 Hello everyone, welcome back to Mind Pump, it's that time of year again, cakes, cookies, and pies in all types of treats that pack pounds on your thighs and your belly. Well we've got the answer for you today, here's a cookie tip, if it's good with butter, it's good with more butter. We talk about all the things that you can do to avoid gaining weight during the holidays. Okay, look, so what, you put on a little weight? A little weight? Does this look like a little weight to you? Enjoy the show. When people gain weight throughout the year, a large chunk of it happens to happen around the holiday season. There are some things you can do to prevent this from happening and actually take advantage of those extra calories you'll be eating through the holiday season. You know, this, we visit this topic every year. You remember the meme I used to share every year? I haven't shared it in a couple of years, so maybe I'll have to dig it up and find you. Remember the meme I used to send around this? Yeah. When you were in the holidays, you were fat in July. Oh yeah, I remember that. But I remember, I don't know how accurate this is, but I remember this being 8 to 12 pounds. We were told this right in the gym space, the average American gains 8 to 12 pounds over the holiday season and then doesn't lose it all afterwards and that ends up adding up over the years. And if you look at a chart of weight gain over the year, a majority of it does happen around this time of year and it's because there's a lot of food, a multitude of factors, family, there's a reason to overeat, there's a reason to be inactive, and so what we tend to do is we tend to quote-unquote let go during this period of time, sort of shelve our disciplines for just a little bit. So this has actually been debated, it's like one of those things like how many calories is muscle burn. Yeah. It's like one of those things. That's why I said it's been told the most. Personally, I actually think it's higher than that. I think a lot of people put on more weight, what do you got, what's it saying? It says about a pound. Yeah, that's a bunch of bullshit. Well, hold on, hold on. Is it a pound after, like done? Or is it every day from Thanksgiving? No, no. And so despite our worst fears, the average American really only puts on one pound during the holiday season. Okay, by the way, can I say something real quick? Everybody's like, there's only a pound, right? That's a pound that you don't lose of body fat. So 10 years of celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas, whatever, 10 pounds of additional body fat on top of the other five. Okay, so I would get behind that. Like it's a pound you never lose and it's compounding. So every year, yeah, every year now your average is one pound higher that you maintain the year every year. And so. But that also means that half of everybody gains more than a pound, right? Because that's the average, right? So on average, well, I guess that would be medium. But you get what I'm saying is that there's a large percentage of people actually gain more than a pound. But nonetheless, look, we all get this. We all feel this over the holiday season. We all know, this is something that everybody understands that this is a time of year where it can be difficult to maintain your health and fitness, right? Things get a little bit more challenging. Now I do want to say this first, we're not the fitness podcast and we're not the trainers and coaches who will discredit the value of enjoying meals, enjoying glasses of wine and enjoying being with family because you're not going to be able to keep your six pack or we're not going to tell you to bring your Tupperware to Thanksgiving dinner. No, because there's tremendous health value in celebrating these times with your family, especially if you don't see these people on a regular base, especially if there's only time you get to connect with these people. So what you're not going to hear from us is, you know, insanity around that. Like there's real value around that. I think the challenge, the problem is people go above and beyond that value and it becomes this like, oh, here's where I, it goes from I'm enjoying myself and connecting with people to, oh my God, this is what I'm going to binge. This is what I'm going to make myself feel terrible. This is what my stomach's in. And now I need to punish myself for this. And then afterwards, right? Yeah, I tell you guys that I did a show the day after Thanksgiving. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I'll never forget that. With a terrible. I thought it was like a brilliant strategy. Like I really thought like nobody is going to fucking do this. Like, and I had, I was like, I got the discipline. You forget you're competing and they're like. I know, everybody's all neurotic. It was like a super packed show. So of course, like this is what they all thought. They're like, no problem sacrificing that. And I'll never do that again. And it could, by the way, Katrina always reminds me of that. Right. If I say like, you know, we don't ever do what I want to do for the holiday. She goes, oh, really? You don't remember. I have an example. Yeah, you don't remember driving down South, like eating out of Tupperware for Thanksgiving. I'm like, oh, you're right. I do remember that one year we did that, you know, and the, and it's, you know, interesting because obviously I was in the middle of a much larger goal that I was incredibly focused on. Right. So I don't, I don't regret it. I would never do it again. Just there's no more value. Like, why would you do that? Yeah, yeah. And there, and there at that time, I really, really thought that it was, it was a smart strategy to, to get to my pro card and stuff like that. And so that was the idea or win my first pro show. That's what I was trying to do. And I do remember how much I missed out on the, on the family stuff. And I'm like, oh, I'll never, I'll never do that again. And I'll never do that to you again. I remember telling her that, like to allow us to miss one of the days of the year when all of our family makes an effort to make sure they are together and stuff, all to look a certain way or win some dumb trophy or to prove to everybody, whatever, this is such an important thing to communicate, because part of developing a good relationship with food as understanding all of its values and part of the value of food, a big part of the value of food is bonding and connecting with the people around you. It's enjoying being present with the food. Like I love, one of my favorite things to do with big meals around the holidays is to talk and experience the flavors with the people around me. Oh my God, did you try this? And oh, this is so good. And who made this dish right here? And I get the chills talking about because it's this wonderful bonding moment that's not when shit goes off the rails. Shit goes off the rails when your relationship with food going into the holidays already isn't great. And so that what happens is you go from this restrict binge model or relationship with food where you restrict and then when you go off, you don't go off and have like a little bit more or a little pie. It becomes like this way in excess, way in excess where you're sitting. I mean, how many, how many times have people done this? Right? You, you finish your holiday meal and you sit back and you're like, oh my God, my stomach hurts. Like that was way too much. What did I, I didn't even enjoy. I'm not even enjoying this time right now because I hurt myself. So you've actually, you've actually lost the potential value of that holiday meal because you've gone off in this, you know, and I quote, unquote binge type of mentality. So working on a good relationship with food is crucial to having a good time with the people around you, around the holidays. Now, what does that look like? Well, it looks like this, understanding all the values around food, which include the stuff that we talk about in the fitness space, which is how this affects me physiologically, how does the house affects me? Digestively, proteins, fats, carbs, calories, what helps me perform better? What gives me more energy? It's also understanding how do I eat when I'm stressed? How do I eat when I'm depressed? Um, it's also being present when you eat. You ever catch yourself doing this while you're eating so fast that you're not even thinking about the food that's in your mouth that you're actually tasting, you're thinking about the next bite and trying to get the next bite in there as fast as possible. That type of behavior is not necessary. That's not, that's not really valuing the true value of food. That's almost a numbing or distracting type of behavior. So you have to go into the holidays and save yourself. And by the way, some people do this on the holidays because they don't like being around family. They don't like being around certain people that make the main truth. So they get really drunk or they bury themselves in the meal. Um, and that's also not a good relationship. So you have to go into it saying, I am going to connect with the following people and I'm going to try these dishes that I haven't had in a while and savor them, right? Savor these dishes, not like pound them down as fast as I can, but rather enjoy this meal. And, and, and I'm not going to allow myself to get painfully full because there's no enjoyment in that, right? Nobody enjoys feeling so stuff that they feel sick to the stomach. Yeah. The stomach. Use that opportunity to slow down. And it's, it's interesting because to your point of people kind of bringing their signature dish is like, this is, this is something they made with their love and, and, and their effort. And they really want to, you know, watch you as you eat it. And it's like this whole experience part of that, uh, where you get to kind of bond with, with your family. And it's like, I mean, like this is just one specific day or maybe like a few days out of the year where you get to spend that kind of time with, uh, your family. And it's like to, to be so focused myopically on like, wow, well, what are the macros in this and what's this one going to do for me in terms of like setting me back. And it's really like nil in, in the grand scope of things. And, but, but to your point of like excess, like you can, you can indulge, but you can do it in a way where it's slow and paced and you have a lot better chance of not like going completely in excess. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So we're going to talk about how we can help you with nutrition. In fact, in today's episode, we talk about how to not gain weight during the holiday season. So here's what we got. We have the fasting guide. We have reverse dieting 101. And we also have the intuitive nutrition guide. All three of them, 50% off. Here's how you get them, go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code healthy for the 50% off discount. All right, here comes the show. Since you brought up, uh, signature dishes, uh, what are they from a macro perspective? Just what do you think is a shitty dish that someone brings all the time? Justin, what'd you say? The Jell-O base. Yeah, the marshmallow Jell-O. Especially when they rebrand it as salad. Like, what are we doing? Jell-O fruit salad or whatever it's called. I'm not a fan of, I'm not a huge fan of, uh, white meat and turkey. What? No, white turkey meat is dry. It depends how juicy the turkey is. Give me the brown meat. The brown meat is the good stuff. That's, that's a bad example of a signature dish that is like really like white turkey. Cork's family's all dark meat roll. I mean, I certainly do over a bunch of other things, over a can of cranberries or over freaking, uh, yams with marshmallows in and syrup in it. Like, yeah, there's a lot of other things. I like cranberries. You like cranberries? I like that. Oh, I put it on my turkey all the time. Doug, you're more of a foodie. Come on, what's, what, what? Yeah, so the one you mentioned, the sweet potatoes with marshmallows. Yes. I despise that. So do I. But one year somebody came to our house for Thanksgiving and they brought their version from their family. And not only did they have sweet potatoes with marshmallows, they had red hots in it. Like red hot candy? Yes. Oh my God. I mean, I, it really, I had a gag reflex. And they said, oh, this is so good. We make it every year. Our family makes this. And it was so horrible. It was the worst thing I ever tasted. It was passed down from the old country. They used to put peppers, but now we use red hots. Wow. I've never heard of that before. Yeah. Yeah. So I've had it with like marshmallows and like a maple syrup and stuff like that. I'm just like, dude, that is just, their sweet potatoes are so good. A little bit of butter and that's it. If that, I don't even need butter on mine. Well, you guys, are there certain, so here's, I like to go in this direction. Are there certain dishes that you normally don't have, except for around this time of year that people tend to make? Stuffing. Stuffing. That's why I never eat stuffing, but on Thanksgiving. Is there somebody in particular? Oh yeah, my mom, my mom makes incredible. And she does it the traditional way where you actually stuff the turkey and stuff. And it's homemade from scratch. So she's not using like a box of, she cuts up all the little pieces. My godmother makes really good stuffing that I look forward to. And I make sure to have a little bit of it because I never have it. Ours is a 100 year old recipe too. That's why it's kind of cool. Really? Yeah. So you talk about tradition and things like that. See, that's what I mean. There's a lot of value in that, right? Yeah. So it's kind of cool to talk about it and how it's been passed down in the family when we have it. So I definitely, the stuffing is something that I know, I would never eat that throughout the year. Rest of the year, I don't think I ever have stuffing on that day. I absolutely have this. There's this one dish that my grandma made, and I think it's from Denmark. But it's like a, it's called patita, I think. But it's like, it's basically a hazelnut bread that has, anyways, it's really good with butter. We have it usually for breakfast. And it's like, I would never eat it otherwise. But it's just like, one of those like, we look forward to it because it's sweet. It's like a sweet bread and it's delicious. So there's one, so we have monkey bread that I never have that gets from Katrina's family. Her niece always makes this like homemade monkey bread. That's bomb. That's the one you're supposed to pull apart. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so this is, this is great. I love that where you took this, Adam, because there's definitely dishes that I look forward to because I never have them otherwise. And it's around the holidays. And I found myself go through this transition years ago. So years ago, the holidays became definitely binge time for me because I was like, build muscle, you know, trying to work out whatever. And so then I'd go into the holidays and especially if I was trying to be lean before that, which happened a little later on, I'd go in and it was like all, it was like, I'd take the hands off and just go crazy. And I would always end up with like too much, like just painful, painfully full, not feeling good, taking a nap on the couch. And I lost, I would lose the value of the particular holiday. It became like this thing. Oh, Sal's asleep on the couch. Why? Because he ate too much food and stomach hurts. Later on, I became much more present. I grab a little bit of this, a little bit of that. I'd sit there and I'd savor it. And then we'd share and we'd talk about it. And it became a totally different experience. I gained way more value out of those meals. Another one is like a pecan pie, homemade pecan pie, which I mean, it's just homemade pies in general. A little bit of vanilla ice cream with that. Yeah. So this is a big deal. Like when you go into it, understanding this like, okay, who am I going to see? I'm going to see my aunt, you know, and I don't see her all the time. And she makes this one thing. And I'm going to go see this guy. And he's going to make my uncle. And he makes this one thing. Or there's this particular alcoholic beverage that my cousin likes to make. And instead of, you know, you know what people screw up a lot on the holidays? Processed chips, candy, soda. Snacking all the time. Like shit that you can get at any time that nobody prepared, that has no real meaning to the holiday itself. Yeah, stupidly like the novel stuff, real novel stuff. Yeah, I do Irish coffees. You know, my father-in-law makes really good Irish coffees. That's actually a tip that you didn't put on here that I think is a good tip is actually to just, is to try and avoid all the generic crappy snack food that gets put out before the meal comes. That has no value to holiday. Right, and like enjoy the feast with your family with the things that we're talking about versus the all day long kind of grazing on this stuff that's just, you know, potato chips and ranch dressing, you know, stuff like that. Or the ranch dressing with the carrots that everybody globs and does that. Those type of things like that. I feel like I would try and restrict from that. That's accessible all the time. But yeah, it's only once in a while does, you know, my niece make the monkey bread or that my mom makes the stuffing. That's like, so I'd rather savor for that. And you'll enjoy it more too versus I'm already kind of full and then now I'm full. I mean, this sounds silly, but if you go into the holiday saying, I'm going to savor these dishes that people prepared for this holiday and I'm going to connect with people that I don't normally see and I don't normally have this opportunity to connect with, you'll find you're far less likely to eat past the point of full. You're far less likely to overeat on garbage junk food that you could get anytime of the year at the convenience store. You'll find yourself deriving the real value out of the holidays. This is what I mean by working on a good relationship with food. This is part of that. And now this is a process that kind of takes time. It's a continual process because your relationship with food evolves as your life evolves, but really identifying these things. And of course, there's tips and tricks like eat protein first and eat the vegetables first because that helps provide more satiety. And we've talked about that at Nauseum, I think, on previous podcasts. But I think if you go into it with what I'm talking about where I'm like, you know, I'm going to really sit and enjoy, like put your phone down, don't be distracted, don't watch the TV, talk to the people around you or find those few family members you don't mind hanging out with, and then like savor and enjoy the food, you'll eat slower and you'll end up really deriving the real value and you'll avoid the shitty, overstuffed, crappy feeling that really is why people gain so much weight. They just overdo it. Now, is there anything that you guys do in regards to training and eating, leading up to that? So let's say it's the week of. So it's Thanksgiving's Thursday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, is there, and you're cognizant of what Thursday is. You know what you're probably going to enjoy yourself calorie-wise and maybe not, maybe you're not even going to be moving as much or whatever, you know what your day looks like. And so are there certain things that you guys will do leading up to that day as far as your eating and your training looks? Yeah, so personally, I have specific ones for me, which include not eating any foods that cause any digestive issues with myself, leading up to it knowing that I'm going to have things that like gluten and stuff like that. So three, four days before, I eat super like easy digestible food because if I go into it with poor digestion, it really will ruin the experience for me. But that's me personally, with clients towards the end of my career, this is when I'd have them reverse diet. Not the three days before, but I'd have them reverse diet working into it because it worked well into the reverse diet because you're going