 Are you experiencing cravings, unexplained fat gain, anxiety, maybe a little bit of depression? It might be due to poor gut health. Believe it or not, poor gut health has been connected to all of those things. You know, I just read a study on gut health, well actually probiotic use and depression anxiety, and they found that people who supplemented with probiotics, there was a 64% reduction in those symptoms. How wild is that? I'm taking a probiotic, just pretty cool. What's your opinion on, obviously you said that statement, there's probably a large portion of people that are like, yeah, yeah, that's me. How do you go about figuring that out? Would you go to an elimination diet first to add and then slowly add foods in? But would you be your recommendation to somebody who's listening? Here's you say that and is curious to figure out if there's somebody who's suffering from that. Well, I would, I mean, if you really want to figure it out, functional medicine practitioner will be your best bet, right? Because they'll do tests. Yeah, they'll do tests. Yeah, they'll do lots of tests to kind of see if you have like, you know, dysbiosis, right? Your gut microbiome is off if there's any parasites or anything like that. Obviously if you have other gut symptoms, constipation, diarrhea, skin issues, then you could probably bet that there might be something wrong with your gut. But I mean, your microbiome, I mean, they produce a good chunk of neurotransmitters like serotonin. They affect catecholamine production. These are like chemicals that give you energy, make you feel a particular way. And then cravings, people are like, what about cravings? How's that? How's that work? Well, I mean, you're, you're more bacteria cells than you are human cells. It makes sense that you're, that the bacteria in your gut will influence the foods or the types of foods that you crave to feed themselves. So and they've done studies where they'll change the microbiome of an animal or even humans. They've done these even with humans and it changes the types of foods that they actually crave, which is kind of wild. So like based off of like the majority of bacteria that you have that can influence you because of the types of foods you've been eating. So just kind of like feeds itself and then craves more of the same. Yeah. So there's just like theory on that, right? Where there's like certain bacteria that feed off of, let's say sugar or, or certain types of fiber or fat. And if you have a lot of those, then you're going to crave more of those feet, those foods because the bacteria is essentially, I mean, here's a theory. The theory is that the bacteria evolved to influence your behaviors to feed themselves. So it's kind of like you're a zombie. Yeah. It's kind of like you're just being controlled by bacteria. Are you both watching that show right now? Which one? The last of us? Yeah. Dude, it's so good. Are you, are you watching? That's fungus though. Are you on it too? Yeah. What about you Douglas? No. Okay. Yes. I won't commit until he's watching. Are you mushroom zombies yet? Until it's until Doug. By the way, welcome back Doug. This guy was out sick for a little while. How do you feel? He's alive. How do you feel? He beat the crap out of himself. How was it? This is round two, yeah? Yeah, round two. Yeah. This one was worse than the first one. No, identical. Really? Absolutely identical, except for maybe one thing, it was different. So the symptoms I had was basically being really tired and a little bit lightheaded and a headache. That's about it. The last time I had it though, I had some type of strange throbbing that was going on in my extremities. Hold on a second, let's get into that. Sounds a little bit wild, but it's true. This time I didn't have, I didn't have that. I did have a lot of like joint pain. So maybe I had some inflammation going on there. The one thing that happened last time and knock on wood, it doesn't happen this time either. I lost so much hair last time. Really? But fortunately, it seems this time I've avoided that. That's not an uncommon symptom that some people got from COVID. I guess it's an inflammatory response that some people get. Yeah, I don't know. Which is kind of weird. I did not like it. Interesting. But first off, Doug has probably one of the strongest immune systems I've ever known in my entire life. At least out of the four of us, for sure. Oh, for sure. I've known Doug now for, how long have we known each other now? It's been like 12, 13 years? Yeah. I think I've seen you sick three times in the entire time. Right. And each time you're sick for a day and then it's gone. And each time I've gotten what you had, I'm sick for a week. You've done that to me twice now, by the way. I know I feel so guilty out here. Were you right on the stack right away? Did you get on the stack? Oh, yeah. I was doing everything. And how soon did you know to even test? Like, did you recognize the same symptoms and go, oh, I better test? Because it wasn't like you were, like, deathly sick. Yeah, first I thought I had food poisoning. And then it became clear to me, like the next morning, that I was actually fighting something else. Because then I recalled, OK, these symptoms are exactly like the ones I had last time. I had COVID. So probably is that. So I did test. And yeah, it came up positive. I wonder if they've done, speaking of microbiome, I wonder if they've done any studies on probiotics and viral infections and their effects. That'd be interesting to pull up to see if there's anything. I don't know. Maybe Andrew can look something up over there. I mean, it seems logical that it would help, right? Well, maybe, right? It might, because certain probiotics, I know the bacillus strains, I think, are anti-inflammatory. So that might help with the inflammation from certain viruses. When I was sick, I was using seed on a regular basis. But I used it before, too. So I'm not sure if there was a difference. But it'd be interesting to see if it makes that big of a difference. Now, that's round two for you. Yes. You've only had it once. Dude, I had, like, an hour's worth. You did. It was done. He did. Still funny. You ever pay attention like you're, I have, like, super conservative friends, super liberal friends, and how they respond and how they talk about how COVID got them is, like, it's very obvious where they're at. You know what I'm saying? That shit was bullshit. It was so easy. Yeah, dude, it didn't even slow me down. Check that thing right there. Then I have my, like, liberal friends. You've got all the shots. All the boosters. Like, man, thank God I got those shots and boosters. I'm not even going to die. I would have died. So much worse. It was so bad. I'm going to die, if I just. It is interesting. Yeah. That was a tough, hey, listen. Look, I'm, you know, that was a tough time for me because I'm a borderline hypochondriac. So that whole period of time for me was so exact. Dude, I just rubbed your borderline. Yeah. I don't think you're anywhere near borderline. You think I'm legit? Like full, full scale? Yeah. Doug, can you please step in here? No, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm in denial, I guess. Hey, man, listen. I stuck, wait, but I stuck to my control. Doug texted me before he came in this morning. He goes, yo, send me a screenshot of your negative test for COVID. I said, yeah, I got you, bro. I got a few of those. So I sent it over to him so he could send it to the thread. So Sal would be okay with him coming to work. No, I recognize Doug's thumb in the picture. Yeah. I know. That was a good thumb. I knew that was him when I saw it. Oh, man. Anyway. But yeah, so, you know, back to the conversation about the microbiome, if that's you, you can even try supplementing with a probiotic. Like we work with seed. You can try and see if you notice any symptom relief. And if you will, you'll probably notice it within the first few weeks. Do you take it consistently? I do every day. So you're consistent. I told you how I use it. I'm not. Only when your gut is off. Or I know I'm going to eat something that's going to throw it off. Like I intentionally know I'm going to go into something that I probably shouldn't have. Like I noticed a huge difference if I proactively take that beforehand. It makes a big difference. All right. Today's giveaway is MAPS Split. This is a bodybuilder style MAPS program. Here's how you can win free access. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we dropped this episode. Subscribe to this channel. Turn on notifications. If we pick you as the winner, we'll let you know in the comment section that you won free access to MAPS Split. Also this month, we have three programs that are 50% off. Huge sale. MAPS performance half off. MAPS aesthetic half off. And MAPS hit half off. If you're interested, just click on the link at the top of the description below. All right. Here comes the show. Dude, speaking of food, I gotta tell you guys a story. So I took my daughter and my 13 year old and my two year old to my mom's house. And Jessica's always like, listen, make sure your mom doesn't like, she's always trying to offer so much food. And you know, with the radius, we gotta be careful with what he's eating right now. He's on a kind of low histamine diet. And she's like, and I'm always arguing with him. Like, no, she's fine. You know, she's not doing that. I'm having a tie-in mom. Okay. If you've ever been to like a tie-in grandma's house, they will offer you. It'd be weird if it was, she was like Swedish or something. That would make sense, right? But they'll offer you food every hour. Every hour on the da, they're gonna offer you something. So I get there and with my daughter, she's like, hey honey, what about this? Can I make you that? I got this, I got that. And they're going back and forth. My daughter's like, no, no, no, I don't want, no, I'm fine, no, no. And I'm like, mom, I think she's okay. Like I think she's, I don't know where my mom busts out like full-size candy bars. Where did she get these? I see like over my head, my mom's offering like a Snickers bar. I'm like, where did you get these? Why do you have full-size candy bars in your cupboard? That has