 The best way to get flexible, lift weights. That's right, getting stronger gives you real world flexibility. Now I'm not just talking about passive range of motion. That's nice, you can do the splits, great. But do you have strength with that new range of motion? Functional flexibility is what counts. Otherwise, you're like a toddler. Great, you can sit in weird positions, but you put load on your back and you get hurt. So you want functional flexibility, the kind that prevents injury, lift weights with a full range of motion. It's the best way to get that. Don't get funked up. I don't think this is... This pisses people off by the way. Get functional. Yeah, I also don't think that it's still common knowledge. I think it's still... I still think most people think that lifting heavy weights is what makes you tight and not flexible. Yes. So this, and be honest with you, this is not something that I fully understood even as a young trainer when I first started training because you feel soreness and tightness in the muscle and if you ever lifted chest heavy or legs heavy the next day, you try to move. You do, you feel stiff. So you think, oh, okay. Well, lifting weights is not the best thing for flexibility. Well, the key is doing it right, right? Because you can make yourself tighter if you lift wrong. Like if you always train in the same planes of movement, okay, you can get really strong in particular exercises, but then because you're weak outside of that, let's say laterally or rotationally, then your body tightens you up because you have all the strength going in one direction. It'll tighten you up so that it doesn't allow you to move outside of that because all that power can then hurt you. So it can make you tight if you do it wrong. The key here is to train with a variety of movements, train in all different planes of movement and to train with the full range of motion. Then what happens is you get strong with that new range of motion. Otherwise, it's like that example I gave, like I have a seven month old daughter. She's flexible as hell. I mean, she could put her toes in her mouth and I could bend her all over the place but she's unstable, that's not flexibility. That's actually a recipe for injury. And trainers who've worked with lots of people have encountered this occasionally where you have that hyper flexible, weak client and those people hurt themselves, it's instability. So long static stretching, what that does that increases range of motion but it doesn't give you functional flexibility in the real world. It's all about functional flexibility. It's not about range of motion. Well, I know this was an evolution for all of us. And definitely it was for me in terms of like stretching my clients out and trying to get them to achieve like certain new ranges of motion. And so a lot of times would intervene and would help kind of be that sort of external force to help kind of pull their arm back, like and get it to go a little bit further back passively but they could never hold and sustain it or try to do that on their own. And then, you know, once I figured out that like adding muscle tension, right? So if I'm doing this now and I'm squeezing my muscles and pulling and trying actively to get in that position. You can move that. You can go further and also you have access to be able to actually lift weights or do something functionally in that range of motion. Well, do you think what also contributes to the stigma around lifting weights making you tighter and less of a range of motion has to do too with after you train a muscle, especially in an exercise you haven't done in a long time, the soreness is typically in the origin or insertion of the muscles where you feel most and so you tend to, like when you're sore from the next. When you're sore, sure. You don't wanna move to that range of motion because it's like, you know, you just trained it hard and so because your sore and the soreness is normally at the end ranges of motion that it feels like, oh, that's shortening my range of motion up but it's just because you're just. So that's what you're signaling to your body. Well, look, think of it this way. Think of a, I don't wanna go for, I'm gonna use an analogy to see if this works out. Like imagine a super powerful train on rails, okay? The more powerful and fast that train goes, the less sharp turns can be because any sharper and it can go right off the rails because it requires tremendous amount of stability to support that speed. So you can't take super sharp turns because of that momentum. Okay, so if you train with short ranges of motion, like bodybuilders do, you do the same exercises, you don't rotate, you don't train laterally, you don't train all the different planes of motion, your body will actually tighten up to limit where you can access that power because you're so strong pressing forward but you've got no strength with stabilizing your, let's say internal and external rotation. Well, now, yeah, you do get, you can find yourself getting a little tighter. That's why this is so important that you do it right. But if you train right and do it properly and train all those planes of movement and train in full range of motion, what happens is you develop strength and stability in all of these. Now you have real functionality. And again, I'll go back to this. Like you could be hyper flexible but if you don't have strength, you're screwed. You're gonna dislocate joints, you're gonna injure yourself. You're gonna get hurt because injury happens not because, I mean, yes, freak things can happen but typically injuries happen because you don't have the strength to support yourself in a range of motion that just happened. Like you step off a curb or you reach to grab something. Maybe you moved faster than your stability allowed you to stabilize or you lifted something in a position where you didn't have the strength or stability to support. Boom, you end up hurting yourself. That's how injuries happen. The analogy you're giving with the train is the example that we probably saw a lot as trainers which was the strength training athlete or the bodybuilder guy who decided to go throw a baseball or throw a Frisbee for the first time in years and fell like they ripped their shoulder off. It was because they're so strong in a specific plane of motion that... The stabilizers didn't support it. Just weren't there. You throw it and then you should be able to move in that range of motion but because you're so strong and one and weak and outside of that it was real easy to injure yourself. And now this is why for the person... Now somebody listening is like, I don't care, I just wanna build muscle. Whatever, I'll take that risk. That would have been me as a teenager. Talk to a few of those in the DMs. Or in my 20s. Now here's the other part of this. So yes, you'll lose flexibility. Injury risk goes up, you become less functional. So great, you look nice but now in the real world you're actually less capable but here's the other part of this. Your body has protection mechanisms. It has limiters, governors. And what it'll do is it'll actually limit your potential for strength and muscle or it'll try to. So if your body starts to develop too much instability your bench press won't go up, your deadlift won't go up, your squat won't go up, your overhead press won't go up. You won't build as much muscle as you can. So mobility work and training in different ranges of motion. This is why a program like maps performance, right? This is an athletic functional minded strength training program. Do you know how many bodybuilders would build more muscle if they followed a three month training program like that every two years? You know, just every two years, once every two years two or three months of that style of training. So it's totally different from bodybuilding. You're not doing your normal bodybuilding training. That's okay, it's only a few months. Then you go back to your traditional training and now what's happened is you've taken those governors that were stuck at eight and you've allowed them now to move up to nine or 10. So now you can progress further. You could build more muscle, you can build even more strength. So regardless of what your goal is, this is something that's very important. But I do like to touch on this flexibility component because the myth, there's a myth out there that strength training is not only not the best way to get real flexibility, it actually does the opposite. Totally not true. If you do it right, you become flexible in real ways. It's the best way to train. What percentage of genetics play in flexibility, would you say? Oh yeah, big time. I mean, it's funny because I know that like you find like these like yogis or guys and girls that love like doing classes like that. And many times it's less about that they got so good at doing that they were already really good. And it had like extremely large ranges of motion in most of their joints. Is it 50%, 80%? Is it what percentage would you say is genetics of people that have this? Like any physical pursuit and it plays a role. So then would you categorize it just like genetics play a role in building strength or muscle? Absolutely. So wherever you're at, you can make tremendous progress. But can everybody become, you know, the guy, I went to the Cirque du Soleil performance once and there was this dude there that folded themselves. He can do a pretzel. Bro, it was actually disturbing. Like he would literally fold himself in half like he was like pressed in half like a piece of paper. And that's so crazy. It's like, yeah, he starts out being super flexible. Then he actually trains it even further, right? So the point where like, yeah, he can actually have his legs completely behind and then his head through. When he was standing normal. This is how this happens. This is my point, right? So like that's somebody who was already like, he did, he was more flexible than somebody who probably has been working on flexibility for 10 years straight. He had it naturally. And then he also took it to another level like a professional athlete. Well, actually, in fact, I remember I was, because this is, member Jessica knows people that work for Cirque du Soleil. So we got to like meet some of the people or whatever and we're kind of backstage. And I saw this guy walking around and because he trains with such an extreme level of flexibility, he had the strangest looking posture and movement. Like, watch, you know, somebody who understands movement, biomechanics. If I didn't know that that's what he did and I just saw him walking around, I would think something is different. Was he all like... It was just weird. He just didn't move like a normal person. And his spine wasn't, you know, I got that normal kind of slight S curve. It was almost like his back was totally straight almost. Yeah, it was really weird. Like you could tell something, and it's because he did so much, like one of his key acts was he would like bend himself backwards and then twist his spine and walk his feet around while he was doing it. I know. I have a hard time watching that stuff, do you? Yes. Like, I don't know why that is. It feels weird. Yeah, there was also this person who did... Looks alien. There was also this woman and another one I went to where they heard ponytail. She had hair, she had been a ponytail. And she hung from her hair and she would spane and do crazy acrobatics. And then my daughter pointed this out. She goes, oh my God, look at her hairline. And then I wasn't, I didn't really pay attention. I looked and you could tell she'd ripped out so much hair that like her hair started right here. Cause that's how she tried. And her neck must be so... Yeah. Like, there's gotta be some long-term... I've seen that. I've seen them hold on with their teeth and are those like clamps that they have, you know? Or they just have piercings that they hang on. Oh. Some people do like crazy stuff with their skin. I mean, it's fascinating. I do like to see the extremes though, like I appreciate it. You know, people that put that kind of like discipline into their training. The thing about extremes I think that messes people up is that they look at extreme physical pursuits or athletes and then they attribute a style of training to creating that reality. It's like they're genetically gifted for that. Then they train at such a ridiculous obsessive level. Already being gifted. They've surpassed. They've gone well beyond like, this is good for me. Now into like, this is not good for me. And so you can't really judge, you know? Yeah. It's just, it's a spectacle. It's not something to pursue. Yeah. It's like judging strength training at a pro bodybuilder. It's like, well, no, that's not, that's strength. Yeah, it is strength training, but there's extreme. It's well beyond what the average person would even want. So anyway. If you're interested, just click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, back to the show. I want to do, bring something that's like off subject. So there's a little bit of a left turn here, but I keep forgetting to talk with us. And I figure since I've been kind of a grumpy bear lately, that I should say something positive. Is that one of the Care Bears? Yeah. Grumpy bear. That was actually my favorite one. He makes it so cute. Yeah. No, I haven't been. So you, and honestly, we, there's a lot of cool stuff that's happening behind the scenes and with the business. And I know that the beginning of this year that we set out on this mission of add value, add value, very similar to how we built this company. And of course, like any other business, real easily you can get into the weeds of revenue streams and breeding prior year and what's next and scaling and growing. And we've been on that trajectory for the last five plus years since we started this and something that we all got together and it was during this kind of COVID recession time. And a lot of thought went into like, you know what, this year coming up, the focus is going to really go back to the mindset of what built this business, which was providing so much value and free content and value and something that we haven't brought up in a while that is doing really well. It's free. It's the newsletter that you have access to. I mean, we've invested in a professional rider to Darren who's incredible and we're evolving it, right? So the, and the reason why the help and support I'm going to ask for our audience is for the feedback. You know, you can actually sign up just to receive the newsletter if you don't want any sort of, you know, promotion or anything else. So you don't want to, I know, I know it's like to not want your email flooded. So this is a newsletter that comes out. Is it once every other week or once a week, Doug? Is it, you know what it is right now? I think it's every other week. So every other week right now, hopefully we'll scale that up to more often. The illustrations on it are great. And then the writing, it's amazing. Yeah, it's incredible. It's a very entertaining, super