 All right, all you fitness-minded, athletic-minded, buffed people, sodium is your friend. It's probably one of the most overlooked, organic aids. It will improve performance, strength, and pumps, and even can improve cognitive function. I know they say sodium is bad for you, but they're wrong, unless your doctor specifically tells you to lower your sodium intake, studies do show that higher sodium intakes probably offer health benefits, especially if you exercise. That's right, salt that steak, mother... What? That went hard. Yeah, you know what's funny? You look at the... So let me cover first why there are studies that show that sodium can be connected to poor health outcomes. These studies don't control for processed food consumption. So processed foods all are very high sodium. Anytime you buy something boxed or in a wrapper, one of the ingredients that improves palatability and shelf life is sodium. And you would be surprised how high a sodium processed foods are. So when they look at data and they say, oh, the people who consume the most sodium have the worst health, what they're actually looking at are people who consume a lot of heavily processed foods. That's eating a lot of calories, a lot of other things that aren't healthy, and then people who eat heavily processed foods. A lot of them also probably don't exercise and all that stuff. But when you parse all that out and control for it, what you find is that higher sodium intakes seem to be better for a lot of different things, especially for athletic performance. So it's not a bad thing. In fact, it's one of the things, if you eat a whole food diet and you exercise properly, you probably should make sure that you are aware of adding sodium to your diet, either in the form of electrolyte powders or adding lots of salt to your food. You'll actually see a performance improvement for most people. Yeah, if you eat ultra processed food, it's going to be a rapid increase to where your RDA is, you're already going to hit your and exceed your RDA for salt, like almost like after one meal. One meal, one meal at a time. So I understand like that's sort of the general public. And so it's like, you kind of have to kind of cater towards that audience of like, in terms of like people that don't tend to lean towards those ultra processed foods very often, like sorts of very vital mineral for you to include in your diet. Yeah, the conversations lean so heavily in that direction that health and fitness people don't even realize that they're, because you would think like, oh, I'm salting my food, so I'm okay. But from going from somebody who was, let's say, not following any sort of a diet, eating the standard American diet, which is heavily processed, you take tons and tons of sodium. Then all of a sudden you decide, oh, I'm going to get on my health kick. I'm going to start eating nothing but whole foods. And I'm going to enjoy and salt it. The dramatic difference between that. You're still low. You lowered your weight. You're not, you're low. Yeah. And so, and I don't think that's communicated enough. It wasn't even to me, like I didn't ever really pay. In fact, if you eat nothing but whole foods, I don't even know if you could over salt your food. No, it would be difficult. It would be really difficult. The amount that you would have to pour, the amount of like table salt that you would have to, or Himalayan pink salt, whatever salt you're using, that you would have to put on your steak and potatoes and whatever your eat rice, whatever you're eating, it would be, it would like be disgusting for it to even catch up to what is naturally put in these processed foods. Wouldn't you say? Yeah. A full teaspoon of table salt is about two, roughly two grams of sodium. Himalayan salt or mineral salt is going to be less sodium because they have other minerals in there. That's why you want to, you want to go with those. They're much more balanced. So I don't think anybody puts a teaspoon of salt on their steak or their potatoes or anything like that. Now you eat a bag of chips, you're hitting that no problem. Or a box of crackers or even things you don't think have a lot of sodium, things that are sweet, they add a lot of sodium to them as well. So you'd have to add a lot. But athletes probably should consume on the low end, low end three grams, probably like five, especially if you sweat and you work out a day. And sometimes you live in like anywhere there's humidity and you're outdoors and you're very active, man. Not even just athletes, wouldn't you argue to someone who just trains hard and consistent in the weight room? Yeah, absolutely. Even if you're not considered an athlete. You add into that if you use a sauna or a steam room, you work out, you don't eat heavily processed foods. So you take the average fitness enthusiast or a person who just doesn't eat heavily processed foods, you have them add a thousand milligrams of sodium with some balance in there, some potassium magnesium, right? You have them add like Element Company we work with. They make electrolyte powder. One packet is a thousand milligrams. Have them add one a day and ask them how they feel. And they'll almost always feel like they have better performance. And it's a very cheap supplement. Immediate energy boost. It's pretty crazy. You brought up the sauna. I notice a huge difference if I do like the sauna and I forget to take my element. Probably dizzy and... Oh, I get headaches. Yeah. Yeah. If I do not, if I don't hydrate, right? If I don't drink water and load up on sodium before I get in there and if I spend a minute over 20 minutes inside that thing, I'll get ahead of it. Same thing with my jacuzzi at home. I've made that mistake before. Just not even thinking about it. It's like, oh, it's a weekend. Maybe I didn't train and take my element that day. I haven't had a lot of food. I get in the jacuzzi at night with Katrina. We're sitting in there talking. 20, 30 minutes goes by. I'll come out and I'll have a massive headache if I didn't take the time to actually hydrate and then take some sodium in. It used to happen to my dad. He went to the gym and did the sauna. He came home and all day he's like, I did it too long. I feel terrible. And I said, because I gave some elements to my parents, I said throw a packet in there, drink it, and then see if you feel a difference. Huge difference. 10 minutes. Yeah. In 10 minutes, he goes, oh my god, I feel so much better. I'm like your electrolyte balance was off. Your body can't operate properly. It's such a cheap supplement that has so much potential benefit. And you'll know right away that one of the challenges with supplements is you'll take it and you'll have to take it for a while to see if there's any difference. If you use electrolyte powder, you'll know within the first time you use it if it's something that's going to... You'll tell right away. You'll take it while you're working out and you'll notice I feel a lot better. And most athletes benefit from... Some of the first studies, by the way, done on athletes were done on electrolytes. Gatorade was based off of an original... It was a University of Florida, right? That made this electrolyte powder or drink that they gave to their athletes and they had better performance. By the way, the original Gatorade... Is that the origin of Gatorade? That's why it's called... That's why it's called Gator. That's why it's called Gator. I didn't know that. Really? The original Gatorade was high in sodium, but they were giving their football players... You just powder, yeah. They added it into the big jugs of water. Now it's turned into a commercial bullshit of nothing. Yeah, that's all sugar and... I imagine they have so many lines though. They've got to have a line so that's more for athletes, right? I mean, they've got so many now. They did. I mean, even when I played, they had these big powdered options that weren't super sugar-based. It was more on the higher sodium side that they would dump in. They got it, right? Because it was a real threat. The humidity was just like... You'd lose a good 10, 20 pounds just being out there for practice. So they had to make sure they counted for that. That's crazy, really. Oh, yeah. That's insane. Oh, you could easily. One of those four-hour type of practices are big, yeah. They weighed us in before every practice and made sure that we're hydrated. Because it was just like... 10 pounds. That's crazy. You'd lose five to 10 pounds. Yeah, no problem. And it was crazy because one of my first games playing in St. Louis, it was 90% humidity. It was almost like 100 degrees. And so you just walking outside, you just felt like you're in a steam room or something. And I passed out after my first half and was puking. And I had no idea what I was in for. So it was vital that you had that. That's crazy. Yeah, unless you're specifically told by your doctor, then you're probably okay. Especially, again, if you work out and you eat whole natural foods, this is not an issue. And again, I want to be very clear. The studies that show negative effects from sodium don't parse out the fact that they're even eating heavily processed foods. That's what you're seeing. What you see is, oh, high sodium group, heavily processed food group. And it's not the sodium. It's the fact that they're eating these heavily processed foods. Now, everybody else, it's a new program, new program launch. That means it's on sale. So check this out. If you click on the link at the bottom of the description below or go to mapsoldtime.com, use the code old80. You'll get $80 off, plus we'll throw in two free ebooks, Forgotten Muscle and Strength Building Secrets and an ebook written by Jay Campbell called Living a Fully Optimized Life. This sale ends August 27th. So if you're interested in building muscle, burning body fat and looking amazing, then get yourself signed up. All right, back to the show. Speaking of football and college and that stuff, so I moved in, we moved my kid into college this weekend, right? Oh, yeah. And the reason why that made me think of that was... He's living in the dorms, right? He's living in the dorms. I'll tell you all guys all about the experience. But before I do, there was a big family event that was happening at night where the parents of the new students would show up, there were food trucks. You had all the athletes for the college there and the cheerleaders and like some clubs and stuff, right? I cannot believe the size of some of these college football players, these kids. They're like... Huge. 19, 20. Yeah. There was this Samoan dude. There was a Samoan man, like a grown man, massive. He was like six, probably 6'6", 216 pounds. Just walking around, you know? And they all have their jerseys on so you could tell that they play football and it says football on it. And I'm looking at this kid and I fought the urge. I wanted to go up to him and be like, bro, how much do you weigh? Then I'm like, I'll be creepy. I'm not going to say anything. They're all sitting there. I'm like, these guys are giant. They're so big, dude. And their kids are college. They're going to get so much bigger. And you're looking at... I mean, as it gets higher, it gets exponentially crazy. That's what I mean. It's one thing to see like star high school kids, they already look like they're grown men compared to the regular high school kids. Then you see them go to college. Those college kids... Then you see Division 1 college athletes. Then you see D1 and then you see pro. These are D1 guys, bro. It's like, literally, when you see, once you get to D1 and pro, it's like the biggest kid, all of them. They're all like that. Every single one is just a freak, man. Yeah. And I mean, I'm looking at this guy and he looks like a grown man, right? He's got like a beard and he's just massive. And there's like four other guys like him, right? He's like the kid who... Remember the one kid you guys went to school at like sixth grade? He had like a mustache. Yeah. Like the one kid