to be one of the- She wants to be the best grandma. Dude, she's got, I mean, she's got stashes of food and like, I don't care what you like, she's got it and she'll offer it to you. Do you think that's like one of the number one arguments with couples is in-laws feeding their kids? Like I feel like that has to be one of the, almost every parent that I've talked to that is trying to make sure they feed their kids a well-balanced diet very early is like, yeah, wait till he goes to, you know, grandma and grandpa is like, that is the biggest challenge. You know what's crazy about it too, is like, so we laid the law with all that stuff and they still, they lie. That's crazy, they do. Yeah, and they, and what really- They get some weird pleasure out of it. Yeah, what gets me so angry is that they think it's funny and cute. Like it's like, oh yeah, we won't tell your dad. You know what I'm saying? It's like, no dude, don't do that. And the kid always sells them out. So that's how you know, you know what I'm saying? Like if it was up to them, I asked them, they lie and I'm like, yeah, he told me. I'll show up and they'll really be like, no, no, blue candy, blue candy. You're like, what are you talking about blue candy? I don't know about blue candy. I'm like, oh really? Ever comes home, he's doing jumping jacks and he's like, dude, I know what happened. So out of all your guys' relationships, who gets more mad in that situation? So do you get more mad at Courtney? Do you get more mad at Jessica in those situations? Well, so because Jessica's mom isn't around, they're always with my parents. So it's more of an issue with my parents, although my mom's pretty good. Yeah, I know, but who's, do you get more mad about it or does Jessica get more mad about it? Probably Jessica, because I understand, you know when you have a friend or a family member that is a particular way? You sound just like Katrina right now. Well, hold on a sec. Make it an excuse right now. No, hold on a sec. Get me out of the family. Fuck, dude, you're just, you're so... Listen, hold on a sec. You guys are the same, dude. Let me paint context for you. Well, I don't need to, I have a wife that does the same thing you're about to say right now. Let me explain. Hold on, let's say we were driving somewhere and I got us 80% of the way there and then I got lost last minute. And you guys know how bad I am with directions. You guys wouldn't get that mad because like it's Sal. Like he did 80% right. Like that's really good for Sal. I mean, she... So when you're talking, when I understand, I know my parents. I know my parents and they're doing pretty damn good. Believe me, compared to how they could be, they do pretty damn good. So is that the same thing? Yeah, dude, it's the same bullshit excuse. So I'm like, listen, if it was my mom, I said I would lay the law. It'd be the last time she would be like, hey, listen, if you ever wanna see that kid again, you don't feed him like that. Scared the shit out of my mom. I'm gonna not do it after that. Wow, dude. But she won't do that. She's just like, well, you gotta understand that this is how they do it. Like the first excuse was, this is how my brother shows love. I'm like, really? That's gonna be your way of justifying. Doesn't your mother love buying my toy every time you show love? Yes, dude. This is, these are like two of the biggest, you know, fights that we have right now is the in-laws with how they feed them and how they give them stuff. You and Jessica should create a support group, I swear to God. Oh. My grandma, this is like generational. My grandma used to come up to me and she'd give me a hug and she, while she's hugging me, she'd slip me to candy or money. Like a drug deal. Here's a word. I swear to God. She would slip me like, it was a drug deal, money or candy. Don't tell. Or she'd like, hug me like this and like put it in my pocket and I'd be like, what the hell? Don't tell your mom. Yeah, or like I'd have like five bucks or something like that. This is a thing. Yeah, that does the same thing. She used to do that too with like my cousins because they were like super staunch about not having any sugar like my uncle and aunt and he would like send them off with like candy bars and all that. So I'm like, okay, I know exactly what I'm up for like with my kids. Yeah. So they're totally bad on that end. And then Courtney's the family and her parents are more like sit them in front of the TV to kind of babysit them. Like that used to irritate the hell out of me. And so it was like this, you have both angles there. You have like the treats and then you have like the TV time. All right. So are you both equally upset then? So like, can they go to... And then we just kind of like balance it on like, okay, how much time do we have them watch versus them? And then... I think that's what I've come to is just like, okay, they spend 10% or less of their time with at their grandparents' house. So that one time they do this or that and if I can get them to do it 50% of the time then I'm like, okay, I'm still probably used to you're like, yeah, they're gonna get treats. I see both sides of it. So on one side, you want to be respected as the parent. And then on the other side, you see the value in them having a relationship with their grandparents and... So I see both sides. Yeah, but okay, so that is the excuse that Katrina tried to make with her brother and stuff like that. I'm like, I said, that's such a poor reason because that's an unhealthy way to build a relationship. Build it on something else. Build it on playing, tickling, playing outside, jumping in the water. I mean, there's a thousand other things you could build in bond. You can read, do something else. Yeah, I know the balls in there for her. It's funny, it's a layup, you know? Dude, because we've been like staunch about it. We talk to the kids all the time about making better decisions and whatnot. And so they'll go over to my parents and stay overnight and they'll say no. And my mom gets like so offended. She comes at me, it's like, why are you making them be all like healthy? Like, dude, you listening to yourself right now? You know, like, I'm taking that away from you. So what do you guys think then? Cause, okay, every generation raises their kids different, right? So I feel like the TV is a big one. When I was a kid, saying like you guys, we were in front of the TV, it wasn't a big deal. Now we're more aware, like you can't watch as much TV. What do you guys think it's gonna be with our kids when they bring their kids over to our house? What are we gonna be doing that they're gonna say don't do? We're gonna be in the metaverse, bro. Probably, don't bring them outside. What are you doing? It's dangerous outside. Just put your head set on and, you know. Yeah, I have no idea what that's gonna look like. We're gonna have to deal with that. It's gonna be really weird. I don't know, I think if we do a good job with ours that we'll have this culture around when we're all together with the families that we do physical things, things that interact with each other. And so that becomes the norm and then maybe we don't have to battle that so much. I mean, that's my hope is that we put all the work in as dads when they're young that later on when they get a little bit older and so I doubt that they wanna do that stuff. I mean, I see this, like I have a cousin, Stephanie, who listens to the show. They have a bunch of kids, right? I love her, yeah. And they grew up in a six kids homeschooled house. She turns around, has kids. They do the same thing, homeschooling their kids. And their kids are incredibly intelligent. They live like on a farm. They're used to doing outside. So, and it doesn't mean they don't like to sit down and watch a movie. But it's the culture they grew up in. Yeah, but they grew that that's such the norm that the default to like watching a movie or iPad or TV stuff like that is only because there's like absolutely nothing else to do. Like they'll go find something else to do first. And then it's like, okay, there's nothing that maybe, but... I bet you, I bet you it would be the opposite, right? It'll be like, I'm teaching them dangerous stuff. Like, you know, blown up firecrackers and you know, like chopping wood and like whatever it is. It's like, you know, someone on the dangerous side. Like I bet you it's that's gonna be even less normal. Like everybody's like so bubbled out with the way that they raise their kids. It feels like that already, don't you? Right? Yeah. I feel like that. Like you, I mean, you're pretty good about getting the boys out and like doing some risks. Well, they don't, there's already... You let your kid climb a tree 100 feet up in the air and stuff like that. Yeah, Justin's a little extreme here. Yeah, so you do some pretty crazy. They're feral. Yeah. I don't know how you do that. You know, they don't allow... He sounds like his kids like get off the curb. He's like, whoa, you see the curb there? I freak out. Bro, it's literally like six inches. They're gonna be okay. They don't let kids play like tag. Do you guys know that? What? Yeah, they can't play tag. Is it racist? No, no. I figured they'd find some way to tie it to it. No, cause kids like run and then they, they'll push each other. Red Rover was out a long time ago. That game was totally off. That was the best game ever. There's a lot of stuff that they can't play. Yeah, they can't play. They can't play a lot of these games. What's it called? Dodgeball? They can't play dodgeball. Cause kids are getting blasted with... So I brought up the other day about the kids and TV and iPad time, right? What are you guys doing? Cause here's another one that we're trying to work through. And again, I don't necessarily know. I know the right answer for this. I'm trying to navigate my way through this is toys. Like at what point do you think the kids having too much toys is actually a bad thing? And at what point too are you depriving them if you're just like, you got two toys. That's all you get to play with. You know what I'm saying? It's like, how do you guys manage the amount? And I don't know if this is a big of a problem for you guys. I mean, I have a mother-in-law who