witty rider. And it's a great way to kind of summarize the content. If you're not an everyday listener of the podcast and you want an overview of some of the stuff that we talked about in the previous week and oh, that might be an episode I want to go listen to and get an idea of what it's about. And we're adding things to it like fitness tips and stuff like that. So we're trying to evolve it, make it even more valuable. But the idea is to bring the type of value that we've created in the podcast and the other channels that we have into the email list. The email list being transparent has been primarily used for us for marketing. It's been, we've grown this huge email list and it's been used to basically just let our audience know when they're sales and things like that. And one of the things we want to do is to find a way to actually add value to that. And that's one big thing. And that's been going, it's been going for the last few months and it's been going well. The other thing that is officially live and going is the askmindpump.com, which I think. This is an AI model. Yes. This will answer, the challenge has been, since we started the podcast, the goal was to kind of give good information and maybe change the direction of this industry a little bit or to counter a lot of the crap that's out there. And so, one thing we do better than anybody in our space, I'll say this very confidently, is we produce more content. That's what we do. Five episodes a week, we've been doing this for since almost the beginning. So we got a lot of podcasts out there. We got a lot of thousands of hours out there. So what this AI model does, this was really cool, you go to askmindpump.com, you ask it a question and it goes through our episodes and it answers it the way we would answer it in our voice essentially. And we've covered topics like multiple times. And so this is a helpful way to get you right to those impactful episodes, those impactful articles, like anything we've put out with that specific subject matter, it's like, boom, here you go. Cause I mean, half the time, like we're not podcasting or doing anything else for the business, it's like, we're just trying to answer questions for people as best as we can. And so this is what we're gonna do. I don't remember what point it was for you guys, but I do remember there was a transition early on when the show was small and we were able to talk to every single one of our DMs and answer almost every question that came across. I think we did a pretty good job of doing that. Then at one point it tipped beyond that. We were still scrambling to try and answer and help as many people as we could. And then it came to a point where almost every DM or every time I answered somebody, what I really, all I was really doing was spending 15 to 20 minutes finding the answer that we had already created for that. Yeah, and then just basically sending the link, oh, go to this, go to minute 15 of this episode, we'd talk about that in depth, or, oh, here's this blog article, or who's this white paper salary, or here's this free guide that we have, like we have so much content now that you literally can find anything related to health, fitness, nutrition, training, hormones, peptides. I mean, you name it, we've probably already talked about it. Do you guys know that who runs our social media uses it to answer questions in the DM? Have you seen some of the questions? I've seen some real specific targeted answers. I'm like, ooh, that was a good one. Every once in a while, I'll go in the DMs to see if I can answer questions, right? Every once in a while. And recently, I went in there and there was, I don't remember what the question was, but it was answered so well. And I'm like, in this thing. Yeah, I probably read the same thing. The person who runs our social media knows fitness, okay, but this question was answered like I had spent an hour breaking it down. It was a deep medical question that was asked. Chokey is the one who runs it. And Chokey does have our bachelor's already in Kines in our field. But again, it picks up all of our content. So it picked up Dr. Arlo's episode who is a doctor that specializes in it. That's like what he said on the episode about, yeah. So it literally gave an answer. And I've seen other ones now where I'm like, oh, she's using our thing to answer questions. I told her I didn't sell her out and tell you that she was using that, but yeah. Oh, I knew, I could read you, bro. But I've been trying to share it with all the employees to do that. I mean, it's just, it's incredible how accurate it is. And it will only get better as more people use it as we continue to compile more content and add to it. But so far so good. Yeah, I wanna ask you guys a question. Have you, have any of you guys ever been tested for ADD? Have you? No. Tested, no. Never been tested? You guys ever suspect you have it? Sure, we all have it. I mean, there's no way we don't. So I was, so I'm the only one I got, I guess in this room that's been tested, right? As an adult. Yeah. And I remember I aced the test. I got a perfect score. Anyway, I was reading about it last night. So, you know, typical to someone with ADD, I either, it's like an on and off switch. I'm either way too interested in something or I'm not interested at all. If I'm not interested at all, it's very hard to get me to even pay attention. If I'm very interested, it's hard to take me away. I become hyper focused. And this is a trait, right? So I just went down this kick on ADD because I read this article. Check this out. Out of the total population, roughly 5% of people have ADD or what's called neurodivergent, okay? Neurodivergence. That's all? Okay, yeah. So 5%. Now neurodivergence is, there's ADD in there. There's autism. These are all these different ways dyslexia I believe is in there as well. But ADD is 5% of the total population. What percentage of entrepreneurs? I think that's ADD. Oh, 985. No, not that high. Oh, I would say 85. 29, almost 30%. Oh wow. So it's still that you're looking at six times more likely or six times more people. If you have ADD, you're 100% more likely to start a business. So twice as likely to start a new business. So I stumbled upon this woman who is going on the speaking tour and she's basically speaking out against trying to squash this out of kids. So she says, look, what we're trying to do is we're trying to force the kid to fit the environment when what we should do is we should change the environment to fit the kid. And so she says with ADD, she says, this is a natural evolutionary trait. There's a gene in particular called the DRD4 gene. And this helps with, it encourages novelty seeking. It helps with fast moving and changing environments. This is all entrepreneurship, right? So she says, people with ADD, what we're needed to think of different things is to hyper focus on certain things to seek out novelty and risk. And so immigrants tend to have higher amounts, entrepreneurs tend to have higher amounts. I thought about this country and the high rate of immigrants and entrepreneurs. It's like we've kind of filtered more of these people in here to who have this. It's the breeding ground for innovation. Yes, yeah, pretty crazy. Yeah, I think it explains the habit that I used to have, which is like I would love the process of building a business. This is what they talked about. I love so much. And then you do it and then you get bored. Yes. And then I was like, then I was over it. It was like, once I- That's always the Achilles heel. Yeah, once I proved that I could do it and I was successful at it, I was already bored with it and I wanted to- You know this is the first business I've ever done we haven't been bored? Yeah. Because there's so many things that we can keep pursuing. That's why, if you really think about it, I mean, if you were to- It's constantly challenging. Well, I mean, when I think back to all the small businesses that I built or had success with. And if you were to say that's a business in itself and then you were to look at this one, there's like nine of those within this. Yeah. You know, so that- And every year there's like a new- Yeah, and then every year we add a new leg or a new layer to it. So it's always giving you that sense of starting a new business. I feel like even when we're not it's all underneath this one. It's just, you know, I wish- Well, I'm glad. I'm glad it wasn't super popular when we were kids to treat. And thankfully I found my passion soon. So I went in that direction. Cause I would have struggled. I tell you what, man, I got away with my type of ADD for a long time because I also have a really good memory for certain things. So I could kind of get away. But when it came to the point where, you know, as you progress in school, you need to be more organized. And you have to learn concepts based on older concepts. And you have to be able to organize how you study. When that started to happen, I started to kind of struggle with subjects that I wasn't interested in. Had I not found fitness and gotten to the gym, cause I started doing that at a high school, I would have been, it would have been so tough for me to continue with traditional education and college. I mean, it would have been really hard. It's an interesting thought because like I do wonder a lot of times if like they had some kind of different schooling for me available. Cause I know that this is such a good fit for me. Like entrepreneurship, it's a great fit. But in terms of me actually like grinding my way through that discipline of having to be organized, having to be on time, having to, you know, complete tasks and do things like methodically and approach it like that. Like I wouldn't have worked on that. You know, I'd been like, oh, fuck that. You know, like let somebody else do that. But having that, I had needed that skill to then actually create an environment for me to enjoy, you know, the true talent that I think that I possess. Yeah, there can't be, it can't be all bad to have to learn to fit in this, you know, the way this education system, right? That we've decided to run, right? Like there's got to be some value in that you've had to learn, even though it's not your personality and you're what you would gravitate to. Well, I guarantee all of us develop skills to be able to deal with it. I know I did. You know what, I'll give you an example. Yeah, I found a lot of cheats around things. Well, I'll give you an example. Like for me, I put certain objects, the only in certain places in the house and here at work, you'll notice, I always put certain things in the exact same place. Why? Because as a kid, I would lose shit. And so I developed this behavior where my keys only go here or here. I'll never put them at down anywhere else. My wallet only goes here or here or my, you know, whatever goes only here or here. Otherwise, I'll lose it. Or as a manager, as a general manager of a gym, if I got like a paper that I had to sign or read over, I did it right then and there. Because I knew if I put it down, gone. It's the same as responding to somebody or addressing a problem, I have to do it right then. Yes. Like right then. Or like, you know, setting my day up, I have to have my clothes there, looking at me. Ready to go. I wanna look for it at all. Like it just fucks me up. You know what? Remember when we had Charlene Johnson on here and we brought up the, she brought up that one of her first tips for somebody before they start to lose weight. So with that is to like declutter their house. I was watching the John Deloni speech that I didn't get a chance to see it when we were at Ramsey and it was really good. And, you know, he had a part in there that I thought was really interesting. And I think, I forget who he, it was like some, wasn't in a monk, it was some minimalist guy that told him that, you know, every materialistic thing that we have is communicating to us at all times. And so he made the comment of like when you, and then he like, and he kind of told him, like when he first heard it was like, oh, whatever, that's bullshit or whatever. And then he gives us great example of like walking through his house and walking past the dishes and the dishes are full in the sink and him going like, oh my God, I should do that. I don't do that. And then he goes through like this and then he goes by his gym in his house and he hasn't worked out in three days. And it's like, it's like, man, it's so true the more things that you have in your house, especially if it starts to clutter up and you can see it at all times, that even like it's not literally talking to you, but it's like it is mentally distracting you and taking energy away from other things that you could potentially focus on and such a cool. And Shalene Johnson was actually the first person that I've ever, fitness person that I ever heard give that as a, as a, I think it's really smart. Yeah, it's a really. And I, and when I think back to my, personally that that has to, I have to have my house in order if I'm going to go do like my workout, there's stuff that I have, that has to be first for me to feel like I'm going to go do something else in addition to that, because if I go do that and that's still out of order, I can't seem to be all in on the other thing. You're still going to be hanging on. Yeah, totally. You know, what's interesting too is as I was reading about this is no two people are the same. Some people are way more over here on certain things and other things are way more over here. Like the organization piece, I have to be, I gotta be as bad as it gets. I could just, I don't think there's anybody, I don't think I could get any worse in, and you know, people think, oh, you just don't try. You don't, no, no, you don't understand. Like this is me trying for years. Like this is me, this is as good as I've been able to get with so my organization. But on the other side, if I get hyper focused, you won't find anybody who can digest and absorb and remember and regurgitate information like I can. So that became for me a superpower that really wasn't useful until I started a podcast. It was good for conversations. It's true. It's pretty much 35 years in my life. You're a closing machine, you know. I mean, it was cool when I was a trainer because I could talk to people about cool stuff. Sal knows a lot of random shit, you know? Cool magic trick before. Well, you know, the podcast is great, right? Cause I could talk about different things. So what about my commercial jingles? Yeah, that was shit. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, I loved it. But yeah, I went down to rabbit hole about that and it made a lot of sense. I mean, I would think that we all kind of have a little bit of it for sure. Well, imagine if when you were a kid, I was thinking about this. And I imagine if I was thinking when I was a kid, if I had a really good, like really good teachers or let's say my parents' homeschooled me or super aware of this, they just weren't, but let's say they were, they would have been able to point me in directions that I wanted to go and I would have just been a machine. Yeah, I remember specifically being in history class, specifically, and it was just boring. The teacher was crappy and whatever and I'm just sitting there. And I picked up the textbook and I got into ancient history and I read the whole book in two days. The rest of the whole year, I paid no attention but the teacher constantly tried to get me to like pick on me to, oh, he's not paying attention. Sal, so what's the answer to whatever? And I knew the answer and I remember I frustrated the shadow of him. He's like, I know you were talking to somebody. How do you know that? Like I read the whole fucking thing in two days because I really got into it, but now I'm bored. So. Well, I mean, when you think about how our education system was structured and informed and for what reason? It wasn't for entrepreneurs. No, no. So it's like, I mean, do a little bit of digging and find out the history of that and then go ahead and make the decision for yourself. Do you think this is ideal for most people and who is it really serving? I don't know. You know, it's for big corporations to get a bunch of worker bees working for them. And it's like, so I guess if you just wanna fall in line and you wanna be that person and you're totally content with working the nine to five and having a decent salary job and that to you is what you want. Then so be it, then okay, then the education system's not bad, but if you aspire for something different, it's like this is not the ideal situation. I think if you don't fit in but you're curious and passionate, there is a path for you. And just find that what your passion is, what your skill is. And there's a way to use that to your advantage. Now, what do you, Justin? Cause I know you're planning on homeschooling, right? Is that still the plan? Oh yeah, Jessica is gonna, 100% she's gonna handle that. And I'm very much on board with that. So that's how you're gonna solve this. How do you plan to deal with the boys? Cause they just, they strike me as they're gonna have you as their personality trait. Like, and they're gonna want that. Like, do you think about that right now? Like, and as they're going through regular schools, like they're in a public school right now, right? So like. Yeah, there's different challenges between both of them. So Everett in seeing Ethan's experience in junior high, I wasn't real impressed. So we're looking at this nature academy for Everett and they offer that for junior high, which is great. So that way too, we can kind of figure out where we're gonna be with high school after that. And it's not too far away, but you know, his friends are still kind of close proximity. And so it's, it's not like he's losing out on a lot of that. And with Ethan, it's been interesting because he just, I didn't realize this. I kind of had an inclination, but I just thought he's been super lazy lately. And I've been on him about like studying very last second and then doing all these things like where he does, he figures out that he can do makeups and then do it. Like, so he'll just wait to do that, do everything. Like, and it drives me crazy. But he gets like, A's dude, he gets like, it's easy for, like this stuff is too easy for him. Like the work is, is like simple and like the workload now that the kids have is just, it's embarrassing. So I'm looking at other schools going into high school. So he'll be in eighth grade. And then after that, we're going to look at maybe go and pursue a different type of high school for him. Yeah. And then we'll see kind of wherever it's at. And I'm really just trying to like make sure it's a good fit for them individually. Like what, you know, so pay attention to kind of their interests and like what strikes them is like, you know, the sort of subjects and things that they're the most passionate about. What's it, what's a nature's academy? What exactly is that? So it's like, it's more kind of Montessori-esque, like very outside and they've learned. Oh, it's more kinesthetic. Yeah, yeah, kinesthetic learning kind of situation, which he'll do so much better at. So does that, is that work in conjunction with the school or does that like a different school completely? Like where he's not going to go to his other school? Yeah, it's a different school, but it's in the same district, yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, but it's like it's, not everybody gets into it. It's like a small group. And so you have to, but thankfully, we kind of know somebody who's pulling strings for us. So hopefully we get him in, yeah. Yeah, I'm going to use the car. I'm going to use the car, remember? This is a Beth Dealer. I'm a P-lister podcast. No, you're the, remember you're a Beth Dealer. Oh yeah, I'm a Beth Dealer, you know, like I'll, yeah. I'll shake him down. Let us get it. That guy, that guy. Exactly, anyway. Dude, so speaking of like going down rabbit holes and stuff, I don't know why I read about this, but it's really interesting. It was interesting to me for 10 minutes. Do you guys know what Merkins are? You ever heard of Merkins? Merkins? Yeah, no. This was a thing, pull it up because this was a thing, I want to say in the, in the, like in the, like 1600s, 1700s, 1800s. So it's like a long time ago. Merkins? Yeah. So these were pubic wigs. Pubic wigs? Pubic hair wigs. Pubic hair wigs. So you may be asking yourself, why, now prostitutes wore them. I mean, let me, let me add to it. So they would wear them so that their bush is sticking out more? So they wore pubic hair wigs in those days. We're talking like, we're talking like 1500, 1600 all the way up to like the, the 1800s. They would wear, it was a thing. They would wear these, these pubic hair wigs. So, so what's your, what's your theory as to why? See, oh, there it is. So that guy's holding up in a box with different, a bunch of free triangles. I'm going to, I'm going to go the evolutionary angle, like you would probably go in this, which is that, you know, a robust bush probably means that you are more fertile and healthy. Ooh, you're close. Okay, think about, think about how dirty. Or stylistic. Hold on. Think about how filthy people were back then in general. Now think about prostitutes. Oh, okay. So all the hair catches all the fucking dander and shit. And so you're, you're inside. What else? Yeah, but what about the crabs and all the things that live in there? Okay. So, so prostitutes used to shave, they used to shave all their pubic hairs to avoid getting lysine crabs from all these men that they would have sex with. So then you switch them out? So then you would get a merkin, which would clean. You could fucking clean the shit out of it, right? And you'd put it on. You know, I just rocked the shaved because I didn't like it back then. Yeah, that wasn't a popular thing. That was not a popular thing back then. In fact, shaved pubic area meant you were sick because back in those days, when you got rid of lys, the way you got rid of lys back then is you shaved your head. Oh, wow. So if you had a shaved head and you walk around, people are like, oh, you had, you got lysine. Bring back the merkin. Bring the shave back, man. Bring back the merkin, dude. Can you buy him still? Cause every once in a while I'm in the mood for like a merkin, you know? I tell Katrina, I'm like, yeah. I'm like, we've been doing this. You know, landing strip merkin? Yeah, I go, hey, I like, I love this, but maybe throw it when we changed it up a little bit or else as well. Hey, what'd you do? Can I get a merkin, Doug? Can you see? I'll see. Merkins are still used. Are they? In Hollywood. This is great. In Hollywood. What's great about this is we can do the merkin for a week and then I can get rid of it. No, no, no. You know why they use them in Hollywood? So I'm going to read about, the presence of merkins protects the actor from inadvertently performing full frontal nudity. So some contrasts specifically require nipples and genitals to be covered in some way. So they'll use fake pubic hair to cover them. Well, that doesn't look like a merkin does. It looks like a little pet lizard. I don't know what Doug's looking up. Can you order me one? No. You can order your own, Adam. Can you wear it in your head? Can you bring it? Can I see so I can decide what style I want? Can you be jazz-y? There you go. There's a couple right, oh, you can't see that. Adam's going to come to work tomorrow with a weird triangular two-pace. Sort of why, I'm a surprise-er. He's the only place to try it. Oh, shit. Just as a wizard. I don't know about that one. Body hair, fake pubic hair, stickers. Wow. Can I get, I mean, is this from real people? No, no, that's all more of a scary. Like a dirty blonde look. What? Maybe they haven't, this is actually Walmart. They sell them. What? Yeah, Amazon. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Walmart is selling body hair, fake pubic hair, stickers. I did not know these things. Walmart sells everything. Let's go down, Doug. There was some more. Oh, where is there? When you went down yesterday. Well, look, the ones on eBay have. It's not scrolling. I find it a little bit disturbing that everything coming up below is children's toys. No, it's not. Why are you going to combo it? Well, it does say, it does say that that's for doll. Dolls, right there. Yeah, but you know, they make dolls that are. Oh, God. Yeah, I know. Well, yeah, find me the best merkin place, Doug. OK, I'll make that my mission. Yeah, it's a test. My merkin mission. It's a weird look at her hair cut for her birthday. He just blew my mind right there. Someone's going to find me and be like, is this girl here? Is this a goatee? OK, so I'm proud to be a merkin. Yeah, merkin. You guys remember a long time ago, and I was talking about like back in medieval times, how they used to have to kind of add bells when they would like bury people. Oh, just in case they were actually alive. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, by the way, you know what they did? Dead ringer. Do you know what they found? They did that. Because they actually buried live people. You know how they knew that? They would move bodies a couple times. They'd open the casket and scratch marks would be inside the person try to get out. Like the worst stuff. So you think that we've probably evolved, right? Like we've gotten like more sophisticated as a society and whatnot like since then. Like we know when someone's dead. Yeah, like we know when somebody's dead, we like have people to confirm and all that. So I believe it's in Ecuador. It's some South American country recently where they were having a wake for their grandma. And beforehand, she had like a stroke in cardiac arrest. And then like they actually had the doctors, you know, pronounced her dead. She got wrapped up. She was like in the coffin and the family members were there. They stood there for like four or five hours and they were all, you know, observing and grieving and they started to hear just like knocking noises and just kept getting louder and louder. And then the coffin started shaking and freaked the fuck out. Right. Open the gate. She's still alive. She's wrapped all the way up to like they wrapped her up and she was alive. Oh, my God. And fighting like her way out to try and like get, you know, out of the coffin. Are you serious? Yeah. This happened like recently. Oh, my God. Great. How terrifying. How does that even happen? Right. Like, come on. Well, there's a disease. I know there's a disease. I don't know if this was her, but there's a disease where it's that your heart rate will slow down so much that without really paying attention or so much to nothing, you know, not to that. Obviously, not to nothing. Oh, my God. Pick it up. Yeah. That's crazy. Well, so along those lines, you want to hear what I just I just read yesterday. So there was a guy, a dad, talk about this is the most messed up prank of all time. So apparently he was pissed off. He got pissed off because nobody ever invited him to anything. His family never invited him to things. His cousins, his aunts, uncles, his kids. So he faked his own death. So he faked his own death and at the funeral, people are there crying whatever and he shows up in a helicopter and he goes, you know, this is because you guys never invite me to anything. And there's a video of it, dude. And people are like, some people are happy. Like, oh, my God, he's alive. What people are like, fuck you, dude. That was wrong with the idea. Why don't you just say something? You made your point, Carl. Hey, what a risk. So you know what, like, that'd be so risky. You do that and it like ends up being like shitty. Hardly anybody shows up to you. Exactly. That would be like, all sad. It would like crash into him. Yeah, that would be the worst. Especially if you're a guy who doesn't get invited to nowhere. You don't get any invited to your world. There's a good chance nobody shows up to your funeral. It's because you smelled, Carl. You know, like, you should have just asked. Where'd you utter it? That's so crazy. So I also read about, I don't know how this came up, but you guys obviously know the term blue balls. So this is actually, they think might actually be a real thing. I thought this was fake. Please say it is. I thought dudes made this up to course, you know, girls or whatever, like, if you don't, you know, have sex with me, it's going to hurt. I'm going to be in dire straits. Yeah, and I'm like, get out of here. That's so stupid. No, it's actually, they studied it and they said that it might actually be a real thing. Apparently the blood, there's vasodilation. And if it doesn't, if it doesn't help, I guess, the vasoconstriction after finishing, but if you don't, it can cause severe pain. And they've examined this or observed this in people. So apparently it's a real thing. I don't know. Why do you think the term blue balls? Because the vasodilation causes the veins and capillaries to expand and it can look blue, because this is what they're theorizing. I thought it was blue. I still think it's bullshit. I think assholes are making this shit up. I sure felt that way when my girlfriend left me hanging when I was a kid. You actually got blue balls. I was 18. I mean, I didn't actually, my balls didn't turn blue. That's why I asked you where the blue thing come from. But I remember being like, that was painful. Emotionally or physically? No, it's emotionally. Rejection. Maybe it was so emotional that I felt pain. But you felt manifested physical pain. Yeah, you know, my balls would hurt. You know what you wouldn't hurt? No. You've never felt that way? Yeah, but it finds its way out, dude. Yeah, eventually it gets relieved. That's it. But yeah, eventually it gets relieved. I probably relieved myself by telling a home. But I mean, like that's when you sleep in. See, Dougie told you I'd get back to this. You don't remember that? You don't remember having like a high school girlfriend and then working all the way up to that? