometimes you're gonna work out five days a week, sometimes you're gonna work out two or three days a week, sometimes your lifts are gonna be heavy and hard and sometimes they're gonna be more mobility focused and full range of motion and just trying to feel good and maintain your health, that's all. And if you do that, cause here's the deal, life changes. Life is going, look, 100% if you think life's gonna stay the same, you're in for a rude awakening. It's going to change. So allow your fitness to change along with your life and you will develop a lifelong healthy relationship with fitness and you'll find that you'll never get into those situations where I stopped fitness for six months because I can't do it the way I want to. That's when it becomes a problem. And with that, I wanna remind everybody, look, there's only five days left for the 50% off, maps, aesthetic, sales, one of our most popular workout programs. It is a body sculpting, body building and bikini inspired workout program. It's half off, you only have five days left. So do this right now, go to mapsblack.com and use the code black50, B-L-A-C-K-5-0. There's no space there, use that for the discount.


Everybody forced here ripping 2021 contenders optic football hobby 10 box half case Number 11. We're on now. It's a PYT Let's read off Alex G Jaguars, Bo B Cardinals, Benjamin V Seahawks, Brian S Bears, Charles W Falcons Daniel W Eagles, Derward with the Browns, Edgar B Steelers, Eric R Patriots, George Y Broncos, Henrik J Bucks, James H Giants, Jamie C Panthers, Jesse O Niners, Jim J Titans Ken I Packers, Kendall with the Texans Kieran has the Cowboys Lance W Vikings, Matt O Raiders, Melvin L Dolphins, Nathan A Colts, Patrick G. Bills, Ray J Chiefs, Robert R Lyons, Scott M Jets, Sean T Washington, Shazeed with the Chargers, Steven with the Ravens, Takeshi, Saints, Thomas B, Bengals, and Zachary L Rams. Thank you very much everybody for joining Good look. All right. First up. We got base Saquon Barkley and Travis E.T.N. Junior That is to 50 orange rookie ticket Jalen Darden Bucks X's and O's Ravens, Clay's Campbell, Lamar Jackson, Blue to 99 Saints Super Bowl auto Marcus Colston, not number And Texans, Blue rookie ticket on card auto, Nico Collins to 75 33 of 75 on the Nico Yeah, the only Texas hitter I remember from earlier was a crack ties Brevin Jordan. No mills Got Davis, D'Yammy Brown Silver rookie ticket, Teres Marshall Jr. Panthers Blue winning ticket Chargers, Justin Herber, nice blue color match One of 99 The first one Raiders rookie ticket auto Alex Leatherwood, Nico Raiders And 49ers, rookie ticket auto Silver, Eli Mitchell He doesn't go by Elijah anymore Okay, we've got base Khalil Mack and Ramandre Stevenson Patriots rookie there Rams, orange, Aaron Donald It's a 50 Pink round numbers, Kylan Hill Packers, Jamar Jeperson Lyons Gonna roll a die. One, two, three, top for the Packers, four, five, six, bottom for the Lyons Pink is to 75 Five on that one, going bottom Lyons Raiders rookie ticket auto Trevon Morig, another Raiders hit there Haven't seen a lot of those today Panthers rookie ticket auto Red on card, Teres Marshall Jr. to 99 Non-variation Got base Lamar Jackson, Zach Wilson base rookie for the Jets Season ticket Ravens, Lamar Jackson, it is blue out of 99, a red, white, and blue Zach Wilson winning ticket That is, what is that going on up there? That's sick There you go Jets, nine of 13 We'll get that magged, got Washington rookie ticket auto John Bates RPA Cardinals, Ron Dale Moore to 50 Lots of Ron Dale Moore today There you go, Zona. All right, we got Russell Wilson, Rashad Bateman rookie Silver for the Falcons, Calvin Ridley Winning ticket Saints, Alvin Camara, Pink to 75 Broncos rookie auto Patrick Surtain the second and Chiefs blue rookie ticket on card auto Cornell Powell to 75 Yeah, we have seen a lot of the same players. I want it to be more diverse Mahomes Javante Green Pulsar Jets Broncos round numbers That's Elijah Moore, Javante Williams One two three top four five six bottom four going bottom on this one Broncos Green Pulsar to 30 Jets rookie ticket auto Elijah Vera Tucker and Falcons green Pulsar rookie ticket auto Darren Hall out of 30 So I think there was a missing Like base like silver and that one but we have the hits in the insert Jags rookie ticket gold Trevor Lawrence Five of ten very nice rookie ticket parallel for the Jaguars Alex G there you go Black scope lottery ticket Ravens Lamar Jackson nine of 25 Sick one Ravens. What a fantastic start to this box The Lawrence will not mag it is too is cut long Darren Waller Etn Bills rookie ticket auto Marcus Stevenson bears All-time contenders auto Brian Urlacher to 50 God Vikings down and cook bears rookie Justin Fields Devontae Smith rookie red That's the 175 for the Eagles Nice lottery ticket Sri Lantz Niners Silver on that one Here you go Niners Jaguars rookie ticket auto J2 felly and Colts rookie ticket auto is quity pay saved by the bell variation. That's right The color when there's like a gold on those or like a whatever the other colors are they've had on those they look really