 Pay close attention. Progress from exercise is not always. Fat loss, muscle gain, or enhancements in athletic performance. There are things you can pay attention to that will show you that you're moving forward. In fact, you should pay attention to all the signs that we can get a complete picture of what fitness can actually do for you. This was a game changer for clients. This is one of my favorite tips that you've done in a while, because one of the hardest challenges as a trainer and coach when you get a client is convincing them that they're actually doing really good when they're so stuck on a goal like, let's say, lose 30 pounds, right? So that's like such a common, I want to lose 30 pounds, I want to lose 30 pounds, and it's all about the scale. So you first as a coach, have this like hurdle, big hurdle that you have to get over, which is explaining to them that I know that you have this number in your head that you were and you felt better than what you were now. But that's not the main metric that we should focus on. So that's already a big enough hurdle to even get over that. And then getting them to really be able to see the other things that are improving in their life because they're still so, even when they think they've moved past the weight thing. Like, okay, I agree with you. I get it. I get, I get the science of explaining the muscle metabolism thing. Okay, I get all that, but I still want to be smaller in the back of their head. And then they're seeing things like they're sleeping better and their sex drive is better and their skin is better. And people are telling them, God, you look good as with that, but the scales not moving. And so they're like, I don't understand. I'm not seeing my the results I want. And so, man, I think this is such a good tip is for people to really start to learn to look at all the other things that exercise and eating good impacts. Yeah, there's so many things, so many factors. And that really is like the biggest part of our job is as personal trainers is to make sure that we highlight those things because it isn't obvious a lot of times. And it's, again, a lot of these things kind of reveal themselves probably later on in the journey. But to be able to know that things are happening and, you know, the way even my my mental health, the way I'm looking at things like me personally improving myself is going to translate a lot of different things with relationships with work and just my overall drive to be a better person. Yeah, this is really about human behavior. To use an analogy, like if you look straight ahead, there are things within your vision that you see but you don't necessarily perceive, because you're not focused on another example would be and I'm going to is going to make everybody annoyed, but you always see your nose when you're looking at something Your nose is always in your vision, but your brain ignores it because you're not focusing on it. Yeah. All right. So what does this have to do with what we're talking about? Great. Now I've seen mine. Yeah. Now you can see the whole time. It's a big nose. It's like manually breathing. It's because we what we focus on is what we see and all the other stuff we tend to ignore. So it's not that these people aren't necessarily getting these these results or there's there's progress. It's that they almost they're ignoring it and they're focusing so heavily on something like the scale. So what ends up happening is they have all these amazing, amazing metrics which are going to happen. Like if you go from inactive to active, you do it properly. You go from eating poorly eating better and you do it appropriately. You're going to feel better. You're going to have better sleep. You're going to have better energy. You're going to have better moods. You're going to, you're going to have a better sex drive. You're going to feel less pain, but you're not going to notice those things if you're so hyper focused on the 30 pound goal or the goal to hit a PR or whatever your goal is. So what's interesting to me is when I figured this out, this is how I figured it out. I would get because when I first became a trainer, I'm sure you guys did the same thing. I also would hyper focus on the goal. Oh, you want to lose 30 pounds? That's all we're going to focus on. And I'm not going to even pay attention to this stuff because I'm going to get you the goal that you paid me $1,000 higher to get you to or whatever. I remember at one point my client was commenting on something. I remember exactly what it was. I think it was something along the lines of like their sleep or something. And I remember their sleep was so bad before. And I said, oh, what? I said, you're sleep. It was really bad before. And she stopped. She goes, oh my God, I haven't been sleeping this good in years. She's like, you're right. The last week has been amazing. Does exercise do that? And I'm like, yeah, it does do that. I mean, definitely improves your sleep. And I remember the shock coming from her voice that she just realized something that's been happening for the last week. And then I remembered, oh, like I need to help these people focus on all these other things because what it does is it paints a complete picture because here's the reality. You want to lose 30 pounds and you do lose the 30 pounds. Now what? Why do you keep exercising to lose another 30 pounds? Like why would you keep doing this? By the way, people who do this consistently for years and years and years eventually figure this out. You ask anybody who's been consistent with exercise for 10 years. You have to. They ask, yeah. You have to because at one point the other goal becomes so superficial and you've already proven to yourself you can do it. And what are you going to do? It's so interesting that we went this direction and the point, I love the point that Justin that you made up because I literally just had this moment in the last week where so at our house, I've told you guys before our routine kind of is that I'm the one to kind of straightens up the house and keeps because I like it like you're super, super clean like nothing out anywhere. Right. So I'm the one who does that most of the time. And I noticed not only that I noticed Katrina even noticed because she said something to me about me like slipping on some of the stuff and I'm just like, and of course a part of me gets irritated is the initial reaction. Then I realized, no, that's that is my part of what I do. What I've already connected before is when I'm really consistent with my training, I come home with this different energy to keep my household in order and to do that stuff. And like, I don't, I don't walk in the door like plopping the couch a long day today or whatever like that or go back on my phone or get on the computer. Right. I come home and I make my house in order and I enjoy that and I have the energy to do that, the motivation to do that. When I don't, when I'm inconsistent with my training, that becomes inconsistent. And so I've learned to tie my consistency around exercise into being a better husband and a better father and a better homekeeper or leader in my home. And so, and because I've already proven to myself what I could do physically, body fat percentage wise, muscle wise, also like that. Like that doesn't motivate me anymore. Okay. Because it's a superficial goal. And by, and doesn't mean it's not that someone shouldn't have that at one point or I don't think there's tons of value and getting ripped into there's lots of value and all that stuff. But eventually that superficial goal, you don't care about anymore. And so you have to find something that is deeper, that is more important than just the way you look. And once you learn to really attach to those things, it's much easier to stay consistent for those reasons. Now, here's how we're going to tie it together and sell it because the other half of this, the challenge with this is trying to sell this to somebody who's just so focused on weight loss that they're like, that's nice. That sounds great. Like I still just want to lose. Yeah, I still got a hundred pounds ago. Yeah, so here's how I'm going to tie it together and sell it. And this is true. So this is 100% accurate. Can you, so I'll ask the question. Can you lose 30 pounds and feel worse, get worse sleep, feel like shit, make your health worse? Yes, you can. You absolutely can. Now, will you lose 30 pounds if you start to feel better, if you start to sleep better, if you start to get a better attitude, if you improve your mobility, if you improve your strength, if you improve your energy, probably. So in essence, what we're saying is the things that you should focus on, which actually give you the complete picture, are the ones that also lead you to that goal that you want. That goal that you want, that you're so focused on, the aesthetic goal, the weight loss goal, whatever. If you just focus on that, there's a very good chance you'll ignore everything else and you'll sacrifice everything else. And then here's the kicker. Not only will your health get worse and you'll feel worse, you won't even hit your goal. You've actually thrown it all out the window. And that ties it together and sells it because, fine, you're just focused on weight loss, here's how you're going to lose the weight anyway. Still do what I'm saying. But at the end of the day, this was such a paradigm shift for my clients. This, I would say, and there's a lot of things that play a role, but this is probably number one in getting my clients to find, or at least figuring out the path toward developing a lifelong. Relationship with exercise. When I figured this piece out, this is when the door opened for my clients and I said, oh, this is exactly what I need to focus on. And what happened was my client's success rate went through the roof. But when I didn't figure this out, it was terrible. I wonder what I would classify someone who's got to this place. Are you a black belt at this point? Because this is something that I feel like to this day, it's still an evolution and getting better and better. That's a big step to get to that place. I think there's a lot of steps before someone really, truly can attach. Because you can say it all you want, but we're mostly driven by our insecurities, especially at the beginning when it comes to body composition change and working out and exercise and nutrition, all that stuff like that. So it is quite the evolution. So don't be discouraged if you're someone listening right now and you know you need to lose 50 pounds or whatever because you know what your doctor's told it, you've been trying to do it. And you also