 The next question is from Taylor Louise. If you're in a calorie deficit, would you expect to experience more muscle soreness and a longer recovery time? If so, should you reduce intensity or volume or increase calories for a couple of weeks? Good question. Yeah, cool question. So let's talk about soreness for a second because this is something that's interesting. I will get more sore when I bump my calories versus when I cut them. Now, it's not because of the calories, but rather because of training harder. I'm stronger. Yes. Like, I'm lifting more weight. You're pressing harder. Yeah, and I notice this. If I cut my calories, I don't get sore like I normally do. If I increase my calories now, all of a sudden I'm lifting 10, 15% more weight, I'm gonna get sore. Now, let's go back to recovery because soreness and recovery aren't necessary. They're somewhat connected, but they're not synonymous with each other. Can I handle the same volume, load, and frequency on a calorie deficit as I can in a calorie surplus? No, I can't. I just don't have as much energy. My body has less to pull from. If I'm well-fed, I can work out more, more often, and do better. At some point, cutting your calories will reduce your body's ability to recover. You just have less resources available to fuel your body. That's the simple way to put it is that when you train and we lift and you get sore from your workout, your body needs to pull from nutrients to recover, primarily from protein. It's looking for that ability to recover, adapt, and build muscle. If you restrict its resources and you don't give it enough of what it needs, it's not gonna do it as effective. If all things are considered equal and I train intensely and volume-wise consistently and the difference between calorie deficit for surplus, I know it's a significant difference in recovery. In fact, one of the things that is always a clear indication that when I'm not tracking and I'm just eating intuitively, that I'm probably under-consuming protein and or calories is that I'm having a harder time recovering. That's one of the first things that go to things that I start to assess. I know my personal habits is under-eating protein. I just think it's hard for me to get 200 grams consistently unless I'm actively pursuing it. Normally, this is one of the signs that reminds me of that, is I'm just not recovering very quick. It shouldn't feel this way. I shouldn't feel sore for this many days. I know how hard I'm training. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary. That is normally an indicator for myself that, oh, I'm probably not getting my body enough nutrients it needs to recover fast enough. Yeah, Bob, with the self-governing aspect of that when you're in a deficit, I just don't tend to over-exert myself quite the same as when I'm super fed and getting after it. I mean, that would be the main difference between that for being sore. Yeah. As far as recovering, yeah, making sure my protein is in there is essential for me to feel like I'm fully recovered. Yeah, now, there is a quote or a school of thought that says, which is so dumb, they say there's no such thing as overtraining. There's under-eating. There's only under-eating, right? No. That's not true. Yes, you can under-eat, and that can affect your recovery, but it's not absolute. So you can't just eat your way into muscle recovery, and that means that you can just train as long and as hard as you want, and what you'll end up doing is overtraining terribly and getting fat. That's what will happen if you apply that in an extreme way. You're not going to, your body won't improve, and look, I did this as a kid. I remember reading this and thinking, oh, cool. Let me just eat it more and more and more, and no, it doesn't work. You could totally over-train. Regardless of how much food you smash into your mouth.