there. There, he had like 10 kids. Yeah, but you have facial hair already. You know when you look at a kid and you can tell they're young by the way they move and stuff? Sure. So I'm looking at him and I'm like, he hasn't even reached like his full forms. Like his final form. He's like a big baby giraffe. Yeah, dude, oh my god. What if that was your kid, do you know what I mean? Go clean your room. No, all right, whatever. Yeah. He hasn't even grown into his shoes yet. Yeah. Oh, it's hilarious. But anyway, so we move him in and... Would you ever want to be that big? Either one of you? Would I? Yeah. I kind of did. Really? No, I wouldn't want to. I know. Life expectancy, bro. Yeah. Bro, that's like a super high horse. So you have never done anything that reduces your life expectancy? No, I'm not saying that. I'm not. Well, I ain't saying that. I ain't saying that. You know what I'm saying? But I mean, if you're that massive, like, I mean, even if you're super healthy, like, I mean, you're... I mean, what's the... Like someone who's like six, eight, 300 pounds, like, what's their life? I mean, hardly anything to them. You know, it's funny about that because I went down to visit my friend who's the guy I live with in college. He was my roommate who was like... Massive? Yeah, like over 300. And I was like just... It's in the Range Rover and I was driving. I couldn't even imagine him in that. I was like, I didn't even think of that, you know, because like, I just know him and, you know, he's been my friend forever. And I just don't look at him like he's this giant dude anymore, you know, and so he goes to get in and just like puts it all the way into the back seat and he's just... I'm like, oh my God, you know, everything's more difficult. When you're like bigger, like that too. And my dad does the same thing. He's six, seven, and he was always like... He couldn't drive certain cars, like, you know, being on a plane, he was always just like, I have to get this seat. And he's like very like stern about it. Otherwise he's like super uncomfortable. I just watched a show on Netflix about the Tyson Fury family. Oh, yeah, yeah. So he's giant. Yeah. He's giant. Having a really hard time adapting to regular life. Yeah, it's actually a really interesting family. It was really endearing. So he's, they call him the Gypsy King. Yeah, yeah. Bro, their culture reminds... Like they're speaking English, or the English accent. Their culture reminds me so much of like my dad's family. This is Sonyan culture. The way they talk, yell at the kids and they are with each other. I'm like, oh my God, this is so similar. But anyway, he's massive. His dad, they show his dad. His dad's in the 60s and they show him and he has this really fancy trailer, you know, because he still is like, I'm a Gypsy, right? Yeah, you're gonna have the trailer, yeah. And he walks out and I looked at Jessica and I'm like, oh, I can see where Tyson got. And I'm like, that guy right there, if he hits you, he'll break your head. Like, look at his hands, look at his forearm. And then sure enough, a few scenes later, he's in the gym working out, you know, and he's 60-something years old and he's just one of those old guys that's just strong. Is that the one where the cable broke? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The cable broke. Yeah, just a strong older guy or whatever. And it was a cool show. But anyway, so we moved my son in and, oh man, it's one of the hardest things I ever did. It's saying bye to my kid. I imagine. This is your oldest. This is the first one you got to go through. I got this crazy flashback. So we're moving, we drive up there, we're moving a man and I got this flashback for his first day of school. So I remember when he was little. Oh my God, like, kindergarten, first grade, like that? Yeah. Oh, wow. So I remember his first day of school, his mom and I brought him. And I remember walking with him, holding his hand and him saying to me. You told me this before. Yeah, and he goes, well, I'm going to be brave today. I'm going to be, because I was trying to prepare. And I'm like, okay, buddy. And we get there and then we're like, situating them. And then the teachers will say, okay, parents, time to go now type of deal. Well, my wife at the time, she's like, I'm going to leave you handle this last part. So I said, okay, I'll do it. So she took off and then, you know, I'm kind of hanging out with them and teachers like, okay, everybody, you know, time to leave now. And said, all right, buddy, I got to go. And he gave me a hug and didn't want to let go. And I had to, I had like, I did. I remember I pulled him off and he's reaching for me like this with like tears and the teacher took him away and I laughed and I was destroyed. Now it's the opposite. I had that say that flashback as I was moving him in. Okay, what is that? So I find this interesting because I've, you've told the story and I can totally relate to this. Oh, so hard. So this is really interesting to me. And I can't wrap my brain around like why this is so in our, in our house, I'm definitely like the stern one, right? So I'm more of the hard ass about like with max and I'm always talked about the manufacturing adversity, shit, right? Like I'm always thinking like that. But then that, like I won't even take him to school because of that. Like I would just give up. I would, I, Katrina does that for us. And she's the strong one that can go through that process. Like I'm so bad that if he looked at me like that, I'm like, all right, cool, let's go home, dude. I'll take you home. You know why? I just, I am. I'd like that something about that. I'm such a hard ass with all these other things and not sensitive about it, right? Like get back in your bed. You're supposed to be like things like that where she's like, come on, just let him, it's okay. But then when it comes to seeing that with him at school and then look at that, like the fear in his eyes that I don't want to go, oh, I'm a sucker. So the way I felt, I don't know, maybe you feel like this. The way I felt, I remembered a feeling as I peeled him off me and gave him to the teacher. I felt like I betrayed him. So that's how he's protected me. Or like I'm the protective, I'm the protective one and I'm not protecting him. That's it, okay. So that's what I felt. It has to be like that, right? Because I'm like, here I am such a hard ass about all this other stuff. Doesn't bother me, I'm emotionless. But then all of a sudden when I have to go give him to strangers and see the fear in his eyes like that, I'm like, oh, fuck no. Yeah, no, you come with me. That's exactly what I felt. I felt like I betrayed my, I felt like- That must be what it is. It's like when you get, your kid has to get a shot. You ever feel like that where you're like, distract your kid and he looks at you. He's like, how could you follow? How could you let this happen to me? You're like, oh, I'm sorry, buddy. You know, but anyway, so we dropped him off and immediately when we get there, you could tell he's like trying to be independent already, you know. He's trying to do his thing and say, hey, you want to come to lunch? He's like, no, I'll stay here. And his mom was having a tough time. And I'm like, we got to let him do his thing, you know. And every day I want to call him or whatever. Right. So, I mean, he's probably just like super excited to go on this whole thing. But like, you know, and then you're struggling with like, are you sure, you know, like, are you going to be okay? He's like, I'm fine, you know, like, yeah. Well, he's going to figure shit out. He has to figure things out. He's fine. He's a smart kid. He's responsible. It's awesome that he's excited. I mean, I think that's what I would probably want as a dad more than anything else is that he's excited to go take life on, right? Like, I mean, that's a scary time. I think that whole thing is way harder for parents, right? Way worse. Way, way harder. Yeah, way harder. Dude, I'm like dreading it too. I remember thinking, I thought how silly my mom was when I moved out. She called me every day and she'd cry every day. Every day she would call me. And every day she would cry because she'd asked me what I ate and it wasn't whatever, you know, you're not taking care of yourself. And she'd start crying and I'd be like, oh my God, mom, it's fine. It's not a big deal. I just, now I know, you know, and it feels like. I just want him to want to come back around. That's the biggest fear that I have, especially the way I'm divided with my family and like I don't have that pool to do that. Like that would break my heart. If my son like doesn't want to come back around, like, man, I really hope that I whatever it is, I did in his next 18 years or less than that now, 14 years or whatever. What I want to make sure is that when he leaves, he leaves with the, oh, I miss dad. I miss family. I want to come back and not the, I'm out. You know what I'm saying? I got this, which was my attitude. My attitude was like, let me go. Let me go, let me go live my life. And then I don't have that same pool to come back. I think that's all I want. You guys want to hear something really crazy? Talk about like a small world. This is so wild. So we get there and we have to park near the dorm so we can unload the car. And then there's kids volunteering who help you bring stuff up and have these huge like baskets on place, like these big carts or whatever and you put your stuff in, right? So we parked the car, this kid comes out and he's helping us. He's a nice kid. So I'm talking to him and hey, you know, what are you studying? Whatever. And we're talking back and forth. And I said, yeah, we're staying up. And he's like, where are you guys from? I said, well, we're from San Jose, but we're up in Truckee right now. Oh, really? You got a place up there? I said, yeah, we're talking. And he goes, yeah, he goes, I worked on this house in Truckee. He goes, it was so crazy. He's like, they had this whole gym and they had like a podcast studio in there. And I looked at him like, shut up, shut up. I swear to God. And I said, was it? And I gave him, you know, I told him we're out or whatever. And he goes, that's your house. I said, yeah, bro. No way. He goes, wait a minute. What are the chances? He goes, what's the name of your podcast? I said, Mind Pump. He goes, that's so great. The guy who fixed our pipe? The guy, yes. The guy who fixed it. The guy who fixed it was there. Yeah, yeah. He was a kid. His name is Ty. Yeah. It was a leaky window that he fixed. And I'm like, you might have met him. Oh, the leaky window. Yeah, yeah, it was a leaky window. I'm like, I wonder if you met Justin. But he was telling me. That's funny, dude. Bro, that's cool. It was a crazy house. I had like a gym. And I think they had podcast equipment in there. And I'm like, I looked at him like, this is a joke. What are the chances of that? That's wild. I know, right? Oh, that's so great. I saw it as a good sign. You know, we just got there. So it's a good omen. Yeah, yeah. Now, OK, so he was just helping out. So he already goes to school there. Older kid? Yeah. Oh, wow. Nice kid. And then I met a dad who listened to the show. He was, you could tell he lifted. And we were talking. He's like, I'm an NPC judge. We're like, you know, whatever. I'm like, dropping a kid off. He's like, yeah, like this sucks, right? He's like, huh, totally sucks. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, there he is. So there it is. Yeah. Yeah, it's a big deal. It's weird. I know going home and knowing he's not there and stuff. You know? Yeah. Do you think you'll go up there and stay up there? And are you going to be like, let him be type of deal? Well, every time I go up, I'm going to try to make time to have lunch with him or something just to see him. You know? Yeah. But other than that, I mean. Would you guys consider, so Katrina and I had this conversation like recently. And we were, thank God we're on the same page. But would you guys consider if like one of you, like say you're oldest, like saying eight years, six years, six to eight years, marries and moves to Florida or New York or something like that. Would you guys consider moving where your kid is? I have four kids, so that's hard. Yeah, it would depend. Yeah, I would. I would too. Yeah. So Katrina and I both agree we would. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, it's funny because like they're young now and so they want to kind of please and they're always like, oh, we'll always be kind of close to you dad. I wouldn't leave you alone. We'll buy a house across the street. You say that now, dude. You say that now. You're going to totally break my heart later. You know what sucks is where we live is one of the most impossible places to live if you're a new, if you just get into the workforce. Affording to live around here? That's why I bring it up because I think it's a very realistic situation that we would be in, right? Like I think that. And I guess I didn't really think about that until. Unless you do it like the gemstones, you buy like a big block of houses, you know. Well, I also see the struggle that my mom has. My mom decided to move like it out. And I didn't think about this until I had a son, right? It was just like whatever, my mom's going to go move where she wants to live, right? So she moved out in the 10 buck to like where she likes to be. But then like nobody comes out there. Like nobody goes out there to see her or visit her. And everybody's busy with their own lives. And she has three kids or four kids in three different states. So the likelihood that they're all going to come back. And so I really feel like it'll be, and then you can't blame the young kids, right? They're all in their 20s and 30s. I know I'm the oldest of 40, but everybody else besides my sister Cassie are in their 30s and 20s. And so they're all trying to build their lives and figure it out and survive and make it happen. Like they can't afford to fly back or drive all the time and go see my mom. And so I really think about, man, what would I do if I'm in that situation with Max? And I'm like, fuck, it'll be on me. Yeah. It'll be on me as the parent. I'll be the one that probably will be financially stable enough to be able to even do that. And so, yeah, I'd be sacrificing maybe the town or the place I love to be or live in, but man, to potentially not see. Especially if you have grandkids, you want to be nice. Well, that's what I mean. And that's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about with him. Like I wouldn't go follow my son out when he's like dating some girl out in New York. He's like, he's doing his own thing right now. He'll probably move again as well. But yeah, exactly. He just plays out. But if he, like, hey, settles down, buys a house, marries, and they're trying to have a kid, like I'm already thinking like, oh, we're moving out there. If you graduate and you get a good degree and then you go start working, you're going to make not enough to live around here, even. You won't make enough. You have to live with a bunch of roommates or whatever. If you meet someone right around that time, you want to settle down, let's say, you want to start a family, you can't do it. That's real, bro. You know, that's only reasonable. That's only really happened in the last 30, 40 years. I know. I mean, did you see the all-in graph that they put up? I did. So I think that was over 50 years. Yeah. Yeah, but that's okay. So we live in a very weird area. A lot of places in the country are totally fine. That wasn't a California thing. No, I'm talking about cost of living. I know what you're talking about. Oh. Yeah, that was different. Yeah, they brought up a chart to show what they would call the wealth gap, right? How much the upper quintile or whatever makes versus the lower, and that gap has grown over time. But that doesn't tell the whole story. And I like the way that they kind of went over it. It was a great discussion. I mean, I'll have the boys share what episode that was and maybe even like a little sound bite from that. Guess what I'm trying to ask you is, should those lines shrink? I've said this in the past. If you shrink those lines, you will limit overall progress. And what I mean by progress is improvements in productivity, improvements in advances in technology, in business, in economic growth. Because we've seen this many times in the past. There's a certain limit on taxation. So one method is to tax, right? Pull more money out of the top earners and redistribute it. The problem is when you do that, there's less capital in the hands of those who have proven themselves to be good at driving productivity and improving access for goods and commodities and things that are cheaper for everyone. I think that there's an important balance to strike. So I don't think it's about taking away from the top as much as it's about enabling the bottom, if that makes sense. It doesn't, because that's what everybody says they want to do. And this has been 50 years of people saying that. Doesn't work. But when push comes to shove, and the question is, do you believe that the dashed black line or the blue line should be legislatively brought down to meet the other lines? People just evade the question. In my perspective, the answer is no. You cannot do that. And the reason why United States GDP is where it is, is because of that dashed line. It's an existence proof of the fact that this is the largest economy in the world. And so one has to make a really simplistic decision, which is, do you want economic supremacy and then try to figure out ways of rebalancing things? Or do you not? I say, you absolutely must start with that, which means that that dashed line and that blue line will always have a rate of acceleration that is greater than the other lines. And that's just natural OPEX leverage that exists in any company. It created a really... One, that's why I love that podcast is because you got, you know, four of these uber successful guys all kind of have different political views, right? So they all... And so they listen to them and they're all very intelligent. So to listen to them debate and argue like, that's a very hot topic, right? Is this like, oh, it's the uber rich and what should we do? Should we tax them more? Or should we level it all out? And so they listened to them all have that debate. You said it, you felt it was incomplete. I thought it was actually really complete. I thought they did a good job, but they could have gone further. Because that data, if you just look at the chart, what people assume is that the rich get richer and this is what you hear. And the poor get poorer. And that's how it stays. It doesn't tell you the whole picture. Well, first off, Margaret Thatcher did a great speech to parliament in the 80s specifically about this. She said, you know, they were talking about the gap back then. And she said, you would rather the gap be smaller but everybody be down here versus the gap be bigger, but everybody be up here. And that's exactly what would happen. The honorable member is saying is that he would rather the poor were poorer, provided the rich were less rich. That way you will never create the wealth for better social services as we have. And what a policy. Yes, he would rather have the poor poorer, provided the rich were less rich. That is the liberal policy. Yes, it came out. He didn't intend it to. So long as the gap is smaller, they'd rather have the poor poorer. You do not create wealth and opportunity that way. You do not create a poverty owning democracy that way. When you have markets, people and companies that provide value are going to continue to earn faster. I'll give you a simple example. If two people invested into a market at the same rate, let's say both of them got 10% returns. One person invests $10,000. One person invests $10,000. The other person invests $500,000. They get the same rate of return. The $500,000 investment is going to get you a lot more money just in dollars. So if we look at dollars growth, we'll see that the $500,000 investment person is just getting richer faster than the person investing $10,000. Because the more money you have, the greater your returns, the more you can invest. The other part that they don't show and data like that is the mobility between those numbers. Well, I thought they kind of talked about that, which I think was a great point is that every one of them, so there's a green, an orange, a red, a blue, and then a black line. The black dotted line represents the Uber rich. The green is under $30,000 a year or whatever. And I think three of the four guys all came from that. So all of them had parents. 85% of millionaires are 100% self-made. 85%. That's a cool step. So I'm the son of immigrants that were poor and uneducated. You also see example. I lived an example of this with working for 24-hour fitness of because you have like these small examples of where companies change policies that are more, I mean, say socialist ideas for a lack of a better word, where we start to bring up the bottom and compress the upper. Oh, yeah. When they would change the comp plans. And so here's how it plays out. Okay. So this was literally the tipping point for me of leaving the company was I went through six different comp plan changes in eight years. And every time they did a comp plan change, it's always to benefit the company, obviously. But they always still left opportunity. I just had to work harder or find another way. I could still make the same kind of money or even potentially more. I just had to work a lot harder, give more to do that, which, okay. Of course I was frustrated, but I figured it out until the last comp plan changed. The last comp plan change was the first time and they literally came out and said it. We want more of these D players to become C and B players and we're less concerned about these A players because they're such a small minority of killers. And so they put a ceiling on us. I could no longer make the kind of money that I was used to making because they wanted to take that cream and they want to take that extra, chop it off, give it to the bottom to bring us up to make us all more even. You know what ended up happening? A company started taking A player. Company eventually goes bankrupt. And let me tell you something. Everybody of those people that were the top performers have all left and gone and made millions somewhere else. And so the company for adopting an ideology like this is the one that suffers. And so I think that's an example of what would happen if we did that on a more global level where we tried to do that. You think it would make things better because it would bring that bottom half up but you would compress the top so much. It would have been theory in how things actually play out. They would leave. They would leave and find somewhere else to figure it out. Listen, the bottom line is the more value you bring to the market, the more and the market determines your value, whether you like it or not. We can say that teachers are valuable but the reality is the market values professional football players more. And how do you know this? They get paid more. Okay. So that's, and by the way, we're the market. So if you don't like something, then go change your consumption. That's just the way it is. Okay. So that's good or bad. The more value you bring, the more money you make, the easier it is to make even more money. Okay. Here's a good example. The more successful you become, the more free shit you get, the more money you have that you can save, the more you can put into devices and areas that make you passive income. So it just accelerates. Okay. Your ability to succeed continues to accelerate the more you make. And people think that's a problem. That's not a problem. The problem is when people look at themselves, compare themselves to other people and say, well, why should they have so much