 Our next caller is Mark from Toronto. Hey, what's up, Mark? How can we help you? What's going on, guys? It's got to say, as everyone does, you know, a big fan of the podcast and everything. Thank you. To really condense the question, in 2017, I was in the hospital with Ulcerative Colitis, came out 35 pounds lighter. I was following a program for two and a half years. During that time, I was perma cutting. At the two and a half year mark, I kind of felt like something needed to change. So I kind of set down some goals for myself, kind of hitting like, you know, normal strength standards for the key compound lifts. And long-term goals would definitely do some type of men's physique show. So what I've really struggled with is nutrition. I've been told to do so many things, like cut aggressively, cut slowly, or bulk, because I haven't really spent much time building muscle. So it's kind of been like a paralysis by analysis type of thing for me. So I wanted to know, I guess, your guys advice on what I should do in terms of like a year structure or, you know, three months, six months type of thing. Okay. All right, Mark, how honest do you want me to be on a scale of one to 10? 10. Go up to 12, 10, 20. All right. So considering that you were in the hospital a couple of years ago with ulcerative colitis and you may have it under control, I'm not quite sure what your regime looks like, but I'm sure it includes either immunosuppressive medications or, you know, a change in diet. The absolute worst possible thing you could do is compete in physique or bodybuilding. Okay. The food, the bulking, the cutting, the stress of the training, that combination is a perfect storm to cause digestive issue flare ups. And I know you're young, but this is going to be something that you're going to deal with kind of for the rest of your life. And there's a couple options. We can either keep it at bay or go through flare ups. And typically each subsequent flare up can be worse than the previous one. And we don't want to be in that situation, okay? So my honest opinion is don't do that. Now here's what I will say. You could still build muscle. You could still train. You could still look freaking amazing. The difference is going to be you're not going to be doing it in an aggressive way like what competing is going to look like. There's not going to be a date that you need to get down to 3% body fat. There's not going to be an off season where you're bulking super aggressively. What I'm going to recommend someone like you do is first off, stick to the foods that you've now learned that don't cause issues with your inflammation. So those are the foods you have to work with. I want you to lift weights in a way that is to build muscle. I think MAPS and Ebola would be a perfect workout program for you. Do three foundational workouts instead of two. Do the trigger sessions. And then what you're going to do is you're going to do a very slow bulk, okay? Aggressive bulks have a tendency to cause inflammatory issues to flare up, especially with the digestive system. So rather than taking your total, your maintenance calories and having you add six or seven hundred or eight hundred or a thousand calories to that, I'm going to have you add 200 calories to that. That's it. And that's plenty to add lean body mass. Now the scale will move up as quickly, but that's okay. We're looking at this long term. You also want to get lean. This is actually the perfect approach. So very slow bulk with a good building routine and then stick to the foods that you know that don't cause issues and do that for a while. Now, if you really, really, really want to do bodybuilding three, four years down the line, when this process is down pat, then I'd say we could probably consider it, but right now I'd say I don't, probably the worst possible thing you could do is go and try to get on stage just from a health perspective. That'll set you back or there are at least the risk of setting you back is too high. Yeah. Regardless, if you decide to bodybuild or not, you need to build. I mean, your age and probably your lifting experience and wanting to build a more impressive physique, getting shredded and lean, getting shredded and lean will temporarily give you that look cause anybody, anybody lean right now will look more muscular, but you'll want to put some more mass on your frame and you'll want to get to a place where you're a little bit higher calorie intake. So personally, I would love to see like a four on one off where you run like a bulk for four weeks. And then you interrupt that with a one week cut, four weeks on a bulking cut for one week, you could do it where you go two weeks with a one to two day interruption. That's fine too, but something like that where we're focused more on bulking, but then we do, we interrupt it with a mini cut and then focus on building strength. I'm with Sal. I think anabolic is the first program I have you run and then maybe jump you to a aesthetic unless we have some mobility issues or joint stuff going on, then I would stress you to go to performance first. Okay. Awesome. Yeah, that sounds great. And Mark, I see in your question that you're consuming between 1800 to 1500 calories currently right now. It's up to 2500. I got it to a comfortable rate. I kind of, I feel like kind of a little depressed when I have to eat like 1800. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're, listen, you're on the right track. You're young. Stay the course. And I'm going to tell you this right now. If you, the priority is going to be staying healthy because if you can read, if you can maintain your current level of inflammation, if you can prevent yourself from having any more digestive type issue or flare ups, you'll be able to continue to get stronger and build muscle for a long time. You'll have a great time working out. What you don't want to do is, and I did this a long time. I didn't have a ulcerative colitis, but I did have, I do still have gut issues and I've worked with clients just like you. And it's the worst part, you know this, you've already gone through it once, you could get so far, you have a flare up, you just might as well erase everything and now you're totally screwed and you don't want to deal with that, right? You want to kind of do it slowly and avoid that huge, you know, roadblock that can potentially happen. And doing a sport that requires you to extreme diet is just flirting with that. Oh, totally. So that's, it's not necessarily, you can't do bodybuilding. You can't build this amazing physique. It's just, if you put yourself in a position where you have to present your physique on a date and follow like a strict program versus listening to your body and trying to make adjustments that way, you're more likely to do something that's going to flare it up. Mark, do you have, do you have access to MAPS anabolic? No, currently not. Okay, we're going to send that to you. Also, I'd like to put you in our forum. Yeah, because I'd like to follow up with you. So when you go on our private forum, you could ask questions in there, you could tag us just so you have some support along the way, because I think this is very interesting. I'd like to see how, how well you do moving forward. Yeah, honestly, that sounds amazing. I kind of want to, you know, build a great physique and show people that, you know, if you have UC or Crohn's or any sort of IBS, you know, you can still, you know, build a great body. Bro, you could do that without competing. Definitely you can do that. Yeah, you just do what Sal always talks about on the show, which is you, you chase health, you chase the health, the aesthetics will follow if you go after aesthetics, you may, you might not necessarily get their help and what looks impressive in real life is like, you know, you could totally get, you know, seven, eight percent body fat, very healthy. Getting on stage is like three percent body fat. I'm going to tell you something right now in person that doesn't look very impressive in person. You look like you're dying. So don't worry about the stage. You know, you want to look good in real life. Eight percent is like incredible. You got muscle fullness. You got the six pack. You look great and you didn't have to like sacrifice your health to get there. Yeah, awesome. That sounds pretty fantastic. Perfect. Thanks, Mark. Thank you guys. Take it easy. Yeah, that's a that's a tough position, man. It's like you got a young guy and he's like, I just want to get on stage and compete. I know. And I tell you what, if you have any health issues, either physical, mental or psychological, one of the worst possible sports you could do is get yourself to a super shredded, get on stage, have people judge you by the way you look. It's like nitro and like, you know, an engine that has a crack. Now, that being said, this is also what's inspiring him to do it, though. Totally. I also like the motivation like he's wanting to do it to inspire others that listen, you can be in this position and still build this amazing body. But I think you have to you have to be focused around your health first and then allow that to follow versus like, OK, this is that important to get on stage in eight weeks or whatever. Yeah, I just I know so many people that were on the edge of, you know, dysfunction with their body and and then they compete and it's like, oh, my gosh, that room or their body is, oh, you know, it's a little bit inflamed or I'm you know, I get to and then they go compete and it's like looking back and extreme. I get the sense to like when you're younger, you want to prove that in spite of all challenges in front of you, you want to prove to everybody you can get to this like extreme version. But, you know, in terms of it being something that you may exacerbate or make worse like later on in life, like you got to consider that it's a health issue that we need to address. And that's going to pay you the most. It could be a powerful tool, though, when wielded correctly. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's the fact that that's a major motivator. And if he can just direct it the right way, yeah. And if he's got it, if he's got good guidance, I mean, I think we can get him in that direction. And I think that's a it's a good goal to have. Yeah. And just remember, he's in his 20s. Remember what you were like in your 20s. I know what I was. Oh, yeah, dude. Hard to tell me to slow down. So kids are kids are smart today. You know, we have access to way more information. I think so.