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's achy, bro. I never had that. Really? No, I didn't hurt. Wow. I forgot you were married. You were married by 17. I wasn't 17. So you were all your hell in the house. 22. You weren't into the whole heavy petting. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was heavy petting for a long time. So that was that's what I was trying to dry helping. I was dry helping for years, dude. You were 28 when you lost your virginity. Yeah, a lot of blue balls. You got purple. That's why, dude. There's only so many hugs, you know, I can take. Ah, it hurts. That's terrible. Big hugger, dude. Anyway, so, Adam, I saw you earlier talking about Netflix. Are they? Oh, so they came in? They're doing the thing now? Yeah, I brought that. I brought it up originally like, what, two or three months ago. And it's in full swing now. So they're cracking down on people sharing their passwords. Yeah, I was talking to Andrew and I were talking before the podcast. And, you know, he's he's actually busted. He was stealing Netflix. No, maybe you guys haven't seen it yet. But they've cracked down now if you're sharing passwords. Did you know the revenue went up? Bro, that's what I brought up. It's like crazy. Yeah, people thought it would crush them. They had like back to back like record month. Is that right, Andrew? It was like back to back record months. The number I saw is they increased the subscribers by 105 percent. Wow. Whoa. Yeah. All right. So we need to crack down a bunch of moochers. People share map programs. Well, you know what I thought about? I mean, so interesting strategy, right? Allowing it, allowing people to use it, share it, get them used to all the great. Brilliant. Yeah, get them kind of a dig and then go up and then you go, OK, we're going to piss off a small percentage of people. They'll be like, oh, fuck Netflix. I've never used it in the beginning because now I can't share it. It's like the third day trial. Yeah. But more people will be like, damn, I don't want to go without it now. I've got halfway in the season of whatever. Yeah, or I've gotten so used to having it for so long and you just, you know, bite the bullet. No more strangers. You've got to think, though, it's the moochers that are getting cut off. So they had never paid any money anyway. Right. So now it's just like, OK, well, I guess I have to pay the money now. Yeah. So a good percentage of the moochers are going to go. Yeah. Now, what I want to, what I don't understand is going to happen, which is so what happens to people like us who have multiple properties. Right. It's always the same thing. You know, it's attached to an IP address. So like if you, and so it's more your Wi-Fi. So if this, so it'll be attached to that. So it's like, because Andrew is sharing your dad's, right? Yeah. So there's an option basically to say that you're traveling. And then if it's your accounts, let's say you go to a different location. You have your Netflix account, but it's not your original home. You just put through your traveling and get a verification code and you're in. Oh, OK. But then you can't use them both simultaneously, probably. I haven't tried that. So what it'll do. OK, that makes sense. So what it'll do is it'll shoot. So if it's mine, I'm up in Truckee. I log into my Netflix there. It's going to prompt and go right to my cell phone. But if I was using Justin's Disney, or it's not Disney, Justin's Netflix up there at the Truckee house, it would code him and then I wouldn't, he wouldn't be, and then he wouldn't verify it ahead of time. So that's how they're going to, that's how they, OK, that makes sense. That's how they crack down on it. Wow. Yeah. And the revenue went up. Everybody thought that would go down. Just like, interesting. You know what's interesting? It's something similar with Twitter, right? Elon said, you're going to, you're going to pay for verification or whatever. It was like, oh my God, it's going to kill Twitter and crush the revenues. How, how is Instagram? Have they boost the revenue? Because they just started rolling out the whole blue checks are everywhere now. Yeah, like it went up a lot too. I actually want people for a thousand. That was a while back, actually, to bring that up. It went up. Yeah, Instagram had to have. I mean, and of course, Twitter was the one that kind of set the stage. Maybe Doug or Andrew can find that when, when Instagram rolled out their blue, blue check, what did it instantly boost revenue? Like it was, you know, I don't want it wasn't a billion. It was like millions of dollars. Yeah. And I don't know if it was like, they felt they did that. I thought I was going to feel. Yeah. Six hundred and 60 million sick, almost. By selling 44 million, bro. Yeah. A half a billion dollar over a half a billion dollars. They're doing nothing but like that. Wow. Those 44 million blue checks were all sold in one day. Wow. Wow. That's insane. Six hundred, 60 million. What a fun day. She's. Yeah. Nothing right? Just blue checks all over your face. Try it with our listeners. We'll verify you that you're a mind pump listener for four ninety nine right now. A terrifying pump head over overnight. Freaking six hundred million dollars. That's crazy, man. So do you think, OK, so we actually haven't talked about this in a long time with you guys is, you know, we used to debate like a year or two ago about like the streaming wars, like who's going to win? Where is it? Where is it at? Maybe Andrew can pull up who's leading the way right now. I think HBO Max, Apple keeps putting out incredible content. I think Netflix sucks. I really do. I know that's like it's like the junk food of streaming service. They haven't had any good, good, like real quality shows a long time. Every once in a while, they pop out like a decent like the Arnold thing was cool. Yeah, yeah, it was a cool doc, but they have that. I haven't seen like it in original that was like a Netflix original. That was like, oh, that's a really good show. That's like not like the level of like what I was catching up. They've been putting a lot of money and effort into their programming for sure. So yeah, you know what? I can't I wonder if at some point there's going to be an app that connects to all those streaming services you own. And then it just shows you the shows and then depending it doesn't matter. So you know that Apple does that, right? So Apple, when you when you have Apple TV, I can see my showtime, my HBO, my Disney, my Hulu, all through the Netflix through Apple, not Netflix. They're not connected at all with with Netflix. I don't think my Netflix I can see through there. But like, you know, so I can be on my Apple TV dashboard and it'll put my popular shows and with that. And it'll be on all those different streaming platforms. Do you do you have Apple TV? I do have Apple TV. Yeah, so you know, you don't have TV. How come? I don't know. Dude, if Disney didn't have Mandalorian, I'd be out. Like, that's the one thing keeping me there. Yeah, like, I haven't seen a really good show from them either, which is weird because, you know, they have everything. They bought every franchise. Do you know what show I watched? Katrina and I watched it yesterday night. We're in the mood for this. It's like her night. One of our favorites, Miracle on Ice. Like, what happens to what happened to Disney promote like doing like good old movies like that? That was good. Such a good story. That's a true story. That's why. Yeah, so crazy. I know, like, it's not like there's not a bunch of great stories like that. It's like, they should tell more stories like that. That was a great, great. That's probably one of my favorite. I am excited, though, about the Jonathan Pajales. He's retelling fairy tales. Yeah. And so he's putting a lot of effort into old stories like Snow White, because I think we kind of talked about this before. But they're all going to be books. Really, really nice looking. Like for like tangible or female lead and for like male lead, you know, fables for kids and their parents. Fairy tales. Yeah, I can't wait to. I'm actually going to get those. Yeah, 100 percent. Hey, I was reading about the science around terpenes yesterday. And I did not know how far the science has gotten. It's gotten pretty far. You guys know what terpenes are? It's basically the little oils that are on the plant that's on the cannabis. Yes. Yes. So hemp and marijuana, right? They have. So it gives it its different flavors. Yeah. So there's cannabinoids, which like CBD, THC, CBC, CBN, like these are all cannabinoids. But then there's the terpenes. And the terpenes give it like its different smells. Like limaline, I think is one of them. Mercyine is another one. Pineal, I think is another one. So that's why some plants smell different than others. Well, they didn't think, you know, for a long time they didn't realize that terpenes had effects on you. So, you know, speaking of cannabis, one strain is going to make you feel energized and the other ones are going to make you feel sleepy and relaxed. They thought it was the cannabinoids. Right. But what used to fly in the face of that was, well, the cannabinoid profile is very similar between this one and this one. But why does this one knock me out? And this one makes me hyper. It's the terpenes. So two terpenes in particular I was reading about. Limanine provides antidepressant effects and they say it brightens the effects of the cannabinoids. Mercyine provides calming and sedative effects. This is the couchlock phenomena or relaxing type phenomena. Okay, so where am I going with this? This is part of the entourage effect that you get when you consume full plant versus going with like, let's say you just use CBD. Oh, I read all these studies on CBD. It's good for inflammation. It does this, that, and the other. And then you go work with a company like Ned who we work with that doesn't just use CBD. They don't take an extract of a cannabinoid from the plant and take everything out. They take the whole plant. They'll breed a plant for a particular profile that they'll take the whole plant, put in oil or capsule or product. And that's why even if it has the same CBD content as a CBD product, that's real cause a lot of them aren't. You just feel way better. What's going on? It's the entourage effect that you get from Ned. This is why the hemp oil from Ned, so many people send us DMs are like, I've used CBD for so long. I went with Ned. Wow, what a difference. What's going on? I'm like, it's not the CBD. It's all the other stuff and how they work together to provide this effect. So Ned was obviously way ahead on this and we knew that when we started working with them and we had a chance to talk to them before we even partnered up. Do you see the market shifting because there was this quick rush to extracting and isolating CBD and marketing that? And do you see these companies pivoting and starting to now offer a full spectrum version? Yeah, so it's in the marijuana space, you see this already where you can buy now products like edibles and stuff that will have specific terpenes in them or combinations of cannabinoids. There's no longer just THC, right? It'll have other stuff. The commercial market for CBD is starting to follow. So you're starting to see now products that are promoting this entourage effect. It's more expensive. It's more expensive to do this. It takes more, it's better processing, but because the market is so competitive, like any competitive market, the better ones start to rise and the crappy stuff starts to fall off. Well, they definitely need to go in and kind of help provide materials and educate these bud tenders. Have you ever talked to them about terpenes? I love, oh, it's actually one of my favorite things to do sometimes is because it's just fun to hear them kind of work their way through, kind of describing and what are the characteristics are and how they're different. But yeah, so again, I remember, I think we were working with, it was DOSUS back in the day. I was gonna bring them up. You know, they were the first ones on the terpene science. They were the first people that I knew outside of our circle, so that was really the only sense, I'll be honest, there's in the marijuana space. Yeah, so Ned knows this very well. So they'll have like the brain blend. They'll have a stress blend. They'll have their general hemp oil. And if you, this is how they develop it. First off, they also use other botanicals. So they don't just use the hemp plant that they'll have a specific breed for let's say energizing euphoric creativity like the brain blend or a profile for relaxing the body anti-inflammatory effects like for the anti-stress blend. They'll also combine them with well-known botanicals like ashwagandha, valerian root, or other compounds that will either, that help complement what's going on. So, and this is why I like working with them. They know their stuff. Yeah, they do. Speaking of stuff, I wanna ask you, Adam. Yeah. I got a DM yesterday, or I read a DM the other day from someone who's been eating creatures of habit and said, it is a bulking hack. Because it comes in a packet, it's super easy to mix up. 30 grams of protein. This kid is a young kid trying to gain muscle or send a DM and said, hey, is it okay if I eat like three packets a day? I'm like, well, yeah. And I'm like, well, what are you doing? And he goes, all I do is add it to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So he eats the same meals. He just throws a packet on. Oh my God. And because it doesn't bloat them and it's easy to digest and it's everything you need, it's really easy. It's a great, and I wanna ask you because when you were competing, this was a staple for you. Three years. Three years, every single morning, the first thing I ate was oatmeal. I'm obviously. With the protein. Yeah, I made my own concoction. In fact, the new flavor that's coming with creatures of habit is one of my favorite, most popular concoctions that I used to make. But what I had found, and this was just purely from trial and error, like doing different, trying different things, is I could get up one to your point. It was easy. It was really easy to digest. I come from the camp of people that have a really hard time eating really big breakfast. I was never a big breakfast eater. I was always like lunch and dinner, the meals later on, I could eat big, big meals and I couldn't get a big 700, a thousand calorie breakfast ever in. And so what the oatmeal did is I would eat it first thing when I first wake up and it would go down easy. So it was really easy for me to crush like a creatures of habit size bowl of oatmeal is I would find that an hour to two hours later, I was ready to eat again. And so I could now have this three to 400 calorie bowl of high protein oatmeal. And then two hours later, now I was ready to eat again and then I could have my steak and egg and potatoes type of meal. Now it's like 10 in the morning. I've already got 12, 1500 calories down, 80, 90 plus grams of protein already done for my day. It became the staple. It was like I literally learned