are not at a place yet where you're like, oh, I can connect it to keeping the house clean. Doesn't make you a failure at all, but that's the place you want to get to. You want to get to a place where the reflection in the mirror, the weight on the scale, the way you look is not what is driving your decision. It's all the other things that health and fitness and exercise and making good healthy choices does for you besides that. Yeah. Well, I think it's a good visual to look at. It is almost like that white belt that's coming in. Like sure, there may be some outliers that will get it right away and all of a sudden they just advance, you know, and they work their way up and, you know, they get a black belt within like a year or two or something like ridiculous. And, you know, there's some people takes quite a lot longer. They have to get through and stumble through a lot of these ideas on their own. And really, that's why this is such an individual journey. And this is like, you know, as trainers, you're just there as like sort of this oracle. You're just there to kind of guide them wherever their mental state is. Like, okay, if you're here, like, let's focus on this. And then like really try to just, you know, drive their attention towards these things that are more beneficial to focus on. But it's not, it's not just innate. It's not something that you just get it right away. Like you do have to work at it. I am so glad you guys use the belt ranking system as an analogy because there's more to it than what you guys are saying. And so this is actually quite interesting. What does a purple belt look like? Yeah, you know, I have one of those. You know, it's okay. So it's a beautiful analogy precisely because of the following. The belt systems in martial arts were invented later. They were invented later because people like to, they like a visual of their progress, but they were never meant to show somebody reaching a destination. Martial arts is a pursuit. It's a journey. It's not like you're there, you're done. Now the data and the statistics on this is fascinating. You can actually look this up. If you look at the stick rate or the quit rate, I should say, among white belts and yellow belts and green belts and purple belts or whatever, blue belts, purple belts, brown belts, black belts, as somebody gets better, the quit rate goes down, not up. So as they get better, they realize more and more, this is not a destination. This is just a, I'm going to, so black belts are far less likely to quit than a purple belt who is also far less likely to quit than a blue belt and so on. So what's the point with this? I'll use another analogy. There's a path towards improving yourself and becoming a better person, becoming healthier, improving your fitness. There's a path. There's also a path that takes you in the opposite and wrong direction. What we're talking about is not, hey, look, there's the destination. Get there. You're done. No, no, no. It's just a path. It's a never ending path, by the way. There is no you get there. You die at some point. So that's basically where you get. Now what we're talking about is a flashlight. Where you shine the flashlight is where you put your steps. That's all. So if I'm putting my flashlight on how I feel, the other effects of exercise, my mood, my energy, I'm walking on the right path. I'm walking on the path that continues to improve me. If I take that flashlight and move it towards the path of just the mirror, just the scale, comparing myself to others, you know the rest, right? Insecurities. I'm going to walk on that path. We know where that path leads. It leads us towards nowhere good. That's all it is. Don't think of this as a, I'm going to get there one day. I'm not there. I'll never get there. No one in this room is ever going to get there. It's just you. It's where you shine the flashlight. Now the exciting and motivating point to learning to put your flashlight on these things that we're talking about instead of the scale, the body fat, the mirror reflection is that you can instantly start to win. Totally. Where you can't do that. If you have a 50 pound goal or I want to look shredded, like, you ain't going to see that. That's a long journey. Yeah. So, and the steps to get there are tiny. Right. And there's a lot of actually setbacks on the way to that long journey. But when you have goals, like I want, like when you're focused on my sleep, my energy, my attitude, making me a better father, a better husband, all these other things. Or the fact that I accomplished this today. Right. When you focus on all those things, those things are like immediate. Yep. When you get a good workout in, you make a good choice of eating all day. Your digestion will immediately start to feel better. Your sleep will probably be better. Your mood will start to increase. You'll probably have a better attitude. Like your energy level, like dude, like right away you start compiling the wins. And when you, when you're focused on the wins, it's really motivating to keep it. And who cares? Oh, the scale went back a pound or two on my goal to 50 pounds. But man, I've had the best sleep I ever had. And I have the best sex I ever had the other day. Like you're, you're concentrated on those things. You ain't tripping about the one or two pounds setbacks here and there on the, on the, on the big, you know, it's a wonderful feeling. This is a wonderful feeling. I'm doing this. Oh my God, I feel good. This is great. Wow. I'm moving in the right direction. Way myself. What? I lost 10 pounds. Surprise. That is an incredible, I love that. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh my God, I can't believe this happened. I've lost 10 pounds. Like, well, you're moving in the right direction. By the way, just to highlight how powerful this is, what we're saying. This used to happen all the time. So someone might be listening. Like, well, how do you not recognize that you feel better? How do you not recognize that you get better sleep? I'll use an even louder signal that people would ignore at a time. I would have to point out to clients that their back doesn't hurt anymore. After 10 years of back pain. Yeah. Okay. We would do an exercise. They would do it. And I'd be like, John, do you remember last week how much your back hurt? You couldn't do that. And then they go, oh my God, you're right. My back doesn't hurt anymore. Dude. That's how much unawareness we can have over things because we're focused so much on this one thing. That's how crippling it can be to focus on the aesthetic thing mainly. That's how crippling it can be. You're so crippled by that. You're so focused on the scale, weight, or how you look that you completely ignore these other things that if you were asked in a category of, you know, top 10 things you want to feel better, be better in your life, you would list. Yeah. Pain, weakness, discomfort. Like those, I feel like a client coming in don't even consider that a lot of times. Isn't that crazy? And it's like, again, yeah. The length and areas of your body, all of a sudden it just eliminates pain. And you're like, what? To me, that's where a lot of the hook starts to happen. It starts to really form the idea that, oh wow, this is so much more than just me trying to come in and lose weight and get shredded. Yeah. That's so awesome. All right. Today's giveaway, the RGB bundle. Here's how you can win all three programs. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and then turn on notifications. And then we'll let you know in the comment section if you win. We're also running a sale right now. Maps Anabolic Advanced is half off this month only. If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below. All right. Back to the show. All right, so since we're having fun and getting emotional here, I'm just going to stay on this little train here. So I got to publicly say something nice about Adam, because I'm going to do it too often. Oh, wow. Do you like how I opened that? I feel like this is going to be a shit sandwich. No, it's going to be. This is a good sandwich. No, so my grandfather passed away. Oh, God, don't talk about this. You're going to make me emotional. No, that's too bad. We can edit it out. No, no, no. Don't go. Yeah, we have to. So my grandfather passed away about six months ago. And he's the patriarch of the family. And we all love him. It was very challenging for all of us. And Adam and his wife gave us just an incredibly thoughtful gift. And I don't even know if you realize just how thoughtful it was, because it was like the perfect gift. Your family made me realize that's not what you're going to make me emotional. Yeah, so they reserved or paid for, I should say, a bench in a county park here in the Bay Area. And it says on it in honor of my grandfather, Giuseppe Visconti, and in parentheses. No, no. And now you have to wait six months for this to be made and all. So they told me when it first happened, and I remember like, wow. And I thought, okay, I'm not going to tell my family until it's done. Well, they got it yesterday. They sent me the picture of it and everything. And I just so happened to be at my mom's house. And I told my, you know, my mom and my aunts, I got them all in FaceTime. And it was a, it was really, really touching moment. And I just want to say that was, and here's why it was so thoughtful. You didn't know my grandfather, but he, that would have been something that would have lit him up forever. Okay. Cause he would have been, he's the kind of person, if there's a bench with his name on it, he'd probably go take a walk every other day, look at it, take a picture of it and show his, you know, show his friends and family. So it was a big deal. That's awesome. Oh, Katrina and I were crying last night because the family, not only did Sal's family call me and FaceTime me and then individually go around and thank us. And then they got emotional. But then all night long, I kept getting text messages from the family members. We're telling me how impactful that it was. And we're just like, Oh God, you guys got to stop sending me this stuff right now. I'm getting all emotional. Which this was like almost a year old. I can't believe it took this long. Like the way this came out was Christmas last year. I wanted to do something for each of you guys that was thoughtful, right? It wasn't about the dollar amount or like a cool, it was more like, oh, what's something that I think that each, each guy would really want. And actually when Katrina and I were sitting around, like Doug and Justin came to me really fast and easy. And I'm like, God, Sal is so hard because he's not a