good That's kind of everything an optic, but Some of those inserts just jump out at you. I've got Josh Allen base Ricky Najee Harris Titans Ryan Tannehill blue 1099 and Mack Jones Najee Harris gonna roll the die for this one silver one two three top four five six bottom Three this one goes Patriots redemption is bears 2011 contenders throwback rookie auto Justin Fields That will be sick we have not seen any 2011 Throwback autos yet What they look like on the checklist. That's pretty sick That's a really cool design on that year Congrats bears and Jets rookie ticket auto base on card is Michael Carter Kelsey and Ellinger Got Tom Brady blue out of 99. There you go buccaneers Orange Packers winning ticket Aaron Rodgers to 50. That's two hits. You got bears Dazz Newsom rookie ticket auto silver Falcons Felipe Franks green pulsar rookie ticket auto To 30 Falcons Felipe Franks Let's do a recap. All right, so we had Felipe Franks Dazz Newsom Michael Carter J2 fell a quitty pay Marcus Stevenson Brian Ehrlacher Darren Hall Elijah Veratucker Cornell Powell Patrick Sertan the second John Bates Rondale more RPA terrorist Marshall Jr. Trayvon Morrig Eli Mitchell Alex Leatherwood Marquez Colston Niko Collins Get a gold Trevor Lawrence that did not fit into a mag. That's what we have it in the top loader here Just off by a little bit sick one though Congrats Jags redemption is Justin Fields bears 2011 contenders throwback rookie auto Sick one for the bears. That'll be nice Black scope lottery ticket Lamar Jackson at 25 Ravens on the insert and a winning ticket red, white and blue Jets rookie Zach Wilson out of 13 That's gonna do it. Thanks again everybody got one more half case coming up


Shop with me, the knitwear edition. A little try on and browse around the likes of H&M, Mango, The White Company and Reese. So let's start with the latter, where I found far too many pieces I wanted to buy. So first day I found this half zip cable knit jumper, which I tried on in the cream. It's also available in a lovely shade of camel and a pastel blue if you're craving a little more color. I think the style is meant to be a regular fit, but I tried it on in the large to make it feel really oversized. You can leave that collar laying open and flat or keep snuggled with it zipped right up. The only downside on this one for me is that it's not made from 100% cotton, which would have made it perfect. It is the season for a little bodycon dressing, but thankfully for us, the trend is still subtle and elegant. And on top of that, I don't think an interpretation like this will ever date. This knitted dress is available in this oatmeal tone that I tried and black too if you prefer. It's made from a blend of wool and viscose with a tiny bit of cashmere to finish. I'm wearing the small and I'd say the fit is perfect. And I think the rib to the knit along with that high roll neck, not only make it feel a bit different, but elevate the piece too. I'd style with long boots and a full length winter coat. As you've probably gathered from my pictures on Instagram, I don't really need another oversized blue shirt, but the fabric on this one really stood out, so I just had to try it on. The label just said 100% cotton, but I'm thinking it's possibly a cotton sateen as it feels so silky to the touch. Now, wreaths are well known for their timeless tailoring, but if you're favoring more oversized fits like I am this season, simply pick out your favorite pieces and size up once or twice. I tried the medium in this shirt and I love it. And although, yes, it's high end of the high street at 98 pounds, I would say having seen this in person and felt the quality, it's absolutely worth the pennies. I thought of this jumper as an alternative to the half zip one I showed you in the beginning. It still has that higher neck we've been seeing an awful lot of this season, but without the zip, which I know that some people find annoying. This one is slightly longer in the length too. The sort of jumper you could style with tighter trousers or jeans or leggings and still feel covered. Again, it has that chunky cable knit, which I love, and I actually really like how they've styled it on their website with those more polished looking joggers. Camel obviously works nicely against creams and beiges, but mostly I love the contrast of laid back jumpers dressed up with heels. It's a cozy contrast I reach for a lot in winter. Talking of smarter joggers, I found these along the way, which I thought were just a little bit different. I like how the leg is tapered to create a gentle barrel leg, and those seams make them feel more polished.  