gets a toy, two toys like every week, you know? So it's like compounding, obviously. Jessica's really good. So obviously she runs the house, right? Jessica's really good at everything. She's really, well, most things when it comes to the kids. I know. I get points every time I'm on a podcast. You hear that? I'm just tallying it. Don't be mad at me. No problem. No, when it comes to raising the kids, obviously she manages most of that. And I never really paid attention to that. But what she does, which I think is really good, is we have toys and she brings out like five or six and then Aurelius will just play with those for a while. And then when he goes to bed, I don't know, once a month or something, she trades them out for another four or five. And the rationale is when there's too much stuff for them to play with, they don't even play with anything. They don't focus on what they're gonna do. It's too many choices, too much stuff, too much clutter. So she'll have like five or six laid out. And then once he kind of gets sick of those, she'll trade them out. And she gets rid of stuff all the time. You know, as an adult, you guys remember, I don't know, when I was in high school, it was a dating, I'm gonna date myself a little bit here, right? It was cool to like collect video cassette, you know, movies, VHS. And, you know, as a kid, like, who's had to work in a summer job and part-time during the years of like that, like, you know, I can't afford to have, you know, infinity number of VHS tapes. So I had like 20, you know, I get to buy one every three to six months. I can afford to go buy the $20 VHS or whatever. So when I had a collection of say 25, like video cassettes, I mean, all through high school, I must have watched all of those, you know, 60 times each. And it was always an easy choice for me. Like I'm looking up at my shelf and it's like, oh yeah. Now you're going Netflix, it takes you an hour and a half. Yeah, like I have way more options than I ever have, but then I sometimes I'll end up spending 30 minutes looking for something and then giving up. Oh, there's nothing to watch. I know. Oh, there's nothing to watch. That's true. It is. That's true. I mean, that highlights your point with the kids having so many choices. I think that's a Montessori thing, is that they say put out like few toys so they can focus on just those toys to play with and not put, not overwhelm them with just a bunch of stuff everywhere. So how have you tackled this? Well, I'm not in that phase anymore, but like when we had like toys, just abundant toys, we would kind of go through and see, you know, we just like grab the toys and like take them out of the room and then just see if they noticed and they wouldn't even notice. And so we would just like kind of scale it down every so often when we would just kind of see what they would lean towards. And then later on, we tried to kind of like incentivize them to sell. So Courtney would like kind of set up this Facebook thing where they could kind of like sell the toys and all this stuff. And they were kind of involved with that. So every now and then we'd do like a spring cleaning and then they would like sell their toys. And that helped because it was like, you know, they wanted to see it go to some other kid or somebody else. I like that. So you, you're, okay, I have an idea that. I had a friend that used to donate toys. So this is what I want to do. Like, so I told Katrina what I like to do is we just switched and moved. And I feel like I could purge like at least 80% of these fucking toys right now. So I want to get rid of a big chunk of them. And then I want to build them like this shelving that has these individual cubbies. And then I want the, I want to, wait a second backup, you're going to build it? Well, no, not like that. Like somebody will build it. Somebody will build it. I was like, well, this is crazy. Fucking three weeks later. Good job, bro. I'm like, six cubbies. Sorry. I feel like the current hour. Yeah. All right. I'm just going to build it for you. So no, so I want to, so I want to have this, these cubbies built, Sal. And that will be the total amount of toys that he has. I'll let him fill it up. And then as he, cause he's been trained already to ask, I want to go to the toy in the store. We have to, to give away one. So that's how I want to do it. It's like, okay, let's, so yeah. So let's say he's got 32 cubbies. Which one do you want to replace? Yeah, exactly. I can see all 32 of his toys. And then he's asking his dad, hey dad, I want this. I want that. Okay son, well, let's go look at your toys. Which one would you like to give to somebody else? And then make him choose one to gift before we go buy another one. That's what I'm trying to do. I like that. Now I'm wondering if he's, you think he's at the right age? Do you think he'd be okay with that at his age? Well, I think that I, it would, we'd start training that now. Obviously it would take a while for him to do it. I have no idea. That's why I'm asking. Cause I want, you know, certain age kids, like they don't know how to share because they don't understand the concept. Yeah. So I love that idea though. I had a friend who did, who kids were a little older though, like five or six. And when they would get toys for Christmas, they would donate like equal amount of toys to other kids. Yeah. I mean, we're, I mean, we're turning four in July. So I think we're, we're getting to an age where he, he understands the concept of sharing, understands one or two and like all those things like that. So I think if I organize it right, and I told her like Katrina, I was like, this is such a perfect time because we're, we're moving from one place to another. So he won't even realize they're all gone. We'll make something really nice for him and be like, this is where all your, plus I'm also thinking too, the cleaning and organized side too. Like I want them to have a place. Like this toy has this place. This put this toy has that place. It helps them organize their mind too. I remember Jessica saying that of that helps them organize their mind. And you ever hear the, the term like it, like if you organize your client, your closet, you'll organize your mind a little more. Or they'll tell that to people who feel anxious. So I, it's like, the mind loads your anxiety. Yeah, I believe this was, I want to say Moni Sorry taught this, I want to say. Yeah, it's pretty, I like your idea though. I like that too, because it combines like them giving. Right. You know, not just getting rid of, but giving. I feel like there's a couple of their privates, so they have a choice. Right, I think, I think he learning to sacrifice, learning how to gift, being organized. I think there's a lot of benefits to it. Now I understand how young of an age he is, it's going to take some extra effort on our part to stay on it, right? To one, cut down to the, say, however many. And I told Katrina, listen, I'm flexible on how many right now. Like you can come up with a number, but let's just agree that we have a certain amount of toys that he has. And then if he wants another one, or if he gets another one, let's say he gets gifted a toy and we come home with it, it's like, okay, we need a spot for it. Where are we going to put it? Which one are we going to give away to some other kid and then make him choose and then the new toy goes out? I'll tell you, so I'm in a little bit different phase right now, you know, than that. You're fighting like smoking cigarettes or something like that. Yeah, they're just like into drugs. Wow, wow. One drug at a time, kid. You can't come out of drugs. I can't get him to quit those damn cigarettes, man. Packs after packs, you know? Yeah, God, I was like, it's okay. You messed them up, Adam. What is this? No, I got it, I got it, I got it. It's back. So they're in this phase now, where they're real entrepreneurial. Yeah. And Ethan especially, so they have this thing, it's called town and so he started out kind of like selling soda and all this stuff and like making all these different concoctions himself and like added like grenadine or like, and he'd like create all these. Is this a kid? So yeah, you have all these different options to like enhance like a soda. Oh, that's great. So anyway, so he sold all this at school and then it didn't stop there. He like, he's still like kind of thinking and scheming all these ideas. And so he knows that that prime drink's really popular and all these like kind of like drinks where kids are just like, you know, wanting to buy this stuff off of other kids and like he sees a market for this seven up drink that was like a powder. So they have these like powders, like sugar-free seven up powders that they put it in their water. And so he was able to buy it online for cheaper and he's like selling it. So his competition is selling it for like three bucks. He's gonna sell it for one buck, right? Okay. And it's cost him like, you know, like 20 cents, a little packet. And so anyway, so he's kind of going through this and he's making little bits of money like every single day and he's like selling it to everybody. And he just recruited his little brother, right? So now Everett's like, you know, taking some and he's like, I got three new clients today, dad. No, he didn't. Are they really doing that right now? Yeah, and I'm like, that's awesome. I mean, it's great. And I love it. And it's like, I'm like, can we like spin this now and like get some like healthy products in here? Is he paying him commission or is he paying commission? Yeah. So Ethan's basically running him. And so he's given him 50% of the profit that they get from it. And so it's like, and he's kind of like shelling it out to him and then running. And then he's trying to find more people to help him kind of, you know, run his enterprise. That's right. That's funny. That's right. When I was a kid, I signed up a bunch of people in Molauns for 20 bucks a lawn and they paid my cousin 10 bucks and I stayed at home, watched TV while he mowed everybody's lawn. It's perfect. My dad found out something never changed. Yeah, you guys do all this. Oh, I gotta tell you guys, my Aurelius cracks me up. He started saying this phrase. I don't