 All right, everybody, it turns out we were right. Again, a high protein diet is superior to a simple calorie restricted diet. New study shows high protein diet kicks its ass. Is this really a new study? Yeah. I'm going to read to you some of the stuff that came out of this. So they compared a high protein diet to a diet that was just low, just calorie restricted. Okay. After a 60 day intervention with 135 obese people, so it took 135 people overweight, uh, to the point of being obese, they, the high protein diet improved weight, lipids, and blood glucose more than intermittent fasting or calorie restriction. So it actually was better than all those things. Isn't that weird? Yeah, I can see that from blood glucose for sure. Yeah. Well, no, I mean, look, the debate has always been, or has been for a long time. Hey, it's, uh, you know, as long as the calories are restricted or low and they're getting adequate protein, doesn't make a big difference. Of course, those of us in the fitness space are saying, no, high protein makes a difference. It probably burns more body fat. It definitely builds more muscle. We know that. Yeah. But now they're showing this in a, you know, now a peer reviewed study. It's also better for blood lipids. Well, this also proves our hypothesis that we came to years ago with coaching clients, which was the idea that, okay, I have a weight loss client, obese client, um, instead of putting them on a calorie-restricted diet or say, follow this plan, I'm actually going to focus on them going and getting more protein, not going to tell them you can't have this, can't do that. All I'm going to say is, Hey, notice that you eat about 80 to 90 grams of protein every day. I want you to target 150 to 170. That's our goal. Don't worry about anything else. Just focus on that, track that. And inevitably what ended up happening, the client ended up losing weight because what we knew happened, what would happen is they would replace the other bad choices with a more calorie dense food that's more satiating. In addition to that, it also promotes recovery for building muscle. And that directly burns body fat. Right. So it had this compounding effect and it was tremendously successful. Now this, I didn't have any studies to prove my theory. Right. It was just through trial and error of, you know, constantly getting people diets to follow and seeing them, you know, inevitably fail at like a 90% rate over, you know, if it was over a year or whatever. And this is what I found worked so much better. The two main factors here, okay, that the data is showing, which we've also observed, which is what you're saying, the two main factors here. So why a high protein diet is more effective than just looking at your and cutting calories or just restricting your time, the time that you can eat, which would be fasting. The two main factors are one, protein produces satiety. If you were to look at, if you were to consider all the things that make it hard for somebody to eat a diet or eat in a way that causes them to lose weight at the top or near the top, I would say, is their appetite and cravings and hunger. Like, is it hard to eat fewer calories when you're not hungry? No, it's easy. Protein does that. High protein definitely does that. It's the biggest challenge. Yes. I mean, I've noticed from any of my clients, it's really, it's just like the cravings, the constant, you know, feeling of like having this, this raging appetite, if they're deprived from it and to be able to solve that in a simple way with protein is, is a perfect solution. Right. So to give an example, just to really nail this home, a lower calorie, higher protein diet will probably produce more satiety or reduce your appetite more than a higher calorie, lower protein diet. So you could eat, and I'm going to just make up numbers here, you can have someone eating 2,500 calories a day, but the protein isn't very high or somebody eating 2,000 calories a day, but the protein is high and the 2,000 calorie person will feel more satiate, feel more full, yeah, feel more full. And that is massive. So that's number one. And then number two, here's the thing you talked about, which is high protein. This is ind, this is undisputable. Okay. This is like proven and study, study after study after study that a high protein diet contributes to muscle building. And if you're doing strength training and you're building muscle, you are increasing the amount of calorie burning machinery on your body. So you just give yourself a faster metabolism, which we've talked about many, many times on the show is a better, more sustainable approach to fat loss. You want to be able to eat more and lose more body fat, right? So high protein wins and this is another study that, that kind of proves that. I can't tell you how many times that I had a client that I put on a high protein diet after I assessed their eating habits and they came back. And these are all weight loss clients, fat loss clients, right? Clients that wanted to lose 20, 30, 40, 50 plus pounds. I can't tell you how many of them that after I put out a plan with a higher protein, you know, strategy for them that they would report back, I can't eat this much. I know. This is too much. Yes. Ironically, the person who obviously was overeating calories for an extended period of time to have put on that much weight, they would report back, this is too much food. I can't eat all this food. And so that would be part of the strategy. And I'd have to communicate to them. This has been for the coaches that are out there, you know, what happens with this client is they struggle with that. And so they miss protein targets. They miss calories for a couple of days in a row. And then all of a sudden they're really hungry and they go make a bad choice. So when you're when you're dealing with a client like this is being able to communicate that, like, that's OK, we'll work up to it. You know, we'll work up to getting that much protein and so that. But just be careful because if you continue to miss your protein targets and we continue to under eat calories, two or three days are going to go by and then all of a sudden you're going to feel so hungry and then you're going to be tempted to go do, you know, the the behaviors or bad habits that you've done in the past of over consuming something that your body doesn't need. You need to know that when that hits and that feeling comes on to go and eat one of those meals that I've taught you to go eat and then you'll feel fine. Yeah. And, you know, just to give examples, like if I got a client that was trying to lose 50 pounds and they're like, yeah, it's tough for me to go on a diet because then I get hungry and I have a tough time dealing with that. And I look at their what their typical diet looks like and they're even like 60 grams approaching a day. I'm like, oh, you just wait. Like I'm going to have you eat 120 grams approaching a day and you're going to come back to me literally not exaggerating 80 percent of time. 80 percent of time. If I had somebody that was eating that low protein and I had them bump it up to where I would consider high protein, at least 80 percent of time, the person will come back to me and say exactly what you said. I can't eat this much. You know, what a wonderful thing. Yeah, like imagine being that person trying to lose weight and you do this. What we're saying. And they're like, I can't eat this much. Like, is it easier now or harder now for you to lose weight? Right. It's a lot easier. So it's a very successful strategy. Now, along those lines, it's just a segue off that the best sources of protein from a protein density standpoint, protein availability standpoint, what I mean by protein density is that you're going to eat something high protein that doesn't also come along with a lot of other stuff along with it. OK, that's also for most people easily digestible and also nutrient dense is meat. Meat is at the top of the list. If you are going to go with a high protein diet to try to lose weight, you can definitely do this with non meat sources. It's going to be exponentially more challenging. It's just much, much harder to do so. That's just the truth. So unless you're like a hardcore vegan for your own moral reasons, if you're flexible with this and you're like, I want to try this and I'm not vegan because I, you know, I it's not moral reasons. I just thought it was healthy or whatever, go with meat. You'll find much more success because working with clients who were vegan, who also tried to go high protein, it was a struggle. And we would only often only hit the high protein targets with protein supplements, which do provide some satiety, but a protein shake, it doesn't produce the same satiety as like a piece of chicken, a piece of meat, you know, piece of steak or something like that. So I think the hardest part about that is is the being prepared, right? Like so steak and chicken and fish and like these these great sources of protein is having it available. So you make that good choice. This is where I like I'm a big advocate for like meal prepping and and getting it like I love it already. Yeah. Like we just got our butcher box came in yesterday and, you know, that's normally leads to this coming weekend, you know, because we just got this shipment and all this meat is we will prep all of that. And now do you do the whole really all one day? Do you do the whole week over the weekend? Yeah, mostly. So I do the whole week, but it's basically about two meals a day for me. If I have two prepped meals a day, I can I can have my I can make my breakfast and I make my dinner. So that's kind of like what it looks like. Oh, yeah. So I have two meals that I'm going to eat at a Tupperware and then I'm going to make my breakfast and the two meals that are most challenging, right? Right. In the middle of the day, yeah, in the middle of the day, when I'm in a hurry, I've got something prepped for that. That doesn't mean there isn't exceptions to the rule where sometimes I have one of those prep meals for morning or for dinner or whatever like that. But for the most part, you know, I'm very consistent with having my oatmeal right now and for breakfast, the creatures of habit. And then at dinner time, Katrina always makes dinner 90 percent of the time. So the prep meals is really the middle of the day. And then because let's be honest, it's noon. I actually just had one of my prepped meals right now. If that wasn't already prepped, I'm not making that choice. I don't have the time to go make the steak, go make the potato and that's not going to do that. So I'm a big fan of buying in bulk, you know, whether that's through Costco or a butcher box or something like that and then preparing enough meals through the week that you have always a couple, you know, to have access to in the fridge. Yeah. So our go to, especially when I have my older kids, because then there's, you know, four kids plus two adults is the tri-tips from Butcher box. So I'll get the tri-tips first off because they taste good. They're easy to prepare. I literally sear them in the cast iron, put the whole thing with the and I season them. But you know, I'll do rosemary, salt, garlic, olive oil. And then, you know, after I sear them, I put them in the oven and we'll do like three or four of these tri-tips. And I'll cook them in the oven, take them out, we'll eat dinner. And then I have like three days worth of tri-tip meat that I can eat for like two meals that I'll have during the day. But they have, you know, lots of choices. But I agree with you. I think that's the hardest part because, you know, processed meat isn't really an option, I guess. So. Well, and what's your. So I'm going to say something that's somewhat controversial because obviously we work with companies that supply protein powders. But I would say of the protein sources, that's one of the least favorable options for you. Of course. And this is always a talking point for me when I'm coaching a client because protein shakes and bars are marketed so heavily. They're marketed as health foods and it's easy, you know, to get 20 or 40 grams that way. And so people tend to lean on that. I tend to coach that as an emergency use only. I do. I like what you say where you tell people to at the end of the day, I missed my protein targets. Let me throw a shake in there to hit my target. And I find that I've had way more success with clients that are that they're going after their protein targets through whole foods, through trying through through meats primarily to hit their protein intake. And then only if, you know, they're way under at the end of the day, they utilize something like that to make sure they still hit their intake and or like a weird situation, you're fly. I was just flying to Austin, Texas, which between airport time and flight. You're talking about like six hours of, you know, driving, flying stuff, like, and I'm in a pinch where I'm not, you know, I have a microwave around me and I'm so like that. So it makes sense. Now, many times I'll choose to fast, but if I'm like, I got to eat something like that's a place where you're not going to have a piece of steak in your luggage. Right. Right. So it makes sense to me to have those type of choices. But I am. But when I when I evaluate or, you know, judge my own diet, I don't consider a protein shake or bar day, what I would call a perfect day of eating, a perfect day of eating for me is hitting macro targets through 100 percent whole foods that I made. Totally. 100 percent. Right. Today's giveaway maps anabolic advanced. If you're interested in winning this, here's how you can enter to win. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we posted here on YouTube. Also subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. Also, we're running a program sale right now. Maps, anabolic and map split both 50 percent off. Huge discounts. If you are interested, just click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, here comes the rest of the show. Speaking of meat, you guys know that Italy, I think, is the first country to ban lab grown meat. Oh, they banned it. They also did a couple of the things good for that. They also put up some laws for GMOs, I think, and stuff like that. But they banned, they passed the law. Maybe Doug can look this up. Well, aren't they the like they're the one place where a lot of people who have like a gluten intolerance here in the States, then they'll go over to like Italy. I've heard that. But then they can have pasta or they can have bread. They have something like that. Is that why some sort of effect? That's different. Do they have different regulations on what the speculation is that there is that the the wheat there is not desiccated desiccated sprayed again with glyphosates. Yeah, because glyphosates are spread on wheat to dry them out. It was called desiccation and Italy. So here's the deal. OK, Italy and my family's from there. So I can say this. They are food snobs hardcore. Like they have a culture around food. They have cultures around certain things. Well, that's what that article even says where they're done, pull up an article and it's like it moves the ban lab grown to protect the food heritage heritage. Right. So they're like this with cars, fashion and food. And you can throw a wine in there. They're very, very like this is our culture. So this wasn't passed for like moral reasons. It was more like disgusting. We will not eat that food. We're passing a law. Repulsive. Yes, we will only eat real meat. I don't think this was passed yet. OK. It's been proposed. Yes. OK. So. But you know what's interesting about this laboratory meat? Have you guys looked at how they make this? I mean, I've briefly seen a video and it did not look appetizing. They they take the cells so the real meat like cells that they'll grow and then they'll 3D print. Yeah. A steak and then they 3D print the marbling and stuff in it. So it looks like it. So like if you bought like 10 steaks that were lab grown, they would all look identical. You know what I mean? With the same like like same patterns, every identical. So I guess my thing is like you said it was like molecule. It was already cells from a steak. Right. I mean, I think that there's the nexus of it is. Yeah. It's stem cell is something from an actual animal. Yeah. That then they reproduce and they just 3D print and smashed together. And yeah. Like like how is that technically not meat? Yeah, not me. I mean, it is meat. It's just lab grown. It's cheating me. Well, yeah. But it really it really addresses because I mean, if they're the. Well, there's different types of vegans, right? So if you're the vegan, that's all about protecting animals. This. But you would eat meat if it wasn't killing an animal. You would eat this. All right. So yeah. OK. OK. So so basically you could like graft off like a part of an animal that's alive. Yeah. And now replicate the cell. I don't think it's like that. I think it's even I think it's even more like they literally take stem cells and then turn them in. Yeah. And they clone it. That's it. Like nothing dies. So yeah. So you're not going to have to kill animals to keep doing this. So then somebody who is a vegan by that choice, not because they hate meat or they don't want to eat. You could literally 3D print meat to look like whatever you want. Like think about this. You make like a meat. Like a Twinkie meat. Yeah. Or you can make like different shapes. So here's how it works. Scientists can harvest a small sample of cells from a living animal and cultivate the sample to grow outside the animal's body. They then shape the fully formed sample into cuts of meat. Fish filets, burgers and bacon produced in this way taste just as consumers would expect them to. But millions of animals don't need to be bred, confined or slaughtered to create these real meat. You know what? I think I think we should do this. I'm pro this and it should get shipped to everybody who's starving. Like that is to me like that that's better. Only if it's cheaper. Maybe it might not be cheap. Well, I think that's a problem. Well, it's not cheaper. It's not right now. It's more expensive. It's not. No, it couldn't be. That's because of engineering. That's got to be right because we're at the very inception. Yeah, it's like, you know, early days of a computer and a cell phone. Give it 10 years and then it will be replicable. And then and then I'm pro that if it comes to somebody who cannot get any food and or like those places on the earth like that. So it says costs for sell cultured meat need to come down quickly because most of us have limited appetite for $50 lab growing chicken nuggets. So OK, so it will though. This is a good this is a good discussion because something inside of me and I can't point to it. Something inside of me is like this is wrong. Yeah. But but the logical side of me is like we're not killing animals. Yeah. It's still meat, right? It's I don't I don't I don't think it's wrong. I think I think it's amazing. You don't feel something inside. It seems like it's here in the right here. Me out. I won't fucking touch it. OK, yeah. That's where I'm at, though. OK, well, listen, though. But but listen, what's the what percentage are still starving? I mean, we have a massive amount of people. Yeah, but it's not because we don't have. I know it's because we can't. I know because it's just because yeah, but you're going to be able to distribute this fake ass meat. I'm sure you're going to store it and if we can't now, we will in the next decade. Yeah, can we agree on that? Can we agree that I don't know if it's the lab grown meat that'll solve it? We have we have people that we have bums with cell phones now, bro. We do. So there's you can see that politically correct. So it's only a matter of time. There's only a matter of time before we can ship this fake ass meat to people that need food and that to me. I'm I'm pro that. Yeah. So I'm for that. Now, you won't ever catch it in my house. 100 percent. I want you won't catch it in my house. Well, so here. So here's you guys ready for this? I'm going to blow your minds right now with the unintended consequences of this pretend of this technology. Let's just imagine a future where lab grown meat is way cheaper, way more accessible. It's taste obviously tastes just like me because it is me. How many cows do you think would survive and exist on earth when we no longer need still a lot still a lot? Here's why. Because there'll still be people like us here. Penning sous. Here's here's the deal. Not a lot. Not enough. Like, OK, let me put it this way. There's a reason why cows, pigs, chickens are so plentiful. Hey, maybe just the right amount. Maybe they're going to be all in these free range type of grass fed type of farms instead of the way we do it commercially right now. Isn't it weird, though? Like, let's be honest, maybe it goes to where like a much healthier way for it to be where a more sustainable place versus these massive commercial farms. Sure, that's always been the problem is just the pure volume of people that need to consume meat. Like, it's it's insane. So if you could kind of solve the majority, you know, the big problem of that, but then also have like the specialization part of it, which you're saying with like farms that are like ethically. But there's yeah, how great would it be if farmer farmer markets become like the high end, like connoisseur, high priced like any because people like us walks for us. We I know it does stuff for us in a sense, right? But I mean, it's all relative, right? It'll probably it'll be expensive compared to what you're saying because it'll get so we'll drive the cost down because we'll have AI creating the meat. We'll have robots that are shipping it and doing it. So the cost will be so little. So then if you really want to take the risk of eating this this fake ass meat, then you can and you can do it reasonably priced and we'll save a lot more lives that way. This this meat's expensive because we killed it. It was actually alive. You know what, though? This is true slaughter. Listen, that's OK. There's a lot of myths around around this, though, because ruminating animals like cows if you let them be grass fed like, OK, so butcher box grass fed meat. When cows go and eat the grass, it's a this is actually healthy for life. It's part of circle life. But it's also important for the environment. Yes, I mean for carbon dioxide, capture, oxygen production. It's important for the land. So we would actually solve maybe one problem, but we create three other problems that people don't realize. Why will we create? Wait, wait. Because you need ruminating animals. You need them. That's why I think, yeah. So we'll just have them out there roaming, I guess. Yeah, why wouldn't you have to take care of them when there's no market for them? There will be a market. You still don't think people like us would go pay a premium price for. Not enough. Yes, you will. We do right now that that. Yeah, that butcher. Butcher box is more expensive than if you were. I mean, it's relatively much more. It's not much more. Thank God. But I think that's how it'll be. It will drive the other stuff really down because robots and AI and all that shit can take care of all of it. And then you'll have real raw milk. You'll have real farmers that are raising real cattle and having to slaughter them. And then it'll be a higher price. They're like Rolex farmers. Yes, bro. They'll be like. Gold teeth. Yeah. Yes. The new way to like. It's a good, right? It will be up to, you know, a rap video. That's great. Farmers are all ballin' out of control. Ferrari tractor. Spinners and shit like that. You know what I'm saying? They're big ass. I kill my meat. I don't know, man. Like I said, it'll it'll it'll solve some problems created. But now here's another question. What other exotic meats that really aren't commercially available? Because it's just not. But I wonder what exotic meats they'll be able to create because they can grow it in a lab. You know what I'm saying? Like rare delicacies like we've created the most tasteful meat. We've combined alligator steak and chicken ostrich in this. Yeah. Like you can create some weird shit. Did you guys watch? Did any of you guys watch that movie? The menu? I did. Oh, I loved it. I was going to watch that. I loved it. It was different, huh? I loved it. Yeah, I liked it too. I thought it was really good. I figured it wasn't a big fan of it, but I like it. Yeah, because she doesn't like like she likes all happy endings and all like that. I like weird. That was cool. I like weird shit like that. That's twisted endings. Oh, dude, speaking of murder in in this remind me. OK. Speaking of executions right there. OK. Yeah, because we're talking about, you know, slaughtered cows. OK, I got it. I murdered my meat. Yeah, I just murdered it outside. So, you know, like the the method that in France for execution, like, you know where the guillotine came from, right? Well, I don't know where it came from, but I know they used it. OK, so French Revolution, right? Is that? Yeah, like they did it specifically to kings that did something like that. Well, so it was to be more ethically. Oh, yes. Oh, and so like, I believe it was a surgeon that like invented it. Yeah, because they saw hanging, right? I think I remember this like, this is not cool. This takes a long time. Yeah, so they found a way to, like, more clean. That's like, that was like the more ethical way. So crazy that, in fact, OK, do you guys? OK, what's your guess for the last time it was used in a real execution? Oh, in France? Yeah, 1875. I bet you it was used 40 years ago. I bet it was used in 1900s. I'm going to guess 40 years ago. OK, 1977. Whoa, 1977. 1977. I'm pretty damn close. Isn't that crazy, you say? I have 40 years ago. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, Doug was on the money there. Yeah, right on the money. Dude, what made you guess? It seemed logical to me. I mean, what can I say? Like they opt in for that, you know? Yeah, was it by choice? Like, you're going to be executed because then that makes kind of sense. I think if I had a choice, like, oh, I'm going to get the gas chain or I'm going to get the electric chain or I just chop my fucking head off. Yeah. Some people would probably go chop my head off. I don't even want to, you know? Some people choose like a firing squad or whatever. Yeah. Is that how it was? Was it like a choice? I think so. Do you know that? That's wild. Did you know that? Was it public, too? No. Oh, I don't know. They don't do public shit. Yeah, they don't do that anymore. Middle East will do that. They'll actually do you publicly. They'll put it on YouTube, but yeah. Yeah, so did you know this? So if you read about, like, people getting their heads cut off, apparently your head gets cut off and you're alive long enough to be aware. To see. Yeah, like your head got cut off. No. Yeah, like you can see your body and everything. Yeah, I've heard that. Until your brain starts from lousy lack of blood. And then logically, that makes sense. But like, I mean, that's how you confirm. You imagine like shroom. Yeah, who confirmed that? Yeah. Oh, yeah, I still feel like we put his head back on real quick. Oh, no, they theorize it. Of course, they can't possibly. But you know, electrocutions are electrocutions aren't any more freaking humane. If you read about electrocution, isn't it isn't it isn't the shot is like the most like the injection. Yeah, the injection, right? Lethal injection, I think. Yeah. Because they can mess that up, too. Can it? It's happened. Yeah. Will they give you the wrong one first? Yeah, or they? Is it similar to the same thing for humans that they do for like animals? Like when you put your dog down, is it the same type of like? I know, I know they use like a couple different. I think one puts you to sleep. When you compound. And then one kills you. Well, when we had to put Mausie down, it was like three different shots. I think one puts him to sleep. One not numbs him. Like he relaxes him so his nerves calm down so he's not like all freaked out. So the first one like totally relaxes him, then one numbs him and then the last one's like that. And I actually think that a lot of times that one slows his heartbeat down slowly. Yeah. And a lot of times that one will make them go and then they only use the third one if he doesn't go. Oh, that sucks. I mean, it's sad, but it's actually for me, it was a I mean, we they actually I don't know if you knew I didn't know if you guys know this or not, but they'll come to your house. Like so we had someone which was really nice. Yeah, we had a fire going to the house. We had like the whole night we were spending with him before I mean it was sad. Right. Thinking back of it is very sad. But I mean better than like taking him to some cold hospital. Like when Bentley died, Bentley died during COVID. So we couldn't continue and I both couldn't even be there. So that was awful. What a stupid. Yeah, it was so stupid. That was one of the ones that made me so angry. Oh, I was so stupid. All the things that was the worst. Oh, man. Yeah. So like so dumb, right? So like that was. Bro, we're going to look back on that time and be like what the hell were you thinking? What did we did to all these people? Oh, there's still people driving around with masks on by themselves. Oh, so sure if we're going to look back on that. I don't know what it is right now that when I go places and I see that and I'm trying to come from a place. Especially now that the Cochrane Review came out. Bro, I know I'm trying to come from a place of compassion and love and Arthur Brooks. I try and keep in my head like, you know, talking to me, love everybody and be compassionate. Let's just say it's hard. It is, dude. It's hard to do. It is. You know what, I think where it bothers me is when I when I see children around like their kids, you know what I'm saying? That their kids are wearing them still and stuff like that. And it's just like, do you not have any idea of what you're potentially, you know, you know how much communication is nonverbal? Seventy percent. Yeah, it's 80. It's the 80 something percent is not is nonverbal, dude. And during a child's early years of development, like you're you're you're taking away 80 percent of their ability. There's a reason why, you know, what teachers to, by the way, I've heard this now, like where were we at? We were at school or somewhere and I heard multiple moms and teachers talking about some of the kids and they refer to these kids as COVID kids. Yeah. It's become so like normal to have these kids that are speech pattern problems, processing problems, can't process emotion as well. Yes. Anxiety issues. I mean, don't get me started. No, I mean, I get fired up when I that's what I'm saying. And I still see these people. Have you ever seen? Have you guys ever seen? I know you're familiar because your wife was a nurse. Have you ever seen the training that hospital experts have that health practitioners? My best friend's wife is a nurse and she told me it's like a whole like certification. You can to learn how to use a mask, but otherwise it's a waste of time is what they say. Yes. And they're like, hey, your three year old, put a mask