I'd have rather something more understated. Perhaps their simple jersey joggers would be a better alternative. Less fuss often feels nicer to wear, for me at least. But I did really like the shawl collar sweatshirt that I tried on in the Ivory. It's been made from a lovely brushed cotton, so it felt super soft to wear. And although low-key, I thought it would be a chic addition to everyday looks. Though this item would obviously work as loungewear, I would also dress it up a touch too, and style it with more tailored trousers, perhaps adding in more textures with a wool coat or a scarf. I often think people can overlook those really simple pieces, but honestly, if you find one that's a great fit and made from a beautiful fabric or yarn, I tend to find them priceless in my wardrobe. Now you need a little bit of imagination with this next piece, as obviously the combination is all wrong, but how gorgeous is this blazer? Though described as oatmeal, I love the blend of colors in that fabric, and the slightly masculine shape to it. It's pretty tailored, like a lot of Reese Blazers. So again, I sized up to a 12 for this look, but I think it would also work true to size as well. With such a lovely statement piece like that, I would probably keep the rest of my styling really simple, classic pair of dark denim jeans, and depending on the weather, maybe just a little vest top or a cami underneath. Some pieces just scream star of the show, so I like to just let them do their thing. Next up, I headed to H&M, who have finally got their changing rooms open again. So laid in with armfuls of pieces I headed for a little try on, and found some new pieces that had to come home with me. Starting with this jumper in that lovely deep charcoal shade. Like at Reese, I've been trying knitwear sized up this season, as I'm craving those really oversized snugly fits, and I think this one did it perfectly. In reality, it's a pretty basic jumper with that simple crew neck and regular sleeves, but in actual fact, I've worn it quite a few different ways already, so it's a sign of a good piece. Those jeans had to come home with me too. I just love that fit. Now they're not meant to be so oversized, but I really love the shade and the detail, so I decided to try them a size up as I thought they would really work and tick that loose trend box perfectly. I've been wearing them really loose and slouchy, or adding a belt and sitting them higher up on my waist. So lots of different options of how to style them. Paired with smarter shirts and blouses for a contrast, or a simple yet classic tee for everyday wear. You could polish the look with smarter heels or pointed toe flats, which do have that handy knack of really elevating very relaxed pieces like baggy jeans. I'd probably add a really chic and timeless blazer with them too, along the lines of that nonchalant, Parisian style that I love so much. Now these trousers obviously need taking up a touch, but I thought the fit around the waist and with that dropped crotch was really flattering. They just need a little tweak on the hems to finish them off nicely. I love those deep pleats down the front of the leg, creating a really nice shape. And for the price, I thought these would be a great workwear, smarter option for my wardrobe. The reality is I personally work from home probably 90% of the time. So I would probably wear them most with flats, but I think they would look great with a pair of kitten heel mules too. H&M actually do smarter pleated trousers really well. So if you're looking for some really affordable alternatives to that style, I would highly recommend having a peak for their current collection. I picked up this piece for those who love the quilted, Her Majesty trend this season. Now I've seen the Frankie shop version all over Instagram recently. It's definitely become the it coat to have this season. And while I think it looks lovely on other people, in all honesty, it just isn't for me. If however you love the look, then this one might be a good dupe for you. It's longer than the Frankie shop version and it has to be said an awful lot cheaper too. Made from recycled polyester and retailing at just 49.99. Obviously the design is quite overpowering. So I'd probably keep the styling with this coat pretty simple elsewhere. You saw a sneak peek of this jumper with the tailored trousers, but just to give you a quick close up. Like the chocolate gray, I tried this on in a medium and I love the fit. It's been made from a blend of wool and recycled polyester again. And I love the sand tone. It feels soft and elegant, both aesthetically and literally. Not only do these big jumpers look great styled with more tailored trousers, but I also love layering them over bodycon dresses that we've seen a lot lately. It dresses down those pieces that feel a little too much for certain occasions, while still leaving you feeling polished and elegant. I promised you the knitwear edition with this video and that is definitely what I found in all its luxurious form at The White Company. One of my favorite stores for little brows. I must be craving knitwear at the minute because as you can see, I find myself another beautiful jumper. I can't actually find this one online unfortunately. So I'm thinking it's possibly in store only, but having been made from a blend of cashmere and wool, I'd say it's definitely worth hunting down. Then to one beautiful winter coat made from the finest Italian wool made by Artisan's Intuscany. Sustainably sourced, blended with twill, and even, hooray, with recycled lining too. Why don't more brands do that? It's single breasted and I love that it comes down to the knee, which not only feels really elegant, but it's very practical for autumn, winter too. I seem to be adding more gray tones into my wardrobe recently. It's a lovely addition to my neutral palette of shades that always seems to make me feel chic and polished without having to try too hard. This would obviously be an investment piece, but I'm imagining you would have it forever.  