materialistic guy. He doesn't spend a lot of money on himself. And it's like, what, what is something that I think that he would really value or that he would really, really like? And it was right around the same time that he had passed. And Katrina and I were just saying, you know, what, what could we do for the family that's something like that? And it was actually her who was like digging around and she's like, what if we do like a park bench? And I'm like, Oh my God. I'm like, I think they would really like that. I think they would really value that. It spread like wildfire throughout my family because I finally told them. And so like uncles and cousins, they want to go to the people who don't even live in California. Yeah. They want to visit destination now. They want to, yeah. They want to walk up to the bench and take a picture on it. Yeah. And do all that. My dad's like, we should plant something next to it. I'm like, this is so, this is so great. I can't stress what a headache it is working with the city. Oh, bro. I mean, you all probably know. You're like, I want to pay for this. I want to give you money. Oh, dude, it was like, and then the follow-up we do. Can you get me to the person who's like, because they have this site that you can go to. And they make it seem like it's going to be an easy process. Like, oh yeah, you can get it. You can have a bench made. You can do a couple of things. You can do a water fountain. You can do a bench. You can do like a shade covering thing that you can have in, you know, at a park, basically. And you donate, you know, X amount of dollars to do that. And so Katrina and I went through that project. But boy, getting it actually done and getting the city to take action. We had to follow up like so many times like, hey, we paid for this for this long ago. That's the other thing. That's the other side of it that made it so, that made it such a nice gift. I'm like, I know. The rigmarole you got to get through. Hey, working with this, and you guys probably remember this when you had your businesses, right? Because when you have your own business, you have to do things like this with permits and whatever. And it's like, God, it was always such a... I told you guys about when I got my unsecured property tax bill. Did I ever tell you about this? When you own a business, I had my business in Los Gatos, right? I don't know if it was a Los Gatos or Santa Clara County thing. I can't remember, but you get a unsecured property tax bill. So what does that mean? Property tax, you own your house, you pay property on it. You own a business. You pay an annual tax on the stuff that is in your business, like your equipment. So I know this sounds like bullshit and it is, but whatever, I have to pay this. So I had a small studio, and every year I would pay a bill, and the way that they would calculate the bill, it was a percentage of the value of the equipment. Well, one year I got this bill and it was like $40,000. I'm like, what is this? And I looked at it and they had some insane estimation of the equipment. You had to pay $40,000. I had dumbbells, a squat rack, adjustable bench, and a cable machine. That's all I had in there. Bands and shit like that. So I'm like, what? The work and effort it took to get to them, to fix it, it cost me thousands of dollars just to get the bill down to what I'm supposed to pay. And I never got that money back that I paid to try to... Part of me is like, sometimes I feel like they screw things up on purpose. So you got to come back and pay all the fines and fees. I asked them, how did they get this estimation? You know what, they just guessed. Yeah, they just guessed. Nobody came into my studio. I went through the same process when I started to do outdoor boot camps, which I thought would be such a simple thing to start. You know what I'm saying? Like I don't really need anything. Wait, hold on. What do you got to do with that? I got to have a permit. Just to use the park, yeah. And like the... For profit, basically. The work to... I think what I ended up doing actually, I don't think I ever ended up getting my permit. I think what I ended up doing was saying, you know what, effort. It was so difficult to get... Was it mandatory donation? To get to the right person to give me the approval to allow me to hold these camps at the park. And I was just like, you know, it'd be better just to do it and then get the slap on the wrist because of the effort it took to just... Just change locations like around then. Yeah. I think that's what I did because every time I got passed to someone else, they're like, oh, they don't have a specific category for fitness boot camps. There's like one of those things where it's like, there's categories of things that can be held at a park and like boot camps at this time wasn't one of them. You could say it's a worship service since that's the tax free. And we worship, you know... Can we talk about that for a second? Okay, so there's this video that I was watching and this guy was breaking down. Basically, Kardashians, you know they have a church that they've basically like... I don't want to say built, but they've aligned with and they have a preacher who they recruited, I don't know if it's Khloe or whatever the hell their names are. One of them got married, right? And so the mom... I called the wrong one the other day. Remember what I said? I don't care. I was saying it was hot. I was actually talking with these people. So the mom is like, yeah, the mastermind business lady, right? So basically she found one of these preachers that lost his license to preach and got him to do the wedding. And this was all like a master plan to then create this church, which then literally is a tax shelter because people can go in and they have mandatory donations of 10% for tithing, which then goes to the mom. And so let's say the kids want to donate all this money to the church and then that goes through. It basically goes to the mom. The mom gives it back to the kids. And again, this is like... maybe it's not like totally confirmed, but this is like some kind of a scheme that's very... You know, that does remind me of the new Mind Pump church that we're starting here. Yeah. Why aren't we in on this? Are you guys caught up on the righteous gym zones yet? Yeah. Oh, you are. It was so good. Was it so good? So this is a real thing. Doug pulled it up. Chris founded the California Community Church in 2009. It was previously known as the Life Changed Church. California Community Church. And it's lead pastor is Brad Johnson. Huh. Yeah. Right underneath that, where does it say, suspicious fans think Chris Jenner founded a church for what? For money laundering? Probably. Yeah, probably. Yeah, because it's tax free. Wow. So, I mean... There's loopholes in it. What percentage of people try and cheat their taxes? You know what the stats are on that? I would say it's a massive number of people. Right, right. And so, I don't think I... I don't think I judge somebody so much for doing that, but when you bring in God and church... Exactly. That's... You're asking for it. Listen, man. It's like lightning is coming your way. Try a different... You should do a different one. God's like, oh, you want to keep your own money? That's cool. Oh, wait, you're using my name to do it? No, no, no. No, that's fine. Yeah, no. We're not going to be okay. You know, I used to love when people tell me how much, how great it is. It's like we need to pay more taxes or whatever. I say, you know, there's a line on your tax code. They're like, when you get your taxes... You pay more if you want. You can actually voluntarily pay more. Do you ever do that? Nobody does that. Nobody gets their taxes and goes, you know what, I'm going to give more to the government. Let's let somebody else try and figure out how to spend my money. Yeah, they spend it really well. I like the way that they spend this money. You know, someone was breaking down one time when you factor in like the taxes that you're talking about with the property, with the sales tax, with the income tax. Like the amount of times like a dollar is taxed, it's like crazy. Did you know the average person, the average person who pays taxes works, I believe four months out of the year for the government. So if you did the math... Oh my God. Think of it this way. The quarter? Yeah, now people get really weird when this is presented this way. I understand why it's not exactly the same thing. Technically it is, but it's not exactly the same thing. But you're literally forced to work for someone else through threat of jail or violence or whatever, right? So you're literally, it's like, you work for me and if you don't, you're going to jail. There's a word for that. And it's like three to four months out of the year. So three to four months out of the year, you're working for someone else and it's not for you. You can't do anything about it. God, it's not much, huh? Yeah. Well, I mean, if you pay... Well, if you ask 25% taxes, so it's actually more than that. If you pay 40% income taxes alone, that's gonna be 40% of your time. Yeah. But you add everything else in. I know, it's an interesting... You know, people should be paid, they should do all their taxes up front at the beginning of the year. The company should collect all the taxes from all of their income for the first four months. So the first four months, people take home nothing and then they get their money at the back half of the year. They'd really feel the pain there, right? So now you really know what you're paying. Oh, man. Oh, yeah. I know. That would suck. Hey, it wouldn't be so bad if we had a way more efficient government. I mean, it wouldn't be so bad. Right. If you actually was transparent, you could see where all that money was being allocated. Come on, guys. You could see, like, communities being uplifted. Yeah. Cut them some slack. I mean, they lost a billion dollars in a day. They don't know where it went. Yeah. Just a little minor accounting errors. Yeah. Anyway. For billions of dollars. Hey, did you guys, you guys saw the day in the life I did and I went to my parents house and filmed it? Yeah. Oh, my God. I had so much fun doing that. I actually wanted to see that. I want to see that drawing or painting. Oh, yeah. In person. It's words. So it's a, it's a, what is it called? Like are they written really tiny? Is that what it, Wow, you couldn't tell on the camera. So it's the entire, so this is at my mom's house. It's the entire New Testament written, but then the way that they, and it's very, very, very, very tiny. You have to use a magnifying glass to read it, but it's there. And you, but you, the way that it's shaded, it's a painting of Jesus. So, and it's, and the underneath it, it says the word becomes flesh. I think that's, That's cool. Yeah. And it's, it's a replica of a famous painting or whatever. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. So my parents. Oh, that's cool. But it was funny because I was filming the house and my mom is just, she's in the background, you know? Show, show. Wait a minute. Don't show it. I didn't put the olive oil on it yet. So there's one scene where I'm showing the, my mom made panelli. This is a, is that a dessert? Is that what that is? No. So this is a traditional Sicilian street food and it's made with chickpea flour. They turn them into the square, like little pancake looking things. And then you fry them and you're supposed to eat them with lemon, salt, and oftentimes people will put them in bread. Oh, interesting. And you buy them on the street. It's a very famous. Sicilian street food. I've never had that. Yeah. So if you go like into like the, the squares and Sicilians towns, especially at night or whatever, people are selling food, you'll see panelli. So she made them the other night and then she re-warmed them up for me because she had saved some for me. So first off, she's like, if you're going to film, you make sure you tell them that this isn't fresh, that you're re-warming them. And then, and then while I'm filming it, you see her slide the bread next to it. Show the bread. Show the bread. I love that. I love seeing too, like all of the fruit trees of the vegetable, Courtney just got kind of a little bit into it, dipping her toes into it, but like to bring all that into the salad, to bring all that into like dinners, like it's right there. You grow it. I don't know. There's something totally different about it. I want my wife to eat it. Like I love that. You guys thought I exaggerated that. Okay. So this is a typical. Yeah. You got like everything back there. San Jose backyard. It's not like an acre. It's just a little backyard. Yeah. It's very small. Oh dude. My dad turned all of it, except for a square of grass when he was on Sunday dinner. All of it is like something you could eat. Yeah. Something. Oh, and he loves them. That's a lot for just him. So I imagine you guys probably give a lot to your family. Is that what they do? They'll give. Yes. They'll give it. That's a lot for just two people. Oh, bro. So Jessica gets annoyed because, well, first off, my culture is that they will feed you and give you more than you ask for. And they're insistent. Yeah. And I'm used to it. I get it, right? It's just like my mom will say, do you want some? No, I don't. I'm going to hear 15 more times and you're going to follow me around. Like there's just whatever. If you're not used to it, it can be annoying. It's like, I thought I told you no, you know, four times. So my mom and dad will be like, hey, do you guys want, you guys want some persimmons? No, we're cool. We ended up throwing them away. What would it be? Just give you five. No, no, I don't want any, you know, three. What if we give you three? I'll give you three. And then on the way out, my dad will show up. No, no. He'll show up on the bag. Don't forget this. He'll show up with a bag as you're leaving and open your car door. If you don't want to throw them away, put it in the door as you drive away. So we always leave with like, my parents do the same thing. It's always like that. But yeah, I had the green bean, my dad grows these long green beans and they're so good. My mom will boil them and then olive oil and a little seasoning. Oh, it's the best, man. Crushed it. We had some lamb shank and that. It was a good time. So I've been so excited. It's not often that I get excited about one of our commercials that we do. What? But I have been so impressed with the eight sleep. Oh yeah. So first of all, I want to start by saying that I have nothing bad to say about chili sleeper ruler. Like I've talked about that as being like life changer for me and like it's been, it was amazing, right? Unfortunately, they went out of business and so they're no longer selling their product or I believe even their customer service and stuff. So unfortunately, they didn't last and I don't know, probably financial. Something didn't work out. Didn't do well. But the product was good, right? So I never had any complaints and I had people tell me in the past that we have friends that all have it. That like Michael Trinnell has it. Brendan has it. Like a couple other friends of mine. They're like, oh, you're going to try eight sleep. I'm all dude, the ruler is amazing. The ruler is amazing. It's cool. I don't need, you know, whatever. Like, why would I go do that when we have a partner already? Of course that all went south and then eight sleep calls us up. We take them on. We have their stuff for a little bit. It takes a while to finally get it over on the bed. I get on the bed last time that we talked about it was when I just first got it on there. So now I've been using it for almost a month consistently and holy shit. If I were to compare, I would say it's like this. You were saying the horsepower on it or whatever. I would say the the ruler, chili, like that brand is like the Mercedes. It's nice. Again, nothing bad to say about a Mercedes. It's a Mercedes of, you know, bed cooling systems. The eight sleep is the Rolls Royce. Like it is the horsepower it is dead. You cannot hear it. It's silent. It gets me. So the ruler would cool down. I told you before, I put it on two hours before and it would keep me cool through the night and it was amazing. The eight sleep will get me so cold that I have to like turn it off. What's amazing about this. So it's just really cool. Stronger. Bro. And so it, the ruler always like would, it would feel my body's temperature and then it would get me cool enough to where I could sleep really well. With this, I actually have to adjust it so it doesn't get me so cold. It wakes me up. So it doesn't have to fight all night. Oh yeah. It is not overworking to do that. The horsepower on it. And then it comes with this thick mattress topper pad where the other one, I could kind of feel this, the lines that were in it, which it wasn't like bad or uncomfortable and didn't bother me. But this thing has like this mattress pad and the whole thing gets cool. Have you, have you messed with the, I don't know if it's an app that it comes with where it measures your sleep? No. So this is, I just, so when we first got it, I got it going right away. And so I didn't wait for eight sleep to send over our free app cause that app caught. So the, so what they do for the people that buy this, you can, you get the whole setup after purchasing it. But if you want all the crazy cool metrics and the adjusting of it, like so it's a smart bed. So it actually learns, like it starts to, so it scores your sleep like your ordering does. So it scores your sleep and it starts to learn like, oh, when it gets this cold, he sleeps better. When he gets this right. So it's individualized. So it manually adjusts to you until you start scoring like hundreds. So it just keeps adjusting. That is insane. And it figured, so I haven't even used that. I'm just manually doing it right now. And it's amazing. Wow. And so I got, and I have the code to do it. So probably the next time we have it. So it's got like an algorithm. It picks up your sleep habits and it, because it scores it. So it's really easy. Yeah. And it starts to see like how you're, when it hits certain. That's gotta be, that's gotta be a game changer. It is, it's really cool. You have yours on? Yeah. So I just plug it in and let it go. I haven't done any of the app stuff yet either. And I'm like super curious about all that, like how you can utilize like all that data and whatnot and how it like learns you. But yeah, dude, for me, it's been like because it's the summer and I don't have to turn my AC on. That was a big battle. We were having for a while. Cause I don't know why, but like, I think like the way we were raised, like, so Courtney is similar in the house. Like it was like, her parents, especially were like never, ever, ever going to like have AC on. They had it. It broke one time. And then they never fixed it. And it was like, nobody could ever use it. Right. And so it's like, you just, it was like this thought of like, this is wasting money or something. And so like every time I go to turn it on, she's like really, it's like, we're going to close those and we're going to be fine. Like we're always battling over that. And so I was like, okay, well let's see. Like I'll compromise. And so I used the eight sleep and it was just like, oh my God, dude, this is so cold and like, like I don't even need anything else. So this is what I've been playing with this since we've got it. Right. And like, I had, like I'm normally, even when with you had the ruler, I had to still keep the AC on. It didn't rise above like 70 degrees. Cause it's still, if it gets really hot in there and then the, that my bed's not freezing, I'm gonna wake up. But what I've been able to do and I've tested this, right? So 67 is what I used to keep the AC at. That's why I keep the AC at when I'm home. 68, 69, 70, 71, I just did this 72. So I can leave the AC only kicking on if it gets hotter, which in the Bay Area it never gets hotter than that at night time. So we, and this is how I was selling it to my buddy who was like, oh my God, this is kind of expensive, bro. Almost $3,000 for this whole set of, I said, yeah. But I don't know how much you run your AC, but I know how much my bill is when I'm running it through the night like that. And so I guarantee you that the temperature that I can keep it up at- You'll probably make the money back in a year or two. For sure in a year, within a year's time. I mean, our AC bill will get over $800 for the month. So me being able to shave that off, I guarantee you I'm saving 100 to 200 bucks for the month. You do that for a year's time and now it's justified the pay just because of that. Yeah, especially you guys. And sharing a hotel room with you, monkeys. You guys are just freezing every time. I need it, man. Yeah, I need it cold, dude. The few times I've shared a hotel room, I don't think I've shared one with you, Justin, maybe once, but with Adam, I have a couple times. You have, come on. And he'll remember I'm offended. Not memorable at all. I remember that thing I did. That's not, he was so kind. No, it was with Adam, I remember specifically because he'll get up in the night and he'll blast it. And I'll be like, oh. Yeah, I have to have it. I have to have it. And I'm like, I'm