on. I mean, to me, that's besides a point. I mean, the real point is that like you said is that all the research has come out now to like, like it's no longer a question. That's a waste of time. It is. And it's like, why continue? And then and then now you have to be like, not only has it been proven that it's doing nothing. Now, what are you doing? No, it's not doing nothing. It's causing damage. Yeah, right. You're now you're just doing damage. And then I guess I just get fired up when I see kids involved because if you want to be stupid and do it yourself, then whatever. I mean, we have plenty of stupid people that do a lot of other stupid things. So I'm not going to get mad about that. Like, but when you got like a child in the car with you or your kid has got it on still too. And I'm just like, I told you kids of my. Kids of my kids school still wear them. And it's it's it's because and you asked them, why are you still wearing this? Well, first off, they're self-conscious anyway at that age. So it's like now and they've had a great way to hide. Yeah, they weren't for two years. So now you got to be the one to take it off first. And then second is because some of the fucking some of the teachers still still wear them. And so that's, you know, I don't know. It's a weird, it's a hard reversal. I have a lot of empathy. Did I ever tell you guys about time? This reminded me of, you know, talking about kids and parents and stuff. I went to Disney World years ago. And so Disney, you mean Scooterville? Yeah, so Rascal Town. Well, no, hey, dude, have you guys been to Disney World? I've been to, yeah, one time. But I have a mainly Disneyland. So Disneyland is California, Disney World, Florida. And so I think because Disney World attracts a lot of the South, they have a higher obesity rate and stuff like that. And I remember when we got there, it was right around when Wally, the movie Wally, came out. And I remember traffic jams in Disney World with the scooters from people who were too obese to walk. Like that's how many people were on scooters. And I'll never forget, you just reminded me, this woman who, I mean, and it made me really sad, right? She was probably 400 something, 500, like really, just really, really obese on a scooter. Her daughter was sitting on her lap on the scooter. Her daughter was also very obese, five year old. And she had what looked like a bucket of soda. And she was just drinking it. And they were driving around Disney World. And I remember like, oh, my, you know, my older kids were so young and it like broke my heart. I was like, oh, my God. That was a long time ago, right? Long time ago. Yeah, I think you remember you first telling me that and it was early on when we first had the podcast going. Yeah. And I actually took a picture. It used to be on my Instagram. I don't think it's on my Instagram anymore. A long time ago, when we were at like some 7-Eleven and they were they were selling. And I remember watching the evolutionist. You remember, I can remember 7-Eleven when we were kids. It went crazy for the size of the double gold size. Old enough to remember before the big gold. Like there used to just be small, medium and large. You know how big sodas were when Doug was a kid? Yeah. Bro, the shot glass. Small as a shot glass. No, probably 10 or 12 ounces. Yeah, it was a little bottle. I've seen good. I've seen really good, you know. Comparisons, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like the generations of like even like an order of a burger and fries and a drink and those things like that. Like, but I mean, I remember like 7-Eleven really stands out to me because as a kid. So when I was in high school, I used to go to 7-Eleven and have coffee before I worked the dairy. So I have this like vivid memory. And then when I came to San Jose, I had a 7-Eleven that was right by my house that I bought when I was 20, 21. That was right there. So for, and I lived there for eight years and I would go there all the time and I'd pick up like energy drinks and stuff. So I watched like the evolution of the drinks change. And I remember when we started this podcast, I'd gone in one, I'd been in one all the time and they had this one gallon. Like it was like, I don't know what they called it. Oh, what is that? Yeah, it was a handle. Yeah, the original fountain drink at McDonald's was seven ounces and that was in 1955. Seven ounces. Wow. So they had the double gulp and then they had the super double gulp. And I remember this vividly because my brother and my dad were like addicted to cherry Coke. And drink the whole thing. Dude, I swear and I think, I don't know what my rationale was, but I was just wasn't into soda. You know, I wouldn't really drink it much. I would have like, occasionally I have like a Sprite or like, but I was drinking water. You didn't go well with your cigarettes. Just cigarettes in my math was a bad combo. I can't imagine any of us smoking cigarettes and just look weird. I mean, I tried for a year. You smoked cigarettes for a year, didn't you? Yeah, I did for one year. Not like religiously though. It was like an after work type of deal. Yeah, I did. I went through a phase like that. Do you see that 7-Eleven has 128 ounce? It's called the team goal. The team goal. Team goal. And you know, that's 1,379 calories. That's a Coca-Cola. Is that a half gallon? For the team of one. Boy. This thing was a gallon that I saw. That's right. Pretty close to a gallon. Hey, you and your five friends want to share one drink. Introducing the team goal. Disgusting. What the hell is going on here? Oh my God. I mean, you got to wonder how, I mean, how many... They sell it because they make money off it. That's what I'm saying. If they sell it and make money off it, they wouldn't do it if it wasn't selling. So how many people... Dude, I want to go back to you talking about smoking cigarettes. Why did you smoke cigarettes for a year, bro? I can't imagine. I just picture Adam right here. Yeah, because I tried chewing tobacco. I was like trying to make it happen. Because I was playing baseball and like all my friends. I mean, come on, let's be honest. I couldn't make it work. I just picture you at your balcony after working at the gym. That's actually exactly what it looks like. So that drink is one gallon. It is one. So it was a gallon. So that's the one I saw, right? So first of all, let's unpack statistically what I was supposed to be anyways, right? I was supposed to be in prison, drug addict, you know, criminal, all that stuff with it, right? So anything is a success. It wasn't heroin, come down. So I pretty much tried everything at one point, you know what I'm saying? So at one point I have tried damn near everything. And you know, I live with a good buddy of mine who I was really close, like my best friend, Mark Baker, he knew and he smoked. You know, and it just like it probably has started for many people. It was like who I didn't ever smoke when I was younger. It was like, oh, on the weekend when we were out partying or doing some like that, like, oh, I'll have one with you. And I got the head change from it. I was like, oh, I kind of liked that. And then that then it turned into like, oh, on a stressful day of work, I'll have one at a gym. But you know what's funny is even the entire time I was like embarrassed about it. I don't think I ever openly admitted or talked about it because I hated the way it made me. I would instantly, after I'd smoked it, go scrub my hands. I always kept alcohol on me and brush my teeth. Like I did not shame. Yeah, I toyed. It was shame, embarrassed and the and I chased crying in the shell. I just I chased the head high from it. Right. I liked the head change from it and stuff like that. And so I would justify it from a long stressful day after work and doing that. And he was having one. And so, you know, that's what happened. But I mean, it lasted about a year and then I like had to come to cigarettes. The anti-cool campaign works so effectively for cigarettes because they were so cool for a long time. Oh, they're in every movie, too. Yeah. I mean, every action hero was like smoking or I think what I gravitated more towards was the cigars because that was like your A-team guy. You know, there was always like some general. Yeah, yeah, that's my guy right there. So I got more into cigars. Hey, they say media. What is everybody's worst habits that you think you've you that you had that whether it was a short stint or a long stint like as far as health, why I still I still I still have issues with supplements. We need to go there. Yeah, but it's like all kinds of weird. Yeah, but that's not like anti health. Do you think I've you seen the mix of shit? I'll put together. No, I do know. I mean, I would you don't know all of it. I get weird sometimes. The real exotic ones. I still got bad. I tell you what, hey, fitness saved my life. I swear to God, what was your worst out? You're like the healthiest. So what's your worst? I'm trying to remember what is your worst? Like, yeah, which would be such a crazy shit right now. Well, one of this little heroin kick for about seven months. I'm trying to recall. I mean, I did eat too much food. I mean, that was basically the challenge I had. Yeah, I'm sorry. You said you're a pussy. I wish I was more of a retro break. I had a couple of hundred calories for like a year. Because I used to eat candy sometimes. That was a good. Did it ever go through a drug phase? No, no, you never dabble with drugs. Now food was my drug of choice. Yeah. Mm hmm. Justin, what was your we'd say your worst? Your cigars. Was that your worst? Cross tubes, heroin. Wow. Stupid. Wow. Stupid. Yeah, I would say, I mean, I was a bartender, so I drank a lot. Oh, alcohol for you. Oh, yeah. A lot. And I mean, it's still like somewhat there, but it's not like anywhere near where I used to drink when I was in college. Like I went, it was after I broke up with my girlfriend, it was like, you know, this justified, oh, I'm going to keep going out. And I just had this, like, it was probably a year of just like I was out every night just destructive. Yes, just very much like punishing myself with it. And between that and I guess, I mean, I was eating restaurant food all the time. So, but I would still like, I never really went like to, I tried because I lived with a lot of fat guys and they tried to take me to these like buffets. And like, it's just kind of a weird thing where they want you to be a fat guy too, you know? And they're just like doing everything they could. No, Missouri loves company, right? And I was like, and at some point I was like kind of trying. And I was like, you know, it was definitely fluffy, but like I just couldn't go to that level. I was like, this is gross. Like it just didn't resonate with me. Dude, I couldn't, I couldn't imagine the house you guys lived in together. Oh, it was awful. I couldn't bring anybody over, dude. Like I just, I remember. Because these guys were, hold on. They're not just like fat dudes. They were giant. Giant. Giant. Well, they were all linemen, right? Huge linemen. Like six, five, six, seven, just giants. Yeah. People thought we were literally like jacking the box bags all over the place. Like pizza boxes stacked up. Like Justin's a big dude, right? He's thick cakes, right? He was a little guy, right? He's like the little guy. Yeah, I was a little guy. That was a little guy. They just go around, you know? Yeah. You guys should have seen, OK, so both my, my friends worked as bouncers at the Cubby Bears. It was this like bar that would bring in acts. They'd have like all these, what, the gay bar? It was like a gay bar, the Cubby Bear. It does actually kind of sound like, it was near Wrigley Field, so it was, you know, the cubs, but I could see how you were. Share your other additions with us. No, so they're, this is not making sense. So I went through like a little Cubby Bear face. They threw him around. Oh, my God, this makes sense. Oh, my God. All right, relax. I'll let you win. All right, go back to the sides. Yeah, OK. You set yourself up on that. Yeah, I did set myself up for that one. So they, so they basically were, they're bouncing and they would get these parties upstairs that, I mean, they had leftover food all over the place. And like, they were just shameless about it. And they would just take it home and like. From the party? From the party. They just, you know, and so there was, I want to say 10 boxes of chicken wings. And I get home and I see one of my friends Ed on the couch, literally like his pants unbuttoned, his like shirts off, and he's eating like wings. And I see stacks of bones. Like, it was the most disgusting. The most disgusting I've ever seen in my life. It's like, I couldn't get in a direction for like two months after that. I was just like, I just want to take a shower immediately. The farts. So was that, I mean, that's another funny thing to think about is like your messiest like roommates, were they like the most disgusting roommates you ever had? Yeah, I threw everything away. I like, it got to the point where I was like washing dishes and then nobody was doing it. And they were literally eating off of like Tupperware lids. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I just picture report, Justin, he's the smallest guy. I'm just like, what is happening? I was like vacuuming and rashes and rats and everything. I gave up. I'll be honest with you guys, I just gave up. And I was like, forget it. And we got to the point where we were moving. And so we had flies this big that were just like, they would give up and they'd be like, brrr. It was flies that gave up on life. It just, it just died, just squished. Obese flies. I was like, I didn't even try and get away from it. I've never heard of that before. And then I just took all of these dishes and I just threw it, we were three stories up and I threw it over the balcony and then into a dumpster and I just threw everybody's shit away. Now you never went through like a roommate experience really. No. You never had roommates on. I remember my parents. Oh, yeah. Well, did you ever go through a roommate? Yeah, I've had a few. Yeah, did you have like a crazy messy roommate? I did actually. So when I came back from Japan, I needed a place to live. And I knew this guy who worked for Microsoft. And so he goes, oh, I live in this house with five other guys that work for Microsoft. It was this massive house. And I got in there and there was one open room. And of course, all these guys were like, totally into their tech and all that type of thing. And my next door neighbor, I walked next to his room. I could actually smell the room as I walked by it. I don't think you ever washed it, his sheets. I've heard stories that. Oh, I've had, I've had all kinds of bad. Well, I've heard stories that from women when they live with all girls and sororities that they're filthy as hell too. It's not just dudes. I've heard stories of friends of mine. It's a different kind of, I mean. It's a different level. I've lived with both, I had female roommates, I had male roommates. I mean, I had my house by the time it was 21 and I always rented at least one, if not two rooms. So I've had, I've had one, two, three different girls that live with me. Really? One, two, three, four, five, six, six different. No, I mean over a course of time. Like I always know, I normally had like one room was rented out to, I had two extra rooms and I had one rented out. You're a clean, you're really clean though. Yeah. You've always been, you've always been that way. Huh? You've always been that way? Yeah. And it was because I grew up in a messy home. I hated that. So