Made from a blend of merino and cotton, and with that wide, chunky, ripped roll neck, it feels like I'm ticking one of the big fashion trends this season, but in a hugely comfy and cozy fashion. Another plus for me would be those raglan sleeves and the boxy fit with a very slightly longer length at the back. I thought this would be beautiful, styled with that knitted skirt that I bought recently from Zara. Or maybe just keeping it really simple with girlfriend jeans and a pair of trainers. Either way, it's a cozy and beautifully made staple for autumn, winter 2021. I couldn't do a shot with me and not try on at least one of the season's hottest trends, stripes. But if you're sick of all the navy and black around at the minute, why not opt for something a little different like this red one at Mango? I like how the stripes don't actually start until about a third of the way down, keeping that neckline clean and minimal, and the stripes aren't too overpowering either. Following that half zip trend again, but unlike the Reese version, this neckline isn't so heavy and won't really back on itself so well. If you're looking for inspiration of how to style your stripes this season, do take a look at my daily outfit ideas over on Instagram, as I think it's fair to say I love this trend and I wear it a lot. I've never really tried Mango's workwear collection, so I thought you might find it interesting if I gave it a try. This small selection came from their essentials but committed range. So basically affordable and sustainable at the same time. Firstly, I tried this floaty tensile shirt, and what I think is a very beautiful shade of blue. The fabric is beautifully soft, actually a really lovely drape. As you can see, it almost looks silk like here. I paired that with the straight leg suit trousers in navy. They've got a lovely fit actually, a really nice tapered leg. Pretty much like a Capri pant, but in a smarter workwear fabric, I guess. I'm not so keen on the belt on these. I thought that detail on that looked a little bit cheap, but obviously that's an easy switch out with an alternative, or actually you don't need a belt at all. And then to finish, I tried their classic staple blazer in navy to match. More tailored than I would normally go for, but in actual fact, I really love the whole look for the office. It feels smart and elegant and yet it feels like my own personal style running through at the same time. The whole suit is also available in black if you prefer, but personally I'm really loving navy at the moment. It feels like a nice change to all the black that I would usually wear in winter. The blazer retails are just under 50 pounds and the tapered suit trousers just under 36 pounds. So a really affordable option there from Mango. I've mentioned a couple of times that I'm looking for more of a robe style camel coat to go in my wardrobe. So I was interested to try Mango's version while I was there. Now I don't think this is the exact version I was thinking of before, but it's still a nice alternative to try out. I love the shade of camel they've used, although Mango always has the worst lighting in their changing rooms, so it's really hard to see in this footage. It retails at just under 120 pounds and is made from a blend of wool and recycled polyester. I would have liked the fabric to feel a little bit thicker, but I do like the shade, the shape and the fit. As you can see here, I'm trying to convince myself on this quilted coat trend, but in reality, I know in my heart, it's just not working for me. I think the problem for me is in contrast to say a traditional puffer coat, which is unglamorous as it is, is actually very handy to have in those freezing days in winter. This style of coats feels like a real fad trend to me. I doubt very much that they'll be on trend next autumn, winter, and they're not particularly thick and cozy and warm either. So my advice would be to not overspend on this trend if you do like them, as I don't imagine it's gonna be around for too long. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on that quilted coat trend, actually. Are you in the love or loathe camp? Or maybe you've found a more versatile option yourself. It's always really lovely hearing from you all in the comments section below. Thank you so much for watching this shop with me, my try-on and little mooch around the shops. As you can see, there are lots of beautiful knitwear pieces out there at the moment. So hopefully that's given you a few ideas and lots of inspiration to get you started. Big hugs, everyone, and hopefully see you all next week.