know where he gets it from, but like if he gets frustrated or something, he'll go like this. He'll do something like fresh. He'll be like, whole life. I'm like, what? He must have heard it. He must have heard it. One of us say something like, my whole life I've been put up with this shit. That's so much. He just says it all the time now. He'll be playing and his blocks will fall over. Whole life and we just start cracking up. What is he doing? My favorite is Max's thing with the tie. Like he has no concept of how long, two or three minutes is, but Katrina for so long would tell like when it's time for bath timer with that and he'd be like, time, let's go for bath time. No, no, no, I want to play. And then Katrina would be like two more minutes. So she's done that since the beginning. So now he knows to ask for that. You know what I'm saying? Come on, it's time for bath time. Two more minutes, Bob. And then you go, okay, fine. She walks up to me. Do you guys get a visual timer? So it's really cool. So we have one and you turn it and it's like a color changes to show you how much time is left. And then they'll learn how much five minutes is two minutes. And right now I kind of like that he doesn't because then I can lie, right? So I can use that to my advantage. Two minutes, five seconds. Yeah, you get to my advantage, she said. Yeah, that's a small window, dude. You want to keep that. Yeah, exactly. I like the fact that there's a lot of power to it that he doesn't know. Hey, you know what works really well right now with my toddler is reverse psychology. Two years old, I can get him to do anything if I tell him not to do it. Anything I want. I'll be like, you better not put your toys away. And he goes, he puts all his toys away. Just gonna look at each other like, this is amazing. How would you compare his, you know, quote unquote, terrible twos to your other kids? My oldest was chill. He was always chill. So he was pretty easy. My daughter, my 13 year old, she had terrible twos, threes, fours, fives and sixes and went all the way from two to six. And she lost, I told you guys, one time she threw a tantrum at Target, knocked her on tooth out. I told you guys about that once, right? And she went nuts and hit herself on the floor and knocked her tooth out. So Aurelius is in between. He's got the terrible twos. He throws tantrums, but he's not like my daughter was where you're like, do we got like, what's going on here? Do we have a problem? Do you want to call a doctor? So he's in between, but he's two and it supposedly gets worse. So we'll see what happens. How are your boys? Were they the same like as far as that phase? I think it would like Everett definitely had it earlier. Then Ethan, it took a little bit longer. It was like more like terrible fours for him. Oh, interesting. Yeah, so yeah, it was different. But I mean, they both had their moments of like, I think it's just asserting themselves and like wanting to kind of like push back real hard. And, but Everett for sure was like more like explosive, I guess would be. He's more like. Like he's very like. He's your twin, right? Like if he doesn't, if he's just not feeling something, dude, you like better batten down the hatches, you know. And you got to let him write it out. Yeah. Because the more you push, the more they go off. Yeah. That's what, you know. And I mean, he'll listen to me and everything, but at the same time, like he wants to give his frustration out and then is like, okay, I need you just have to leave him alone. You know, are there traits you guys see in them that you know came from you that you wish they didn't have that came from you? Oh. Yeah. Like Everett is super clumsy, dude. And just like smashes everything. And he's like got no like, you know, softness and dexterity with like anything. He's broken more things. And it's like, you know, it's coming. And he'll just like, there'll be something like just hanging on the corner of the table and just, you know, that's how we feel when we go places with you, right? I know, right? I know. You know, five minutes. This would either be on Justin's shirt or on the floor. I'm a bull in the Chinese shop, dude. I hate that. Turbo or nothing. That's it. You know what? If I think about it, Aurelius is very cautious, which is how I was when I was a kid. So, so Jessica wants him to climb stuff. Yeah. He'll climb hella slow. But by help, you know, and then Jessica's like, he's like his dad, I'm like, sorry. At least you've hurt himself. As I said, that's a trait you wish you did. Cause Max kind of has a little bit of that too. Where he's cautious. Were you like that? So, and what I see him doing, I was telling her this the other night, we were actually talking about this. And I said, you know, I was a bit cautious with things that I just wasn't interested in. But if it was something I was really interested in, I would do dangerous stuff. Yeah. So I did definitely stuff where I look back now and be like, that was pretty stupid. Like I probably shouldn't have done that. That was super dangerous. But it was something I was really into. Like we were at a very young age, I was out, as soon as I could ride a bike, I was out ramping it, you know, off ramps and going down hills and hitting dirt mounds and coming back all messed up. Like so I definitely did stuff that, risky stuff as a kid. But then I also was the type where, you know, if all the kids were doing something and it was something dangerous and I wasn't in there trying to pressure me into doing it. I'm like, no, I'm cool. Yeah. And so you couldn't like course me to do something I didn't want to do. And it was less about if it's risky or not. I just weren't interested. I don't want to, I'm not interested. So I see that in him where he's like, you know, he still scoots his butt down the stairs. Even though he could like walk up and down the stairs. That was me. He still does that. But then he'll, you know, jump from couch to couch to couch. And, you know, he's fallen a couple of times and almost hit the concrete slab. And like, so he'll, so he does certain things that he's risky than other things he seems super cautious about. I didn't get, I wasn't a risk taker at all until I was probably 16. And I got my driver's license. And then I was very risky with the car. But other than that, I never did anything like physically. I mean, I did, you know, Judo and stuff like, but I never climbed things and jumped off things and stuff like that. So he won't break any bones, honey. He'll be fine. That's it. Speaking of your kids, Justin, cause your kids like magic, they like magic spin so much. Did you give them the new birthday cake flavor? Yeah, I haven't tried it. Yeah, they do actually, they like it. They like still prefer the fruity, but that was like their second favorite. So yeah, I had brought that home because we just finally, and I'm so glad now that they send it. Cause it was like a limited flavor. It's permanent now. And now it's permanent. Oh, it is? Yeah, birthday cake is permanent. You sure about that? Positive. Yes. Oh, I thought it was just that. Yeah, and that's why they sent us over like, cause they always have like these cool featured flavors and then we are late to the party in terms of tasting. Have you tried the birthday cake? I haven't. Max has had it, Katrina. So Katrina took some home and I'd seen him eating them and she says he loves them, but I haven't had it yet. What are the macros on that again? Because someone's listening right now. 150 calories for a cup. And what's the protein? 13 grams. Yeah, that's great. How often do your kids eat it? I mean, it's kind of like off and on. Like, so it, I would say probably, I don't know, every kind of four days or so. Okay. We'll have like, yeah. Oh, Max eats daily. Yeah. Oh yeah, you do it dry, right? He eats it dry at school. Yeah. Yeah, I don't. Dude, any kids eat it with milk anymore? Like none of my kids eat it. He's no, he's no. I don't even know if he's, I don't even know if he's had it like that before. Are you psycho? Like, he does those little cups, you know the ones where you have your hands? We just don't obviously use them. Oh, maybe that's why. Like they've trained him now to just eat, like dry. So he prefers it. You know what he likes too? Like I'll take the waffles out and he doesn't want me to toast them sometimes. I'm like, buddy, it's cold. Let's take out of the freezer. He's a fruit person? Yeah. He then eat waffles too without syrup and butter. Yeah. He likes it straight like that. Or if I just drizzle a little bit of honey on it, he just lets it eat it straight like that. You guys want to hear something weird? When I went to Italy as a kid, so I don't know if this is a thing in Europe, but it was in my, I guess my family over there. They, when they poured cereal, they threw the milk first and then they'd add the cereal to it. What? That's actually smart. What? Like it keeps it from getting soggy. Like the majority of it. Well, I mean, you're going to eat it right away. What's the difference? But they pour milk and then they throw the cereal in the milk. You have to eat it right away. I told you I broke up with a girl because like I was over cereal. Oh yeah. And I was on the phone and she was talking forever. Yeah. I'm like, I got cereal. That was so mad because all my frosted flakes got all soggy. And you dumped her. Yeah. That's how important the relationship was. Speaking of relationship, I want to hear about this show. Is it a show that you listed over there, Milth Manor? What is that? What is that? I'm so glad you brought this up. What was it? Yes. So this is how ridiculous TV is now and like, like programming, right? So, I mean, you've seen Temptation Island. You've seen kind of these accelerations, these dating shows and all the stuff. So the latest, I think this is like a TLC show. They decide, oh, well, you know, there's a whole category. I guess they looked on Pornhub or something, right? Because they're just like, yeah, Milth's a big thing. So let's get all these moms on an island or I don't know if it's an island, but it's basically, they put them all in one place and they're all going to be dating these guys that are half their age. Okay. No. Now the twist