not gonna fight this. I'm just gonna bury myself in the sheets. Yeah. I mean, we're a better fit for sure. It's cool. I've been itching to tell you guys about it on the show. So I'm excited that that was today that we finally got to talk about it because it's all. And again, I've got nothing bad to say. You guys are chilling in the room. Like those things are amazing, right? So it's so cool, but for this thing. I got to bring forth the speculation. Earlier we were talking about how exercise is a journey. You keep learning and stuff like that. And I just never stop learning. And what I'm realizing now is that as I've gotten older, this is an interesting speculation. So I used to think, I have a different perspective now. I used to think as you got older, you trained with less volume and intensity because you don't have the same ability to recover and heal, okay? You don't have the same, like you're not as resistant to the damages from that kind of stuff, right? As you are when you're younger. There's some truth to that. But I think there's more to the story. What I'm starting to realize, and I wonder if this is because, definitely as I'm getting older, but I think a part of that has to do with the fact that I've been working out for so long. Yes, I need less volume or I can tolerate less volume, but more so I do better in terms of progressing with less volume. In other words, I need way less than I did when I was younger to move forward. And I'm playing with this right now in a very interesting way. So like I've brought my strength training down from six days to five days to four days, now down to three days. Now that doesn't mean I'm not active on the other days. So for people lost, like do you only work out three days a week? No, I still come in here and I'll do things that are active just for my health, but I'm only lifting three days. That's it, okay? And it's not full body three days either. It's still, I'm hitting each body part once a week. This is like the lowest volume and frequency I've trained a long time. And I'm progressing. I'm getting stronger and I'm realizing I need less to progress. And I actually progress better with less. This is an interesting thing that I'm noticing with myself as I get older. Would you say, I've noticed the same thing. It's, I don't know if anybody's, they probably coined it as like muscle maturity, right? It's almost like you've established this base and you've put all this work in over the years to the point where like your body just, it responds to way less. It just knows like, okay, like I'm getting the stimulus. And so therefore like this is a priority and I'm able to keep and retain muscle a lot easier. It's weird because it's not just, it's more than that. I actually am progressing faster and I feel better with less and it's less than I thought. That's the crazy thing. Literally this is what I'm doing. No joke. I'm doing six sets per body part per week. That's like nothing. I mean, that's nothing compared to how I would always train. Remember, I've been consistent. It's not like I'm a beginner or anything like that. So I'm literally like Monday I did chat and I'm experimenting. So Monday I'll do three body parts. Wednesday I'll do three body parts. Friday I'll do a few body parts. I'm only hitting everything once a week, lower sets. And guess what? I'm getting stronger and I'm progressing and I feel better. It's wild. I pieced this together over the last couple of years for sure and I wish someone would have communicated this to me when I was younger because I always thought it would just get harder and harder as I got older. You know what I'm saying? Like, oh man, you get older and you sort of have joint pain and issues and you got other responsibilities. And it's like, but I better stay fit and good looking while I'm young because it's gonna just like diminish as I get older. But the truth is the work and the effort that has to go towards lifting is way with. And I think there's a bunch of things that are at work here, right? I think your muscle maturity point is there. I think your wisdom around what's most effective is there. That's true. That's true. That week is super sharp, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think you know exactly how to do that. I think over years too, you've refined, getting better at your sleep, making better food choices, like balance and other aspects of your life, reading when you have high stress, knowing how to start to. So I think there's a lot of things that are at play here. But boy, I wish that was sold to the young. If you're listening and you're young or you're early into getting into lifting weights, this is the exciting thing, is that it actually gets easier. It gets easier to stay fit. It gets easier to stay strong if you've been consistent for a long period of time. So I have a theory around this. I don't have any scientific evidence yet. I'm gonna go look for it, but I don't have anything yet I can cite. This is just a theory, but I'll bet money that I think I'm on the right track with this. Here's what I think that is happening because everything you're saying is true. Everything we're all saying is true, but there's still something else that's strange that's happening here. And I think I have, I think I know what's going on. So epigenetics is your genes, abilities. So you have hard, your hard genes, and then you have the fact that your genes can express themselves one way or another depending on your lifestyle. That's epigenetics. And over time, you can actually train your genes to be more like something else than how they are. So it's not set in stone in other words, right? That's kind of how epigenetics works. So I think what's happening is through the years of training, I have trained my body to become more responsive and more sensitive to muscle building and strength building signaling. I think over the years, I've actually trained my genetics to become better at responding to the stresses that strength training. So this is when I'm young, my body's more resistant to the muscle building signal. Well, because I've been doing this for 30 years with consistent exercise, I've trained my body to become more sensitive to that signal. So now when it first gets it, it responds because it's been there so many times before. I mean, I think that's exactly what we're all saying. You're just taking it down to the cellular level. Yeah. You know, that's what there's something going on. It just responds. On that level that your body is just, but I mean, it's not communicated that often. I don't remember hearing it when I was younger. I remember thinking that like, oh, again, I gotta stay fit when I'm young because who knows where I'll be. It's not even, here's the crazy part. It's not muscle memory. People are like, oh, that's muscle memory. No, no, no, I hit a PR. I hit a PR in deadlifting like a few months ago with training with really low training volume. And I'm getting that pretty damn close with other things. And I'm 44. You're amplifying that signal. Well, this is why I remember when I asked you, this was like a while back. I think it was before you even had your son when I was telling you like, do you think that you're, you're DNA, yeah, you've, like cause you're a different man with this child and you were, now obviously you have a different partner too. So there's a lot of things that play, but I do think that you've, if you believe that you've changed that in yourself, why would that not potentially impact an offspring also because you had a bit of a different point in your life. So I would think that that would happen. Yeah, it's weird. It's almost like, you know, you are subjected to a particular type of stress. You learn how to adapt to that stress. You do it so often that then when you become wise to it or you learn it, when that stress presents itself, you adapt right away. And I think that's what's happening. I have to talk about, since you brought up adaptation and stress, the water beetle, you guys. What? This particular insect is like unreal. It's the most resilient insect I've ever heard. So it's main predator is a frog and it's, it literally has the ability to be eaten and travel all the way through the intestines, the digestive tract, all the way through, make it all the way till it like poops it out and then it survives. What? It can, it can, it can just survive being eaten alive. Wow. So a frog will eat it and poop it out and it comes out alive? Yeah. How terrible. Isn't that crazy? That's terrible. And you see this video and it's just like, it's gross. It's like, just looks like the frog's taking a dump and it's this beetle and then it's just like, I'm free, dude, it just takes off. That's terrifying. Yeah. So it has some kind of like weird film over it that allows it to protect it as it's traveling through this, this journey of, of digestion. See, now what trips me out is like- 90% survived being eaten. 90%? Hahaha. Isn't that crazy? So what's really crazy about this, when you talk about like how things evolve and adapt and get to that point, like why hasn't everything else that, that gets eaten adapted like this? What is it about the frog eating the beetle and the beetle that makes it so you need- Well, there's different pathways to surviving. Like one might be that a beetle adapts a bad taste, bad tasting poison on its skin or it adapts and gets claws to fight back or it runs fast. But in this case, it's like, well, we'll just let ourselves be eaten and survived. Think of it, the frog doesn't have teeth, I guess. Wow, that's, how terrifying. Imagine if that happened with the food we ate. Imagine that, you eat it, you poop it out. It just comes out. It just like runs away. Ah! Come back, I need your nutrients. Listen, you need to chew your food. Why, dad? Trust me, chew the fuck out of it. So you would think then the frog is getting nothing from that. I would say yes. Yeah, nothing. And so then why would the frog continue to eat those beetles is another question. Because 10% of them, I get just maybe- 20% of the time they get to- Oh, I guess you're right. So yeah, if it's not 100%, so there's still- Maybe the beetle does something for the frog as it goes through. Yeah, cleaning up. And I'm sure there's a beetle version. Hey, what if it was a dove? What if it was more like a synergistic relationship than you don't even realize it? Oh, it's like cleaning him out. Like fish come into like sharp, like little small fish will come in and clean the teeth of other fish. What if it was something like that where they're actually coming through? And it's actually- That'd be true, it's an enema. Yeah, it's like two frogs