when I was a kid, and my sister's, Cassie's that way too. If you ever go to Cassie's house, she's like super. Spotless. Yeah, her house is immaculate and it's because we both had the same experience growing up in a like just disheveled house and you know, you'd be embarrassed and we'd be embarrassed to bring your friends over. I'd never know, like I'd bring my friends over and there'd be like laundry all over the, you know, the living room, you know, floor and the dishes are all piled up in there. And you know, it's, I remember like just that like cringing like, well, I don't know what I'm gonna walk into my own house with my friends and be embarrassed with that. And I swore that man, when I move out on my own, like I'll always keep myself or all my stuff like really nice. So, but I mean, I had roommates that, you know, I never let the house get messy because that I controlled that but their bedrooms, they rent them. So I'm like, I wouldn't mess with them and it wouldn't be until like after they left. Oh. Like I told you guys the whole, remember the guy that did all the Coke? I had all the razor blade. I felt like, I mean, I must have got a hundred half straws and razor blade marks in my window seal and like, I had no idea this dude had a Coke problem. Like. You just thought he was energetic. Yeah. Couldn't figure out why he could play video games till four in the morning on a camping chair and then get up and go to work with me at seven. You know, say it every day. Yeah. Yeah. I just figured it out, you know, so. And then I had another guy who, you know, he was a hardcore workout buff fit dude and he would make big old meals, like skillet. And I found like pans like under his bed of like half food still. What is wrong with people? Yeah. That's right. I was like, how do you, how do you like leave a pan of half eaten food under your. Live with it. And then like, yeah, and you slept on top and had girls over and shit like that. Like, how did that work out? Like, that's so weird. Like, you know, my biggest pep he was with besides this disgusting mess everywhere was like, I would go into the bathroom and every time they'd take a shower, they're so big they would step out and then just drip dry. And it was like, I was always stepping into like wet. And I was just like, your socks, you just put your socks on and I would yell and, you know, we'd wrestle and like, dude. Hey, back to this zero gayness. And had a pillow fight. No pillow fight. Hey, don't throw me in there. Don't throw me in there. Can't wear boxers on. It was totally normal. They were wet, slippery, but it was all right. Yeah. Speaking of showers, that place I moved into, I had to share a shower with that guy. I mean, at the same time, different time, different time. But the walls, you know how showers get moldy? Yeah. The walls were just black with mold. So that was my first job was to clean that. Now you're a clean guy too. So that must be. I'm clean. I can be messy, but I'm clean. Yeah. You can be disorganized. I'm disorganized. Not dirty. I'm not dirty. Yeah, there's disorganized and there's dirty. What would you categorize yourself as? Disorganized. I'm disorganized. I'm not dirty. I don't like dirty shit. No, I hate dirt. But I can be very disorganized because that's like what's in my head. So it just shows up. Outside. Speaking of disorganizing, I mean, I asked you this, Adam. You've been looking juicy lately. Oh, my God. Looking out. What's going on? I'm back. I'm back into gyms, dude. And I have to say, you know, it's been over three years. You're going to dust off your pro card and shard me what time it is. You know, I think. You let me have my time long enough. I did. I felt like. Son of a bitch. Well, to be honest, like I really thought that I think you I thought you guys had influenced me so much that I had been converted. If those have been listening to the show for a really long time, could probably remember when we first would all have this kind of debate. Remember, we'd have this argument. Oh, home gym versus. Yeah, home gym versus. And I was like so staunch about working out of the gym. Well, then COVID happened and I was forced to work out at home or here. Then I started to tell you guys, well, you know what? I'm starting to see what you guys saw. Like, I like this and it's convenient. And I love the way I'm like, I'm doing these little 10 minute micro workouts. And I really liked a lot of that stuff. And it did it did me well for COVID, right? I thought the and when I look back now and I came back now to the gyms, what I what I like about the home is the convenience and flexibility. And I would say that having it is kept me healthier than just having a gym membership, right? Because what I found about having the home gym was it was easy for me to go. I can go in and just do a squat, you know, right? I can just go do one little thing. And sometimes I would. Sometimes I would just do like three sets of squats. That's all I do. Consistency. I would never drive to the gym and squat three times and then get out. That would never happen. If I go to the gym, I'm committed to an hour full-time workout, which as you can probably forget or figure out is that that's the pro and con to this, is that what's nice about being back in the gym is my workouts are improving. Yeah, they're most consistent. I've seen you in a while. Yeah. You can tell, dude. You've put on like eight pounds. It looks like you've put on. Am I guessing right? Eight pounds of lean body mass since you started? You know, I haven't done a dexa scan, which I will do at the new gym that has one. You should have done it when you first started. I know, I know. Because you've changed already since then. Yeah. Oh, no, I've definitely have. My weight has stayed almost exactly the same, though. Yeah, I know. But yeah, you've definitely gained some muscle. I keep, I always keep like, so when I first started, I always take a photo. So I have a log for myself so I can look back on the visual. I'm actually really not tracking weight that much. I get on here at our scale, maybe, you know, once every couple of weeks just to kind of see where I'm floating around. I've been hanging right around 230. So I'm not moving much from 230, but I've completely changed my body. So it has. But, you know, talking about the gyms, you know, this is, haven't been in one for over three years. So some things have changed really blown away by the amenities in this cheap Fitness 19. So I got this membership at Fitness 19. It was kind of a cheaper, smaller club. They took over an old 24-hour fitness. But which one? The old, over in Morgan Hill. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's no longer 24. The tenant. Yes, yes, that one. So, yeah, I come in and I'm just like, hey, give me a membership. And then they pitch you the month to month. You guys have some sort of a prepay. Like, you know, I'll just pay it all up and be done with it. He's like, oh, oh, yeah, we had that. It was like a couple hundred bucks. It was only like, I think 280 or 340, something like that. But then I have unlimited tanning, unlimited red light therapy, unlimited cryotherapy, in addition to the gym access. Like you would, what you would, is that the, oh yeah, that's the gym right there. And it's got, I mean, it's a cool little gym. You know what? Boy, they have really capitalized on the whole, signing people up and they never show up model. And they've gone lower and lower. And they provide more and more. To figure out how we attract people and who's not going to show up. Because that's the only way they make money. Listen, this is, okay. I know I get teased about this. I think this is membership number five I have right now. That I'm paying for. But here's the justification. So my psoriasis does really well when I'm doing red light therapy and or tanning. And it has both of these here. And so I have this motivation of like, well, shit, if I wouldn't pay it for a tanning membership, I don't even know anywhere that does just pure red light therapy. So I can get access to that other than mine at home. And so I'm like, if you were to pay a tanning salon, it would be 80 to 100 some bucks a month. And then I have access to the cryo and I have access to the red light therapy. Like that's insane. That's cool. Red light therapy is getting commercial. Yeah. And the red light therapy is a cool standup bed where it hits me all the way around. Yeah. So I thought that was, it's, I mean, it's not juve. So I don't, what I don't know is the quality of the red light. Is it up to the standards of what juve is? It'd be really interesting to see like a comparison of like, what are the- You know the data on the red light therapy and psoriasis is pretty remarkable. It's like one of the more effective ways to treat it. So what I've never done is the combo of the two. I've experienced both of them individually Tanning makes a huge impact. When I was competing, obviously I was tanning a lot. And so it, one of the best parts about that is the, what it did with my psoriasis. I know what I've done with red light therapy of being consistent by using my juve and how much that's helped it. I'm curious of compiling- Now do you do the red light pre or post workout? So it depends. Cause what, like some, I've, what I've done now is like I've alternated. Like sometimes I'll tan, sometimes I'll do the red light- I'm wondering if, cause, okay. Red light therapy reduces inflammation. But I normally do it post cause I work out and then it's like nice to, to do that after- Well, I was just going to say, so improves, improves that inflammatory process, recovery. But then on the flip side activates the mitochondria which could power workouts. So I wonder which is better. That's why I would love for you to try that. Well, I've been, I've been doing the, the creatine stack with it, right? So I do right after workout, I do creatine and then the red light therapy. It's like the, the, the idea. And I know that's kind of like a theory right now, right? There's nothing to really support. Well, it's all mitochondrial function, right? So I don't, I mean, they're both, I don't know if stacking about the same time makes a difference. It's a good theory though. I would think so. Well, yeah. Cause the creatine is getting up-taked into that, right? And if you're, if you're enhancing the, the, basically the engine or the motor of a cell by doing the red light therapy, I would think that- I'm just wondering what, if it would be better pre or post workout, I got to think about that. I mean, I think- I've never, I've never used it in, with a workout. My thought process on that is it's most likely, like we talk about almost anything, which is the consistency of using it, Trump's- Yeah, of course. The pre or post of whatever it is. Of course. And what I find for me, if I come in and I get heated up on a red light therapy or a tanning bed before I work out, I don't feel right. I'd rather like get warm, like train. And then now that I'm coming down, I can stand in a bed for eight. I'll plumped up. I'll glisten it. Yeah, look at my muscles. Speaking of- Speaking of- Being so hot and bothered. Speaking of- Yeah, no, Justin. All those stories. Speaking of- I want to wrestle. No. I want to wrestle. Speaking of heated up, I got to talk about this on the show. What? This has to be, you know, through at the course of the podcast, there's like moments that we will always talk about. And remember, and we just had Shalene Johnson on the podcast. And she's amazing. We'll air that episode. Great episode. She's a fitness icon. And next door, we have all this construction that's going down. Oh my God. This is great. So we have all this construction going on next door. And sometimes you can kind of hear it. It's not that loud, not distracting. This time it was excessive. Bro, they were banging on- Elephants were just smashing everything. On our, so we start the podcast. We're excited. She's a fitness icon. She really want to do a good job. Remember too, we're just getting to know her right now. You could tell she's nervous. Yeah, so we're just, you know, but she's a professional, so we're going. Right when she starts, start the cameras, let's go. Banging, drilling. It's like- Jackhammer. It might as well be in the room, and we're still trying to do the podcast. I thought my guitar was going to fly off and take me out. And I watch, I'm like, trying to maintain focus. And at one point, Doug goes over, because Adam's signaling like, oh fuck, Doug goes over, comes back, and nothing happens. And finally Adam loses his shit. We have it on camera. Can we please show Adam- Oh, do you have that on camera? We have to. Yeah, we have all this. Oh God. We need to get there, us. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Let's go, let's go. Adam jumps out of the chair and runs over there. Adam jumps out of the chair, and runs over there. It's gonna look so bad, like- I follow him because I'm like, ooh, is this gonna be a fight? Like, and I hear him yelling. Did you hear him yelling? No, I didn't hear him. I followed him. I imagined what it was sounding like. Here's the thing, just as like I've seen enough of it. Yeah, yeah, I know how Adam goes. I had to, like, I was thinking of doing the same thing, but I'm like, I'm gonna cut her camera off, I get out in front, and I'm like, there's no easy way for me to, like, get around and, because it was at that level, it was just like, if we- It was distracting me. Somebody just do something, like- Bro, it was making Justin's guitar swing. Yeah. I'm dead serious. That was like the tipping point for him. I'm like, dude, this is so bad, Doug, the fucking guitar is swinging. Like, it's like, we can't do this. Like, this is crazy. Adam's yelling over there, dude. All I hear is, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like listening for like, is there gonna be some shit that happens? Then he walks back and it was all good. Well, Doug, after Doug had came back, he then, he's over here next to me, and he's taking photos. And it's still banging. And I'm like trying to, I'm like, Doug, why didn't you go over there and jump stage over something? And he's like, I did, I don't speak any English. Like, fuck, they got a, they understand angry? Yeah, that's exactly what I thought. Like, they're gonna understand crazy real quick here when I get over there. Hey, truth though, it was better you than Doug. If Doug snaps, because he has this thing with Doug, Doug holds it. Yeah. He holds it, holds it, holds it. Doug's anger delivery is different. I've only seen, I've seen Adam loses temper once a week. I've seen Doug loses temper twice in my entire life. One time, like, one time on me, and you see it, you're like, oh, shit, that was bottled up. Put it back inside. Keep it back inside. Get a little pressure valve or something. Cause Doug would have done some shit. I have a little more controlled anger. Well, cause you're, I know what I'm doing. You let it out. Directed anger. You're like a volcano. You let out the steam. Very direct. There's no eruption or whatever. Doug's like Yellowstone. Like, ah! We didn't hear a peep afterwards. No, no, no. They didn't even say anything to me. They just all stopped. They dropped their tools. They looked at me and they could see how crazy I looked. I'm mad. It's just like. I couldn't hear what you're saying. But the wild part was so the audience can get an idea what's going on here. So next door, you're talking about 4,000 square feet. It's a decent size building. It's a giant big square. They've been dimming over there for the last month or whatever. And of all the mornings, this morning, literally the whole crew, there's five of them, are all working on the, I don't know, what is that? 20 feet. A little bobcat and everything in there, just smashing walls. 