is, their mom is there. So they're going to be dating everybody else's moms. Well, hold on. The sons, the sons are the ones that are coming onto the show. With their moms. With their moms. And they have to stay with their mom while they date somebody else's mom. And the moms are dating the other guys. Does that make sense to you? No. Okay, let's use my mom and myself as an example. You're going to go on the show with your mom. I'm going to go on the show with my mom. He's going to date your mom. You're going to try and date my mom. Oh, like that? Yes. I'm going to try and date your mom. Oh, wow. Okay, I'm interested. This sounds really funny. It's sad. Dude, this is like Jerry Sprenger's No, it's still you liar. Try to act like you're interested. Are they all single moms, I'm assuming? Why would I? Yeah. I think so. Dad has to stay home. I don't know if they'll tell me. Who knows these days, but... That's the twist. Yeah, get it twisted. By the way, they're all married. Man, like it needs any more twists. Wait a minute. So this is fucked up. Hold on a second. So that the guys are hanging out with each other? Yeah. And they're like, can you imagine this? You better treat my mom right. Dude. Click on that bottom left picture. Let me... He's all me and Karen. Well, last night, Karen, it's my mom. It's like, dude. Oh, wow, there's some hot moms. Wow. Your mom's got some legs. Are those them? Bro. Is that them? Yeah, that's them. That's the show. Hey, you know what? They're a young mom. You're the guys. Oh, God, they're bunch of kids. Bunch of douchebags. I mean... Okay, so you know it might be weird about this. We were supposed likely to hook up with one of our moms out of the three of us. What? Hold on a second. You? Totally that guy. I would totally hook up with Sal's mom. There's a reason... Oh, my God. There's a reason why you've never met our moms. Have you met Mrs. Love? Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah? Yeah, my mom. I was just like, safeguarding her, though. Yeah. Trust me. Adam's a predator. You're the prey. I'm just kidding. You know what would be weird about this show? Have you ever met, like, you ever meet a woman or, you know, whatever, and you think she's attractive, but then you meet her dad or her son or whatever. It looks like them. And then it's like, oh. Yeah, yeah. Like, what if these guys are like, they're like, oh, she was so hot. And then you meet the dude and you're like, oh, you look like your mom. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if that happens to at least one. Yeah. I'm saying one of them that looks like the mom. Bro, so hold on. How many episodes you watched behind? I haven't watched any. I just saw the concept in the trailer and I was, like, appalled. But I mean, yeah, I could see how... Is it Netflix? It's interesting. Is it Netflix? That's on? No, I think he said TLC. TLC. That's a network. Is that where is that? Yeah, I have no idea. I don't know if they sold it. Yeah, TLC is like, I don't know. No, that's a channel, right? That's a network. But that's normally on... Watch on Discovery Plus. There you go. That's the streaming thing. You can go see it now. Well, you got much hope. Dugs, I don't know what the magic box is. Listen. I don't know what the talk is. That's it. Hey, I got to tell you guys about a study, a groundbreaking study. You guys ever read studies and think to yourself, who funded this? All the time. Study. Why would they even? So what do you guys think would happen if you take men and then you add, give them testosterone? Do you think their libido increases or decreases? Ooh, let's think about that for, I don't know, immediately, of course. Yeah. So this is the article. This is the article. Smearing testosterone on men makes them into horny beasts scientists find. And then it says we're shocked. And it's a surprise. Absolutely no, my scientists have discovered that literally smearing testosterone onto the skin of young straight dudes makes them unbelievably horny. I like how they put that. Unbelievably, like Chris said all about. Why do they fund studies like this? Well, did you? OK, so when you see a study like that, do you right away go look and see who funded it? And if there's any sort of promotions or anything attached to it, I don't know. I mean, there's there's a lot of studies going on with testosterone right now because of the declining rates in testosterone. So it's like, we've talked about this on the show before. The rates, testosterone rates in men have been declining for decades now to the point where an 18-year-old man today, I think 18-year-old will have the testosterone of like a 50-year-old man in 1980, something along those lines. So it's like really, really dramatic. So there's lots of studies going on with testosterone, behavior, cognitive performance, brain development, health and that kind of stuff. Because this is an issue that's on the horizon or actually it's in front of us right now. You know what I wonder about that? Because I mean, it is promoted so much lately, like in terms of like the over-the-counter of accessibility and availability now versus like when we grow up, because they did have the test boosters and they had all these kind of like crappy versions of it. But like what, you know, do people have access to now besides like kind of go by passing a physician? Well, well, there's herbs and stuff like that, but just also about peptides and stuff. Yeah, peptides, they don't really have any, I don't think that raised testosterone. I know they have growth hormone releasing ones, but testosterone replacement therapy, you guys know this obviously, we've talked about this, is exploded. It was like 15 years ago, 20 years ago, if you went to the doctor and your testosterone was low or you had symptoms of low testosterone, they're not gonna put you on anything. Unless you're so low that you're sick, they wouldn't touch it. Now, I mean, you could, I mean, like the place we work with, like they meet you digitally online and then they mail it to your house. That was unheard of a couple of decades ago. No, we've talked about it before. It closely mirrors the medical marijuana field. Just exploding. Yeah, that's what it's looking like. Isn't the test booster supplement space like one of the largest as far as money-wise? I think one of the most profitable, but I wouldn't say the largest. I don't think it's the largest. I don't think it's close to the largest. I think it is, bro. Could you look that up, Devin? I think fat burners, fat protein powder, fat burners. Okay, so the reason why I don't think that, because you're talking about that's like performance and people that are into working out. Like even people that don't work out are taking test boosters. They are, but you're also automatically have segmented your market to just men because women aren't taking testosterone booster, you know, boost supplements. Yeah, that's fair. So that's I think why it would be a smaller market. But I know they're profitable because the markup on testosterone boosters, the margins are huge. Do they typically all have the same four or five ingredients to like the ashwagandas, the horny goat weed, like there's a handful of things that like have proven to show that it's zinc, like zinc, vitamin D, boron will probably be in some of them. And then, you know, cause if you have deficiencies in those, what does that say? 305 million? 305 million dollar market, yeah. So compare that, give me a fat burners now. So the fat burner supplement market. Oh, that's gotta be a, it's gotta be at least a billion, I would say, or double. I mean, 305 billion is a, is a, or a million is a lot. It is. Yeah. But what does the fat burner market look like? 34 billion. Oh, well, 39 billion. Oh yeah. So way more. Wow. Way more. That's not even in close. No, no. So fat burners, I think you're top number one. You got protein powders are at the top probably. Cause remember, we talked to our friends in the supplement space, what do they say? You bring them, you, you, you have small margins on your protein, cause that's so competitive. And then you bring them in and the way you make your money is with your pre-workouts, your testosterone boosters and your fat burners. Cause the margins are so big. Wow. So it's like that Costco model where they sell, they sell stuff at a loss. You know how, you know how wrong I was right there? That's like so far off. That's not even close. 34 billion compared to- One of us was right though. Stupid. Stupid. I forgot I had something for you to bring. I had something to bring up that you were wrong and I- Was that really? Yeah, of course. You know it's nothing, don't lie. You know that people like DMs stuff all the time. Do they really? Oh, here's something to just totally counter. Bring it up! I don't care dude. Dude, okay. So you know how I'm like super into like origins of like where a lot of these movie ideas and things kind of come out of and all that? Like we kind of went down the rabbit hole of one with like the Matrix and Terminator and how they like that one lady claimed like she wrote the whole thing. You know, yeah. So you guys know where like stranger things came from? No. Yeah. So it's actually based off of like this Experiment the Montag project. Montag, am I saying that right? Montag, yes. So this was like a, I mean, I guess it's a verified like tied into like MK Ultra where they were like experimenting with kids. What? Yes. And you know, this is also the area where they found these weird animals. Remember that one that was like, I mean, they thought it was like it washed up on shore and it had like all these parts like eaten off of it and it looked weird. It almost looked like, so it was like a raccoon but just had been eaten. So it looked like this weird, had like a beak and they thought it was some mutant like creature. No. And was that, did they connect it? The Montag monster, I think is what they call it. Really? Yes. Look it up. So give me some context. But where did you come across this? You're going in on the show or you like looking at history to the stranger thing? Yeah, I just kind of, I kind of perused that. Hold on. Was this like a government funded like where they were trying to see if they