talking to each other. Man, I haven't pooped in like a week. Agree to be able to get it right out of my mouth. Tom the beetle, he'll- He's amazing. He's amazing. He's amazing. He fixed my ad. One time. She didn't poop for a month. She had that beetle, he pushed her in. Think about that. It could be like a synergistic relationship versus like a predator one, right? Yeah, it could be. Hey, Justin, you watched Oppenheimer, right? No, I didn't. I was gonna ask you about it, actually, because I was curious if it was any good. Yes, okay. Yes, it's so good. Really? Okay, so you know what's interesting? So my oldest watched it first and he's like, you gotta watch this, dad, it's so good. So I went to the movies, little side note by myself. Never done that before. Have any of you guys ever gone to movies by yourselves? I just do it a lot. Really? I have a few times. Actually, before we started at MindPump, I was on a kick for like four or five years there where I used to go to the gym. So I hate, hate, hate doing- Shout out to a Peewee Herman doing that, but yeah. Wow. That's not what I was doing, but yeah. Sometimes you gotta put things in your own hands, you know what I mean? Sometimes. Peewee Herman. No, I hate doing anything alone. I hate it. I just do something about being alone. I don't like it. So it's this exercise that I'm trying to do, not to go into too much detail, but I'm trying to do things on my own to try and be comfortable with Quiet Time or whatever. So I went to the movies by myself and I'm like, I'm gonna watch Oppenheimer. The movie ends and the theater's silent. It's one of those movies. Oh, wow. When it's done- Too serious. No, you could tell everybody was affected. Like it ends when everybody just sat there for like, like a minute before anybody got up. Oh, interesting. Yeah, dude, it's that. Oh, wow. So it's obviously the true story of the lead physicist in the Manhattan Project, the development of the nuclear bomb. It's so relevant today. Oh. It's so relevant today. How they compartmentalize everybody to work on. Well, that's all what happened. I didn't realize how many incredible physicists were part of it. Fear me, it was a famous Italian physicist was a part of it. Einstein was, you know, they asked him questions. He wasn't actually in it, but he was alive during the time. Well, that was like the start of like the idea of how they were able to figure it out. Well, so what's, the reason why it's so relevant is as you're watching this, they were all very aware that they were about to create a incredibly destructive force. Like they all knew and this is all pretty factual. I mean, there's Oppenheimer later on became this massive activist against nuclear proliferation. So after the nuclear bomb was dropped, he said nightmares about it essentially. He wasn't a perfect man. He wanted him, yeah. Yeah, but he would go and speak out and try to influence the nuclear commission and say, we need to like not do this anymore. He didn't want to create the hydrogen bomb, which is a much more powerful version of the atomic bomb. But anyway, as they're doing this, all these physicists know that they're about to create something terrible. And there's scenes in there where they're like, they don't want to do it. And they're like, but the other guy's doing it. So we have to. And I'm like, oh, that's AI. That's happening right now, dude. There's always the justification. All the scientists working on AI right now. If they're doing it, we gotta do it. A lot of them are like, we should not be doing this, but they're all propelled. Yeah, better us than somebody else. That's kind of the attitude. Jonathan Page-Out talks just about, refers to this as agency. He's like, there's this agency driving us. He goes, we all know we shouldn't be doing this. And yet we are. He's like, we're being driven by this agency. And the way we describe it is the other guy. We gotta do this because the other guy's gonna do it. So as you're watching it, I couldn't help but be like, oh, damn it, it's happening again. Yeah, well, I actually secretly brought that up to bring up kind of a messed up story. This guy that donated his mom to a Alzheimer Institute like in Arizona. You mean after she died? After she, yeah, sorry. Yeah, she didn't specify that. Yeah, it was her body after she died, but it was. Here's my mom. Here she is. She's remembering it. Well, it gets more messed up. Okay, so basically he did that under the guise of like, oh, this is gonna help people, you know, and that center in Arizona actually ended up selling her to the military for bomb testing. How do they test the body? What, did they just blow her up? Yeah. Oh, that's terrible. Isn't that awful? Like, can you imagine like- Like your mom? Yeah! Like, how messed up is that, yeah. Obviously he didn't know the second step, right? He basically donated her the first step. No, he donated it with the assumption that they were gonna use it to help people, you know, within the Alzheimer community and they'd, I'm sorry, it's just fucked up story. And I'm like, I just couldn't wrap my brain around that. Like, what would you, how would you like, reconcile that? I don't know. I would feel so terrible. If you guys heard the conspiracy around Marilyn Monroe, when she died, her body, they couldn't account for, I don't remember how many hours afterwards and they speculate that people took the body and- Oh my God. I'd say, yeah. Wow. Whoa, whoa. Yeah. I didn't know that. I've never heard that story. That she, that the body was just like unaccounted for, for like hours and hours and hours. And then, yep. Oh my God. I know. Yeah, we went in a dark turn there. Hey, I started it. You started it, dude. Thanks, Justin. Mom's getting blown up by bombs. Oh. That's pretty bad, Justin. I'm sorry, dude. I've been in a dark sense of humor sometimes. That's terrible. Anyway, I wanted to touch on a subject. I saw a clip. Where was the clip? I wanna say it was Max Lugaviers podcast where they were talking about how calories are all not equal. And this is in reference to the, you know, like the calories in versus calories out. And they made it, we've made this point before. It's very important. I think we need to stop placing so much value on calories from an energy perspective in the sense that one calorie in and one calorie out is homeostasis. If I burn more, I lose weight. If I eat more, I gain weight. And I think it's more important to focus on what makes up those calories and how they make you feel. Because how you feel is what drives whether or not you overeat, whether or not you under eat, whether or not you feel good. And that was the point that they made on it, is that it's like, yes, you know, calories are a unit of energy, but they make you feel a particular way. And if you feel always like overeating and you always feel crappy and you always feel like you're in a bad mood from what you're doing, then they're not equal. And they're gonna drive you to make decisions and choices that aren't gonna help you. What do you think it is that drives the people that are in the fitness space to push that message so hard? Because think of the average fitness fanatic in the fitness space. They have such a dysfunctional relationship with food that to them, food literally is energy. They can literally disassociate and be like, I just eat these calories, these proteins, this food is fuel. I will just move forward no matter what for whatever reason. So they communicate it to people like everybody's like they are. That's what I think at least. Yeah, I wonder if it's if the origin of it is tied to the supplement industry. Oh, they promote it for sure. Yeah, because I feel like when you really unpack, like, I don't know, maybe 90%, I'm just gonna throw a number out there. So it's probably somewhere close to that, I would argue, of protein bars or basically glorified candy bars. Oh yeah. Candy bars with 10 more grams of protein in it. Yes, yeah. I mean, just wedged in there. And so if you are going to promote health and fitness and you're gonna make the argument that that is something that would be considered healthy and good for you, then you gotta lean on the calorie as a calorie thing and focus on the macronutrient as like the primary thing because it really is. Because that's what you're selling. Yeah, you're selling a candy bar that just has some more protein. So and you're selling it as a health supplement. So I wonder if the origin of that message really came from that. I mean, I know the IIFYM thing came from the bodybuilding community and the forums back in the days. That's where it started, as far as macro counting and stuff. But I feel like the big push on the calories of calorie and that message, I bet the origin is connected somehow to the supplement. Well, just to give you an example, you could get a baby Ruth bar. I looked that one up, cause that was my favorite. I know you guys don't like it. We've talked about this, but you could get a baby Ruth bar, add 10 grams of protein from soy isolate or non-fat, dry milk powder or something like that. Something that tastes great. Create a new get out of it. And you have a high protein bar. Just add 10 grams. It gives it 13 grams cause it already has three from the peanuts. Add 10 grams. Technically it's a high protein. That's how you could label it. Bar and you change nothing else. And I bet if I did that, it would taste pretty damn close to what it normally would taste like. And it would be a best seller. I mean, that's what you see. Your most popular bars and so without the ones that taste the best. And when you flip the, what a lot of people don't know though is if you actually flip that around next to a baby Ruth or a Snickers. Pretty close. How close all the stuff is. You're in the label. So what you're saying is we should be eating candy bars. That's how some people are gonna hear this. Yeah. No, you're right. Just dip it in whey protein there. I drink a shake of candy bars. I mean, it's really. That's a great idea, Justin. The way that I've always positioned, you know, shakes and bars is that it's a last resort. Like it's not that I am. I'm demonizing it, right? Because there's always that, right? I can't talk negatively about it than all of a sudden I'm demonizing. No, I'm not demonizing it. I'm not saying I don't utilize bars and shakes at a bar yesterday, right? So, but I think that you look at it like in the manner of like, this is not ideal. Ideally, instead of me eating that bar yesterday, I would have had a balanced meal. It had one of my daily dose meals. That would have been a better choice in that moment. And I recognize that it's okay to just be like, but it was