when I have, but the reality is everybody is doing better. Everybody continues. And then the mobility is really good. So here's where, where we can fix things. Get out of the way for the people on the bottom. A good example is this. You want to start, let's say you want to start a business and they use this example. I remember this example. The Bear Braids. Yeah. This was a great example on the East Coast. If you wanted to open up a hair braiding business, say you all you want to just, all you want to do is braid hair. They have regulations where you have to go spend thousands of dollars taking courses and classes. You have to open up a shop that has like two or three sinks in it. There's all these weird regulations just to braid hair. So here you are. You don't have a lot of education. You know how to braid hair real well. You want to start your own business. I don't have $50,000 to do all this stuff. So I can't, I can't do this business. I can't start. There's a lot of examples of that. Now, why do those regulations exist? It's not to protect the consumer. It's to protect the producer. All these barber shops and whatever, they're the ones that push for these regulations to limit competition. California is a great example. We have like Uber, DoorDash, right? A lot of people go work for these companies specifically because they want the flexibility. They want to make their money. They want to turn it on when they want. They want to turn it off when they want. California politicians, of course, come out and say, hey, they deserve to have all these like guaranteed benefits and all that, which basically would crush how these companies work. And the people who are getting jobs that are like, I don't want that. I just want to be able to go turn it on, turn it off, do my thing. And what you're, what these regulations are going to do is make it harder for us to do, to be able to do that kind of stuff. That's what you need to do is get out of the way. And the second thing is make it so that education is more market-based because one of the greatest disparities that exists in modern societies in America, if you want to see the difference between rich and poor, go to publicly funded services, not markets. Forget markets. Go to public schools. Go to a public school in a quote-unquote bad area and then go to a public school in a quote-unquote good. Both funded by the state. And you tell me that isn't the most ridiculous, insane disparity. And if you allow kids or parents to make choices to take that tax money and go spend it where they want, then that would help balance that out. Those two things alone would make the biggest difference. Do we have any candidates right now that are presenting that? Because we've talked about that for a long time, and I know that's not something that we thought. I know Vivek is. Is he? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's surging. I see he passed to Santos officially, huh? He's second. And I just watched him with Bill Maher, and Bill Maher was going at him hard. Oh, really? Dude, he was so cool and so honest. And he says a lot of shit that makes me go, man, I hope he's got security. Bro, do you know what he said? He wants to put, there's two people he wants to put in charge of auditing the Fed, Rand or Ron Paul. Right away when he said that, I'm like, oh, bro, get your security out of you, bro. That's not good. He wasn't dismantled the FBI and all that stuff. But he's smart. The guy's real smart. Do you know the back to the conversation of the wealth gap? So you know what makes it really hard to defend is when you have examples like the Purdue pharma. Did you see that? You guys see that with the painkiller documentary that's out right now? Oh. You have to watch that. Like, I knew a little bit of the story, but I really didn't know all the details behind it. And it's another one of those, like, what do you call those again? DocuDrama. DocuDrama, right? So they, like, it's based on real events and everything like that. But then they have actors and stuff that are in it. And it's, I think it's like a four or six part series, something like that. Really, really, I don't want to ruin it because it had one of those, like, my jaw was on the floor at the end of it. But, I mean, another example of, you know, Uber rich families that passed down the wealth and they put things in place that, like, really fuck over a lot of people. Let me guess. It has to do with basically lobbying government to create law regulations. It's the whole Oxy Cotton move. And so, yeah. So they're an example, like, of, you know, and it, you know, without spoiling it, like even when their hand get caught in the cookie jar, you know, they're a phone call away from the White House. You know who loves regulations? Who loves regulations? Yeah, big business. Yeah. Loves it. Keeps competition up. You know who loves raising minimum wage? Big ass retail companies that can afford to and put out. Pops can't, can't, like, afford these employees at, like, certain rates. If Walmart wants to completely destroy all the small businesses, all they have to do is get minimum wage. Well, I remember- What's the numbers on that right now? Do we know, like, after COVID, like how many small businesses just got completely- It never came back? Yeah, never came back. Because I know a ton. It was a huge percent. A ton, especially in our area, that just have never been able to come back. You want to transfer wealth, that was forced. And that totally made these big companies explode. Because they could deliver to your door. They got exceptions. Oh, you could stay open. Yeah, Amazon. But the small businesses stay closed. Bigger than it's ever been. Crazy. You know, another percentage is crazy that I just, I heard this stat on that, telemarketing documentary that's going on. It's on the second episode. Yeah, you were telling me. And so non-profits, okay, there's over a million non-profits. They make up 10% of the entire GDP, over $2 trillion a year. And because of the way they're structured, the hustle is crazy. Wow. So I've told this story, if you've listened since the beginning, someone's definitely heard me tell this story. I've told this story to many people before about my experience working in medical marijuana and just how corrupt it was and all things like that. I've told you guys before how I even got shook down by local police and the fire. And after I watched this, for the first time, have you ever felt that feeling when you recognized as a closer, like, oh my God, I got close so hard and didn't even know? Wow. This is how hard I got close, is that I've been saying that for over a decade now, that I got basically, you know, had them basically squeeze me for money, right? It wasn't them. It was telemarketers presenting themselves. And I was an easy target because I was working in the gray area. And so these telemarketers were smart and knew to call all these dispensaries and say, hey, you should probably donate your money to the boat. And so I, because of the way they probably said it. You said it's like protection money. Oh, for sure. And like after watching this documentary, I go, oh my God, I got fucking had. And then- What's on that whole hustle with like, what are they called? Like the IRS, like where they're saying- Oh yeah. That's why people, it's that fear because there's- Yes. The majority of people like have probably fudged some people. Bro, and on top of you add the fact, so once I got, once I gave money to one, I'm on a list now. And so they just called out that list. It says on it whales. So, yeah, no, that's how this is. There's like, so veterans disability, firefighters, police are the top and cancer, top four of what they do for these. And then the way they're structured, they're in this weird predicament because the police departments are the ones and the firefighters, they actually hire these companies to, these telemarketing companies to provide the service because even though they're only getting 10% of the money- It's more than they would get other ones. It's more than they would get other ones. And they don't have the manpower to do all this. So, they kind of don't give a shit because they wouldn't get that much money. So, and then what ends up happening, even when they find out like one of these companies that pops up is doing something illegal, it becomes like a speeding ticket or they shut them down so they can only, and they just reopen up another one and then literally within a month, the same hustle rehire people back, they're doing it again. And it's just this game that they just, they play and there's, and because they're operating within the law, there's not a lot that the law can do. And they, and it makes up 10% of the GDP. Wow. Fucking crazy. That's insane. Insane. And you remember getting that. Oh, I remember so much because I told so many people that it was the police and fire department that got me. But now I realize- Yeah, they ain't got the time for that. No. Yeah. No. And when I think about the phone call, I'm like, oh, you know what? Like, it's not like they told me- It was some ex-con. Oh, for sure. It was somebody hustled the shit out of me. Wow. And they got it. You know, and I didn't think twice because of course the position I'm, what I'm doing, I'm like, oh my god, I'm in the grid. I had a buddy who was, and so he was a prime target because, so he got one of those calls from someone who pretended to be the IRS. We're the IRS. And we noticed this, that, and the other. And you owe us much money. Otherwise, we're going to take you to court, maybe throw you in jail. Now, because he was already dancing the line with taxes and stuff, he was already, like, scared. Yeah. The guy convinced him to get visa cards to pay- Oh, god. To pay thousands of dollars- It's so crazy how this is like- Over the phone to these people. Literally, I think it was like $6,000. Well, he doesn't even register because he's in such a state of fear. In guilt. In guilt. No, he's got guilt. In guilt, I mean, yeah. I'll do whatever. Hey, just after he paid it, he called me and said, oh my god, I almost got in trouble. And as he's telling me, he starts to realize. As he's telling me, I'm like, so I had to go get gift cards, and I had to do it, and he's like- Bro, that's how- Oh, shit. I'm like, you think the IRS collects money like that? Yeah. Hey, that's how I felt telling Katrina the story last night. I'm like telling her as I'm watching this going like, and I'm like having that moment of, oh my god, that wasn't the police. I had that moment last night. It was wild. It was like, oh my god, this whole time, I've been telling the same story, like they got over on me, like the cops. That sucks. And it's like, oh no, I just got closed hard by a telemarketer. Wow. That sucks. Dang. All right, I'm going to change direction. I want to talk about these. They're going like crazy. So we released a new program, right? Maps, Old Time Strength. In the program, we have three strength challenges based off of what some of these Bronze Era athletes would do on stage. People are already sharing it and talking all about it. In fact, Doug, do you have the challenges with the percent? I would love to give our audience what the challenges are and how to get to figure out the right weights. Helen started the spreadsheet. I saw that. Yes. So that's up. So whether you follow the programs already in it. Yeah. And whether you follow the program or not, we might as well put out what these challenges are and let people have fun with them. Could you do that? Justin, maybe put like a three-slide for Instagram for the main IG where people can actually see with it. Yeah, I have those posters in it. Yeah, that'd be perfect. Exactly what those exercises are and the requirements. And the percentages, right? Yeah. Because the way we design them, first of all, one of them is based off of max strength. The other one is based off of strength stamina. Time. And then the third one is based off of your just