20 feet of wall in a 4,000 square foot. They are all banging on it. Like, one guy's got a jackhammer. The other guy's got a sledgehammer. The other guy's got a shovel. It's comical, dude. Yeah, it was comical. It was like, literally, you guys could not make this worse by today, by like rank. And at that time, when we're interviewing. There's another guy with a stick of dynamite. He's just saying, you guys are crazy. What should I like this? This is a game with drumsticks. He's just walking with these guys on the back. Can you remember? I remember the first time like everybody has seen, like that side of all of us, right? I think everybody has had their moment of like, I mean, we talked about Justin when he stormed out, when he thought he was so, I've never seen Justin lose it though. But when he's talking about, when he slammed, that's exactly what I did. I pushed the microwave and I got it. Like when he left the room. Yeah, but he's never like yelled or screamed or anything like that. Well, that's not his style. Yeah, that's not his style. I think he keeps it bottled pretty good. That's what I think. Yeah. I don't think I've ever lost. Have I ever lost? I can get loud, but I don't think I've ever lost. You and I have gotten into a few loud arguments. Yeah. There's been a few times. There were discussions. Discussions. Discussions. High volume discussion. And they brought us closer every time. I mean, does or no. Because, oh, always, always. Absolutely. Do you remember the first time like maybe before you even knew how we were all going to work together? Like the first time Sal and I got into it? I don't remember the first time, but I do recall the times. And it's always a little bit stressful. You still, does he still get stressed? Oh, yeah, I know it's going to blow over. I know it's going to blow over. You can't get stressed till now. Many times it's happened. Oh, yeah, no, no. I just, I mean, Justin and I just sit over here, wait for things to calm down, and then we can say something. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's how it works. And then we try to get you to have a storm. Then we try to get you guys to pick sides. Yeah. There's always one. There's always one of us who tries to recruit to that. What do you think, Doug? Which line are you in, Justin? As we stare at him, it sucks when either one, both of us get one each. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Andrew, you're the fucking tiebreaker now, bro. That's what you need. Welcome to the team. Yeah, we do need a fifth. Yeah, I know. It's a good time. I, a, a, truth, man, when you got friends that you could argue with and then afterwards respect each other, that's the problem. And it's always immediate. You know, it doesn't take long before it's like, you know, it settles and it's just has come out. What do you think that, what do you think the main characteristic is that makes that okay and work? Like my theory and thought is, is that it, even though there's this, this, this fighting or whatever going back and forth, that it's not from a place of ego, right? It's not from a place of, and I've been in that place before where I want to be right. I care about that. And I'm like, and you're just, that versus like, it's, it, it does truly come from a place of love that we share. We love this business. We love what we're building. We love what we're creating so much. It's just passion that we're passionate behind it that we're willing to fight for. What it is, I think there's always ego, but I think that's why the tempers get lost, right? That's where it comes from. But I think that the trust that the other person wants something good. I don't think that you will have ill intent. Never. So for, oh, we're yelling, arguing, whatever. I'm not thinking this, this guy's trying to, you know, fuck me over. This guy has bad intention. Never enters my mind. So I think that's what keeps it always like good and respectful at the end. It's like, yeah, I think we, I think we all, when we, if we fight like that, we all have the same desired outcome. That's it. Right. So it's, it's just, we, we really strongly disagree with the pursuit to that desired outcome. Right. But I mean, ultimately, if we both agree on, hey, this is, we're trying to better this business. Like the, and I think that's why, I really, that's why how I feel when we, any of us argue about that stuff. It's because we both want, it's never selfishly driven. Never you or Justin or Doug argue because you want more of something. I think that you're trying to get over or any of that. It's always like, this is the best path, I think, for what we're trying to accomplish and we disagree. And ultimately what's been proven, which I think has made it even better, is that at the end, whichever direction is decided, everybody's on board, even if you were against it. Well, even if it doesn't work out. Yeah. Oh, and if it doesn't work out, it's a team loss. Yeah. We don't, you know, I respect that about you guys. I wanted to bring something up to Justin because he wasn't in the conversation. And I think we had it off air. So I hope I'm not duplicating this conversation because I thought it was really interesting. Wasn't it off air when we were talking to Kara about the dog? It was off air, right? It was. So did you hear about the chat GPT and the guy's dog? Curing the dog. Yeah. No. So this guy had a, I don't remember what kind of breed of dog it was, whatever, but he, his dog was like deathly ill, was dying, couldn't figure out what it was, rushed him to the vet, vet run the panels, blood work, lab stuff, right? And came back and said, oh, your dog has this. And then he gave him like the medication, goes home, he's giving his dog the medication and the dog is getting progressively worse. And he's looking like he's gonna die. So he's freaking out. So he takes the lab work, uploads it into chat GPT to get chat GPT's opinion on what are some of the possibilities that this dog could have. And it spit out three options instead of one. One of the three was what the vet said, then there was two other ones. And then he figured out, I don't know how he teased out one of them. He brought it back to another vet. Yeah. And he said, here's the other one. And they saw, and they cured the dog. All through chat GPT. And it's not even optimized for that, for medical, for labs and stuff like that. Huh. So. That cool. That is cool. I mean, so there's a bit of optimism there. Meanwhile, you get all the other articles about like it coercing somebody to kill themselves. I let your theory about it being the antichrist, I agree. Give us everything we want. Give us everything we want. Until it kills us. Yeah. There we go. So that was good news. Then I saw something that I thought was interesting that was on the bad news side that I thought was fascinating. And you probably won't be surprised, but I thought the number was high. Do you know how many schools have contracts with Pepsi and Coke? I do because we have a written up paper. Are you decking? 80%. Is that boiling the answer? Isn't that? I know. 80% of schools have a contract with Coke and Pepsi. That's nuts to me. And then we just, and then that memory I brought up the other day, the Lunchables, you know? So that's what we're... It's not about health, it's business. That's right. It is 100% about making money. And that's what we're teaching the generation coming up is Lunchables and sodas. Great. There you go. Do we have a shout out that we want to do today? No, I got one for you guys. I got a shout out. I don't think I've given this guy a shout out. Jonathan Peijiao, I think is how you say his last name. Is that the religious guy? He's not religious, he's an expert on symbolism. And if you want to like watch videos and go deep and listen to an intellectual that's gonna really blow your mind, a lot of different things. Didn't him and Peterson do an interview? Yeah, dude. I mean, if I watch his stuff, I'll get lost. Oh, symbolism that he... He's an expert on it. That's awesome. And he explains the value of it, the relevance. And so he can go into religion, he can go into art, he can go into architecture, why we talk the way we do, why our behaviors are the way we are and the psychology behind it. So it's Jonathan with a J dot page U P A G E A U. Interesting. Really, really interesting stuff. Yeah. Hey, check this out. Do you want to sleep better, recover faster, improve your hormone profile? Try sleep me. This is a device, it's a pad that goes over your bed that uses water to cool or warm your bed so that you have the perfect temperature for the perfect circadian rhythm. Studies show that sleeping in the right temperature has a profound effect on sleep quality. And these devices are pretty amazing. They control the temperature. They can warm up in the morning to wake you up. You have two sides to them. So you and your partner can have different temperature controls. It's pretty awesome. Go check them out. Go to sleep.me forward slash pump 30 and get 25% off any of their sleep systems. All right, here comes the rest of the show. Our first caller is Jeffrey from Alabama. Jeffrey, what's happening? How can we help you, man? Hey, nice to meet you guys. Good morning. What up, all right. Hey, I didn't want to take up too much of the time slot with the obligatory appreciation, but I did want to say how much I appreciate all the stuff you guys do, all the tips you have, a bunch of little things that I've added to my lifestyle that have really helped me out. Got my wife running MAPS, Anabolic now. She wouldn't be able to tell you that's what she's doing, but that's what she's running and the product recommendations, like math sounds for sure, been a huge game changer for me. So thank you to everything you guys do. Awesome, thank you. So jumping right into my question, how do you plan for someone who has long-term strength goals in the gym but without any type of strength, such as a competition, I'd like to hit specific strength targets in my life, such as a 500 plus pound squat, 400 bench and 600 deadlift. However, I don't have any deadline to achieve these targets. I just want to do them in the healthiest way possible without sacrificing overall health and fitness. Damn, I love this question. Yeah, I do. Where are your lifts now, by the way? Yeah, I don't think we can help you. You're already stronger than most of us. So squat, my max is like 375, but Monday, third, Sunday, I can roll out of bed and hit 345, no matter how I'm feeling. Bench is 295, deadlifts 425. How long have you been training for? So super consistent for about two years, stepped in the gym for the first time at 22, so about 12 years ago now. Okay, and you're 20, wait, how old are you now, 34, 35? I'm 33, about to be 34, right? Okay, and the reason why I'm asking this is I just want to make sure that these are somewhat realistic goals. How much do you weigh, by the way, body weight? So, like I said, the mass, it's been a huge thing. I was stuck at like 180 for a while. Even eating 4,000 calories, I just wasn't processing it. Eating the exact same calories, now I've gotten up to 200. Isn't that crazy how much of a difference it makes when you can digest something? That was huge, yeah. It's pretty wild. Okay, so these goals are lofty, but possible, but they're big goals. Now, I like the fact that you have goals and that you said you don't have time constraints and you want to do something the healthiest way possible because these are big goals, like that's a big squat, big bench and a big deadlift. And here's what happens the stronger you get. When people first start working out, strength is one of the best things to focus on. But the stronger you get, the higher the risk becomes with lifting heavier and the less of the reward you get in terms of the risk to reward ratio. For example, if you're squatting 250 and your form is off a little bit, the risk is not nearly as high as if you're squatting, let's say 450, right? So, the most important thing you can do when chasing a goal like this is to alternate heavy powerlifting style strength training, which is very effective at getting you stronger with a focus on mobility slash hypertrophy. Because what's gonna get in your way of these goals more often than not is your function in mobility and then potential instability or risk of injury. So, if you can alternate very intelligently with performance and power lift back and forth. Performance and power lift symmetry would be good even. I would even throw in some bodybuilding hypertrophy training, but basically alternate with a focus on power lifting and little by little you'll get close to this goal, maybe even hit it, but you won't hit those roadblocks that tend to hit people at this strength phase, which is like at that level, it's injury and stability. That's what stops people. What programs do you have of ours right now? So, I have the build your butt, I'm the one that I got from my wife. So, it has anabolic aesthetic and kettlebell I believe, and then I have power lift. I picked that up in January, but I haven't started it yet. I was kind of finishing the split that I'm on before I looked into it. Yeah, I would really run power lift then performance, and then he could run power lift again. He could just go keep going back and forth, and then like Salson, even like symmetry I think, to interrupt that just because, I mean it's so intensely focused, like your joints are gonna get a lot of stress, and so to constantly keep that in check, I think it's gonna be vital if you're trying to do this the healthy way. Yeah. I also think Prime Pro might be good for you in between if things start to happen. It's almost inevitable that you're going to run into some roadblocks when it comes to stability. When you're pushing those kind of numbers. At that level, okay, at that level you'll start to notice things, and you'll have to kind of troubleshoot, you'll have to take a few steps back before moving forward. To give you an example, I think I was in my early 30s, and I hit 600 pounds in the deadlift, and that was like my PR, and then throughout the rest of the time I'd been training I had that number in my mind, but I was comfortable with 500, maybe mid 500s, low 500s, and then at one point I'd try to push it, and I'd kind of tweak something, and then I'd back off and tweak something, and so I went through six months of focusing on working on what the issues were, even avoiding deadlifts for a little while, focusing on single joint exercises, and eventually I went back to pursuing that by doing these kind of micro, MAPS 15 style workouts, which I'd never tried before, and I was able to break that record at a much older age, but I had to take a lot of steps back, and so that's the process that you're gonna go through hitting those numbers, there's very few people in the world that, I mean, because it's, this is hard to understand if you follow strength people on Instagram, it looks like everybody could squat 500 pounds, and everybody could bench press 400 pounds, and everybody could deadlift 600 pounds, but the reality is that would place you, those lifts would place you in the 0.1%, maybe even smaller percent of the world, so it's gonna be a slow process, and the key is gonna be stability, functionality, and then pursuing strength, and then backing out, and the trick is gonna be not waiting until those issues come up. The temptation ahead of it, the temptation's gonna be, you're gonna run MAPS PowerLift, you're gonna see great results, you're gonna see all those probably go