that that was what I had to do if I was in a steak consistent with hitting my protein intake and being able to hit the calories I needed to eat on a daily basis. That's awesome. All right, so who's the shout out today? When are you guys meeting somebody? Yeah, so earlier in the beginning of the show we're kind of talking about to functional flexibility and mobility and whatnot. And so I was, we haven't mentioned him yet. And he's like one of the leaders especially in the strength, coaching, kind of sports specific world, Eric Cressy. Oh yeah. Yeah, just the phenomenal content. Baseball is for now. Baseball is his main sport. He works with all athletes, but mainly baseball, but just real quality stuff. So I believe it's Eric or is it Cressy Sports Performance? Yeah, so C-R-E-S-S-E-Y. So he is, it remind me, because Cressy was one of the OGs that I remember. I remember Cressy, DeFranco. Boyle. Boyle. There's another one, yeah. And who else in the sports performance world? There's only three I know. I mean, those are the main ones. They were, right? So when we were early trainers, excuse me, in our early 20s, those guys were the ones that were really on the cutting edge science of sports performance. Free cook and more physical therapy. He was like, but he was more. Yeah, he kind of crossed over a little bit with the functional, with the screening tests he did. But yeah, those are the main kind of sports performance guys. He's still putting out great content. Hey, you can work with a continual glucose monitor and a nutrition expert to maximize your fat loss and your fitness. They monitor your blood sugar levels and they help coach you with nutrition. This has the highest success rate of anything that we've ever seen when it comes to, especially fat loss. Go check them out. Go to Nutrisense.io. So that's N-U-T-R-I-S-E-N-S-E.io forward slash mind pump. Use code mind pump and get $30 off. All right, back to the show. Our first caller is Hildi from Ohio. Hi, Hildi. How can we help you? Hello, hi. So I'm 54, 5'11 with a larger build. Carry him in a puzzle. And I currently weigh 196 pounds and I'm trying to figure out what is the right calorie count for my activity level. I started working out a little bit later in life around 47 and I train twice a week with a trainer. I do circuit training on my own one day week. I run three to four days a week averaging 12 to 15 miles and I walk or I do the elliptical alongside the two days that I train virtually. I was on and off weight watchers for the last two decades. I finally quit last year after realizing that it was just becoming too obsessive on my part with the scale and seeing my weight go down and then go back up. And currently I track my meals on my plate and I do have fibromuscular dysplasia which kind of restricts me with weight work but I still am fine with working out with the TRX and with weights and I've tried everything from calorie cuts 24 hour fast, undulating my diet, bringing up the calories, bringing the back down. All with the goal of building up my metabolism, getting stronger leaner and the issue is really just finding the right calorie count for what I'm doing. Okay, Hildi, where do you get your information on building your metabolism? What have you done to try to build your metabolism? So I'm working with a trainer. I've been with for eight years and he's a big fan of your show also. So maybe he'll listen to this. Have her stop running so much and doing circuit training. If you listen to my show, you know that that's the wrong thing to do. So the workouts that you're doing where you're running 12 to 15 miles a week, the circuit training is counter to what you're trying to do with boosting metabolism. It's counter. That type of activity gets the metabolism to adapt in the other direction. Now they're calorie burners but that calorie burn very quickly, your body adapts and it no longer does anything for you. Now it doesn't mean it's unhealthy for you. It's probably healthy. In fact, I would say it might even be unhealthy at this point. You said you're a paramount apostle. You're probably doing too much. You're probably doing too much stuff and your body is just holding on to stuff. Especially if you're in a calorie restricted diet too. So if you're a restricting circuit training, running and that, I mean, that's just, yeah, it's not surprising at all that we're stalling as far as our progress right now. By the way, you are a representative of like 60% of the clients that we trained. Okay, so we have a lot of experience with what you're talking about. So let's start with the workout, then we'll get to the nutrition and then we'll get to the root of all of this, okay? So the workout should be completely focused on building strength. I want you to train in a way to build as much muscle as possible. Now, if that makes you worry, like I don't wanna get real big muscles, don't worry, you won't. Okay, good. You won't but that's what's gonna move the metabolism in the right direction. It's also going to, by the way, the metabolism boost is a side effect of what's happening, which is the muscle building, which is also a side effect of something else that's happening. Your hormones are gonna organize themselves in a way to build muscle. So you talk about being paramanaposal, one of the best things you could do to get those hormones to regulate in a better way is to create the environment and send the stimulus for your body to build muscle. Because in order for your body to build muscle, you need what's called an anabolic hormone profile. So what does that look like? It's an appropriate testosterone level in women. Testosterone is important in women, just like it is in men, just a different level. It's a balance of estrogen or progesterone and that balance looks different when your menopausal versus pre, but it doesn't matter. There's still a balance that's ideal for building muscle. So it'll move towards that. You get more insulin sensitive and your growth hormone levels start to rise. So I would train you in a way to build strength and muscle that will be the primary focus. Then as far as just being active. Well, let's talk about that for a second. That was going a bit deeper as far as what the strength training looks like. Cause a lot of people just assume because they pick up dumbbells or weights that they are. It is not, you are training like a strength athlete or like a bodybuilder. Now I don't mean in terms of the intensity necessarily and all that stuff, but you're doing a set and you're resting for two minutes. Adequate rest. And then you're doing a set and then you're resting for two minutes. Which is gonna be really uncomfortable for you if you haven't done that before. Something that you have to kind of work your way through mentally. Short rest periods or no rest periods is just cardio with weights. So even though you're using weights, it's really not that different in terms of the stimulus that it's sending to the body. So we have to do a set where you do eight, let's say eight reps or 12 reps with a good amount of intensity, trying to work on strength. Then you put the weight down and you rest for two minutes and then you repeat it. So you're doing sets of exercises. Basically you're doing strength training. You're doing it in a way. You're using weights in a way to build muscle and strength. And if you don't have a program of ours, I'll make sure to send you one. That's appropriate. And then you can just follow that. I don't, but I love it. Okay, perfect. I'll send you one that'll be just, you can follow the format and you can have your trainer modify it since they've been working with you for so long. There may be exercises that are more appropriate than some of the ones that we have listed. So that's number one. As far as being active, I would eliminate the running. Do you like the run? Do you love running? Is it like your favorite thing to do or you just do it? I do. I've had like a love, I wouldn't say hate relationship over the years. I was definitely faster in doing more when I started out. And I've done five half marathons. I've done a lot of 10Ks, five Ks these days. I'm doing between three and four miles at a time. What do you hate about it? When you say love? Trail running. What do you hate about it? The trail running, is that what you said? No, no, no, no. I love trail running. No, I wouldn't say I hate it, but there's times when I would, I think I will lose my mojo and I'd wake up in the morning and say, oh, I got to go out and do this. So I go through these periods of times and right now I'm in an uptake where I am excited to do it. And I plan ahead. I, you know, I put my clothes out the night before. I have an idea of where I'm gonna go. So I have a better attitude. But if you told me that it's getting in the way of things, then... I'd prefer you walk. Yeah, or let me ask you this. At least for right now. Well, you said you liked trail running. Let me guess. What you like about the trail running is that you're outside and you're out in nature. Okay. Can you hike? And I'm away from everything. Yeah, can you hike or walk instead? I could. Okay. I'd rather you do that. That is not gonna be nearly as detrimental. So I would walk or hike not for the same distance for the same time. So however long you run, turn it into a walk. Okay. Okay, so that's the same time. So how long are you running for typically? I average somewhere between like a 10 45 minute mile. So if I'm doing four miles and it's 45 minutes maybe. Oh, okay. Go do a 45 minute walk or hike instead. Yep. That just switched to that right now. Focus on strength training. We'll send you that. We'll send you a good program for that. And then as far as diet is concerned, I wouldn't worry about calories at all right now. Here's what I would do. Protein. Yes. What's your target body weight? What would be like a good, healthy body weight for you? I would say 175 to 180. Okay. I just haven't been there in a really long time. I've just seen it climb up between the medicine I've been on and just hormonal I'm sure. Okay. And the strength, I have put on muscle over time. So. I would aim for 170 grams of protein a day all from whole food. So that looks like 350 gram of protein meals, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then a 20 gram of protein meal in between there. Okay. Now that's the goal. That is the focus. Eat that first. Then the rest just make it whole natural foods. Now here's what's going to happen. It's going to be really hard to eat that much protein from whole foods. You're going to find your satiety is going to kick in real hard. It's going to be like, oh my God, I can't eat this because protein is very satiety inducing and your calories are naturally going to fall where they should if you avoid heavily processed food. So if it's all whole natural foods and you start with the protein, so you eat breakfast, you're like, okay, I need to have 50 grams of protein. So whatever that looks like, it's probably going to be something like four eggs, plus some chicken or something else in there. And you're like, okay, we'll eat this and then eat that. And they're like, okay, I think I'm still hungry. I'll have a little bit of fruit or you're probably going to be like, I don't want to eat anymore. I'm really full. Then wait till lunch and then prioritize the protein and do that again. Your calories will naturally fall where they need to. The protein is going to fuel the muscle and the metabolism. And then from there, you're going to start to see the body compositions start to change. So that's where I'll have you go. And it's better than what you did before with Weight Watchers or anything else because I'm not telling you to take anything out. I'm not telling you to cut anything. I'm not necessarily telling you to hit targets except for protein. And if anything, it's going to change from feeling like you're restricting like you did when you were cutting calories to what's probably going to feel like is you're stuffing yourself because protein is so, so satiety inducing like hitting 170 grams of protein every single day. I'll be surprised if you're able to do it without adding protein shakes. From whole natural foods, you're going to be like, oh my gosh, this is just, I don't know if I can eat this. That's how it's going to feel but your calories are going to fall into an appropriate place. And what to expect is actually you'll probably feel and see physical change and strength before you see scale weight go down. So don't get hung up on, let's say you're listening to what we're saying and you're being very consistent with it for a month and you're like, damn it, the scale hasn't moved. Don't get hung up on that. Focus more on how you like look. So you can look at yourself and go, and then what I suggest normally when I put somebody on a program like this ago, get in a bathing suit, take a picture of yourself front side back where you're at at first thing in the morning, say Friday or Monday morning, and then four weeks later, same thing again. First thing in the morning, Friday or Monday, whatever day you do it and be honest with yourself, like, do I look and feel better than what I'd hit here and there? And I promise you will see a difference from those two points. That will happen faster than the scale starting to drop because we got to build the metabolism, you got to build muscle. There's a good chance that we'll see a nice even exchange of building muscle while losing body fat, which will change your body. It will feel tighter, it will look better, but the scale may kind of stay the same initially before you start to really see the weight drop. What kind of access to exercise equipment do you have? Do you have a gym or do you work out? Oh, I put a whole gym in my basement. I carried out when my kids left the house. So I've got a TRX hanging from my ceiling. I've got a bench, I've got different sizes of kettle balls, different weights starting from five pounds to 30, but my weight limit is 30 right now because of the F and D. I've got a Bosu trainer, a resistance bands. So you have dumbbells, you have dumbbells, right? I have dumbbells pretty much every size up to 30 pounds. Okay, then MAPs and Ebola is the program I'm gonna have you do. And I want you to start in pre-phase and go ahead and do the three day a week version. So there's a two day a week and a three day a week version. Do the three day a week version because you've been working out, so you've got some fitness. Do the dumbbell at home version. So there's a modification in there where it's just dumbbells. Otherwise it uses barbells. It doesn't sound like you have barbells. So follow the one that's dumbbells. Do no other strength training, no circuit training, no nothing else. Just follow the MAPS Antibolic Program as it's laid out and your trainer can look at it and modify it if they need to. But if they try to cut your rest periods. Don't do that. If they try to combine exercises and do whatever, then make sure you have them listen to this episode. Or give them, give us his phone number. We'll call him. We'll put him on the show. Call his ass. Yeah, cause you've got, we have to put you in the direction of building. That's what's going to move things in the right direction. Otherwise what's going to happen, Hildi, is you're going to keep, you're going to stay on this hamster wheel that you're on right now. Where you gain, lose weight, gain, lose weight gain. By the way, every time you do that, it probably feels like it's harder to move in the right direction. So we're going to move things in the right direction, but it's going to be through strength and muscle. So normally I've been doing the thing on Sunday that he created for me. And I worked out with him on Tuesday and Thursdays. So should those days now be switched to following your program? Yes. I mean, hopefully he's, if he's a fan of the show, he'll hopefully be okay with following. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So yeah. So hopefully you can bring to him the next time you see him, say, Hey, the guys wanted me to do maps, anabolic. They said pre-phase three days a week, would you take me through these movements? And then there's tremendous value having him train. Watch your form. Are you training with him in the gym or is he coming to your house? No, we actually do it virtually. He watches you while you work out. Got you. Okay. Got you. Okay. Yeah. But he does a full body. We, you know, sometimes we focus a little more on upper body and core, but we do get the whole body in. Sure. So like Thursdays, more legs. Today we did more upper body core. Yeah. But I'm going to guess it's a lot. It's a lot. It's more like circuit and faster. Yeah. So that, so that is going to be the, I can picture it right now too is like, so the most awkward or difficult thing is that you guys should have these two to three minute breaks on zoom, you know, he's going to be, you're going to have done an exercise and then you're going to sit there and not do shit for three minutes. Like just, Oh yeah. So be prepared for that, you know. He talks to me. Well, like he usually gives me a 60 second break sometimes and I need, depending on how long the circuit was. So we, we chat in between. I, I have a chance to get a hold of myself, but so it's three days a week of doing the strength work. You're saying? Yes. And then, and then, and then just, just, just stay active. And so maintain, you can maintain those days you run, but turn them into walks or hikes. Okay. And then you'll be set and then hit the protein targets, like I said, and prioritize that and the calories are going to fall where they need to. Great. Okay. Thank you so much. No problem. We'll send you that program. And then of course you can give your trainer access cause, so he can look at it. So you can share your password. We don't let anybody else do that, but. Okay. That's illegal. I was just going to ask you in terms of, I know the protein is the emphasis, but carbs, is there anything I should focus more on versus I know you said natural foods, but. That's it for now. So like fruit. No, that's it for now. You could have rice. You could even have pot, if your body handles pasta. If you're a digest, well, yeah. Whatever, whatever. Just avoid heavily processed food. So I don't, I wouldn't need anything that comes out of a wrapper or a box just cause those foods are engineered to make you overeat. And so. Okay. And this is the thing, Hildi, that is when you eat in the way that we're kind of talking or starting, your calories will end up where they need to. So you're not going to have to sit there and like count and focus and what's going on and here, whatever, when you throw heavily processed foods in, those foods are so carefully designed and engineered to make you overeat that your calories are going to fall much higher. It just doesn't matter. It's just going to happen. So that's all you got to do. So afterwards you're like, all right, what do I want for carbs? Oh, that's whole natural. Okay. Well, it could be rice, could be oatmeal, could be fruit. It could be anything in a whole natural sense. I'll give you my favorites. My favorites of my clients are sweet potatoes, yams, quinoa, rice, all fruits and vegetables. That's the, that's the go-to right there. Rotate through all that. And again, like Sal said, hit your protein first and then indulge in the other. And you'll see it'll probably naturally just kind of level your calories where you need to be. All right. Great. Thank you. You got it. Thanks for pulling in. Thanks a lot. Well, that, when you hear someone like that, doesn't it flash back like, oh, that's every client that I trained for years. You know, same struggle, same thing. Yeah. And been through a lot of those like programs as weight loss kind of programs and then having to kind of, you know, condition them that, look, we do have to rest. We got to build strength and that's, you know, a long conversation that you always have to have. Plus our generation and her generation, right? She's just a little older. We were taught that the way that you work out to get lean is you need to constantly be moving. You constantly need to be sweating and fat is bad and watch your calories and, oh, you want to lose weight, go run or you're going to lift weights, make sure you don't rest. That's the way you burn body fat. So it gets really hard because she's going to switch to the style of training, do what we say. And she's like, I don't feel like I'm doing enough. It's going to take a minute. That's why I wanted to put emphasis on like, you know it's going to be weird, right? So you want to zoom for three minutes between, like she says, sometimes he gives her a six, sometimes she gets a 60 second rest. We'll wait till you have to sit there for three minutes. And that's after every single time you do a set. Like that's going to be... It's a good point because I mean, if you're a trainer and you're coaching somebody virtually like that and you want to show value, you know, you don't want to waste their time. And so, you know, I'm sure like, that's sort of the intention, like good intentions, but for her, she really needs that rest to be able to switch into like a strong... 100% you're right on with what that is. That is totally a trainer who probably knows what they're supposed to do and what's best if that client was coming in. Listen, you're training someone virtually. You can talk work just sit there for two minutes. Can picture it. Well, because you know why? You're literally sitting on the zoom more than you are teaching or coaching. Do the math. A set's only going to take her maybe 30 seconds top, then she's going to rest for three minutes, like the two to three minutes. Like, I mean, my advice to the trainers is really just come in with some educational material to then, you know, those breaks, like teacher something. Right. Something, you know, nutritionally, teacher something like, you know, in terms of exercise mechanics, something, you know, to bring. Yeah, I used to sell my clients on why we're doing what we're doing. I think you're just saying, I used to sell my clients on why they need more training. It's just, while we're training. All right, now that we're done with this, this is a... Also, here comes the commercial break. Here's the commercial break. Yeah. Just constant commercial. Our next caller is Rachel from California. Hi, Rachel. How can we help you? Hi. How are you guys? Hey, what's happening? Not much. First of all, I just want to thank you guys for everything that you do and for the, you know, the real high quality content you guys put out. I've been listening for a couple of years and it took me a while to jump onto the resistance training train. I'm a former, I guess, cardioholic, if you would call it. And I just, you know, cardio was my thing. I needed the endorphin rush. Anything that wouldn't get me that was off the charts. And so I've recently started doing resistance training and I've been enjoying it a lot. So thank you guys for that. Awesome. Great. Yeah. Okay, I want to give you guys a little bit of context before I ask my question because I think giving you a little bit of background will be helpful in any kind of where I'm coming from. I, growing up, I never struggled with any type of disordered eating or addiction to exercise. I was raised in a very untraditional childhood. I was born into a very ultra religious Orthodox Jewish family. And my dad is the head rabbi of a very large community in Southern California. And so we were brought up in a typical Jewish home. I had a very Jewish mother and, you know, the Jewish culture is if you love me, you'll feed me. And so we would, I'm one of eight and we would come home every night after school and there would be eight dinners waiting for us because we all like different foods. And so, you know, mom would kind of cook whatever we all wanted. I went to an all Jewish girl's school, essentially. So I grew up with very like-minded girls. Body image was never an issue. We, I guess I hovered around 145, 150 since I stopped growing. But it never really bothered me because we were so sheltered from social media. We were so sheltered from the world. We were, you know, we didn't watch movies. We didn't read English books. And so body image just didn't exist. Fast forward, after high school, I was set up in an arranged marriage, which is pretty common in the Orthodox culture. I met the man that I was supposed to marry when I was right at 18 and then a month later, we were married. So the night of my wedding, I got pregnant. And, you know, the first year I wanna say into my marriage, everything kind of just hit me. I realized how miserable I was in this world, in this marriage, in this religion. Everything I felt like I was doing, ultimately I felt like I was doing for my parents, not for me. And I've got a kid and I'm married to someone I don't know, I feel nothing. I was just numb. So I took on a hobby and that was exercising. I started running. I loved the feeling that running gave me. It was an escape for me. I started hit training. Again, I loved that endorphin rush and exercise was essentially what I would do to escape my reality. At the same time, I started restricting the food that I was eating. I gave up all animal protein. Then I started giving up eggs, giving up carbs. Over time, I went from that 145 weight down to about 104. I was very lean. I exercised in the beginning, started about an hour a day until it got to about five hours a day and nothing less than that was acceptable to me. It almost felt like I was punishing myself for the life that I was living in an odd way. But that went on for over 10 years. I've got three kids and about two years ago, I left the marriage and essentially left the religion too. I started adapting a very healthy way of eating and exercising. I've incorporated a lot of food back into my diet. I trimmed down the exercise from five hours to three hours to two hours gone over the last two years. So I'm currently at one hour a day. I do mind pump aesthetic for three days a week. The other days I do my cardio, I'll go for runs, do my steps, whatever feels right that day. But I know that I've done a lot of damage to my immune system, to my gut, to my body during those 10 years. So I've tried to incorporate a lot more protein into my diet, a lot more food, but my stomach can't really handle it. In the beginning it was almost impossible to eat that much, but I've gone to a place now where I'm able to eat the amount of protein that I should be eating, not enough, but I'm working towards that. In regards to the exercise that I'm doing, I told you it's the mind pump and then the cardio. The last couple of months I wanna say it just feels like everything's breaking down. My body's breaking down, I don't have energy for those runs anymore. My heart rate is just elevated more than it's ever been. I just, I feel tired constantly. And so ultimately my question is those 10, 12 years, I know that I've done a lot of damage to my body. I also know that it's tied to some type of trauma of my past. And I'm wondering now in my mind, I'm eating more, I've cut back to about an hour a day only, but I can't seem to find that the place where I feel rested and ready and ultimately that the results of the work that I'm putting in, I'm not really seeing it. So I guess my question is, I'm worried to take a full-time, a full-on break. I don't wanna do that. But given my past and the history and where I am now, I wanna know your thoughts on if I'm not, let's say I'm not eating enough to sustain the muscle growth that I would want or that I'm putting in the work for, or I'm just, am I pushing my body into the ground? Where do you think I should go from here? Rachel, are you first before I let Sal lecture you? Are you in a place where you're ready to receive that? Because that's, I guarantee all the guys, I mean, we probably could have answered your question about halfway through on what you need to do right now and the answers to why you're seeing what you're seeing right now. The question really comes down to, are you in a place right now where you're ready to receive that advice and follow through on it? Or do you feel like you're reaching out to us just to hopefully tell you that we can do more of something else? Something you might know intrinsically. I know what you guys are going to tell me. I know what Sal's gonna lecture me in, you know, calories, I need a reverse diet myself. I mean, I couldn't write the script myself. Yeah, yeah. That's why I'm asking. I took a week off of exercising because I thought that that would cure all my problems. And clearly it did not. Yeah. I don't know honestly that I can commit to any longer than that of taking a break. I don't necessarily think he's gonna tell you that you gotta stop everything. Rachel, let me ask you a question. Hi, Sal. Hi, how are you? How you doing? Here it comes. Hey look, by the way, congratulations for being able to get where you're at now and talk about kind of everything that you went through and the way you did. You've helped a lot of people, okay, right now just because you're on our show. So I appreciate it. It takes courage to do that. What are you worried about? What are you afraid of? Because you said, I don't know if I can do less than an hour a day. What is the fear? Fear is my mind. The fear is what I'm gonna tell myself all day. The fear is, you know, I've become the harshest critic of myself and it's constant. It's constant noise in my head. You need to work out, you need it, why aren't you working out, right? You're working out. And then it just goes on all day until ultimately I'm just, I just wanna shut it up and so I work out. Yeah, yeah, I know what that feels like. Are you working with a therapist? I've been working with a therapist. We've been going through, you know, all the past trauma and look, that's gonna take years to, right? I guess I wonder if there's any way that my exercise or my eating is tied to more than just, you know, the body being tired and more... Yes, yes, and by the way, it's less of a punishment thing. It's more of a control