your isometric stability and grit. So three strength challenges. We picked those three because you're probably going to be good at one of them and not good at the other ones. It gives everybody an opportunity to kind of... You shine. You definitely shine in probably one versus the other two. But yeah, this is all like a big test to see kind of where you stand. You have it out, right? Total. Okay. So here we go. So the first one is a strength challenge. Here's what you do. It's your max barbell single arm deadlift. It's your max dumbbell or barbell bent press. So that's a one-arm bent press. We did basically for women, we did the dumbbell and for men, we did the barbell. Yes. And then it's your max barbell hack squat. Now, how do you compete with other people? It's you get your total weight and it's a percentage of your body weight. Okay. So, you know, I did 175% by body weight, 275% by body, whatever. That's the number that you present to show how strong you are pound for pound. The second one is called the stamina challenge. This one you do as many dive bomber or Hindu push ups as you can do. So same same exercise. It's the one where your butt is up and you swing down and come up. The second one is front squats. You take half your body weight. That's the amount of weight that you use. And then the last one is called the seesaw press. This is a shoulder press with dumbbells. Continuous. Continuous one arm after another. You do as many reps as you can. Women pick 10% of their body weight per arm. Men pick 15% of their body weight per arm. And for this, the number that you give is the total reps. You add all the reps up for all of these. And then, so I did, you know, 275 reps or 150, whatever, right? The last one is the grit challenge. With this one, you do a dumbbell single arm overhead hold. For women, it's 30% of your body weight. For men, it's 50% of your body weight. The next one is a barbell suitcase hold. So that's a barbell on your, at your side. Women, 50% of the body weight. Men, 70% of the body weight. And then the last one is called a chin over bar hold. So you pull yourself up over a bar if you're a man, for women, you just start that way. Hold your chin over the bar and you do that for time. The number you present is the total time. How much total time you did for all three of them, that's your number. I'd love to see these people post it. Yeah, if you tag Mind Pump Media, I'll let Chokey know since she runs that. We'll start sharing these stories. Yeah, so anyway, it's gonna be fun to see what people share and stuff and see what's going on. But people are already talking about them. So, and it's cool because it's an alternative to like powerlifting or, you know, like most strength events are so, you know, unilaterally kind of focused or you do CrossFit that doesn't make any sense. So at least with these, you know, we'll see what these look like and then see what people share. They're specific, yeah, specific challenges. Yeah, yeah, those attributes. Have you taken the kids down to Monterey Zoo yet? No, you need to. Oh, oh, you know what we're supposed to. I'm telling you right now that is like. So Katrina was telling Jessica was amazing. Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, we go all the time now. I think there's an owl over here. You like owls too. What does the sound of the owl make? There's a parrot here. Oh, there's a parrot. But I've never been and seen more than five people. Really? It doesn't matter if it's a Saturday or Sunday. It's just nobody knows about it. Do they have like all the cool animals? Yes. Like bears and all the fence and. Yes. Lions, tigers. How long has it been a thing? Like, is it a fairly new? It's Monterey or Marina. It's right by Marina, but it's Monterey. So if you put Monterey Zoo and that's what it'll pop up. Justin, it was like this like a rescue of all these animals. And then it wasn't an actual zoo until like, I think like four or five years ago, maybe a little longer now. Yeah, I never heard of it. I didn't I didn't know about it either. And Katrina heard about it. I believe Jerry's husband of my brother-in-law has actually actually worked there as a kid. So and that's he worked there when it was like a rescue, right? But I mean, it's immaculate. So clean has every main animal and it's like. What's your favorite animal to look at? Oh, that's a good question. What do I, what do I, I'd love like tigers and I love big cats. Big cats are cool to me. Yeah, I'd like to watch. I like to watch big cats. I like gorillas. Yeah. Yeah, gorillas don't fuck around. No, it's I'll sit and stare at a gorilla for an hour. Yeah, I could watch. I could watch any. Intimidating dude. Yeah. Monkey or gorilla. You know why I like gorillas? Because they're similar to humans. Yeah. So you can see like the muscular development on them. They see like right. Three, two, just look at you and you're like, oh god. Bro, their arms and delts just look so insane. Yeah. You know, they don't even bodybuild. It's crazy. I think big cats are just like beautiful animals. Have you ever go to a zoo? I love listening to them there before they're hungry. I was gonna say, do you ever go where they feed them and you hear them all roaring and stuff? It's so loud. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. But I mean, it's such a cool like spot that I swear that nobody, nobody goes to and it's a great, because I'm like, I hate like the crate. Will you go to some of these big zoos like San Diego, even San Francisco? So packed. Yeah. You know, you're trying to, everyone's like against the glass or thing and it's like, you can't see. It's like, we can literally go there and it's like, you have every exhibit to yourself. I have a, I have an interesting question because I've been to the exhibits where they feed the cats and they're always giving them stakes, like big ass, like stakes to, and I don't know if that's for the people to watch, if that's what they always feed them. Maybe you could look this up, Doug, because if you're a wild cat, you're a tiger, a lion, you're eating grass-fed everything. You ain't eating, you're not eating like a normal convention. Are they feeding them grass-fed meat? Bro, you just brought something up. That's really crazy. Because I wonder if that's the kids. That's their natural, right? Wouldn't the health go... Are you guys familiar with T24, that famous tiger? They called the man-eater. There's a documentary about it. Oh, in India. Yes. Killed like 100 people. Four. No, just four. Eight, four, like full eight, like attacked. Eight of them. And eight. Not like defended himself, and that was like the big debate, right? There was a bunch of... There was a huge activist movement behind it and everything, because over... And it was in like the course of eight or 10 years that this tiger literally attacked an eight for four men. But the interesting, the tiger ends up going in, they eventually put it in captivity and they have to feed it and it ends up having to have surgery because of digestion issues. So your point is probably exactly what happened. And they were... And the documentary briefly talks a little bit, but it's just about like the animal... Not to mention that, but also like the part of the digestive process is the moving and the hunting and the like being active. And so you put them in this cage and just feed them this big chunk of probably not grass-fed beef. It's wild, like, and the kill, the hunt, the walking afterwards doesn't really happen. It's a fast food version of this. So he had all the... He had to do surgery over like digestive issues. Now, I read, I don't know if this is correct, but I read that if you get eaten by a tiger, it kills you first. So like bites your throat, kills you, and then eats you. Yeah. If you get... Like a gentleman's death. If you get eaten by a polar bear, it just starts eating you. It eats you like that. It holds you down and just starts eating you. Isn't it like a hyena or something? It eats you ass first. Oh! Is that true? Yeah. Like, well, you're still alive. Is that... Oh, wow. That's crazy. There's some of those animals, it's like... I feel like I don't have a way to go. Like, go to bed, die. Quick. And you're just getting eaten like you're... Yeah, like I heard like a polar bear will literally hold you down and just start eating you. Well, that's... I mean, the polar bear, they're like the biggest, right? They're bigger than a grizzly, right? They're the most vicious. I mean, they can hunt people. Yeah. I mean, the food's scarce. So their opportunists, it's like, if it's in front of them, they're going to pounce. They're the only bear that I think is a pure carnivore. If I'm not mistaken. I know all grizzlies and stuff eat berries. Omnivores, yeah. They're omnivores, but polar bears only eat me. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. So if like you're an explorer and you see a polar bear, then the odds are he's tracking you. Well, that's also probably because when you're... If you're a polar bear, where you're at, there isn't any fruit. Of course. Yeah. Seals. Yeah. You have no choice but fat and protein, right? I know. What do you mean? Strawberries? I saw this funny video. There's this guy like kayaking. And I swear, I swear, I don't know if it's this year or not, but like there's been more of these like sea animal attacks or like they're like coming after humans. But there's a seal that... It's Aquaman. It literally had a huge octopus in its mouth and it gets up out of the water and slaps him in the face with this octopus. Dude, it was the funniest thing I've ever seen. And like the caption on it was like because he had scratches on his face, like he was trying to explain it to his wife like... Listen, like a seal came up, slapped me with an octopus. We were trying to justify it. You know, like, sure, honey. Nobody would believe that story. Yeah, nobody's gonna believe you. You know what happened to your face? You'll never believe it. Yeah. You'll never... A seal. You're gonna have to sit down for this. A seal scratched your face? No, no, no. No, no. A seal slapped me in the face with an octopus. An octopus. You know what we were cracking up about this week? And we were at Fisherman's Wharf, right? And the sea otters were like crazy and they were all beached right there. I don't know if you guys saw my video and stuff, but we were like, I mean, from me to Justin. They're the cutest animals ever. Well, you know what we were cracking up about? I mean, they were just all beached in this area is the like one... They'll be like, there's a bunch of them. They're like passed out over here and then Booby one that comes out of the water and he just hops across all of them and you can see them get pissed. You know what I'm saying? Like you're dead of sleep and this big old fat sea otter jumps on you and they start fighting and stuff. And we went to Washington for about 20 minutes. Max was cracking up. You know when they sleep on their back. So they're cute, right? Like super. So I love them. When I was a kid, it was one of my favorite animals. When they sleep, they hold hands. Do you guys know that? Really? They don't float away from each other. Yeah, they'll lay on their backs like this and then they'll hold their little... They're literally like... Little furry paws. Little like almost dogs. You know, they just get the little fuzzy face. I also didn't know that tigers are another one of those animals that pick one mate for life. They'll stay with the same mate. They do? Yeah, I didn't know that. Because I thought they're... Someone told me it was only like... Oh, that's true. He wins. That's right. I knew that. Lions are different. Lions will have a better fight. Yeah, lions are different. Yeah. You know, tigers are bigger than lions but lions are better fighters. Don't ask me how I know this. I looked at some... Oh, I actually looked at some. That's not true. So it's like... No, I heard so. So here, I would gather them all and research you. Miders