to have extra calories anyway. So why don't we make this like a short bulk period anyway? So now when you're in the holiday meal and you're eating the extra calories, it works well with our goal, which is reverse dieting, building muscle, fueling muscle growth. So that's more generally. I don't know. No, no, I love that. So that's similar to what... So I would normally do like a mini cut like at the beginning of November. So I'm in a low calorie deficit and then that week leading into it, very similar. I would start to reverse out of it. I would start building the calories up. I also, if there's a week or I'd say a couple of days where I might overreach it almost intentionally, it's going to be on this too. Yeah. So I would do a little bit longer workout or kind of push a little bit harder than usual than the advice that we normally give, knowing that I'm going to be extra sore, knowing that my body's going to want potentially extra calories to help me recover since I know I'm going to be getting them anyway. So those are probably the two things that I do between like the training and the diet, like leading into that. So I actually organized a little personal holiday around this strategy. You guys know this. I love that too. I started incorporating some very similar. After every Thanksgiving, this will be your, I don't know what this is going to be, year nine or 10 or maybe nine or 10, where so almost a decade, I've organized what we call the post Thanksgiving and we say the Guido workout because it's my cousins and I. So racist. I know. And what we do is we all have our Thanksgiving together and of course we're going to eat more than we normally do and enjoy ourselves and that stuff. And remember I said that the goal, my personal goal was kind of this reverse diet or sort of shade, excuse me, should I say this, this goal that I would get my clients, like reverse diet uses to build strength. And I thought this was perfect. Like let's meet the day after and do heavy lifting together. And so it's really, it's more bonding. It's more family time, but I've also hit a lot of PRs on the day after Thanksgiving. So this is really utilize all the stored energy. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it's, it's a really solid approach like because to like, you're able to now put a lot of that to banked energy, just consume to work. And why not go through a book? Why not go through, you know, part of that being a performance enhancement? Well, I've experienced it, I think twice now with your family. And one of the things I really appreciate about it that I like that's different too than if I were to compare it to normal, it is nothing like a normal workout. And it's actually, I think it lasts like almost three hours. But it's a lot more talking and it's, and it's connecting and it's, but it's this law, which what I love about that is we're not eating, we're not eating because there's no food around. So all we're really doing is connecting, drinking a little bit of water, lifting a little bit, doing challenges, bullshit and making telling jokes, talking business. Oh, back to lifting a little bit. And it turns into this like three hour, you know, semi fitness type of event that we're doing where I'm not eating food. I'm not sitting down. I'm connecting with family. I'm moving and burning calories. I'm sending a signal to build muscle. I really, really love this is like this cool traditional thing that you guys have done. And I've been lucky enough to be a part of it a couple of times. And that's what I find is different. It's not what I have done in the past where it's like it's a workout, right? So, oh, it's another workout where I get after it. It's like, no, no, no, you've really turned it into more about connecting with the family. And therefore it doesn't matter that it gets stretched out for three hours or whatever because we're just having, we're having fun. It's fun too. And it's probably going to start morphing because now everybody has little kids, you know. Kids will be running around. Well, no, what we might end up doing is bringing the babies together. And, you know, doing something that's like a, like maybe we'll do some strength challenges but in the meantime, we have our kids. Especially since we have this place, it's so perfect to have let them kind of run around and everyone take turns doing stuff and they get to see, you know. Well, and what a great, you know, maybe it'll be a tradition that they end up picking up, you know, because all of us have little boys actually. Right. So it'll be kind of cool. But, you know, I like, I like, I used to love telling clients, okay, here's what we're going to do. The week before we're going to start your reverse diet. So the holiday is going to be a part of your reverse diet. And the goals in the gym have changed. Our goals in the gym are, let's see how strong we can get. And then what ends up happening is you, it works perfectly because I'm not doing a cut during the holidays. That's really hard. You just talked about what that looked like when you were