could find kids with like psychic ability and stuff like that? Yes. Whoa. Yeah. This must have been Cold War era stuff. I mean, this was, I think it was the 70s. Yeah, it must have been. Yeah, so. Dude, so much crazy shit happened during the Cold War because of the threat of nuclear war that we funded. We funded. The man who stare at goats and all that stuff. That was real. We actually spent millions of dollars. What's that one? On remote viewing. The man that stare at goats. That's a movie about the whole process. About being able to basically like telepathically kill a goat from afar. That was like a real test. Like we were trying to do that. They spent millions of dollars on remote viewing where they would have people who claim to be psychic and they'd have them draw out things that they could see at a distance and they wanted to see if they could, we could spy on Russia with psychics and they actually spent money, millions of dollars on this kind of stuff. Wow. Yeah, I know. It's crazy. There had to have been something there for them to go that deep and spend that kind of money, right? Yes. There's been some people that have done it and have gotten through all of these walls of the government and we're able to read like classified documents and then like literally like write it down and then give them like a password. So if you, wow. You really? Yes. It doesn't make any sense. If you look at the research on this, it was better than random. In other words, it was, they did better than what you would get, like people just guessing, but it wasn't good enough to invest money in because it wasn't dependable. But there was something there, which is really weird. So they kept spending money on it. Was there a good movie or good doc on this? Was there something like that? Well, yeah. The silly one was Men Who Stare at Goats is an actual movie with- It was like George Clooney? George Clooney, yeah. Was it like a spoof or whatever? It wasn't like- I mean, it was tongue-in-cheek, but it was like, yeah, kind of somewhat accurate, I guess in terms of like experiments that they were conducting. So, but yeah, so this was actually based on, and so they got the idea, why brought up the Montauk monster too is because the Demogorgon and all that stuff that they have, like, you know, they're like these monsters. So it's also, you can kind of see how that might have inspired that. You know, there's some theories right now that they're using DMT because they think that there are people who go on DMT are actually seeing alternate dimensions with other beings. And so actually there's some theories that they're doing studies where they're having people try to communicate with these other beings. Have you heard about this? No. Yeah, like the elves? Yeah, so here's what's weird. So people who were on DMT, a large percentage of them see the same kind of stuff. So you would think if it's hallucination that it would be super random or whatever. Or they would share thoughts and memories and brain. Yeah, but they all see like, they call them like the elves and they're like, they're working on machinery and their engineers and then there's like these evil entities and they all look the same. So they're saying, oh, maybe they're investing, you know. I mean, have you ever noticed that with, I find that with psilocybin like that. So like when we've done like shrooms before and we're looking at like the clouds, I find it interesting that Katrina will see some of the same images that I'm seeing. Like they're obviously all made up in my head. I'm looking at this, we're looking at just regular clouds. But then when I'm expressing the detail, she's able to finish the details. It's all cotton candy. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. It's a little more detailed than I thought. I mean, have you not experienced that? Have you not experienced like seeing a being on psilocybin and not seeing something similar to someone else? Yeah, the theory is that because we're all human that our brains are immediately patterned. Yes, in very similar ways. So that's the alternate explanation, which is it's not alternative realities. It's actually that we're all humans and our brains all wired similarly. So we're all going to see similar type of patterns like faces. Yes, skulls, skulls, things like that. Yeah, so faces is one, snakes is another one. I don't remember what the other one was that are quite common. And they think it has to do with evolution. Like we had to be able to see faces to make sure there were no predators and also to read each other's faces. And then snakes was another one because they probably killed a lot of us because there were poisonous spiders. I think it was another one. I don't see ice cream, I don't know what that means. It was. Cheese blocks of cheese. Exactly. Doug, did you find the Montauk monster? I did see something on that. Let me pull it up and researching DMT as well. Doug, we got you all over the place. His Google searches, I swear he's on a list. Yeah, I'm sure. So 10 years later, the Montauk monster is still a weird, gross, darkly, a dark mystery. Wow. You know what's crazy about this kind of stuff is maybe, I don't know, three, three decades ago, giant, giant squids were all theory. And now we know that they're real. You know what they find? You know how big giant squids are? They hunt whales. Whales. So they'll find sperm whales with big markings on it from being attacked from giant squid. That's how big these giant squid are. And I think Japanese researchers caught one on camera. So you're talking about like a sea monster. Literally, that's how big it is. That's it right there, huh? Yeah. That is weird looking. Looks like someone threw a dog or something. Yeah. So it was unclear because it was like it looked like other animals had kind of taken pieces of it. But yeah, those are like real images right there. I know. Yeah. Yeah. That's real. I don't know, man. You guys ever go to Ripley's, believe it or not, a museum? Yeah. Where's that at? God, where was it? Well, they have one in San Francisco as well. San Francisco? You ever been there? Yeah. I've never been there. So there's a lot of like fake artifacts that people would put together. Like there was this mermaid skeleton that for a long time people debated was a real animal. Like dinosaur bones? Yeah. Just like dinosaur bones. That's just a real animal. Put it together. No, man, what have I done? How do they know? Anyway, good stuff. Do we have any shout outs for today? Oh, dude, I don't think I do have one. You know, you should do shout out our home girl, Becky. Oh, Dr. Becky Campbell. Give her some love. Yeah, Dr. Becky Campbell, what's your Instagram? At Dr. Becky Campbell. That's it, easy. At Dr. Becky Campbell, functional medicine doctor. She's phenomenal. I'll be interviewing her and her co-host Crystal later on. But great information, also very entertaining. So go check them out. All right, check this out. You're not what you eat. You're what you digest. So if you eat a high protein diet, if you're an athlete, sometimes you find eating those extra calories is hard to digest. Well, digestive enzymes can actually help. And there's a company we work with called Mass Asigns. They make digestive enzymes for people like you, people who are fitness oriented. Go check them out and see if they help your digestion, help you assimilate more of those amino acids to fuel those muscles. Go to masszimes.com. That's M-A-S-S-Z-Y-M-E-S.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code Mind Pump 10 for 10% off any order. All right, here comes the show. First question is from what Mallory eats. You've been talking a lot about zero calorie food and how this is not accurate. Does this mean sweetener and diet beverages have calories? If they don't have calories, what other foods and drinks are actually zero calorie? It could mean that they don't. It doesn't necessarily mean that they do. This is from that conversation we had on the podcast. It's less than what they're able to get away with. If a serving size is less than five calories in it, they can say zero. So it has four calories and a serving size, they can say zero. So could some of these diet drinks possibly, I don't know, I mean you'd have to be more specific which ones. I think there's zero because if you look at a can, a diet soda, it's a can is a full serving. It says zero calories. This is like tic-tacs, right? You look at tic-tacs and it says like one tic-tac is a serving zero calories, but obviously you eat the whole box of all. Right, or I can't believe it's not a butter thing that says zero calories, but then that's because one of the four sprays is what the serving is. I mean usually calorie free diet type foods do have zero calories, but I do wanna say this, that doesn't mean it's not gonna have a negative effect on your ability or your chances of burning body fat or gaining body fat. Now I don't wanna get into the whole debate as to whether or not the artificial sweeteners affects your ability to metabolize glucose or insulin sensitivity, there's a little bit of debate there. Really what I experienced as a trainer is that because you, it's more of a behavioral effect. Because it's sweet, it tends to change your palate and your cravings and make you crave more sweet things. And because these drinks come with zero calories, there's this, like there's basically no barrier. There's this perception that it's innocuous, I can have as many as I want. And what you end up with is having one diet soda, two diet sodas, and anybody, if you've ever worked with anybody who consumes diet sodas, you'll notice they have a lot throughout the day. It's never just one. And that changes your behaviors. This is why studies on diet sodas, when they're controlled, when every calorie is counted for, yes, there's zero calories, yes, the person can lose weight when they replace calories with zero calorie foods. But in the real world, where everyone else lives, when people consume zero calorie diet foods or sodas, they don't lose weight. And the reason why they don't lose weight is because they make up for those calories in other places. And this is why I never used, I never used artificially flavored sodas or diet