are big and fat and useful. So in the cases where they've had this, multiple times where a tiger has gotten into a lion's cage or like at a zoo and the tiger wins every time. But there's theories that in the wild, if a tiger were to attack a lion, the lion would win but because he's in a pack. Because lions go in a pack like that where a tiger runs solo. So here's what I read. Because incaptivity is different. Yes, right. It's always very different. So what I've read and then Romans have, from the Colosseum, they have accounts of the most fearsome animals. The hippo was the one that he's gonna kill everybody. Messes everybody up. But a tiger, excuse me, a lion fights all the time. Lions always fight with each other. That's why they have a big mane, protects their neck. Tigers are more visible too. Solitary. So tigers don't have good fighting skills. Tigers are a lot more elusive too because they have the whole jungle and their environment is different so they can hide and then pounce a lot more. That being said, didn't He-Man ride a tiger? It was a tiger, right? Yes, it was a tiger. Not true. That solves the argument right there. It was a battle cat. Anyway, back to what you got, Doug. Let's see. Oh, this is the same art. I read this right here. Yeah, tigers generally have the upper hands. See? Yeah, but that's in... That's... Bro, I literally went down this rabbit hole reading all this after that. It's so funny that you said that. Like, I was just curious. I'm like, you know what? They are bigger. They would take out a grizzly bear. Like, how would they fare? Grizzly bear wins. Yeah, right. Oh, it's huge. Our polar bear would win. Polar bear is top. Yeah. Yeah, polar bear has got an extra foot or two. A hippo kills all of them. Well, yeah, hippos, yeah. The only one that could be... Rhino's up there, too. The only one that could build all of them is an elephant. You ever seen videos of elephants going up against rhinos? An elephant is so big and strong, it's insane. Like, a rhino just kicks it over. Like, it's nothing. It's like a building just smashing you. You know? Anyway, all right. I mentioned grass-fed meat. I know I've talked about this many, many times, but the tri-tip from ButcherBox is the staple for sure. Staple, staple, staple. It's the easiest to cook. It tastes good. One of my favorites. Yeah, I just got to mention that because people will send me messages and say, what should I put in my box? And I'm like, dude, if you want a good cut of meat that's easy to cook, you sear it, throw it in the oven, taste good, it's got nice, you know, some fat in it, go with the tri-tip. Well, you know, it was a surprising one that we ordered. It was like something I normally order from Starbucks. I'll have my Nitro, and then I get like my sous-vide eggs. And so we got the egg bites. I just got them. Did you get the tri-tip? I haven't tried them yet. We just got them. Yeah, so I have them over the weekend. They have the sous-vide. Oh, you did. They have the sous-vide eggs. They're in my freezer right now. They're great. I knew you were going that direction. Yeah, I was totally like surprised because I was like, how are they going to like, I don't know, because, you know, you get them like frozen and then how's that going to translate? And they're great. They're good. Yeah, we're still crushing. I was just like, okay, it's a good option. I eat gluten-free nuggets as a meal now sometimes. I feel like a child. They're really good. I know. They are so good. I'll have like 15 of them. You remember when I first sold you guys about that? I mean, bro, they got a lot of good stuff that I didn't. I was, I don't get on there enough and actually dig through all the stuff. I always do. I don't. I don't do that enough. And I've been cheating on Butcher Vox lately with my Butcher lately. So I got to get back to diving in my Butcher Vox. You're a polyamorous Butcher. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Locker live. Polyamorous meat eater. Yeah, dude. I had, I told Doug that I've been getting so crazy with the Wagyu or the A5 stuff that it's like, I actually went to the Butcher and asked for a lesser cut. I'm like, it's too, I was eating so much of it's rich. Yeah. And so even as much as we all love that, that's it. You guys are getting gout. Yeah, I was starting to cook it a lot. And I'm like, you know what? Like I actually was craving a lower grade steak because I was like, dude, it's so rich that you can only do it so often, I feel like. It's like overdoing it. All right, do we have any shout outs for today? Anybody have a shout out that I want to throw out there? How about the Monterey Zoo? That's a shout out. All right. I like that. No, yeah. So I think that's a, dude, go, if you live in the Bay Area. Use code, mind pump, get nothing off. Tell them anyway. Yeah, get nothing off. Mind pump, mind pump. Create one, yeah. No, that's my shout out. Seriously, it's a hidden gem. If you got kids, you live anywhere in the Bay Area, it's worth heading over there to go hang out for sure. All right, let's talk about probiotics. Good probiotics have been shown to reduce depression, improve athletic performance, recovery, help the look of your skin, help with sleep. I mean, your microbiome is so important for your health. Anyway, there's a company we work with called Seed, and we believe them to be the world's best probiotic. It is phenomenal, and it is put in a capsule that survives some of the digestion track and delivers the probiotics to where they should be delivered so you get the full benefit. It's the best probiotic I've ever used in my entire life, hands down. Anyway, go check them out and get 30% off. Go to seed.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code Mind Pump and get 30% off your first month's order of Seed's daily symbiotic. All right, back to the show. The first question is from Caroline Norris L. If I don't care how long it takes for me to reach my weight loss goals, that's down 15 pounds of fat, how long should my cut or reverse diet cycles be? So this is a very individual type question. You want to base your reverse diet and cuts off of how you feel and how you're performing. Okay, so to be more specific, if your calories start to get really low and you still have fat to lose, then you probably want to start a reverse diet and start focusing on building. You want to get that metabolism to speed up because at some point you'll end up too low to where it's not sustainable. So typically, and this can be different from person to person, but typically you're looking at a three to one ratio of time spent in the cut versus time spent in a reverse diet. Okay, typically, now for some people it's different, but generally speaking it would be like you're doing a month, so three weeks cut, one week maintenance reverse diet, three weeks cut, one week reverse diet, you know, type of deal. Generally speaking is what you're looking at and how long will it take you to reach that 15 pounds of fat loss? Again, it depends on the person. If everything's crushing and you're doing a great job, metabolism's healthy, you got good muscle, I mean, you could lose 15 pounds in like a, I don't know, eight week, you know, just pure body fat in about eight weeks. That would be really, you're just blazing. Most people though would take probably probably another four to six weeks on top of that. I like that as general advice. Obviously it's general, right? Because we have, everything is going to be based off of the individual, but I think that's pretty good advice to do this, you know, three week on one week off type of concept as long as you can or want. The other like kind of generic piece of advice I give to somebody in this position is my goal always as a trainer was to get your calories to a place where it was actually hard for you to eat that much. I think that's such a good place to be, right? Like where if you've done a really good job of reverse dieting and building muscle and reverse dieting and building muscle and speeding that metabolism up, you eventually get to a point where it's a bit of a burden to eat that much food to keep up with your roaring metabolism. And it's a place that I think as a trainer, you always wanted to get your client to, right? They're like, oh my, and it's great to have a client who's trying to lose body fat tell you, man, Adam, it's just so hard to eat all that food you're having me eat. And I go, oh, great, this is perfect. Now let's cut back a little bit on these calories. And that way when I cut back on the calories, they're in this sustainable place when they get, because it's already one challenge to lose the 15 pounds of fat, but the even more difficult challenge is to keep it off. People lose 15 pounds all the time. Most people probably listen to this podcast have experienced losing 15 or 20 pounds before, but the hard part is keeping it off and maintaining that. By far. And one of the best strategies to doing that long term is making sure that where you're at calorie-wise is sustainable. It's a place that you could go, I could eat here. I could live in this 22 to 2500 calorie range and as long as I have the physique and feel good, man, this is a great place. And so, and you can only do that if you've slowly inched those calories up to a place that is towards, like, wow, that's a lot of food for you and then coming back the other direction. Otherwise, if you just keep cutting and cutting and cutting from where you're currently at, you end up losing your 15 pounds, but you're eating 1200 calories a day and that's just not sustainable. Yeah, yeah. So to put it plainly, you want, you want to be in a position where your body naturally burns a lot of calories. Because then it makes the fat loss sustainable period end of story. Next question is from Nicky Fricky. I know you mentioned eating whole foods, which is something I strive for and tell my clients to aim for. However, it feels like this then causes categories of food to be eliminated such as gluten, bread, pasta, flowers, dairy. What falls under the umbrella of whole natural foods according to you guys? Dairy is, I would 100% consider a whole natural food. It does eliminate a large category of foods. It's heavily processed foods. All right, what are whole natural foods? Foods with one ingredient? I mean, that would be it. Does bread fall under whole natural foods? It's kind of in between, but I will say this. Most people, not most, most people with food intolerances, most people with digestive issues and food intolerances or skin issues would do better avoiding gluten-containing flowers. That's just my experience. So if that's you, then you probably, I haven't met a lot of people who can eat a whole food-based diet and include bread and feel okay. I just haven't met a lot of people like that. Most people, if they remove that, tend to do a lot better, a lot better. Now, this is coming from someone who's, I mean, my family loves bread, we're Italian, I get the whole deal, whatever, and pasta and all that stuff. I would say they're kind of in between, but you have to really assess whether or not it causes digestive issues for you or skin issues. Those are the two categories I would look at. Yeah, I mean, similar. It's most clients I've ever trained. There's not really any of them that have gone away from bread that didn't feel an immediate benefit from going away from those types of foods. And so there's other options, like in the carbohydrate lane and rice and potatoes and things like that would a lot of times be a great supplement to that. But yeah, in terms of limiting those, I think that, yeah, if you're trying to just keep it there to keep it, you've got to really assess whether or not that's something that really is doing a lot of benefit for you anyway. I'd say I live like 80, 20, and I'm always trying to be 90, 10. What do you eat that's processed? I'll have pasta and bread every now and then. Okay, that's pretty much it, right? But very rare though. You're not like a