getting ready for a show. It's part of the reverse diet, right? It's part of the getting stronger. And then when you go back to the gym, rather than worrying about the two pounds of water weight that you gain from the extra bread and carbs and whatever, you're like, oh my God, I get, I added five pounds to my bench press or 10 pounds to my deadlift. It's a great combination. I like to back it up even a little bit further. So if you start with like a little week or two week at the end of October, beginning of November, like a cut, and I like to do kind of an aggressive cut in that short week or two. And then I'm reversing out. And the part of the reversing out is leading into what you're talking about. So we're starting to slowly increase calories, leading into Thursday. And in addition to that, I'm switching up my training. So whatever I was currently doing before that, I'm transitioning into a new focus, typically love something that's strength related and then kind of come up that way. Even knowing that I'm probably going to intake, you know, over my, my, my caloric maintenance, the idea is that any of those extra calories, I'm hoping that a majority of them get partitioned over into building muscle and not just storing body. That's the goal. The goal is, can I take this extra fuel? And again, we started earlier with talking about good relationship with this. So this isn't binging. This isn't eating till you get sick, but you're going to eat more. You're going to eat more and you're going to eat foods you don't normally eat. Why not take advantage of them within the context of a reverse diet? Because what a reverse diet is for people who don't know. In essence, it's the slow increasing of calories over time in combination with proper and appropriate strength training. Because the goal is to build muscle through a reverse diet and speed up the metabolism. So at the end of this process, if you reverse diet properly and incorporate the holidays in it, you could end up with a faster metabolism afterwards, which will make you getting lean easier because the challenge then becomes, how do I get lean if I did gain extra body fat after these holidays? The other thing that related to exercise that we do, even though, by the way, notice that nobody said anything about long bouts of cardio anywhere. We love to do this. And I get, I don't know, anywhere I think as little as three of my family members to as many as like seven of them have joined me before. But post-eating, I'll just go for a nice long one. Oh yeah. Just a nice stroll, like a nice long stroll. And again, more about connecting. Talking. And laughing, enjoying, telling stories, reminiscing. But going for a nice long walk after eating a big heavy meal like that. So good for your digestion. Oh, you feel so much better just by doing that. And it's not a lot to ask. I'm not saying I'm going to go for a run. I'm not saying I'm going to go push the weights. It's like we can go walk outside the weather in California around this time of the year is always beautiful too. So it's like the perfect temperature to go out there and walk for like a nice hour, hour and a half. I know some families play football. Yeah, we play tennis. Do you guys do that? Yeah. We used to play basketball. But too many injuries. I can't imagine my uncles and aunts play football. Basketball used to be a tradition. Yeah, it didn't last very long. I was just going to say, Justin, who the hell plays football with you? No, they don't really. Yeah. It's more just like touch at this point. Now, yes, we just throw the ball around and just try to run without like pulling hammies. So it's like, yeah, it's not like super rigorous or anything. It's just for fun. I do like. That's how the basketball or the walking came about for us. It used to be like this crazy like basketball tournament thing. It was a competitive. Yeah, very competitive. And we've now been, we've been walking for the last like four years. So it's been a while since we've played like, I mean, I would love to do the basketball, but it's like there's always like one or two of us that probably shouldn't. We're not conditioned. So you know what the theme is though? Because here we just talked about the post Thanksgiving workout that I do with my cousins. There's like, you know, and brothers, right? There's like eight of us. You talked about the basketball football, but then you talk about walking. You're talking about hiking. Really what it's evolved into is the real value of the holidays, which is connecting and bonding with family. So the workout, the walk, the hike, it's not about the crazy workout. It's about being active, but using activity as a vehicle for connecting with your family and your friends. So the workout is not like, I'm going to go hit my arms and shoulders and all that stuff. We're going to use this as a vehicle to connect. And activity is a great way to do it. What you'll notice by the way, when you go on a walk with family members is the movement and the activity promotes wonderful connection and wonderful conversations. It actually induces good conversations versus just sitting down feeling lethargic after you just ate, you know, a bunch of stuff. Also keep in mind, if you're listening to this and you don't do any of these things, but you're hearing it going like, oh, I would love to do that. You just kind of be the leader in the family. Do not be discouraged just because maybe only one or two decide to join you the first year, because that's kind of what it looked like for me. It wasn't like everyone's like, yeah, let's all go work out. Obviously you're going to have some uncle that's sitting on the couch with his foot up watching football, drinking his beer and like, fuck that. I ain't going out there. Like that's going to happen. That's okay. Don't make a big deal about it. Like take whoever will do that with you. I think make it very easy to try and gain it. Because again, the main point for me is connecting with my family. So the nice walk and stroll is easier to convince a handful of people to go do that. And you're not saying, hey, you guys, we're going to go walk hella fast and do this. No, yeah, we're going to go outside. Yeah, we're going to go walk. You want to take a walk for me? And I guarantee you'll get a couple of family members that will connect and do that. And then what we've seen is over the time, over years, more and more of the family members want to be a part of it and do it. Totally. Now, another strategy that you can use appropriately, I'm going to say appropriately, because this could easily go in the other direction, is fasting. Fasting can be used properly and appropriately on days where you feast. So what does this mean? This means that Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas dinner is coming, right? Some holiday get-together dinner or meal is coming. So why don't I not eat leading up to that? Like, why don't I not eat leading up to that? Now, here's where it could go wrong. If it feeds into the restrict binge behavior, because it could encourage you to binge even more because now you've given yourself permission. Held out and then all of a sudden now it's free reign. Right. But reality, what it is, is if you fast leading into the meal and the fast is more of this spiritual fast where I'm not eating and I'm thinking about the people I'm going to be with. I'm thinking about the value of my friends and family. I'm thinking about the meals that I haven't had since last year and I'm going to enjoy them and really savor them. What happens with the fast is it heightens your senses. It provides a little bit of clarity and actually improves your ability to savor meals. If you've ever gone on a fast, even a short fast for 10 hours, you'll find when you eat something, you actually perceive the flavors as more flavorful. So it can actually make that meal much more enjoyable. So I like using fasting in this particular way. So we're kind of dancing between general advice and then probably more of the advanced health and fitness person who has a good relationship with exercise and food because and I think that's important to make that clear as we talk about this because I'll share like almost exactly like what my protocol will look like heading in. That's not necessarily what I would recommend to my client because maybe they're not there yet because I totally agree that the fasting could be a good strategy but if you don't have a good relationship then you just- You can easily abuse. Yeah, you can easily abuse it. So I personally like to go on a pretty hard cut for two weeks and so reverse engineers back so like three weeks out. So this would be the end of October. I will start a pretty hard two-week cut where I restrict more calories than I normally would. And then I give myself a nice week and a half or so leading into Thanksgiving which gives me that time to slowly control my calories back in and I don't feel like I'm having to come from a hard cut. I would never do a hard cut right into there because then even with my discipline I know that would promote the overeating. So I want the hard cut at least three, four weeks out before the Thanksgiving week and then I'm slowly introducing calories leading up the reverse dieting and then the day of Thanksgiving is actually I'm gonna try and hold out on eating anything until the main meal. That's exactly what I do. And when the main meal happens, I enjoy. I enjoy everything in front of me and I'm mindful of what I'm doing. I also fast after the main meal. You know when people really screw up is they have their big holiday meal with their family and friends and then they take home a bunch of leftovers or the food is hung around. And then on their own by themselves. No more connecting with family or whatever. Now it's just- Gorge shoveling your things. Yeah, gorge on. Exactly. So I even will fast afterwards knowing that, well, I just I overate and also that was the value of that meal and I'm by myself now. So there's no value now and me sitting here eating all this food and not connecting with them by myself. So then I also do a fast afterwards. So there's