up, and then you're gonna wanna run it again, and you may, and the average person may run something like that again, and actually get away with it one more time, and then what'll happen is they'll be tempted to do it a third time, because they'll see gains again, and then by that third time, they've been working in that sagittal plane so much, and neglecting all the other planes and mobility work, that all of a sudden, their joints start talking to them, and then they see their hard plateau, and some sort of regression. The goal would be, okay, I'm gonna run PowerLift, I'm gonna get my gains, I'm gonna resist the temptation to run it again, I'm gonna go over, do something like MAPS Performance, which is multi-planier stuff, mobility work, do all that, not worrying about hitting PRs or anything like that at that time, then you get back into PowerLift again, and you just kind of keep cycling a good mobility focus program in between your PowerLifting cycles. To me, that would be the smartest, best way to get to there, in a healthy way to where you can sustain those type of lifts, and those are huge goals, especially for your size. You look bigger, I thought you were like 222 plus, I mean, that's 180 to 200 pounds hitting those numbers, those are legit numbers right there. Yeah, that's huge. Yeah, I really appreciate all the advice. Like, I've had some setbacks with Bench Press, specifically not so much with squat, alternating between back squat and front squat, I've been able to kind of steadily progress on that, but it's unilateral, I'm terrible, like I can probably barely split squat like 135, even though my squat's where it is, oh, wow. Working in those. Well, that's a good sign. Also, the planes is something that I haven't done much and that I haven't focused on, so. Oh, you identified it. You don't get any stronger right away. Totally. Yeah, if you focus on that. Yup, let's send you performance, and I'll send you symmetry too. I think both of those will benefit you. And you can alternate those with PowerLift, and don't wait until you start to feel something happen. The best thing you could possibly do is you feel good, and then you move into mobility and functional style training. Also, I wanna highlight what you already found out yourself. When you see that, that's actually a really good thing for you. For someone who's chasing continued strength gains and you wanna get bigger and stronger, and you see that you kinda suck at a Bulgarian split squat or whatever, and you're significantly weaker, that's actually a huge opportunity for growth and gains for you. As much as it sucks for the ego, because you gotta strip down all this weight and you know you can bilateral squat way more, the value of you sticking towards that unilateral type of movement and getting strong in it and sucking at it for a while. We're emanating a weak link in the chain. Yeah, and then when you come back to the bilateral work, you're gonna see huge improvements. Awesome. All right, thanks for calling in, man. We'll send those over to you. Absolutely, I appreciate it, guys. You got it. You know, Adam, you made a really good point that took me a long time to figure out, which is it's one thing to be stuck into plateau and to not see any glaring holes. Like, ah, everything kinda, it's hard to figure out, but when you're stuck and then you see like this big difference between, let's say, right and left side. Huge opportunity. Or a split stance versus bilateral, or dumbbells versus barbells. That's like a very easy like, oh, let me just bring that ratio up to where it probably should be and then watch what happens. I mean, that's such a good point. It is, but you know, I don't look at it that well. It's hard. Like, so obviously we're all in our 40s, so it's easy to talk about that now. If I really, if I take myself back to my 20s, and I remember the first time that I was introduced to Bulgarian split squat, it was something that I wouldn't do. I wouldn't do it, because I mean, I was so weak in the Bulgarian that I could hold 20 pound dumbbells and I was just lit up, lit up. And I was like, fuck that. You just dismiss it like you're stupid. My girlfriend's right next to me holding 15s. I got 20s and I'm like, good. I'm putting the barbell back on my back to where I should at least do some serious weight. And so I would avoid it for those reasons. And that, of course, that's the young naive side of me as I've gotten older and wiser and understand the benefits that you just highlighted. It's like, man, now I look forward to that. If I see a discrepancy in my training today where I'm like, oh shit, I'm a hell of a week right there. It's like, oh, those are gains to be had right there. That's how I see it now. Because what's the usual thing you see when people are pursuing like big numbers like this? It's like, they wanna stay in that sagittal plane. They wanna just add any kind of extra help. Either it's like, we get some kind of help support aids in terms of security around the joints or we're gonna go the pharmaceutical route. And that's what you see in like, so to be able to actually look at it from a perspective of health and like how to do this to where you're building your entire body up so it actually can withstand that amount of force. It's a completely different playbook. Yeah, one thing that I did with that, Adam, was that I started doing, I'd say probably over the last, maybe a couple of years, is I only lift really heavy when I work out alone. When I'm in here or in my garage and when I'm in front of other people now, I make it a point to make it about technique form and getting the pump. And I do that on purpose because it trains my ego. Otherwise I get caught up in the line. Instead of peacocking. Yeah, and then you get caught up in shitty form and I don't wanna do that exercise or whatever, but now it's like, I will only lift heavy. I will only test my strength when I'm in here and it's just us or I'm by myself because then it's like my, my calf training hack. Yes. Where I wear shorts for a year. Yeah. I can force myself to wear shorts every single day. It's like, okay, deal with this insecurity. Our next caller is Anano from South Korea. Anano, how can we help you? Hi guys, so excited and nervous right now. So is Justin. Don't worry. I'm always nervous. We're just struggling with severe depression and I have no idea how much you're helping me and your programs. You guys basically like brought me back to life. So thank you for that. Oh, thank you. And I will question simple and I only have one question. So I'm anabolic twice and now I'm running a maps study. In difference from with maps anabolic, I feel that I don't enough, if that makes sense, the workouts I don't fit for any fatigue as if I've worked out all at the same time. I've worked out at all. The thing is that I myself during the sets, my deadlifts and squats and then increased challenging when I'm doing that, like as I move towards the end. So I don't really feel any kind of effect of explaining it. I don't feel like anything. Should I like increase my weights or on the tempo or like what shall I do? Okay, so let me anabolic. She's not feeling no aesthetic. So, okay. So Anano, just you're cutting out a little bit. So I'm just going to re kind of re say what you said a little bit just for the audience. First off, I'm really happy that we could help you during those dark and hard times. That is like when we hear stuff like that, that's that really it's all about. Yeah, that really drives it. I appreciate you sharing that. Now your question essentially is you're following maps aesthetic, you're getting stronger, you finish your set, you in your question, you said you're resting for 90 seconds as recommended, but you just don't feel tired and fatigued. And so your question is basically, are you doing something wrong? Should you push yourself harder in order to get that feeling of fatigue? No, in fact, if you're getting stronger, that is all the evidence you need that you're moving in the right direction. Number two, this is strength training. This is not endurance or stamina training. Now, if I was training you for endurance or stamina, we would definitely want to push that kind of fatigue that you're asking about. But when it comes to strength training, ideally, especially if you're getting stronger, you should feel pretty fresh. Yeah, like energized. To get to your next set. So it's not the same as like circuit training or hit training or cardio type training. You shouldn't feel tons of fatigue. And if you're getting stronger, it means you're moving in the right direction. So this is actually very, very good what you're experiencing. This is great. All right, thank you so much. So everything is okay. I should keep going like this. You're doing good, sounds like. Sounds like you're getting stronger. If you keep getting stronger, you are completely on the right track. You're moving, this is excellent. And no, you shouldn't feel beat up or fatigued after your workout. In fact, what we say on the show all the time is if you're doing strength training, you should feel good at the end of your workout. Not like you beat yourself up. That's actually a good indicator. It means you're utilizing the type of intensity that you should probably utilize most of the time with your training to get long-term successful results. Now that being said, I'd like to send you a free program just because you called in, Anano. You did maps in a ball, like you're doing maps aesthetic. Mass performance. Yeah, do you have mass performance? I don't. I actually have time crunch bundle and advanced and skinny guy bundle. Oh, good. We'll send you performance. Now here's the thing about performance. There's a phase in performance because it's an athletic minded training program where you are training for stamina. So there's one of the phases there where you will feel that fatigue. And that's totally normal because you're training in a particular phase for stamina. But we'll send that to you and you can follow that one after aesthetic if you want. Thank you so much. Can I just ask a tiny question about Anabolic? Sure, yeah. It's okay. Yes. So I know guys, you guys always and the program also has trigger sessions but I ran it twice and I was struggling with my mental health and it was really hard for me to push myself to do trigger sessions. So even though I did not do them I still lost weight, gain muscle and lost body fat. So how much importance does it have these trigger sessions? It'll add about 5% to the program. You know, 95% of the program is a foundational workout. And 5% is not a little. Like there isn't a supplement in the world you could take that would give you 5% improvement. So you'll notice if you get the trigger session. Your recovery will bounce back a lot faster if you do apply those and it actually will contribute towards the next workout you'll actually feel a bit more strength going into it. Yeah, so it's definitely there but it's not the majority. You know, trigger sessions are there to kind of add a little turbo to the program. It's not a lot of intensity. So you just keep it very low intensity, very moderate. Yeah, thank you so much. You got it. It's always great to listen to you guys. Thank you so much. You hang in there, huh? Thank you, it's good to see you smile. Thank you. Thank you. You got it. That always hits me when I hear someone say something like that. Cause we're not, I mean, our intention is to help people with fitness but to hear that. All the way from South Korea, huh? Yeah, all the way from over there. Is that why it was choppy? Yeah, it takes a while for the signal to get across the ocean. Something like that. Do you know how that works, Adam? Yeah, no idea. All that cable they lay here. They're making it up. The dinosaurs. I had no idea. You know what? I tell you, you don't hear this too much with people asking us questions cause they listen to the show. This is a common question people, clients that I would train would have is they'd be like, well I'm not like breathing, gasping for air. I'm not like sweating off my, you know, off my butt like, what's going on? It's like, this is strength training. It's not the same. If you, you should feel fresh for your next set. This is exactly what we wanna do. This one and the scale not moving. Which is so funny to me. You know, it's like, I mean, and it's, I'm back on my kick right now. So I'm experiencing both these things right now. And it just reminds me of like, this is like one of the biggest struggles for people that are getting started is, one, I've been going, I'm dialed on my diet training every day for the last month and the scale is staying the same. The average person would get super frustrated. Where I go, that's like the perfect place to be. Right. And then same, I'm weaker than I've ever been, but every workout I'm getting a little bit stronger. And so it's like, if I'm getting stronger, my weight is staying the same. Like, I'm in that. You know what's happening. Yeah, I'm in this beautiful sweet spot. But boy, that really gets people, you know what I'm saying? Oh, I'm not killing myself. I'm not super sore. I'm not like, you know, it's like, they feel like they need to be crushed, exhausted, or super sore on the workout side. And then on the scale side, they feel like they need to see this swing up or down depending on what their goal is. And the truth is, you actually want to see neither one of those. You want to see this nice, steady gains and strength. And feel good. And you want to feel good. You don't want to feel exhausted afterwards. And you want to see your scale kind of stay the same. And then you have this beautiful exchange of losing body fat and building muscle. And that's a great place to be. But it's such a challenging place to be mentally. Yeah. And the other side of that is, or they'll realize what you're saying. And then they'll say something like this. Well, if I go harder, I'll make it happen even faster. You can press a little bit more. Yeah, dude. And then they really screwed up. Our next caller is Jeff from Pennsylvania. Jeff, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey, what's up guys? How you doing? What's happening? So, so my wife actually turned me on to this show. I watched more like bodybuilding, you know, a lot of bodybuilding podcasts and you guys have quickly become like my number one go-to podcast. So it's pretty cool. She's a keeper. Yeah, she is. So, so my questions are, I have a couple of different topics, I guess. So a lot of, like I have, I guess I have a form, but why things I have a form of like body dysmorphia where I can't constantly get like, you know, hey, you look huge. You look this, you know, like you look that. I just, I don't believe it myself. You know what I mean? Yep. So, so I'm trying to like, diet down with, with carbs and I can never seem to like, to get a good diet or stay consistent with the diet with carbohydrates. So I cut them out and, and I do good. I do fine. Last year I cut from like 240 down to 207. And that was probably at the expense of some muscle loss. So I just, I have a hard time like sticking to the diet with carbs due to my, my job, I work in corrections. So I'm, I just want to, I'm obsessed with being as big as possible, you know? And, and so I just, I have like a hard time just, just staying on a diet with carbs. So like I said, I cut them out. I do like a keto diet and that seems to work for me. How would you, I just, I don't want to give up. I'm having a hard time like maintaining the size that I put on with the carbs, without the carbs. Yeah. So good question. So I'm going to just add something to what you said. You