thing. Yeah, it's total control. So it's control. You've developed a relationship with exercise where you abuse it like a drug. And it sounds like you're running away from something when you do it. And so without that, like you said, your fear is like, what am I gonna tell myself? What am I gonna do in that hour? How am I gonna operate? So I understand that. So, okay, first off, you have 15 years of trauma. Yeah. And that's, there's a lot there. I mean, you told us the tip of the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure, right? So there's 15 years of trauma. A big part of it is you abusing yourself. And then there's other stuff that goes along with that. Okay, a week off, isn't gonna even come close to addressing that. Three years off, isn't gonna do that. Now I'm not gonna tell you to take time off. But what I am saying to you is what's driving the way you're feeling right now has to do with your mind. Some people would say the spirit, but it's the mind that's driving all of this. And the mind is probably impacted your gut in the way that it has. Now you got bad gut health. I would work with a functional medicine practitioner for gut health. So you gotta do that. And as far as exercise is concerned, I know what program I would recommend to you, but you're gonna probably want to do something every single day. Is there something you can do in replace of the workout for that hour? Is there anything you can do that, like would you be open to doing a Yin yoga class on those days that you're, you know, on the days where you're not gonna be lifting? It's so boring. I know. I know. Do you play music? Do you have any other hobbies, a hobby that you like? I do have hobbies, but my hobbies are boxing, running. Yeah, no, no, no. You don't get any of those ones. Yeah. Okay, look, here's what I want. There's no knitting, knitting, or reading books, or anything like that. I'm not gonna, look, I'm sitting still. Anything that's, you know, honestly, I don't really love hiking because it's very slow paced, right? Yeah, yeah. Hiking is slow paced. There's no way in hell I'm gonna do a Yin yoga class. I just, I can't. All right. All right, look, I'm gonna sell you differently, okay? Either do what I'm about to tell you, or you're gonna be forced. And I don't mean I'm gonna come force you. You're gonna start to run into some problems. I'm already running into those problems. Okay. They're only gonna get worse. They're gonna get a lot worse. Things are gonna get a lot louder. Your, the signs are gonna get a lot louder. You're gonna suffer more. Your children are gonna suffer as a result. Maybe that'll motivate you. So the only way, the only way to get to the other end is to go through, okay? You can't go around and you can't avoid it. You gotta go through. So what does that mean? What am I talking about? The advice I'm gonna give you is gonna suck really bad for probably a year. It's just gonna suck. A lot of shit's gonna come up. You're gonna be like, I gotta do it this way. I really wanna do it the way I did it before. You're gonna start to feel better. That's really gonna want you to go back. It's gonna push you to go back to what you were doing before, especially as you start to feel better. So here's what I'm gonna recommend. Maps Aesthetic is the wrong program for you. Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna have you do Maps Anabolic. I want you to follow Maps Anabolic, the two-day-a-week version, not the three-day-a-week version. Jesus, bro. The two-day-a-week, I'm giving you the perfect advice, okay? This is what I want you to do, okay? I wish I could train you because I would just coach you the whole time. But Maps Anabolic, two-day-a-week version, on the other days, I want you to find a restorative something. Yin yoga is a good example. Can we give her Maps Performance to go with it and have her do the mobility sessions? I think the flow work and stuff in there would give her something that makes her feel better. As long as you don't turn the mobility sessions into circuit training. Well, no, that's not hard to do that. Well, I mean, you can do it fast as hell. You can make the math sweat. I mean, that will keep her mind busy. It's challenging enough to where she has a goal she can set and work on. The intensity is low enough. It'll be recuperative, and it'll keep her... Do you have the... Is it feasible for you to hire a yoga instructor so you could do one-on-one? Yeah, that's feasible. You know, I mean, it's just as feasible for me to do it alone, right? Or go to a yoga class and do it. I just... I never have the style of exercise. Yeah, no, I'm not talking about feasible in terms of... Like, in terms of the cost, because it's more expensive, right, to do a one-on-one instructor. Here's why I think a yoga instructor would be better. You're gonna be more accountable. They're gonna be able to coach you through the process. And a really good yoga instructor really knows how to work with the mind. They really know how to calm the mind. A lot of breathing techniques. Yeah, and you're gonna need that. A lot of shit's gonna come out. Like, okay, don't be surprised if you cry often in yin yoga with a good instructor. And if that happens, it's supposed to happen, okay? I would do yin yoga. I would do maps on a ball of two days a week. And then I'd work with a functional medicine practitioner for diet, because you got some gut stuff that needs to get addressed, okay? Now, what I'm saying isn't gonna be easy. A lot of stuff's gonna come up. It's gonna be challenging. But I promise you on the other end of this, you're gonna be like, wow, this is so different. This is so different. A lot better. So I'm gonna add some stuff to this just because if I had you as my client, I would 100% agree with Sal because I'd be in control of it every day. My fear is taking you from everything you're doing down to two days a week and yin yoga, which you already professed you are not a fan of. My fear is that you're not gonna stick to it longer than a week or two. So I would wanna peel you down slowly. I would wanna take you to anabolic three days a week with mobility days on the other day. So you're still got this kind of feeling of you're doing active, but I know you're dramatically reducing the intensity. And then my goal would be to get you to where Sal wants you. Cause right now I think you're so far on the right of extreme at the exercise that the rip off the band aid thing you want her to do right now without having somebody holding her hand all the way through it. Here's the thing, Rachel's saying right now that the signs are already showing up. She hasn't told us what they are, but based off of the energy I'm getting from what she's saying, it sounds like we're in a bit of a dire situation. Am I resonating? Yes, yes. You are resonating as far as the signs. However, the week that I took off of exercising, I was in this. I was angry. I was moody. I couldn't be a mom. I couldn't work. I've got, you know, I have three kids and that one week I felt bad for my kids. It was, you know, like they were suffering with me because I couldn't be present for them because of my own shit that I had going on. And that's why I don't know that I can do a year. I don't. Rachel, how familiar are you with what withdrawal looks like from substances? Not that familiar. Have you ever known a friend who had to stop doing something like opiates or alcohol or cigarettes even? Okay. The withdrawal symptoms are really bad at first. They don't last a year, not even close. So yeah, it's gonna suck at first. That's what you're experiencing is withdrawal. And what's coming up is all the stuff that you're burying and distracting your cell phone. But here's the problem, okay? This is the myth. The myth is that you're actually keeping it at bay and solving it. No, because what's happening is it's still under the surface and it's coming out without your permission. Okay? It's coming out in other ways. It's still acting below the surface. It's actually more insidious because it's more subconscious. When you go through withdrawal, it's more of a conscious awareness. Like, oh, fuck, I feel like this. Ah, I'm acting shitty, I'm irritable. When you bury it, stuff it and distract, it's still pulling the strings. It's just in a way that you're not aware of and you're still doing stuff that's not great. So, and withdrawal does not last forever at all. It's gonna suck at first really bad, then it gets easier and it gets easier and it gets easier. So- How long do you think it would last for? I think if you followed what we said, if you let your therapist know what you're doing and you did the yin yoga and you found a good instructor, I think you would have a very, I think you would feel very cathartic by the second or third week, definitely by the second month. Are you not on, Rachel, are you on social media at all? Are you on Instagram, Facebook, are you on any of that stuff? Yeah. Where I'm gonna put you in our form too. So, I mean, I would like to stay in touch with you as you go through this. It's so hard to be able to sit here and try and tell you like, oh, this long and then you're gonna feel great. Like it's, you know, it may not even take a year, but it may take longer. It's like, but for sure what is not gonna help is going back and then continuing to punish your body. I don't know where I'm at with like, if I think that going all the way to what Sal is saying is the path or it is to slowly taper you down or not, but no matter what, you've gotta head in that direction. You've gotta start taking steps in the direction of taking care of your body instead of punishing it through exercise because it's revolting already and it's gonna revolt anymore. That doesn't mean you need to stop at all. It just means we need to choose things that are less punishing and taxing on the body and more things that are going to feed you. Feed your soul, feed your body, take care of your body. And so we need to find that right balance and you're really far on one side right now and I gotta bring you back to the other side. I mean, listening to all this advice and it's a really tough one to prescribe but I really do feel like if a personal coach, somebody that can kind of be constantly there to communicate with you in terms of like that intensity factor because you're gonna be driven to wanna do everything intensively and to sort of let it out and to be able to work your way through and find a different approach and a different way to do it where it's restorative. So I understand where Sal's going with the yin yoga and I understand how difficult that's gonna be for you mentally to shift into that kind of a mindset. And I think that either one of us would love to personally kind of guide you through that whole process and I think that there's somebody out there like that. I think within our forum. We know somebody, we're gonna talk. Where in California are you? In the Canoe Valley, Agora Hills. Well, no, we know somebody virtually. I don't wanna say over just in case that their schedule's too full. Rachel, I'm gonna save your contact info and I'll have somebody contact you that's a really good online coach that we know personally that could kind of help you along the way. Yeah. I appreciate all of that. I think my response to all of that simply is, that my workouts have really just been my saving grace in the last 15 years of my life and they're the one thing that just may be able to just go on every day. Yeah. And I don't know. That's why I don't wanna take it away from you. I just wanna change it a little. Yeah, we're just looking at changing it. That's why I just wanna change it a little. I don't wanna take your workouts away. I want you to do it every day. You're just three days a week, it's lifting weights and strength training and then the other four days, you want it to build you up, not to punish you. Yeah, that's where we want to get. Yeah, I get, look, I get where you're coming from. I can definitely go in and out of a relationship with exercise that way, so I know what it feels like. I get it. It's definitely doing something but it's not working anymore. It's doing the opposite now of what you want it to do. So, yeah. That's the hard part. It's like, I wanna do it and I wanna feel good and I wanna have that relationship with it but it's just fighting me. Rachel, I also want you to know that you are not an anomaly. This is not something that I have not personally dealt with with clients before. You'll get through this. You're gonna make it through this. You will, okay? I've been excommunicated from my family, my community. It's very much an alone feeling. You're not alone, we're with you, okay? We're with you. I'm gonna put you in the forum. I want you to, if you communicate with me, I'm gonna communicate with you, okay? So you're not alone, you will get through this, okay? Really what it is right now and what we're all spinning our wheels around is like where to start you and how do we guide you virtually right now? If I had you, I'd take you, I got you. There's no way you would not get through this if I didn't have you right by my side. One step at a time, right now you're gonna heal yourself. It's one step at a time, okay? It sounds like there's a lot of things there you wanna work on but in order to tackle all those other things, you need to be healthy and happy, Rachel. So let's heal you first, okay? Look how far you've come by yourself. You've got this, you will. We're gonna say, I'm gonna have somebody contact you, okay? We got your, I think we got your email. So I'll have somebody contact you and hopefully it works out because they're really good online coaches and they can help you with this process. We'll be in touch today, okay? You guys, I really appreciate it. All right, Rachel. Thanks, Rachel. Thank you. You got it. That's hard. Yeah. Yeah, that's really tough. I mean, look, man. I wish she was close. She was close, I'd take her right now. Yeah, that's rough. That's, she's developed this, you know, it's like an abusive relationship with exercise. It's like you're with this person and you're afraid to leave them but you have to because they're abusive. This is also a major control thing. When you grow up in a very religious family where you've done everything, everyone's been telling you what you need to do your whole life. You don't do what you want. This is the one thing you have had. It's your one outlet. It's your one thing you've had full control of. Nobody's telling you how to eat. Nobody is telling you how to exercise. You have decided that. And so more of it, harder of it, you get to do that. And so it's letting go of some of that control. That's why I thought you were too far, bro, to two days a week with, I mean. We are, we literally get minutes. I know, I know. And I know, I know your design. I mean, that's my goal is to get in there. And it's also, yeah, it's just to tell her the answer which you would never do in coaching. If I'm working with someone, I'm not gonna just give you the, I'm like, we're gonna work on this step by step. And there's also other people. There's a lot of the reveal as we're doing the work, right? Listen, Rachel, we hung up with you and we were not satisfied with the help that we, I mean, we tried helping you, but we thought we wanted to give you more. So here's what we did, okay? We contacted our friend, Christina. She's an excellent coach, excellent. She's a licensed therapist, but she's also works with people with nutrition and exercise. And what we did is we hired her for you for the next three months. So she's gonna walk you, she's gonna walk you through this process, okay? Because, yes, I promise. So she's exceptional, she's really, really good. We wanna help you out. And that was the person that I was kind of alluding to when we were talking to you. Adam got her on the phone and she'd love to work with you. She's a friend of ours and we will be in contact with her also. So by extension, we're gonna be working with you. I really appreciate that, you guys. You got it. That's honestly something that I've never, I've spoken to a therapist about my past, but never really about this issue and combining the two. So hopefully it'll work. And just having someone to talk to, honestly, I think is gonna be the best motivator. That's why she's gonna be perfect. Because that's what we were thinking is like, she specializes in exactly that. And that's what you need right now is somebody to be able to talk to you and communicate all these things. And then also be able to help you through the exercise and nutrition portion because that's equally as important. So I'm gonna, you wanna give her her number or you wanna have her call? No, I'll have Christina call you. She's mind, what is it? Mind of Matter? Mindset of Matter. Mindset of Matter on Instagram and mindsetofmatter.com is her website. She's phenomenal. She's gonna contact you. We've already talked to her. And now you have somebody there that's gonna walk you through the process. So, and we wanna see you succeed really bad. We do. Yeah. Okay. I did that. You guys really, thank you. Okay, you got it. We're gonna give her your number right now so be on the lookout. Her name's Christine, okay. Mindset of Matter coaching. Mindset of Matter coaching, that's it. Okay. And it's Christina. To Doug, I don't know if Doug has my number. I do have your number. I called you earlier. Oh, that's right, you did. Okay, sorry. Yes, no problem. Yeah, we're gonna have her call you and then she's gonna, whatever you, we told her whatever you need as far as coaching on her end for the next three months. Mind pump, take care of it, okay? Wow, thank you. Thank you guys, that's awesome. All right, Rachel. You got it. We'll be in touch. Thank you. All right, bye. You have a good day. Take care of yourself. Our next caller is Sarah from Massachusetts. Hi, Sarah. How can we help you? Hi, so let me see. I am 40. I've been working out for about four or five years but really focusing on strength training a little over two years. That's when I started listening to you guys. I've really fallen in love with the process. I have gone from God in 2017. I was about 210 pounds, a women's size 18. I'm now about 140, 142, size four. Really have been trying to focus, listening to you guys. I built my own kind of routine. I really focus on progressive overload, focusing on strength. At first the scale went up a little, scared me. But I've been super consistent. I packed on a ton of muscle. I think I had a dextra scan done 85 to 90 percentile for my age. That being said, the last three or four months I've been noticing no real strength gains, no aesthetic gains. I'm at about 30 percent body weight. I used to eat very low calorie with your advice, reverse diet. I eat usually about 2,000, 2,200 calories a day. I'm only five one. So I'm really just, I'm kind of stuck. I don't know how to make more progress. Again, I'm 40. I'm feeling like, I don't know if it's my age or what. You look awesome, by the way. I mean, I'm looking up at your great guys, got your stuff up right now. Yeah, you're doing great. Okay, so it's only been a couple months that you're not noticing any changes? Three or four months. And it's not that I haven't been, I haven't changed anything as far as I'm concerned. Again, listening to you guys. Sleep is a priority. I get a ton of sleep. I take my supplements. I do, nothing's changed for me. What's the, what kind of program are you following? Are you following one of our programs? No, so I'm a little stuck on, you know, do I do aesthetic, do I do anabolic? I don't know where to start being that I'm not, I'm still a fairly new lifter, but I don't want to go backwards either. So. What does your routine look like now? How many days a week are you in the gym working out with weights? You're going to yell at me. I know I over train. Six, six days a week. I try to do, and I know you guys are big on full body. I just can't get into it. So I do three upper, three lower. You know, if I'm feeling kind of shitty one day, I think mentally I just like to be in the gym. So if there's a day where I didn't get a great sleep, I'll go to the gym and just walk or row or do something. But I mean, lifting, I lift always five days a week. I think you're doing all right. Yeah, I think you're doing it. That's not a bad. Your energy is okay and you feel good. You got good sleep. Your libido is healthy. Everything else is good. Yeah. All right. Maps aesthetic. You'll be in the gym five days a week on Maps aesthetic. Now it is full body based. So there's three full body workouts, but then there's two focus sessions, but you'll be in the gym five days a week lifting weights. And it's well programmed. Obviously we created it. It's a high volume workout, but you sound like you could probably do it. And I wouldn't change anything else. I think just changing the workout alone is going to do it for you. Okay. Yeah, I've tried like changing up the tempo, listening to you guys as far as what else can I do? And I don't want to get bored. I go, when I lift, it's all out. You know, I couldn't even squat my body weight. Now I can squat like 210. So like, I think where I'm not packing weight on the bar, I'm not, you know, making the progress that I was making when I started lifting gets frustrating for me. Yeah. I also, that's another point to be made is I think you've made tremendous. You're not going to make progress all the time. Unfortunately, the longer we do this, the better we get the less we see as far as the progress. You know, like what you came from, you were probably seeing week over week change with your physique and stuff. And so, and you look really good right now. So you're going to see very incremental change going forward. So you do need to be adjusted for that. I think you're doing a great job. And I think map's aesthetic is okay. Yeah. And just getting a new stimulus is at least going to spark that new kind of energy going into it. So I think that'll be helpful, if anything, you know, and your body will respond. Do you track, did you track steps? I don't know if I heard you say that or not. Did you say how many steps today you're doing? I mean, I wear a watch. I'm usually between 10 to 15,000 a day. Okay. Yeah. You're on fire. Map's aesthetic. That's all. Easy. Follow that program. Follow as it's laid out. Listen to the. And keep my calories the same. Yep. Because I want to cut body fat, but I don't want to. Let the program do it. I think the program will do it for you. I'm going to, I'm going to give you one more follow-up. So after you run aesthetic, I would look into map strong. I think you would love it. And I think there's enough unconventional exercises in there that you'll also get great change from that. Yep. So do maps aesthetic, like Sal said, and then I would tell you to look into strong after that. I think that would be a great follow-up program for you. Awesome. Thank you guys so much. Thank you for everything. I feel like I know all of you. I know your fives. I know, like I'm a little starstruck. So thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you. Thank you. You got it. We almost never recommend maps aesthetic because of the volume. But she had everything dialed in. She's been doing this for a while. She's kicking ass. Eating good amount of calories. Sleeping good. Proteins high, sleep, or libido. Just a switch from what she's doing to that. She's going to see some change for sure. I really think she's just, I mean, this is what happens after you've made, I mean, look at her transformation. Yeah, I know. Before and after is insane. Like she has completely changed her body composition. And so now it's incremental. You know, we'll start kind of tapering off. So then you got to just change it up. I mean, her before and after is crazy. Yeah, that's remarkable. Yeah. Our next caller is David from Georgia. David, what's happening, man? How can we help you? Hey, how's it going, guys? Good. What's going on? Awesome that you took my call. I really, really appreciate it. You got it, man. I'm sure you want to get to lunch. So I'll just jump right in with a little background. So I'm 48 years old, 190 pounds, about 14 and a half percent body fat. I've been really active in endurance sports. I mean, since high school, mostly mountain bike racing. I switched to weight training in 2021. And doing, it's basically been through anabolic a couple times, symmetry. And right now I'm about halfway through power lift. I'm still not happy with my physique, though. I have a lot of, I still have belly fat, the love handles going, but when I have a pump, I'm like, I feel like I'm really cool. That's where I really want to be. So my question is, what can I take from that? And what should I continue to focus on? All right, well, first off, if you look the ideal way you want to look when you have a pump, that means you're already pretty close. Like you can't take somebody and radically transform with the pump to the point where they're, so in other words, you're pretty close without that pump because a pump is going to add, it's not going to add a ton. I see something right away that'll help, not to cut you off. Is that, I mean, you're currently in a cut on power lift? Well, I was, I'm on vacation now, but I was on a cut, yes, sir. I mean, have you done like it, when was the last time you did like a clean bulk, like with the intent to like add good calories and straight train and build versus probably trying to lean out? It's been a while just because I've always, I'm always focused on the love handles and that belly. So that's, you hit the knee on the head, Adam. Yeah, so that's what you just need to go through. You need to go through, like a lean bulk. Yeah, a lean bulk. So not like a vacation, get to eat what you want. That's, I'm on a bulk for the week. Like a, okay, I'm strategically going to bulk through maps power lift and slowly increase my calories. The goal is I'm not going to worry about the love handles at this moment. I'm going to get strong as fuck, build some more muscle. And then I'm going to come back down after the program. David, if you do this right, you'll actually get leaner. Yeah. Yeah, if you do this right, you'll get leaner. Not on the scale, but in terms of body composition. So if you do this right, you'll probably fuel, I don't know, I'm going to say five to eight pounds of lean body mass, which would be phenomenal. Your body fat, the total amount of body fat on your body won't change. So you'll have the same pounds of body fat, but the percentage will go down because now it's a smaller percentage of your overall body mass. Cause you're now, let's say eight pounds heavier with lean body mass. And it'll look better on your face. You're going to look a lot better, right? So, and then from there, if you want to cut, now your metabolism's faster and it's going to be a lot easier. That's right. So, and the fact that you haven't done a lean bulk, like a really strategic one in a long time. I mean, that alone, I mean, that tells me everything. Yeah. And I'm looking at 1900 calories for 190 pounds. That's very low. It's pretty low. So you, I mean, I would like to reverse diet you and get you to a place where you're above 26, 2800 calories and then cut you back down to say like 24, like a 2400 calorie should be a cut for you. And so that would be kind of the goal. Like if I was training you, we'd be going through MAPS Power Lift. I'd be really pushing the weight, trying to get strong, trying to increase your calories. And the goal literally would be week over week, can we get stronger? Can we add calories? Can we get stronger? Can we add calories? And at the end of the program, what would be a very successful cycle for us would be, did I get you up north of 26 to 2800 calories? And did we not put on a bunch of body fat in the pursuit of that? And did we get stronger? If we did that, I just should, I set you up to get shredded over the next six to eight weeks. Like then you're in prime situation to lean out, drop the calories, follow whatever program you want to follow after that and you'll start to see those love handles drop down and you look great. Somehow I knew you were gonna say something like this, but I guess I just had to hear you all say it. Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, yeah. By the way, like Sal said, you're right there. I mean, when you can say, I like the way I look, I just want to look the way which I could totally relate to saying that, right? Like seeing myself all aired up in the gym, like, damn, I just want to look like that, walking around. That means you're not far away, man. You're right. It's around the corner for you. So it's right there. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. You got it, man. By the way, you know, how tall are you? Oh, six one. Six one, one 90, 14% body fat. Yeah, you probably, yeah. I'm 48 years old. I think you're doing pretty good, bro. Yeah, yeah. You might be a little less on your machine. Yeah, exactly. You're doing good. Oh, thank you. You got it. All right, Dan. Yeah. Yeah, bro, you hit the nail right on the head. Yeah. Right away. Well, I saw on the ad there. I know I didn't want to interrupt you, but I saw like when I dug, scrolled the screen down and then I go, oh, shit. Okay. This dude is trying to get rid of the brother. You've been cutting forever. Yeah, he's been cutting for a while. And he's, I mean, but like you said too, six one, one 90, 14. I mean, he's at 48. I think he's in better shape than I am right now. We should know. Yeah, he's doing good. He's like 230, dude. I'm six. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, you're, you're a beast though. I'm beef. You're not a lot of beef. You're a wild bite. Husky, husky. Husky is the best when you were a kid, right? Where are those? Look, if you like Mind Pump, if you want your fitness questions answered, but you know, go on Google and the fitness industry is full of crap, go to askmindpump.com. We have an AI model that will answer your question in our voice based on our episodes. So you know what's accurate. Askmindpump.com. Go check it out.