convenient, it was fast. We had to hurry up and podcast. So I didn't have the time to do all the other stuff. So, okay, understandable. But I think that it's been promoted and sold as a health supplement so hard that people think they're doing a good job by having that. And then that justifies that happening more and more. And then now their best food they eat for the day is shakes and bars. And the rest of it's like, not even great choices. All right, I wanna tell you guys something I've been doing, I haven't told you guys about, but I've been coming in. I come in the morning and work out. And I've been doing it more here because our editing team will work out in the morning. It's a great vibe. I like this morning was so awesome. I walk in, music's cranking, everybody's working out. And in between sets, people are talking shit, yelling at each other. It was so awesome. I thought I loved it. Brought you back to some gym days. Oh man, I loved it. It was so great. But anyway, I'll come in early sometimes and I'll do, cause we have the red light, the juve panels in there. And I'll do like five minutes, five to seven minutes. And I'll just look at it straight ahead, do the front of my body. And I just, I just like, I'm here. Let me just do this. I might as well see what happens. Bro, the skin on my face. And it is like it, it's pretty wild. Like it's like, even- I noticed it right after you do the first time. That's again, one of those, why I think that product is does so well is that it's hard to deny the difference. You'll hear it from somebody else for sure. If you have a hard time- It literally does feel like my skin's getting younger, is how it feels. What I really want you to do with it, because you and Doug are the most consistent right now with Jay Campbell's hair product. I know everybody wants me too, because I'm the bald guy, but I happen to be the bald guy who doesn't give a fuck. And also he's like, you know, kind of likes it. So you guys, if you're doing that- That's called reframing everyone. What? So one of the things I did notice when we first got introduced to the juve light as a side effect, because I used to sit, I used to sit like this and like in front of the light. And it, I started to feel some of my hair come back. And so that combined with that product, I would love to- I'm going to. I'm using just the hair peptide by itself to continue to gauge it. And then I'm going to do both. But I don't want to do both at the same time, because I don't know which one would give the credit to. That's fair. But I definitely think that that's going to supercharge it. I bet you're going to see a difference from that. Because I, as a side effect, noticed that. And it wasn't even something that I was trying to do. I remember that's what led to you finding the research. Because I remember saying, it feels weird. It feels like my hair feels thicker. I have little stubs that are growing. I'm excited. I'm going to go into the three or four months and then I'll do that. So you guys know. Hey, quick shout out. I hope you guys don't mind. I want to shout out my cousin owns a company that he just founded. And I want to just give it a little shout out so people could check this out. We're not going to go into too much detail, because we will later on. But he has created a, this is a very disruptive tech company. My cousin Alessandro is a brilliant young man. Love him. You can set yourself up with the trust. Okay, so if you have a family, you're a new parent, you got to do this because if you die, all your shit goes to the state. It goes to probate. And then it costs money and months for the state and the lawyers to figure out where everything goes. Whereas if you have a trust that just boom right away, no money loss, no nothing. Normally to get a trust, cause you thousands of dollars, you got to go through a lawyer. There's always archaic ass laws. He figured a way to go around these laws to use robo signing and it's all legit, it's all legal. You can get a free trust. You can go online. For free? Free. You get a free trust. It's getdynasty.com. So I'm not going to say too much more if you just want to check it out. We'll do future episodes and kind of break it down a little bit and talk a little bit. But you can go get- Super disruptive, man. Very, this is Uber for that whole space. So are they, on the website, I haven't been to the website yet. Is it, does he have like a video? Yeah, just go on there. You're so dope. Getdynasty.com. And that's owned again by my company, by my cousin, sir. Very cool. Okay, so Joy Mode is a natural product that looks to improve blood flow through the entire body. Now what does that also mean? Better sexual performance. All of the ingredients in Joy Mode are backed by real data to help vasodilate, open the blood vessels, improve blood flow, thus improving sexual quality. Go check them out. Go to usejoymode.com forward slash mind pump, then use the code mind pump at checkout for 20% off your first order. All right, back to the show. First question is from C-Feverz. What is the relationship between building muscle and testosterone levels, particularly in women? If a woman has already experienced issues with other hormonal imbalances, can building muscle cause an abnormal increase in testosterone levels? Ah, that's a great, that's a really, really great question because we talk all the time about how building muscle, especially in men, helps raise testosterone. So let me explain this a little bit better so people understand kind of what's going on and why the process of building muscle would not cause an imbalance or an abnormal, what would be an imbalance, abnormal increase in testosterone levels in women. When you send the muscle building signal through strength training and you feed yourself appropriately because you have to have the nutrients there to support that. And the rest of your life also fits that. In other words, you're not overstressed, not getting enough sleep, you know, all that stuff. Like everything's working okay and you send a signal to build muscle. Your body organizes its hormones in the way to do that. Now the hormone profile that does that is a balanced one. So in men, that often means a higher testosterone level. Sometimes it means that in women too. But abnormally high testosterone levels in women is a side effect of imbalances in other places. Oftentimes what you see with that are insulin resistance or estrogen or progesterone imbalances. So if you're a woman and you have abnormally high testosterone, that's not because your body's trying to build more muscle. It's a compensatory pattern that comes from other imbalances. So the strength training along with the other stuff that I mentioned balances it out and you'll get the other hormones to balance themselves out and then you probably won't have the side effects of abnormally high testosterone levels which is relatively rare by the way in women. But again, it's a side effect. It's not a, this is my body just trying to build muscle. So I'm confused a little bit. So the concern this person has is that they've already had hormonal imbalance issues. If she starts to lift weights because we've talked about how that could increase testosterone, like if that's actually gonna throw her balance off more. Oh, yeah, the opposite is true. It's only gonna organize it and make it better. That's right, because yes, testosterone is a driver of muscle building but there's also insulin that plays a role. There's growth hormone that plays a role. Estrogen or progesterone indirectly play a role. Cortisol balance plays a role. So really it's the symphony of all these hormones working in a great way that tells your body to build more muscle. Now, yes, you could artificially jack testosterone up so high through... Synthetic. Yeah, administering testosterone or anabolic steroids. This is totally different. Which is very different. And yes, that will cause you to build muscle. Like you could take a woman, I could quadruple her testosterone and yeah, she'll build more muscle for them but also start to masculinize and get a bunch of weird side effects. From a normal, natural perspective, the process of strength training is one of the most effective ways to balance out your hormones. When I would work with female clients with hormone imbalances and I'd work with their functional medicine practitioners, the form of exercise that they were always like, oh yeah, keep doing that or focus on, was always strength training, always. It always would produce the most beneficial effects. Even when women were overstressed. So lots of times women have hormone imbalances because of too much stress, lack of sleep. The form of exercise that I still applied, however, quite precisely and gently was still strength training. So no, you're not gonna get an abnormal hormone profile for strength training unless you're doing it in a completely inappropriate way. You're over-training yourself, over-stressing yourself, not feeding yourself properly, in which case it can contribute to hormone imbalances. Next question is from Jay Bustaf. How do I know when I have enough muscle to cut so I don't end up looking skinny? That's a good question. I don't think it would be so much of a measuring lean body mass as it would be measuring your strength. I think that's a better metric to measure. I like even better metric than that as I like focusing on your metabolism. So instead, I like going, when I'm pushing someone to build muscle, like a client male or female, and it's like, okay, how long are we gonna be in this quote-unquote bulk or reverse diet before we get to cut down and get shredded or go the other direction? And I normally say, well, let's get it to a place where you're eating so much food that you don't wanna eat anymore. To me, that's a better gauge is like, let's keep increasing calories and building muscle so long as you feel like you comfortably can keep adding calories to the diet until you get to a place where it's like, man, that's a lot of food. That's hard for me to hit that number. Like, oh, what a great place to be. Now let's go the opposite direction and let's lean out versus some arbitrary number of body fat percentage or pounds of muscle on your body. Yeah, seems a little more subjective that way in terms of like, if I have this much muscle mass, now it's time for me to cut versus like, yeah, if I can increase my calories and I can get to that place where it feels like work, to be able to scale down is gonna be a lot easier and you're gonna get all the benefit and result of losing weight, losing body fat in a comfortable place where you're eating. Yeah, I just think also to