said it works for you. It doesn't. It's not something that works for you. So, and you can cut with carbs. I mean, I'm sure you're aware of that, right? Like you could just cut your calories, keep the protein high and still drop body fat. You could also cycle on which I love to do. Yeah. You could also carb cycle. The challenge with, when you're somebody that has a little bit of body dysmorphia which I can completely relate to, with cutting carbs is you lose water and muscle fullness and you just feel smaller, especially in those beginning stages, you don't get a good pump. You just start to feel smaller. Your strength goes down because the carbs, you know, you lose the glycogen. So you're losing, you're not as strong in the gym. And it really starts to mess with your head. It really does start to mess with your head. So that's the challenge with cutting carbs as a way to get leaner. So you can cut without having to cut carbs or you could cycle the carbs. The other thing is, you know, because I had the similar issue that you have when I would get leaner, I would just feel smaller. Yeah. Is that I ignored, I literally ignored the feelings of feeling smaller and I just continued to get leaner. And at some point you get to a body fat, now this is not necessarily what's gonna help you with your body dysmorphia, if anything it might make it worse. But I got to a point where I started to really get lean and then it would work out in like a tank top and I would look bigger, okay? But you gotta get down to like 10, 9%, 8% body fat for that start to happen. And then you start to develop a relationship with getting lean where you're like, oh, I look big when I'm lean. Now that's not gonna solve the body dysmorphia issue. That's gonna kind of help you with the get lean issue. The body dysmorphia issue is much more complex and that's gonna take a lot of work, personal work on yourself and maybe even working with somebody who can help walk you through that because that's something that's much more challenging. So I love to carb cycle when I cut like this and for sure the most challenging part is there's about, I don't know, almost every show I ever did, I'd say there's about a three to four week phase that I don't like the way I look. I mean, I'm like, I've been in a cut already for like a month or more and like Sal saying you're depleted and when you're depleted of carbohydrates, you gotta understand that our muscle bellies are all carbs and water, right? It's all glucose and water. So if you pull all the carbohydrates out, it's gonna flatten what we call in bodybuilding the flat look. So it gives you this kind of flat look and for guys that like being big that like myself and probably like you, that really fucks with your head. You're like, man, I'd rather be a little fluffier and have all this fullness to me because I feel better and look better. And to Sal's point, I knew I just had to keep going. I had to keep going past that point. Now what would help me is every third or fourth day I would refeed with lots of carbohydrates and I'd fill all out and then I'd have this great workout and then it would remind me of like, oh, I'm not a lot smaller, I'm just depleted. And that's part of the process of getting kind of shredded is you stay in this depleted phase for extended periods of time because that's what forces the body over to utilize fat as its primary source of fuel. And every time you come out of that, it then it goes jumps back into using glucose. And so I would jump out of it for one day out of the week just so I could see my body all filled out and go like, oh, okay, I'm not little, but I'm depleted. And so I like that idea of cycling every three to four weeks for the mental aspect of how I look. And it helped me through that process. And then I got over this like, you know, it's crazy and it took probably a few times of getting really lean and shredded and enough people walking up to me after I'd lose 30 pounds, they'd go, damn, dude, how'd you get so big? I'd be like, what? I'm 30 pounds lighter than what I was at the beginning of my cut. But you look better, you look bigger, you look better. And so it's kind of working through that mental process. But if you've never carb cycled, I mean, I'm a big fan of doing that, then going pure keto. I didn't go every three, every third day. Every third to fourth day. I actually like for the traditional way of carb cycling is three days, but I like going too low, medium, and then a high. And that was like, that was my formula for me, like that I thought worked really well and I'd see myself lean out. And then all I needed was one day a week of me filling back out to remind myself, like, okay, I'm not, I'm not tiny, I'm not small, it's just I'm depleted, that's all. Yeah, so I have tried carbs, like I have tried like Justin Harris's carbs like in protocol and just different things. And I just, I get so like bloated on the carb days, you know what I mean? Like I just get like to the point where I'm, you know, I'm nauseous, like, you know, I have thrown up, like just like, you know. You went too far. Yeah, I was gonna say, have you, have you played, have you paid attention to certain types of carbohydrates? Cause that's another thing that I over competing. Or even the amount. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Maybe, maybe the amount is just too much. Like it's just a lot of white rice, you know, like, and just, I just feel like I'm, and then I kind of lose control. Like I start to like binge and slide. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's, so that's kind of, that was one of the things I saw a lot in the competitive world is bodybuilders that would on their quote unquote, re-feed days, they'd be eaten shit. They'd eat all kinds of stuff where I stayed disciplined. You know, it was always sweet potatoes, white rice and like maybe quinoa. Also keep this in mind, Jeff, like what would be considered a carb low day? It can really vary depending on the individual and their sensitivity to carbohydrates. That's right. Especially for somebody who says that they've ran low to no carb for extended period of time. So when I was competing, I got to a point where I could eat 600 grams of carbs and my body loved it, absorbed it and I looked great on it. Today, I can't eat more than about 250 to 300 because I've completely flipped the way I eat and for an extended period of time, I've been low carb. So now my body has recalibrated to that. So now if I wanted to do a quote unquote, re-feed day or what I'd call a high carb day, now it'd be 350, maybe 400. I couldn't, if I hit 600, I'd probably throw up. Even for, even for me, my high, my carb low days, loading days were like 175 for me. And I'm just very sensitive to carbohydrates because I would experience what you would get. I'd get that nausea from the insulin spike, the glucose spike, I'd get bloating. So it was like, 150, 175 was my high carb day. So you're just going too hard on that carb load day. Yeah, I was probably around 500 for a high carb day. Yeah, yeah, that's probably just too much. Especially for a guy like you who actually has run low to no carb too. Yeah, if you're going like 50 grams of carbs on your keto days or 70 grams of carbs, try 150, 200 grams of carbs on your load days. Yeah, you feel. Okay. I want to have Doug, because I'm really curious to help you through this process too, because this is where you can't really just take somebody else's advice, even our advice, and just like, oh, the guy said, eat this, this, and this, I'm going to go do it. We've got to try some things to figure out where that sweet spot is for you. So I want Doug to put you in the private forum, and then I'd love to hear you playing with some of these different protocols, and then giving us feedback, so I can hear how you're feeling when you do certain things, and then give even better advice. Okay. Jeff, one more thing. You're a correctional officer, and you've got the whole, you mentioned the body dysmorphia thing. What helped me at one point was doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu, because in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I actually got to fight with other guys, and I could see that size played somewhat of a role, but my technique played more of a role, and it made me feel more confident at smaller sizes and not be so obsessed with being big, because I could actually test it, right? And so just one thing to keep in mind, because I know with your job, there's always the threat of physical altercations, so that's just another thing you may want to consider. You could always hang out too with smaller people, that helps. Doug hangs out with all the little people, that's all his friends, his best friends are all like, you know, five, one, 180 pounds. I do. And that's the thing. And as soon as I see, like, I have four kids, so me and my wife and four kids are in a picture, I take up half the picture, that's what I'm like, oh, wait. I am a big dude. Maybe I'm wrong. Good deal, Jeff. Well, keep us posted. We're Doug's gonna throw you in our private forum, so you're in there. Make sure you tag me when you post in there, but just keep me posted as you're working through that process, as far as playing with different diets and foods, like keep us posted, and then we'll communicate with you in there. Yeah, my other question was, I just, I've been training for like a good eight years. Well, you know, good weight training for eight years, it saved my life completely. I was into some dark places, and I believe it really pulled me out of that. So I've been training like five to six days a week, really hard, and a lot of volume, a lot of intensity, more like I said, bodybuilding style training. I just feel like I kind of plateaued, like hit like a stalemate, you know? So I started running aesthetic, you know, in the last few weeks, and I really liked it, and I feel that the focus days helped me to beat that anxiety of having to be at the gym five to six days a week. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So like I get like, I feel like I have to be there. I gotta be there, I gotta be, I gotta go, gotta go, and I just can't like, I tried to do anabolic before, and I just didn't really care for the trigger days. I just needed that, like, needed to be at the gym. Yeah, focus sessions are perfect for that. I mean, that's why I love the aesthetic, bro. I mean, that was, that program was written and inspired by my competing days, and so I like that too. I like being, just being at the gym, you know? But you know, with a guy like you, you know, you have to, the thing where you gotta check yourself is to really learn to listen to your body, and it's okay to go to the gym seven days a week, just learning to modify the intensity. You can't hammer it seven days a week, or else your body's gonna push back, and you're gonna be stuck in a hard plateau. And I've learned this lesson so many times over decades of training, of like, I always end up kind of pushing those limits, and then I'm always reminded, when I peel back a little bit, and run a program that is like an anabolic, or a MAPS-15, or something that's way later, that I don't like, per se, doing, but then my body all of a sudden responds to it, and it's always that reminder of, oh, I was redlining for too long, so keep that in mind when you have that tendency that your body will probably thank you to pull back on intensity every now and then. Yeah, I need that, I need to pull back. Like I did a D-load week, listen to you guys, finally got me to do a D-load week, and I appreciate that. But it was hard, it was really, it's really hard for me, to get there and do the 50% intensity, 50% weight, and just try to keep everything under control. And I just have a hard time not being at the gym, since it's such a big part of my life. But I think, you know, I think Aesthetic works for me. You guys think that that would be a good program for me to continue. I actually think your MAPS had a bulk advance, Sal. Oh yeah. Where he's having to have like- Oh yeah, you would love an anabolic advance. I think if anabolic advanced, you would actually really like. And it programs the D-load week. That's a six day a week program. Yeah, it's a six day a week, and it programs D-loading in there. So I actually think that you would love this one. Oh yeah, you'll like it. We'll have Doug send that to you also. Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, check that out. But I do think Aesthetic is cool too, so I mean, if you're in the middle of Aesthetic, maybe finish it and then go to anabolic advance. But I think anabolic advance you're gonna really like. I think it'd be really good for you. Okay, cool. Right on. Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate that. Thanks. You got it. Yeah, sometimes when people hear body dysmorphia, but not the common like, you know, I'm too fat and you lose weight, and they see it like a dude that's like jacked or whatever, he's like, I'm not big enough. They don't believe you. Yeah, not only not believe it, that just, you know, I've heard people saying it's silly, you know, but body dysmorphia is body dysmorphia. It's literally you cannot be, well, nobody's objective when they're, you know, looking at themselves, but boy, are you far from objective. You know what? I would make the case, you know, if you were an outside person that's like a therapist that's into health and everything, and you're not in the sphere at all, you'd probably say that a good percentage, if not most, all people that are hammering those weights and got big boulder shoulders and the arm like all have. Oh yeah. Cause that is not a reflection of like true, true health. No. We all aspire to look that and when we highlighted on magazines and we praise these bodies that look like that, but it's not a shining example of health and most people that train and diet so hard to look that way have a bit of an obsession that way. I would say more than a bit. Yeah, and I would say, now granted, you know, if you're gonna be addicted to something, you're gonna be obsessed about something, it's probably one of the best decisions, you know? But the truth is there's definitely a little bit of body dysmorphia in all of us to, you know, be going to the gym that much, that often to keep pursuing better shoulders, better legs. I mean, we're all already at that healthy point. And if anything, we probably need more of recuperative. No, I make no qualms. I mean, in fact, I think, I don't remember where I said this. I think I said this on another podcast where I said, you know, they asked me about my workouts and I gave the disclaimer, like here, quick disclaimer, I trade performance, I trade strength, I trade muscle building for longevity. So the way I work out is not pro necessarily longevity and health. I consider that, but if I'm being quite honest, that's not the thing that I chase most often and it's always a trade-off. And, you know, I've kind of accepted it and working through it and, you know, I'm sure I'll get better at it with time, but you're right, Adam. I mean, it's something that I think everyone's dealing with. Here's the beauty, though, of going to the gym and training yourself. You work through it and you eventually start to, if you stick to it long enough, slowly start to figure this out. You really do because it requires work. It's not the same as getting plastic surgery. It's not the same as, you know, taking a drug or whatever. You have to go in and train yourself and work on things. And that is a different process. It builds different relationships and, again, if you stick to it long enough, you really start to figure