drinks as part of my strategy with my clients, unless it was like a competitor or somebody who's counting every single calorie or macro, in which case then, okay. But it's just not a good strategy. I had a big discussion with Lane Norton about this on a live IG. And I said, he brought up the studies that were controlled. I said, yeah, but the observational ones and the ones in the real world, they don't show weight loss because it makes people eat more. People end up eating more as a result. Yeah, and in regards to the ones that have calories that you're not for sure the total amount, I think this is the reason why we always recommend that people go the whole foods route. Does that mean that I would never let a diet or I can't believe it's not butter type of thing in the occasional diet or what have that. And you make that choice to minimize the amount of calories. That's not the worst thing that's gonna happen. But if you build this diet around all these processed foods that are locale or zero-cal and your whole diet is comprised of all these packaged things, really, really tough to get a really good accurate number on what my metabolism is like. And you're gonna overeat. Yeah. You'll almost always overeat. They're hyper-palatable zero-calorie foods. And what happens with, and what's happened for a long time with the food industry or the diet food industry, I should say, is all they account for are calories. What they don't account for are how these foods affects people's behaviors because it's behaviors that drive how we eat, how we exercise, how we move, the choices that we make. So, okay, yeah, there's zero calories, but then does that encourage behaviors that make you crave more of other types of foods or want to eat more in general? It's the novel stimulus without any of the sustenance. Yeah. So it's like it just promotes more of that. I want to keep consuming something. And it does. You end up eating more. And again, this is why studies show that people don't lose weight unless it's everything is totally controlled for, in which case they do lose weight, but nobody eats that way. Nobody eats that way. Everybody eats and they follow kind of their, you know, how they feel and whatever. And so it just doesn't, it's not a great strategy. But in terms of the conversation with the FDA's, what they allow you to say on the label, I think diet sodas are in fact, zero calorie. But like you said, that I can't believe, you know, it's not better. Yeah, it'd be how they define the serving size. Yeah. And then also like protein bars and stuff like that. Like I'd be really, if a protein, the most competitive thing with protein bars is how good they taste, right? And how high of protein they have and how low of calorie, right? So that's like the three things. Like, oh, is it low, lower calorie? Is it higher protein? Does it taste good? And so if you don't think that these companies are going to skirt those lines as closely as possible to- Didn't you say 20% is the- Yeah, up to 20% FDA allows them to be off. So you got to know that if you're in the business of making your bar look lower calorie, higher protein, lower fat or sugars, you're going to skirt those lines so you can get away with it. It would be in their best interest to do that. I wonder if they would do something like this. They would, because it's 20% up or down, right? Yes. So I wonder if they'd be like- You go 20 up on like protein, 20 down on low- Carbs. Of course, of course. I mean, it makes sense that they would, if they weren't doing it, it's almost silly. I mean, because they're allowed to get away with that and they're in the market of showing that they're low. So it's just not a good strategy to build your regular plan or eating plan around a lot of these packaged foods that allow this percentage to be off. So you're far better off disciplining yourself for at least a few weeks or a month of eating whole foods and at least getting a really good handle of, okay, this is, I gain weight on this. I lose weight on this. I maintain on this. You have a really good understanding of where your calorie intake should be. And then of course, then okay, oh, I'm on the go. I don't have time. So I get this bar and it's like, 20% on one protein bar being up or down is not going to make the difference of you putting on a pound or two of body fat. So I think letting it, allowing it in the diet occasionally is not a big deal at all, but when you are building and trying to figure out, where's my caloric maintenance at? And you have all these random foods you eat out and stuff like that. It's like, man, that's really tough to get a precise number that way. Next question is from Zee Bolson Five. If abs are made in the kitchen, how can you build thicker abs? Can you train them more frequently than other body parts? You know, there's just like myths around core training that somehow the core, the muscles of the core respond different to exercise than other parts of the body. They respond just like any other muscle in the body. So if you want to build abs, okay, now why would you want to build abs? They're more visible. If your abs are more developed, they're going to be more visible at higher body fat percentages. How would you develop a muscle? Resistance. So you want to do high resistance core exercises, not 50 reps of crunches, but 10 reps of something that, and you want perfect form, of course, really good form. Which you barely ever see. No. To have that kind of focus of less reps and like more of a strength focus with your core. Yeah, that's one that, if you incorporate that and you do a cycle of just pure strength training with your abs, like you're going to see that growth. Huge results. Huge results. Because it's one of those things that I think most people do not do. It's up there with like, when you think of like people doing sit-ups and crunches, how often do you ever see somebody doing five to 10 reps of an exercise? Rarely ever. I mean, you said 10, you can do five, you can do like five roll-ups, you know what I'm saying? I love to do that. I used to do sets of one or two. I would do dragon flags. Weighted crunches. I would do dragon flags, which that's an exercise Bruce Lee used to do. Rocky Four, Sylvester Sloan did it in there too. And that is a high tension. Of course that's why I did it. That's a high tension exercise. And I would do like two to four reps. Super slow, real controlled. And my abs just developed from doing that. But you never see that with core. Now part of the reason I think is because with core, I mean, look, with all body parts, this is true. But with the core in particular, if your form is off, it's not gonna work really well. So I think- It's difficult to load too. Yes. But it's really about tension. So you can even do a perfect sit-up. And we're that saying came from though, is that you could do all the abs you want and get super strong abs if you are sitting at 25% body fat and you never see them. So there's some truth to that. And everybody has abs, right? Right. There is some truth to the abs we made in the kitchen. I know that it makes a viral video to go counter that message right now, like to say that. But the truth is you can do all the sit-ups you want and phase it all the ways you want. And if you don't lean out to a certain point, you're never gonna see those. So there is some truth there. But to think that there's not value in doing like low rep crunches, sit-ups, knee-ups, things like that. Cable chops. Yeah. You can actually build the size of them. Not just reveal them. Right. Which I know is a big push. That's why I would say abs are made in the gym, but the revealed in the kitchen. That'd be a better phrase. So smart. Oh my God. Next question is from Don't Worry. It's just Courtney. Is there anything I can do to begin to address imbalances that I'm noticing in my upper body while I'm in the middle of running a program? You know, why did you ask this question? It's not my Courtney, don't worry. You know what I know? So when I first learned correctional exercise as a trainer, it's very individualized. You identify imbalances as someone. You're very specific with the types of exercise that you apply. And this is still true. But as I got more advanced, as I learned more about correctional exercise, I realized that 80% of the way there you could get simply by doing controlled unilateral exercise. Now you're gonna get all the way there and you're not gonna rehab as well by doing this. But if you're talking about muscle imbalances, one side stronger than the other, more developed than the other, your hips shift one way, one shoulder rises a little bit, just train unilaterally for like three months. So whatever program you're running, take all the exercises and do them unilaterally. So all the barbell exercises, do them dumbbell, one arm, one leg at a time. And if you copy the stronger side with the weaker side, make sure the weaker side dictates the weights and the reps, but the form is perfect on both sides, then you'll naturally start to correct these imbalances just by doing that alone. Yeah, I mean, obviously this really matters to know what the imbalances to give like really good advice. I think that's pretty good general advice, I think for the most part. Would you guys agree like 80% of the way there? Yeah, I would say a large percentage of imbalances or discrepancies from left to right could be solved for the most part by training unilateral, focusing on the weaker side first, mirroring that with the stronger side. But I mean, you could have imbalances too where someone has like upper cross syndrome and their shoulders keep going forward. And unilateral work is not necessarily gonna be the biggest benefit for them as much as we'd be addressing the, being able to retract your scapula. Which is where priming ahead of time really makes an impact with that and like assessing that first, right? To know that like, you know, my tendencies are to kind of form into this type of posture just naturally. So I have to prep and set myself up so I'm actually in good position when I go to perform the exercises. So if you figure that out and you find like the one to two like real impactful type of mobility exercises ahead of time