definitely a healthy way to use fasting but it's not the avoidance of calories aspect of it. It's really the going into the meal with kind of clarity, right? And the side effect being I eat less calories as a result of it. It's really the side effect. So this a lot. And again, I love saying this part. If you want to, you have to be conscious of this if you've never done this before. If you go into these holiday meals consciously saying to yourself, I'm going to savor because think of a picture in your mind right now what it looks like for somebody to savor a bite of food. Okay. It's not rushed. It's not fast. It's not washing it down with water or a drink, right? It's like if you have a picture like it's, it's enjoying the senses. It's enjoying the flavor and the smell and the texture. So it's just kind of slow process. If you are going into what that mindset is saying, I'm going to test this out. I heard Sal say this on the podcast. I'm going to savor the meals that I'm going to eat in these holidays. If you go into it fasted, it's going to enhance your ability to savor because it does upregulate your perception of flavors and taste. Anybody knows this, right? You eat a lot of candy all the time. Candy starts to lose its value. You eat a lot of sweets. You eat a lot of anything. Starts to lose its value. If you haven't had it in a while, it all of a sudden has this different, you have this different, stronger perception. It's really cool experience. Like when I first did this and I was savoring the meals, it was like this explosion of experience that I had that I hadn't experienced before. So fasting can definitely be a part of all of this. Now, are there mechanistic aspects that you can make with your, with your, with your meals? Yeah, you could do like I said earlier, eat your protein first, eat your vegetables first, and so on. But I think what we talked about today is probably the root, right? The most important parts of all of this. People really honestly only get in a lot of trouble when you get out of control. It is very difficult, by the way. You become unaware. By the way, if you were to like try to get quote unquote fat in a day, I mean, you've seen those YouTube challenges of it's hard to eat 10,000 calories a day. Most people can't even get 10,000 calories. So that's not, that's not enough for you to put five pounds of fat on your body. So you actually. What it is, it's the mentality that's leading after. All the other holidays. That's right. It's what happens. It's not so much what happens on that day. It's what that kick starts. Because all of a sudden you go into this like I was restricting hard. I overindulge. I binge like crazy that day. And then I have the fuck off attitude for the next week afterwards. Because all Christmas is in a month anyway. And that's right. And that's where all the day. 100%. This is why I like to use fasting afterwards. Because another way that fasting can be used in a healthy way is it can be a reset. And what I mean by that is if you've ever, all of us experience this, right? Where we eat a particular way and then we find that we crave those foods. There's actually studies on this where people will eat like fast food. And then they find that they crave the fast food more and more as the receptors in the brain change, as the body starts to model itself after these particular types of foods. So fasting after helps prevent exactly that, Adam. It's not Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. It's Thanksgiving plus the weeks leading up to Christmas, plus the weeks leading to New Year's. It's that entire period of time when people really screw up. Now here's the deal. If you want to help on some of this in guidance, I know this episode is helping everybody or can help everybody. But if you want more specifics, we have an intuitive nutrition guide that helps with relationship to food. We have a reverse dieting 101 book which helps you with reverse dieting and explains how to do it. And then we have an intermittent fasting guide which kind of breaks down the different forms of fasting and the different ways you use fasting. All three of those are gonna be 50% off with this episode because we know that although this episode can help people out, a lot of people need more specifics. They need more reference. They need more help to help them through this process. So again, all three of them are 50% off. You can find them at mapsfitnessproducts.com and the code is healthy for the 50% off. This one's really important and that is to phase your training. If somebody trains for a full year doing a bench press and they're always aiming for five reps, if you compared that person to a person who did bench press where they did three or four weeks of five reps but then they did three or four weeks of 12 reps and three or four weeks of let's say 15 to 20 reps and then they'll throw in some supersets, at the end of that year, you're gonna see more consistent progress from the person who's moving in and out and less injury. That's another thing. You'll see less injury as well.