this out. And it might take you until you're 50 or 60 to do so, but you will eventually start to figure this out. Our next caller is Lisa from Washington, DC. Hey, Lisa, how can we help you? Hey, so before I tell you my question, I wanna give you guys an audio compliment and I know you focus hard on your audio anyway, but I have a next-level compliment for you because I have cochlear implants and podcasts have just never been audible to me. I have to have subtitles or be able to lip read. So I just kind of wrote it off as a medium, but I gave you guys a listen and I can hear you fricking perfectly and I don't need a single caption. So I gotta bet that with the size of your audience, you've been made a podcast accessible to hard-of-hearing people that never before could listen. Oh, that's amazing. You just made Doug's, Doug's been having a hard day today, a real hard day. So you just made his day right now. That's awesome. Good. Yeah, yeah. What do you got for us? Okay, my question. So I am a bikini competitor and I know a lot of your advice, you say it's kind of a gen pop and you give the caveat that the 1% of crazy bodybuilders out there might not apply to, but with one thing that you say that I think applies across the board is that breaking your workouts into 15 minute increments benefits everybody, no matter how advanced of a lifter you are. So I have, I want to do that and I currently train about between 60 to 75 minutes on my weightlifting workouts. So I wanna break it apart, but because I'm competing, I have a big emphasis on how I structure my food for the workouts. And I've been doing simple high-carb foods around my workouts and then saving fat and fiber and all the denser stuff for the other meals. And I have my creatine and my pre-workout before the workout. So how would you structure the food if I'm breaking it up into 15 minute increments? And as a secondary thing I've been wondering about there is how much of this carb around workout philosophy is based on giving you energy and recovery versus muscle gain and muscle retention. Because I get that if it's about recovery and energy, you probably don't even need it if you're breaking up your workouts into 15 minutes. I love this question. I've been waiting for somebody to ask this question. Yeah, this is a funny question right here. Okay, so let's talk about what actually is important first in this regard. So first off to clarify, you'll be taking a normal workout and instead of doing it in one shot, you'll be doing several workouts in the same day where the workouts broken up, correct? Okay. So let's talk about what's actually important, which would be the pre-workout. This is where this question starts to make sense is what do I do with my pre-workout if I'm gonna workout three times a day and I can't take three pre-workouts. I'd be an insane amount of caffeine or whatever. My answer to that is you don't take a pre-workout or you just take it for the first one and the rest of them there is no pre-workout. So there's really no way around that unless you wanna break up your pre-workout dose in which case you might be taking the caffeine too late in the day, which might influence your sleep. You won't need it though. You've already expressed this Sal many times. What you notice about short workouts is you get energized. That's what's kinda cool about the short workouts is you don't have that same kind of fatigue feeling that you get when you do a 75 minute workout where you start to drop off. That's what I did. I would take the pre-workout in the morning and then the rest of the day I would just minus the pre-workout. Crating doesn't matter, just take a post one of the workouts. That's also splitting hairs, doesn't make a big difference. Now nutrition, nutrition with the carbs and when I kinda cycle in or put in my energy and take with my workouts, that only matters when you're doing really long, really grueling workouts. The data's pretty clear on this. It actually makes no difference with, it actually makes no difference with most strength training workouts. Now it makes a difference with like hard, endurance, stamina type workouts that are long but even most strength workouts, traditional strength workouts, it actually doesn't make that big of a difference let alone three short workouts. So what I would say is the only thing to consider is you don't wanna eat necessarily right before your workout because then you have a full stomach while you're doing the workout. But aside from that, the rest of the day doesn't matter. You don't need to eat post-workout, you don't need to have carbs during your workout. Makes zero difference if you have the carbohydrates after or if you have it two hours later, makes zero difference. What would dictate when or how I eat would be how far apart these are spread out, right? So let's say we're gonna do it in three segments. They're each gonna be about 25 minutes or 30 minutes long, right? If I'm doing my math right, about 25, 35 minutes long. If you have four hours in between the first one and the second one, you definitely, I would try and eat right in the middle of that, right? So I get refueled, I get a good hour to two hour digestion before I get into that next workout. I think that's about the only thing that I would probably try in somewhat time. Like I would try and avoid eating like a big meal like right before I go back into another 15. Although, like Sal's point, it's probably not gonna affect that much. So you could kind of play with this. You could see, you could eat your total normal eating schedule and just stay on it and then just schedule your workouts how they fall. You'll probably feel fine, have no issues. But if you notice like, oh wow, one of my workouts landed right after a big meal and I felt a little lethargic getting into my workout, then push the meal back a little bit or skip the meal completely before the workout and get it post workout. So as far as the timing with what you're doing, it is not going to affect or hinder gains whatsoever. Yeah, it really is gonna come off a personal preference on how you liked to eat during these little broken up workouts. Yeah, the way I would do it is let's say if I did three 20 to 25 minute workouts is I would do the first one before breakfast, the second one before lunch and the third one before dinner. That's how I would do it. Just cause I would work, I would feel better that way than doing it right after breakfast, lunch and dinner. Thank you. I will do that. And is there any rhyme or reason at all to doing like more of the compound movement at certain times or just whatever my personal preference is? So you may find, now here's what you, there's two things you can do. You can take your normal workout and just divide it into three workouts. So wherever it falls, it falls. So you do your first workout and then you see, oh, I finished these exercises. Here's the next set of exercises for the second workout. And then here's the next set of exercise for the third workout. That's totally fine. But here's what's probably gonna happen. You're gonna notice, you're gonna feel stronger. You're gonna feel more recovered. And those, you know how it is with your 75 minute workouts. The exercises at the end are the easier single joint, get a finisher type exercises. You may find that because you feel so good, you're gonna be like, I actually wanna do more compound lifts. So you could play around with this a little bit. But you can also just break up the workout that you normally do, which would be totally fine. I mean, I would personally put my compound lifts at the time that you've probably, since you've been lifting for a while already, that you have figured out is your favorite lifting. For example, if I was doing the breakfast workout, the lunch workout and the dinner workout is how I was gonna split my routine. I know my body already well enough that I'm gonna perform my compound lifts best at the second workout than I would the first workout. Because I'm not a good morning lifter. I just, I'm like, Justin and I both take until noon to wake up. So if I'm coming in and I'm trying to hit heavy squats at six or seven or eight a.m., it's not gonna feel my best. But by noon or one of my second workout, I'm probably gonna feel my best. So this is gonna be another personal preference I would suggest playing with it. Do one time, try your heavy hard compound lifts first, see how it feels, then do it second and then do it last and then let that drive. Now, here's what I did. Here's what I did that I've messed with all of these, okay? Here's what I did that I got the best results from. Instead of doing the first set of exercises with the first workout and the second one for the second, which is fine, you could do that. Or instead of doing like what Adam said, what I would do is in, let's say I was doing, let's say the total workout was 12 sets, for example, four exercises, three sets each. I would do one set of every exercise, every workout. And I got amazing results with that. So every workout looked the same. I just did one-third the volume of every exercise. So it was like, let's say it was squats, bench, overhead press, row or whatever. I would do that again the second time, that again the third time. I would just do one-third the sets the first time, one-third the sets the second time, one-third the sets the third time. And I got, because of the frequency of each workout and the way that it stimulated my muscles, I got such great results doing that. Would you then have to warm up and prime for each one, each session? No, I actually found that I did that for the first one and I felt fine the second and third time. I actually, it was one of the strangest feelings is I would jump into the second workout and the third workout and it's like I was already primed and warmed up because I had worked out. You don't really allow yourself to fatigue that way. No. Yeah, so it's like, yeah, you don't really have to consider that as much. So it's like the warmup is basically you're just going through it and you're strong to the point where you're not even feeling fatigued. It was really weird. Like I just, the first workout, I'd have to do my priming, warming up. Then the second one I'd get into under the bar and I'd be like, whoa, I feel great. And the third workout, wow, I feel great. It was really, really interesting. So, but you know, if you've never trained like this before, give yourself a week or two to kind of like get used to it. Oh, at least that. And I would suggest trying kind of all of our, you know, let's have Doug put you in our forum because I would love to hear, this is such a fun question and the fact that you're high level type of person who's been training for a while at a competitive level. You'd be a fun person to experiment this with and I'd love to hear your feedback as you try all of them out, what you're noticing. This is cool. Okay. I'd love to give it to you. All right. Thanks for the compliment, by the way. I appreciate that. Thank you. You got it, Lisa. Right. Most people don't, can't do this, right? Right, right. This is not a novel question. But dude, I, you know, it was, it's the weirdest. So you had, you had better, you had better. Yes. That's interesting. It was really, remember I told you guys, I would even, I would even do it more than three times in a day. I would do like a few sets every other hour. But it was like the same exercises each time. And it's really strange how your body adapt, actually you get stronger as the day goes on. It's going to take a very unique person to I think have that same experience as you because you have probably a better ability to get right in the groove of something. Or one of the perks of, you know, separating exercises by the workout is you get three sets to kind of get in the groove where you are, you're saying basically by the second exercise, you're able to get under that barbell squat and it's like you're- I didn't expect it. Zero one set is a working set. It's really weird. Yeah. It's very, very strange. Like literally if someone's listening right now you could do, you know, three sets of squats three times a day in the day and watch how you feel with the second and third workout. And there's actually studies that show that priming and warming up, like the effects of it last for like two or three hours. It's not like it has to happen right before there's some effects that linger for a little while. So- It makes sense. But I mean my tendency would be to just what Adam said, because it's like the morning I'm like, I just want to like kind of put in the work but then like around noon or like one o'clock is where I for sure feel my strongest and I would be more inclined to lift heavy and do my compound. So when I have done this, I've done a not a formal way of doing this. Like so I have done like this mobility-esque functional type exercises early when I don't need a lot of strength and I'm really kind of, it's like almost like I'm priming the body and I'm kind of waking it all up and getting a little bit of a pump but not really training hard. And then the second workout is the one where I'm like, okay, this is where I'm going to load. This is the one where I'm going to try and, you know, hit my deadlift or my squat or like a big compound lift. And that's because I know, I know that I need to have a meal or two at least in me for me to really feel a good workout. What's what was most strange about experimenting with this was at the end of the day, I had done so much volume that normally have I had I done that much volume in one workout I would have felt like I overdid it. But by the end of the day, I felt far from overdoing it. I was like, wow, I feel like in the next day I felt pretty damn good. And I had strength gains almost immediately with like two or three days later. You know, this is also what I really like about this conversation is how unique and different all of us are. And you could do a study to try and prove someone's point is more effective here. Like, and this is just an example of our space and what we do and why people should caution people to like take a study and go like, oh, this is the best way to do it because well, what if you just respond different to, you know, food timing or- And you will. And you will, right? And all that stuff matters. This is why it's good to take that, like take information that we get from good research and use it as a baseline but to not be afraid to kind of venture out a little bit of that and experiment with it yourself because what we might find, she may have a whole different, you know, way of breaking. Her protocol may look completely different. Yeah, yeah. Maybe she does all the crazy heavy stuff at the beginning and then she tapers off or she's, maybe she waits all the way till the end of the night. Yeah, the end of the night. Well, she's the right person because she's a competitor. So she's been trying for a while. Yeah, she's measuring, tracking. So yeah, it'd be good for her. Look, if you like Mind Pump, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out all of our free guides and information that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump Justin. I'm at Mind Pump DeStefano and Adam is at Mind Pump Adam. Today we're going to teach you everything you need to know to build a strong, well-developed chest. When I think of weak points and areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time, chest was up there with the work. Yeah, it was for me. It was for me for sure. I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body. I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because of the form and technique.