and then also like apply some, you know, unilateral training. Yeah, if this was a live caller, we would give them maps prime and map symmetry. And we'd say, you know, figure out, you know, do the zone tests, incorporate some of the movements to address whatever tests you failed within build it within your program. And you can even do a lot of those things on your off days and then follow a map symmetry, use all the unilateral work between the two of those. You can do it. And that doesn't mean that you can't because I know this person's asking like if they could integrate it into their program, you could technically take the, you know, the point Sal's making about unilateral work and you could just change out whatever. Like say you weren't following our program, you're following somebody else's and everywhere where it's bilateral, right? You just change it to unilateral work, dumbbell work. And that would work plus with prime exercises. Yeah, ideally, like this is kind of like how you check up. I think unilateral training is a good one to kind of see like how egregious some of those imbalances are, which then will take you a little further. If it's to a point where you're starting to feel kind of pain and dysfunction when you're going to lift, like that's where we kind of regress a bit. We work a little further on our prime and our mobility or our joint specific function. And then if it's even worse than that, then we go into prime pro, which then we can get, you know, all those nuances and corrective type of an approach. I really don't like the movement that I see right now happening in our, have you guys seen that? I brought it up the other day on the show. Like there's like a, there's a big counter movement to like the, you know, being symmetrical and this idea of like, you know, you're never going to be able to beat asymmetry. It's always going to have, nobody is perfectly symmetrical on each side. It's like, and so there's this argument. But it's not a bad target. No, it's a, I think it's incredibly important for people to never striving for perfection in anything. No, yeah. Just cause I can't achieve it. It's because it's, because the benefits of correctional work, mobility have become finally popular. They weren't popular just a decade ago. They finally have become popular. Now it's the cool thing is to, you know, find a way to make an argument in case why that's a waste of your time. I guess I could see in some cases where that's like too much of an emphasis. Like we all knew that trainer that was all about ridiculous like emphasis on, yes. And they never did like the traditional, yeah. And they never did the traditional like muscle building, strength building stuff. So they missed out on that. There's definitely a balance, but this new counter movement is just that. No, you're right, Sal. That's, and I know that's what's promoted it, right? Because I know that some of these people that are, that are promoting this message are, are smart. And I know that they are countering the people that have now over corrected, right? We went from not putting any emphasis on correctional work or mobility work or any of that stuff to now all of a sudden it's like, everything's built around it. Your entire routine is all this stuff. And so I get that that's the counter movement and the truth isn't, you know, one is right, the other one is wrong. It's somewhere in the middle. It's understanding that, that there's tremendous value for most people to figure out your imbalances they have left to right or any discrepancies they have in a basic squat pattern and then go try and address that through mobility and correctional work. Like there's a tremendous value in that. And so to, you know, throw it out completely just because some people over, over apply it and abuse it. So I had, this is an exceptional physical therapist that worked with me years ago in my studio. And she was, I mean, she was one of the best people I've worked with when it came to correctional exercise, but she knew very little about traditional strength training. And so I borrowed a lot from her and she borrowed a lot from me. So she would have patients coming in who needed correctional exercise work and she would apply what she knew and then she would apply traditional barbell work and they got far better results. And then for me, of course, with my clients, I learned exception. So the value is across the board. It's not one or the other. It's both. And yes, you can go too far in one direction or the other. Next question is from Jamie Nicolette, 15. Can using knee sleeves to squat actually make you lose muscle over time? Oh, that's a funny one. Yeah, no. So knee sleeves are different than knee wraps. Knee sleeves are, they're somewhat tight but really what they do is they provide. Make you look serious. If you have knee sleeves on, like people know that this dude works out. You know, it's interesting, right? I don't know if you guys have ever used them, but that external pressure and it's mild, it's not like wraps, the warmth, it gives you this kind of, you know, this effect on the joint where it feels like it's got more range of motion. It's crazy, false confidence. Yeah, and you just, you feel a little bit better when you move. I feel like it gives you a sense of more stability. That's what it feels like to me. It does, but what's funny is like the compression pants. I know you've felt that difference. I did. It's like, come on, let's be honest. These tights are not making me way stronger, but there is this sense of when it's all tight and compressed like that, I feel more stable. I think that's how the, what's it called? Is the correctional tape, what's that tape called? KY, KT, KY. No, not KT. We know your head's going. Not that. No, not that. Not that. Yeah. It's KT, right? Is it KT, right? Thank you, Andrew. Thank you. Andrew is all over it, Doug. You take a couple days off. I know. And this guy is way faster, dude. Doug's so insecure about that, I don't know what you're saying. Yeah, I'll just walk out now. No, no, don't do that, Doug. That's like, no, so that's how the tape works too, right? Right. It's not, it's not really providing stability and it's on your skin. It's not going to do anything, but because it's creating this kind of sensation. Feedback. This external, you know, feedback sensation. Yeah. Your CNS fires a little differently and it gives you this sense of increased stability. Now knee wraps do provide stability. Knee wraps are on really tight. I don't like knee wraps though, unless you're going to compete in powerlifting, because when you wear knee wraps, first off, it allows for worse form, you get away with worse form, to the pressure on the patella. You could cause issues, because the patella has to slide, you know, on the femur as you're squatting and moving and you could will increase the chance of things that conjure Malaysia, right? Where the, I mean. How much underneath the patella? In terms of muscle development too, like, because yet, like to that point of being able to then lift a bit more than you can actually physically stabilize, right? So it's like, if you're doing just everyday functional movements, and now you have all this like access of strength that is, you could fire on command, like let's say you just like do some crazy, like fast movement, fast twitch movement. But you don't have all this stability to coincide with that, that's where we're vulnerable. Yeah, knee sleeves don't make that big of a difference, but they do can feel good. Knee wraps will make, I don't know if you guys ever use knee wraps before. I've done both, but the question is are you gonna lose muscle? You're not gonna lose muscle from. If you wear knee wraps or something all the time, maybe, but not while you're working out. No, no, you're not gonna lose. Messes up your recruitment pattern. But there isn't like, I mean, I went through a kick, right? And I think, I mean. You did the sleeves or the wraps? Both, I've done both. Yeah, no, I went on kicks of trying both. The wraps, I feel the coil effect. Oh yeah. Right, because it's so tight. And when it, and you to come on. I'll add 20 pounds on my squat with it. Yeah, so there's definitely a recoil effect that you get from that. You don't see the less elastic energy. Yeah, and then the knee wraps are like I said. You just feel like the compression pants. You just feel a little, but I mean, again, it's not, I'm not competing in powerlifting. The only time when I went through a kick like that is when I was really trying to see how high I could get my squat up to. And so that was like the real purpose of even utilizing them. I would, you wouldn't catch me using them right now at all. There's no point. Yeah, I guess it's mostly just the feel thing, but the question you're always going to ask yourself is, do I need this or is it just something I enjoy? Because if it becomes something you need, do you probably want to address stability or address why you need something external to allow you to be able to work out in a particular way? Like why you would need to rub cold cream on your joints or why you would need to wear elbow sleeves or knee sleeves. There's something there that should probably be addressed because in my experience, people are like, oh, my knees hurt, oh, knee sleeves help. Let me keep putting knee sleeves on. Over time, the knee pain gets worse and worse and then the knee sleeves no longer help. And then they gotta move to something else and it becomes more of an issue because they never targeted the root cause. Look, if you like Mind Pump, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have free guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump. Justin, Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump. And you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Sal. Today we're gonna teach you everything you need to know to build a strong, well-developed chest. When I think of weak points and areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time, chest was up there with the work. Yeah, it was for me for sure. I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body. I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because the form and technique.