the whole like, I don't wanna look skinny. I mean, you probably would be a better way to say that is I don't wanna look or feel frail or look or feel weak or lose, I guess, function or mobility, which can happen if you just go to low calories. That's why I said strength as well. I think in combination, what you guys are saying would be great. Because if you've doubled your strength in a lot of key lifts and you feel solid, you feel strong, like let's say you're a woman and you could squat your body weight or you're a man and you could squat one and a half times your body weight or something like that, right? And then you feel comfortable, like, okay, I think I can go on a cut and then you can continue monitoring the strength because if I go from being able to squat 200 pounds for 10 reps and then I go on a cut, I should expect some strength to go down, but if it goes from 200 to 100, then I'm probably cutting too much or I'm too aggressive with the calorie cut or I'm not doing things right, right? So if I can relatively maintain my strength, maybe lose a little bit depending on how advanced I am when I cut, I'm doing okay. I think I'm doing fine. That's usually how I would, that's how I used to gauge it for myself, at least. You also have this ability to say you, your belly muscles say for a month or two and you've been on this consistent, reverse diet or bulk, right? Same difference. And you're like, okay, I wonder, is this enough muscle to keep on my body that when I lean out, I'm not gonna look skinny and I'm still gonna have this, then start to cut, go the opposite direction and pay attention. If you start to feel like, oh my God, I don't like how much I'm losing or how skinny I now look, you can go back the other direction. I just be careful of getting so focused on how we look because a lot of times your mind plays a lot of games with you. One of the things that always kept me from getting stage shredded was my insecurity around being skinny, like this question and being small. And so I never would allow myself to push that far. I would start to lean out and go, oh my God, I'm losing all my muscle. Like I'm looking skinny and I would say things like that to myself. And then I'd pack back the calories back on because I was so insecure about being skinny. So just be careful of tying your results to your goals to this skinny look that you potentially are afraid of. Yeah, it is too subjective. And you're actually not the best person to judge that a lot of times. A lot of times, if you were driven, like I was, to get muscular and buff by my insecurity of being skinny, then a lot of times that will play mind games with you that you're low calorie, you're deflated a little bit, so your muscle bellies aren't filled up. So you think you're getting skinny when in reality, well, no, you're of low calorie and when you're low calorie, the muscle bellies aren't gonna be filled out as much. And so it gives you this illusion of you look flat or skinnier or looks like you're losing muscle. But in reality, you're not. You're just low calorie and your body is actually burning and breaking down body fat. Next question is from Outback Danes. Should you reverse diet if you're over 30% body fat? So a reverse diet, for people who don't know, a reverse diet is the process of slowly increasing calories in combination with proper strength training to speed up the metabolism so that later on you could set yourself up to go on a calorie cut from a higher place so that you don't end up with such low calories that it's hard to sustain. Okay, so that's what a reverse diet is. In other words, a reverse diet is not about losing body fat. It's about setting yourself up so you could lose body fat in the future in a month, two months, whatever, in a more sustainable way. So then if we understand that, the question really has nothing to do with what body fat percentage you're at. It has everything to do with how many calories you can consume now and maintain your body weight and what it takes for you to lose weight. If that number is so low that you're like, this is unsustainable. Like if I need a thousand calories a day to lose weight, it doesn't matter what body fat percentage I'm at. I know that that's just unsustainable. So I'm gonna reverse diet. I'm gonna try and get myself to a place where I can cut from. That's it. That's just the bottom line. So it really doesn't matter what body fat percentage you're at. Look, you could be a guy at 10% body fat and you could come and tell me, I'm 10% cell. I'm gonna get to 5% body fat. And I'd say, well, how many calories are you eating now? 1800. Okay, let's reverse diet you because where are we gonna end up when we get down to 5% in a place that's so unsustainable, it's gonna put you in a bad position. So it has really nothing to do with body fat percentage and everything to do with, you know- Yeah, to me it has a lot more to do with where you're currently at in your journey and diet at the time, right? So if you are like, you came to me, right? And you were just about to get started on your fitness journey. And we measure your body fat and you're 30% and then I assessed where your calories in your diet was 99% of the time when a client that was overweight, okay? This is later in my career, not talking about the beginning of my career when I hadn't figured this out yet. Every client that would come in that wanted to lose body fat or lose weight but when I first started them was a reverse diet. And it was, and for a lot of different reasons, psychologically it blows their mind because they're like, wait a second, I need to lose 30, 40 pounds of fat and you're telling me you want me to eat more of these foods and it's like, yes, because what you alluded to earlier is that I wanna set you up for long-term success and what that looks like is building some muscle on your body as a priority versus just getting weight off the scale. If I prioritize building muscle, I'm going to speed your metabolism up to where your body will naturally burn more calories, which in turn is gonna make you getting leaner so much easier versus saying, hey, you just hired me, you're at 30% body fat, you wanna cut and lead out. Okay, well, let me assess your calories at 2,000 calories. Okay, let's cut to 1,500 and then we play that game because eventually you'll get to what you were saying which is only eating 1,000 calories, still not where you wanna be your goal. I think it's important to say that losing weight is not the challenge, it just isn't. If you look at the numbers and the data, losing weight is not the- Millions of people do it every year. Every year. It's the keeping it off that is the challenge. So what you should be concerned with when you wanna start losing weight is not can I lose the weight, it's can I keep it off? How can I keep going with this? And then focus on creating a way to make it sustainable. Reverse dieting is a part of that process. So it's not a part of the weight loss process, it's a part of setting the steps so I can do it forever process, which is far more important. Next question is from Justin Liff's weight. What is the best protein for a budget bulk? Budget bulk. So we're gonna talk about whole foods, obviously. Ground beef. Yeah, I mean- Ground beef. A value pack of ground beef is inexpensive. A value pack of frozen chicken thighs is inexpensive. I also wanna point out this, when someone says words of question like this, this is where you're gonna hear like conflicting things from us or different stuff, right? Like I'm going to promote something like butcher box and grass-fed beef because I think it's a better choice for you. But if I had somebody who is broke or struggling to pay their bills and they're like, Adam, I also wanna get in shape but grass-fed beef is really expensive. Like I don't care. At that point, like later in life, we'll get to getting better at making those organic choices of that. There is a hierarchy of what's most important and you eating a balanced meal that's macro-friendly. That's 95% of the way. It's way more important than you spending an extra $3 on organic or grass-fed. Yeah, you're gonna hear me promote how important that is. Yeah, it is, but it's still a hierarchy. It's not the most important thing. It's more important that you balance it. So if a person comes to me about budget, I'm gonna tell you things like rice and ground beef. Like it's gonna be your staple. Yeah, value packs are incredible. Tuna fish, inexpensive. Costco, one Costco of mine, meat and bulk. I know guys have lived off tuna cans and had that in the gym and that's what we go to. I did, for a long time like that. Eggs, inexpensive. Yeah, eggs are inexpensive. Cottage cheese, inexpensive. Milk, inexpensive. There's a myth out there that eating healthy is inexpensive. It's not, excuse me, it's expensive. It's not, it's inexpensive. It's actually quite inexpensive to eat healthy and that's not even counting the saved money and healthcare and all that and people talk about that. I'm not even talking about that. I'm just talking about your total bill. You buy ground beef or chicken thighs or tuna fish and eggs and rice and beans and frozen vegetables and some fruit. In bulk, look at your bill and all you do is eat that. You never eat out, okay? You never eat out, you just eat those foods. You'll save money and you'll get fit and you'll get healthy. Yeah, and there's a bunch of, if you go to the butcher and there's always like a meat that they're putting on for sale and it's in bulk and you can always find some, even if it's like organ meat or something like that, you can blend that in with your ground meat and you get a lot more protein out of it. Yeah, I had a family member who's like, they went to Whole Foods, right? And they bought steaks for everybody and they bought the dry aged, whatever, ribeye. Like, man, I just spent $300 on steaks because it's so expensive to eat healthy and like, where'd you go? And he tells me like, dude, come on. Yeah, it's like, bro, yeah, you got dry aged, whatever, cut, you know, at the, I said, if you went to Safeway or Costco or Costco and got bulk, like ground beef, like, do you know how inexpensive that is? And you get high protein, you'd have everything that you're looking for. There's definitely a way to do it. 100%. Look, if you love the show, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out all of our free fitness guides. They're free and they're awesome. You can also find all of us on social media. Justin, he's on Instagram at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm on Instagram at Mind Pump DeStefano and Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam.