 Next question is from Ashley Berg, 97. How important are carbs post-workout for muscle growth? You know, it's funny, this is the result of very effective advertising and marketing. Yeah, so supplement companies which drive the fitness industry, especially the performance industry, is driven by supplement companies. They're the ones that bring in the money, and so then they drive the content. What kind of content is going to reinforce our products or the value in our products? And one of the best ways to sell a product, any marketer will tell you, is to attach it to a ritual. If you can attach a product to a ritual, people are more likely to use it on a regular basis. So for a long time, supplement companies have been advertising protein powders to fitness consumers. Maybe a little less carbohydrate supplements. That's been advertised to us as well, but not nearly as much as protein. And you know, I understand why. A high protein diet is effective for building muscle, recovery, that kind of stuff. Carbohydrates might benefit somebody who's an endurance athlete, needs more stamina. Maybe they're not eating enough calories. But the problem that these supplement companies ran into was people would buy a jug of protein and it would sit in their cabinet. And I knew lots of people like this in the early and mid 90s when I was a kid. Almost everybody that had ever worked out, ever had a jug of protein powder that was expired because nobody ever took it. So how did supplement companies get people to buy protein and then take it? Well, they came up with this whole take it right after your workout and it builds more muscle and speeds up your recovery. And they would use studies to reinforce this. Studies show that you replenish glycogen, which is a type of energy your muscles use, faster when they would eat carbohydrates post workout. And then if you combine that with protein, you recover faster. Now, it is true that you replenish glycogen faster when you have carbohydrates right after your workout. But if you have carbohydrates later, you replenish it just the same. In other words, it doesn't make a difference. Now here's where it does make a difference. Do you plan on working out again a couple of hours later? In which case, then it's a good idea. I know, Justin, you played football for a long time. This was probably important for someone like you when you would have double days. Oh, absolutely essential. Yeah, I had to get that energy in. Carbohydrates played a massive role in that too. And this is also where we get into talking about ice and stuff like that and the benefits of that like after I would do a practice like that, knowing full ahead of time that I was gonna have to then come back and practice again and pound on my body again. So it made sense for me to ice and go in an ice bath to then get the inflammation levels down again so that I could perform again at a higher level. And you would eat like a carb and protein meal. And I would eat a carb, definitely a heavy carb meal like in between. This is the only time that I used it was when I was competing and I knew I was going back to the gym later on. Other than that, you're splitting hairs. I mean, as if you are, and if you're tracking, where it really matters is if you're tracking and you're paying attention to your calorie intake and for sure protein in this case, making sure you're getting adequate protein and you're eating in a surplus of calories and you're stimulating the body correctly. So you have good programming, you're training well. Those are the main things. So as long as your daily targets are getting hit, the timing of it before or after workout, that stuff is really splitting hairs. And even at the highest level of competing and sculpting and shaping the body, I did not worry about none of that shit. The only time that I would make an effort is when I knew. I knew that I was scaling up right before a show and that this is where I'm starting to head back to the gym too, sometimes even three times to do like other work, then I would make sure that I'm being fed and then before I go back into the gym again. Yeah, and now here's some of the unintended consequences of this message that's been hammered to athletes and to fitness enthusiasts. People who have a tendency towards gut issues, this is a terrible time to eat because post workout, your inflammation is higher and when you eat a really fast digesting protein or carbohydrate shake right after your workout and you're inflamed and your gut is inflamed, you're more likely to develop a food intolerance because when your gut is inflamed, that's when things can pass through the gut when they're not supposed to. So again, it's not that big of a deal. If you plan on working out again later, then you should. I do have one more scenario that where I did use this and it just came to mind when we were talking about that. So when I was trying to bulk and I had a hard time getting calories in, I found that as an opportunity, like as soon as I got done working out, I was hungry and so I would feed myself something that was four or 500 calories, carb heavy and I would find that I would be hungry still again an hour or two hours later. So it helped me stay on top. But the reason for that wasn't for the studies that support the benefits of eating right after the workout. The reason for that for me was I could get a meal in right after I get to work out and then I knew that by the time I got home and I took a shower and I was ready to eat another meal which it was all about hitting my calorie target. So there, I do see strategies to eating right after a workout when you're completely depleted and you're hungry already and you're somebody who has a hard time getting enough calories, but it's really less about the timing of it after the workout and it's more about you making sure you hit your total calorie intake for the day.