boxed food or what? No, no, no, no. I mean, we eat, like I said, 80, 20. I'd say I'm 80%, and I'm 80, 20, and I'm always striving to be 90, 10. Yeah. Like I think that's kind of the, how, I know, and I used to be a big bread eater. So, and I noticed a big difference when I cut it out. Your skin, right? Yeah, my skin, and I would, and also water retention and blow. I used to get a lot of water retention and blow from it. Like the going down, but when I really started to like unpack like how I felt afterwards, how I looked from it, like the next 24 to 48 hours from having a big old, you know, Togo's or Subway type of sandwich, how I felt the next day. I'm just being honest with myself. If I replaced that same amount of carbohydrates and calories with something like white rice or even like a baked potato or sweet potato or yam or quinoa, I mean, definitely there was a night and day difference of my digestion, how my skin watered to all that stuff. And so, because of that experiment for myself years ago, I've forevered now that's like, okay, that's my staple. I don't do that, but doesn't mean there's not times where, you know, someone served my, we're making something and there's garlic bread and so I'll have a slice of garlic bread or what that. So I try and stick to about 80% of my stuff is whole foods. I would, by the way, bread is a big category of, there's a lot of different kinds of breads. So they're not all created equal. You could get sprouted. Sprout, yeah. Yeah, sprouted. Sourdough is pretty good. Sourdough, traditional sourdough. Dave's bread. Not the processed stuff, so. I noticed a big difference in that too. Sourdough is a big difference. If I just make that choice of having sourdough, you know why? It's got a very low rate of low amount of gluten. And then the, how sourdough is made, it's almost like it's broken down, it's fermented. It's fermented bread, essentially. That's why it's sour. So sourdough, traditional sourdough bread, sprouted wheat, Ezekiel is a company that will make bread that's like this. And then pastas, you know, it's hit or miss for some people. They make two, three pasta and quinoa pasta, which I have that too. Yeah, I could do that, no problem. I'll have traditional pasta, I don't know, once a week, if I eat at my mom's house. Then I'll have, but I notice. You know what I get? I get, I'll get some of the blow, but I get energy crash about 30, 40 minutes later. That's a good point. I want to go to sleep. That's what I get from a big sandwich, too. I didn't say that, but that's the other thing I noticed, too. It's like I have about two hours later, I'm like wanting to fall asleep from it, for sure. Yeah, it's tough to get fat. I mean, if you have to avoid dairy, like I get it, like there's probably a good chunk of the population that can't handle dairy, like it gives them gut issues, but for people that can handle it, I mean, if you're going to just, that's a pretty big category, not to consider in terms of like, you know, anything from milk to, you know, butter and cheese and like everything else. Like for me, like obviously, yeah, you guys give me shit all the time, but like it's, where else am I going to get that? I mean, I could get, you know, olive oil, I could get kind of creative and go in like the nut category and all that stuff. But like for me, I get plenty of, my good fats from dairy. I just, I think one of the things that I learned for myself, and I always try to coach and teach his clients, is the things that you just tend to abuse. I went through a time in my life where every morning I had a toast with my breakfast and or cereal, and then for lunch, I had this massive huge bread sandwich. And that was like every day. And simply eliminating that and saying like, okay, I'm not, that's not going to be a choice anymore. 80% of the time made a massive difference. Doesn't mean that like every, occasionally I don't have a sandwich. I don't enjoy those things. But just by flipping that on its head, instead of it being like, you know, instead of it being in my diet 80% of the time, it's now in my diet 10 to 20% of the time. And that, that makes a big difference. And so I think I've tried to teach my clients the same thing as like, let's look at these, these potentially gross offenders. And let's try and evaluate how often they're in your diet and let's dramatically reduce it. Let's eliminate it first and see if you notice a difference of improvement. If we notice a difference in improvement by eliminating that food, then let's make it a goal to keep it out for as much as you possibly can, shooting for that 90%. And if long as you find yourself falling around 80% of the time, I think you're pretty successful at that. Next question is from Teresa13. Can you mix creatine and with things ahead of time, such as in your overnight oats? Yeah, you probably will stay stable within 24 hours, but there's a, there's a probably in there. I, creatine can start to break down and turn into, there's certain byproducts that could be that the, the creatine can turn into that make it not necessarily as good for you. Oh, this person is meaning like, put it in there and leave it. And leave it. Oh. Yeah. No, I mean, okay. You know, and this is when, when people would ask me this is like, how hard is it to take creatine right then and there? Put it in there. Yeah. Or just throw it in your mouth and wash it down. I mean, I imagine it's, I think I imagine it's somebody who has just found that that's easy and convenient. And they just want to know that am I, am I losing the gains from it? You don't want to keep it. You don't want to keep it in water for too long. I mean, you'd be, what you'd be far better off is it's overnight oats. Is that in the morning, when you go to eat your overnight, you just throw the scoop and then you'd be better off than that. But I think it's only like things that are like acidic, where it's really going to break it. Even in water over time, it can, it can start. I mean, if you read about creatine, it says it can stay stable up to about 24 hours, which tells me that probably wouldn't, I would probably take it right, right when I want to take it, not, you know, leave it in something. That being said, we've been preaching now for, I don't know, eight years on how great of a supplement creatine is for just health, not just muscle building, not just fat loss, not just bone density, but like health. I've talked in the past about like heart health, liver health, brain health, all better when people take creatine. Did you guys know a study just came out connecting creatine to a reduced risk of cancer? I saw that, yeah. How insane is that? Now it makes perfect sense to me, and by the way, this was like a correlation, so it's not proven yet. Well, just from it being muscle sparing in itself. Well, I believe you're going to see data that's going to show that it unequivocally reduces cancer risk because of the, how it fuels the mitochondria. If you look at cancer, mitochondrial dysfunction is a, it's like a foundational part of cancer. In fact, this is the Warburger fact, as they discovered this year, a long time ago, where you take cancer cells, you don't feed them sugar, some of them die, because of the way the mitochondria is functioning. Creatine, it helps, have healthy mitochondria. It also helps with methylation of the body. Oh, healthy mitochondria, paired with also muscle sparing to me, seems like, I agree. Those two things are huge. Yeah, I think the older you get, the more important it is to take creatine. So take it, but I wouldn't mix it in something and then leave it overnight. I would take it right when you want to take it. Next question is from Marina Liffs. Adam once said in a very old episode that he thinks marriage should be a lease, where each partner agrees to renew their contract every few years. I was wondering if his thoughts have changed now that he is married. What's your thoughts, Doug? What do you think? My thoughts? I've never been married. Yeah. And I actually had a conversation last week about this with this woman. And I think marriage works for some people, but I also feel too that a lot of times when people get married, they actually change the way they relate to the other person because now they feel like they have this binding contract from the state saying that now you're married, now you get half of everything, now I can do whatever I want and not have to put in the effort. So that's just my opinion. For the audience that hasn't been listening that long, I can't remember if I read this somewhere or how this came to be, but I just, you know, half of this is tongue-in-cheek, but then there's some, I think there's some truth to it too that I thought it would be this great idea that you just like you renew alone, or renew insurance, or you renew anything that you had every five years that anybody who's been married, and then I said two or five years, and I remember having those five is what I said, every five years you have this like, hey, it's been five years we need to agree to continue this, you know, this on or part ways because we've realized how difficult it is, we don't like each other and we want to go different directions and just I thought, why do we not do that for a series and of a commitment as marriages and almost anything else that you are that serious or committed to in the real world? Like you have these opt-outs. Now you're still there? So for the audience that doesn't know, like Katrina and I legally are not married, I think of her as my wife, I call her my wife, which is why this person probably thinks this is because I absolutely think that I've proposed to her, she's the beneficiary in everything, she has my social, she has access and control of all of our money, she has my child, so I mean, I'm as married as I feel I can be to that woman without bringing the government involved. I mean, that's literally the difference maker for us and I don't know, there's a part of me that I kind of agree with Doug, there's this, and I've wondered sometimes, like we're at what, 13 years we've been together, you know, is there this subconscious like thought that, oh, because we're not legally bound by the government, that we could break apart easier than the person that would be legally bound that way and so does that keep each of us? Well, you already have a kid with her and all that stuff, you're screwed anyway. Well, that's what, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's how I feel like, I feel like there's not much difference for legally that she would or wouldn't get by us being married, right? So, but my point, and I was talking to Doug about this off air before you guys came in, and you know, and I think I agree to him that there's this, I don't know, there's this sense of because we're legally not that I'm always working to impress her and working to keep her and like, so I kind of have that where I do think that there, I see a lot of relationships where people get very complacent when they get that ring or they get that official contract and it's like half your shit's mine and we're good to go and then all of a sudden they fall out of shape or then all of a sudden they become this crazy dick or bitch and they just have the, like they change, they change dramatically from the person who was told you. I don't think this would fix that though, to be honest with you. So, as being the most married person in here, I've been married twice. I think my opinion is heavy. Listen, I don't think this would fix any of that. I think first off, it is a very important, serious thing. I think if you talk to people who've been married for a long time, they'll tell you they've went through tough periods. Now you think, well, how long is a tough period? You're like a week, a month? Years. Talk to me, we've been married for 50 years. I'm like, oh, there was that five-year period where it was really hard. Five-year period where it was really, really hard. So, that's what you're signing up for. Now, if you stop trying, well, that's the problem. The problem isn't, you know, I think this makes the boys so much easier. What you're trying to do with this is create accountability for that sort of drive in your relationship to continuously improve and grow and evolve together and have that kind of dynamic relationship. That's what a relationship should be. And you should already be kind of thinking in those terms of like, both of you have to like take that kind of assessment as like, what am I bringing to the table? And this has to be a constant conversation you have. And so, I don't understand where you're coming from with this. However, I'm a bit more of a traditionalist and if I'm vested in somebody, like, I'm going to bring that. It's all or nothing. I'm bringing that in. And if you're not going to match that, you're the one that's slacking. But I know I'm confident I chose a partner that is growth minded like that and is going to put in the work. And it is work. It's not like it's something that just works itself out. You really have to work on it. 100%, you're going to choose to be with this person. You're saying we're going to stay together for the rest of our lives and especially if you have children together. You're going to go through a lot over 30, 40 years. Forget a year, two years, five years. Like 30, 40 years, you're going to go through a lot of crazy stuff. Death, losing a job. You make some fucked up mistake. You go through depression. Someone, you know, something happens. Like you're going to go through a lot of shit. And so you have to, it's like, the only way in my opinion to succeed at it, and there's a lot of people that don't succeed at it. I mean, I did it the first time, is to be all in, in my opinion. It's like, how can you have one foot in, one foot out? So how does that, how's that the counterargument though to the five year lease? Like why, why can you not have everything, both of you said like 100% agree? But then at the five year mark, you just, you have to have that conversation. I'll tell you why. I know enough couples who've been married for, like divorce is pretty rare in my family. A lot of people married a long time. I know a lot of them, if you hit them at the wrong moment, at the wrong time and you approach them, hey, do you want to continue this? They might not have made it. If you give them, yeah, if you give them an ounce. So okay, so I feel like that's something that, that's also, cause 13 years Katrina and I haven't had perfect, right? Like we've had, we've had moments of separation and potentially going our, our separate ways. But what it's always, and I don't know if this has anything to do with us being legally married or not, but what happens in those moments is that you still have to have that, that real conversation. Like in the hard moment, in the hard moment when I'm like, I don't like you or maybe we're not meant to be together, but also going like have to evaluate that and go, but you know what? Like you are worth it. Like as hard as it is right now and as much as I'm frustrated right now, as much as I want to go my separate ways, I do love you and there's no one else I want to be with. And so I want to make this work. I agree with you, but I don't think like a lease, a contract. Well, the reason why I proposed that a long time ago, why I thought it was an issue. Because you're talking about a voluntary conversation. I think that's a healthy relationship. Yeah, but okay. So why do you give me a letter from the government? Why I, why I position that is not for myself personally, per se, or even any of you guys, but because I think so many relationships fail to have that conversation. Yeah, that's different. It brings attention to it. I agree with you. And so, and so what that, what it does is it forces all these people who, who aren't actively, I mean, you guys, we're all like, like to think that we're good dads, we're good husbands, we're all these good things and we work at it. We all are growth minded. And so this really, this, this idea was less about me personally or any of you in here and more for the general population. I think it would be a healthy exercise that people would be forced to have that conversation. I don't, I don't think forcing people through some government lease or contract or, or hey, here's your letter from the government. Do you guys want to stay married? I don't think that's the way to do it. Well, yeah, we do it to get married. It's more of a, well, I also disagree with that. I think it should be a religious ceremony or a personal ceremony. I don't understand why the government's involved in any of it, but I think it's a cultural thing. I think it's one, your family, it's a religious thing. And I do think that there should be, we have, and we're reversing in this way, but there's, it's okay to have some societal pressure for people to not so easily divorce. People are like, oh no, we got to make it super easy for people. And I get the whole like terrible abusive relationship type of deal. But there, there should be a healthy amount of pressure that says, hey, you guys got kids together. Like you guys should probably work a little harder at this. And yeah, it's fucking hard. See, that was- And they need to value that a little. So, okay, so that was the argument that Doug and I were making and that I said, there's a little bit of that healthy pressure to stay on your toes because it's easier to potentially leave. That's how I felt. I feel like, and by the way, I'm completely- Yeah, to you guys. But yeah, well, I'm completely speculating. I don't even know if that's true. Like neither one of you guys would ever be the dad that would get divorced and then see your kids once a month. You guys would never do that. Doug's already proof of that. He's not that guy. At all. Right. And so, same with me. Like that's, I mean, I mean- But there's a lot of guys out there- For the audience to know that. Like that's when I- Back when Katrina and I obviously had all these conversations, I told her the nothing shows me or shows commitment more than me having a child with you. You could- I said you could go off and run off on me, steal half of our wealth, go get with my best friend, and I still would take care of you and my son. Of course. That's how I feel. Like that's how- There's no bigger commitment. There's like you, you're my wife, you're the mother of my child. I'm forever attached to you for that. You're going to be Max's dad forever, even if you're not married to her. That's right. So, I mean, to me, that is the ultimate commitment in my eyes. I just don't think, and I wish I knew this better when I was younger, but I don't think the type of effort, work, compromise, and sacrifice that's required to be with the same person for decades and decades through every challenge you guys are going to go through, I don't think it's really talked about enough of that, like, hey, this is what it's going to be like, and sometimes, sometimes for a while, it's going to be really hard. People go through a month of hard, and they're like, I'm ready to bounce. Yeah. I'm telling you, man, I've talked to so many, so I used to train an older population. I used to love asking them about stuff like this, and I would say, did you have any tough times with your, oh, yeah, so many, and then I remember one of them answered this question in this way, and then I asked the rest of them, and I couldn't believe it. I said, oh, wait, when you say you had a tough time, like, what do you mean? Like, how long was the tough time for? I was like, oh, that was like four years. Holy shit, for four years, you went through a period where you guys were just at each other and just, it's like, yeah, that was like a four-year period. But I mean, you're married for 40 years or 50 years. I mean, you go through stuff like that, you know? So, and I mean, if we understood that, we'd know like, okay, it's, people are like, oh, it's equal 50-50. No, it's not. Sometimes it's 90-10, and it's going to be like that for a little while until things start to work. But it requires both people. I mean, I agree. I just think that there's the argument to be made on the opposite side of like, that there's a part of that that causes me to work harder because of there's that potential of like, oh, she could literally just bounce tomorrow and there's no, we didn't have to go through legal hoops or anything like that. The other thing too is a lot of people think this. They think like, first of all, if you have kids and you want to be involved, so that's the criteria here. You have kids, you want to be involved. Getting divorced is often harder than being married. It takes a lot more planning, a lot more scheduling. You got to put up with more whatever in the divorce, trying to raise your kids with this person than you did. Yeah, I've never heard anybody in my life say divorce is easy, ever, ever. Well, I think a lot of people do it thinking, this is, you know, I'd rather do this. And they realize, or they just check out, a lot of guys check out. Well, and that's the people why I think I presented that information for. I just think that for those people, I think it'd be a healthy exercise for these motherfuckers to have that conversation every once in a while. I mean, I naturally have that with my wife all the time, but I think that not enough people have that open dialogue and conversation. And I think it's such an important thing. I just can't imagine it being like a letter from like a government agency or anything. I mean, like, it's a big tongue in cheek, right? Like, I don't really think that it should be like that form, but there's something to it. So how about positioning it like this? Like, I think it's very important, okay? And I'm going to say less than five. I'm going to say every year to two years that you have a trip or a weekend that you go with your wife or your spouse. And it's literally, let's evaluate where our relationship is. I mean, Katrina and I, we just did it this weekend, we do this, we sit, we're alone. No, that's great. And we're like, we have a check-in. How are you feeling about the relationship right now? Yeah, that's great. Are you happy with me? Get to test drive new vehicles or what? I'm just listening. No, I just think doing that. I think that is a really important thing that not enough people do is have these blunt, straight conversations. Because that's what happened. They get married and then they just go, okay, we're married. And then to like Doug's point, they just kind of let it all go. Start living two separate lives. Yeah, they almost live two separate lives, especially when kids get involved and then all of a sudden you're just a dad or just a mom and you don't think about each other anymore. And it's like, we make sure that we do that to this day where we regularly check in with each other and say, hey, are you happy with where we're at? Where we are as a couple, where you are as a dad. It's interesting because it does take a long time. Like my parents, when I was a kid, like they would get in arguments and big blowout fights and stuff like that. And it's maybe gonna get a forever now, right? Now I see them argue or like they'll bicker. And it's so hilarious. It's like, my dad will make a comment. My mom will be like, whatever. And then it's over. They're over it. Why have they been together for so long? They've accepted each other, whatever, certain things. And it's like no big deal. But I remember as a kid, like that kind of stuff would set them off. So I'm like, okay, cool. We'll be there one day. Get there. There you go. All right, look, if you like the show, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out all of our free fitness guides. There's a lot of them and they're all free. You can download every single one, costing nothing. You can also find all of us on social media. Justin is on Instagram, Mind Pump. Justin, I'm on Instagram. Mind Pump to Stefano. And Adam is on Instagram. I'm Mind Pump Adam.