 What do they say, the calm before the storm? But then what's after? Also calm? Yeah, because the storm came. It is gone. Everyone's dead. Now that's what happened. Now it's the calm after the storm. Tropical storm, Nico, rolled through 3SB and now I'm just like finding who I am again. It was an existential sequence of events. Shout out to the boys at Game Day. We're back, man. Shout out to y'all for all the love and support. Videos are hitting. We're running back. We're running it back, man. So if you just think a thumbs up, we're going to talk about some of my diets, some of my transformation. I've lost over 55 pounds, like 58 pounds now. The low is 191 and today was 192. So this week's average is probably 192. We're going to dig into some of your questions from Instagram. Be sure to follow me. Follow Michael2K. Be sure to follow Seabass. He's making this shit happen on Instagram, YouTube, in the gym. So follow him. Follow me. And we're going to answer your questions about fat loss, nutrition and get you guys shredded. So little Nikki Merks, bro. We're about the same age. I'm a little bit nicer in the gym and he's just a little bit nicer on the stick. I've been around for a long time. I'll probably wash Nick. Maybe seven years now. It's like cod days. Now everyone knows him. He's the guy. But I've gotten Nick references more in the last three years than anything. Our dads don't really look alike, but we do kind of look alike. Maybe one that I did. The collaboration of the century. We'll hit some apex and we'll hit a little deadlift workout, maybe. Most common questions like diet and nutrition. In the beginning, I just cleaned stuff up. We're talking about a two-year process to lose about 60 pounds. Doing it straight up is probably not the greatest thing for your hormones. I suggest probably breaking it up, eight weeks, 12 weeks. In the beginning, all I did was focus more on whole foods and take away snacks. So you can go step by step, bit by bit, depending on what your habits are. Stop drinking calorie drinks. Get two servings of fruits and veggies a day. Do that for four weeks. See how it goes. Just track your protein. Dig in. Get that going. Focus more on whole foods. If you eat out every day, say, all right, I'm only going to eat out one meal once a week. You know, you can chip away at these habits so they can build these long-term returns. Cutting fast food for a week is great, but you're going to gain that weight back, right? And you're going to lose your habits over time. So for me, it was getting back into the routine after doing construction here. In the beginning, I just ate more nutritious foods. I said, I'm going to cook two meals a day. Okay, I'm going to get two veggies in a day. I did that for a couple months. Then when we started to dig in, I don't suggest this for everybody. You have to know the difference between you and I, and I and you. We're all different. I'm very experienced at what I do. I've done all this for over 15 years, coaching, nutrition, fitness. I started to just track my food. Every ounce, everything that went in my mouth, I started to track. So I had to plateau and you start to just chip away at the calories. around one gram of protein per pound of body weight or per pound of lean body mass. I've been eating 20 grams of protein right now at the end of the diet these are my last two weeks to get more shredded than Bart. Bart and Gio don't know it but I've been competing with them the whole time. Me for sure. Right now I'm about 1,600 calories a day. Before you guys freak out, trust me I drive, I sit on my couch, I lay on the laptop, I'm not doing cardio, I'm getting all my nutrition in, I'm getting all my veggies and fruits in daily, I'm sleeping a lot and again how you live and how you move is much different than how I live and how I move so don't base yours off of that. Find an experienced coach to lead you. Right now if you want to know I mean about 1,600 calories. This one's from Untamed Strength himself, Mr. Allen. What kind of series are you using? Look man, I may not be a strong man. I don't have father strength like you do dude but all I know is strain. Untamed. Good question. For those that have followed along, played college basketball, grew up playing basketball, chose about 21 years old, probably ranged from 180 to about 190 pounds. I was always like a thick for a basketball player. Then I dove straight into powerlifting, I competed at 198 and 220. Heaviest I was was ever about 225, so about 2017, 18, 19, talking openly about it on the podcast a lot and a little bit here. I've been diagnosed with a bunch of anxiety stuff, a bunch of depression. I've been to therapy since like third grade. One of those things just hit. You know, it was maybe the worst one of my adulthood, 30, 31 years old I guess now. There's a couple months I just literally couldn't get off the couch. People talk about that but physically I couldn't get off the couch. Then once we got back, COVID hit. So I was already kind of in a rough spot, started going back to therapy full time. I wouldn't say COVID messed with me at all because I'm pretty antisocial. So I don't mind being alone. I was already in this period and then COVID hit and so then now what? I was just eating, door dash, no gyms were open, plus I had no motivation. I hadn't trained since the beginning of that year so I guess 2019. Going into COVID, June of 2020, we got the keys to this place. So whether my mental state was ready or not, it was go time. I didn't have time to fuck around anymore. So we started revamping this entire gym for the next six months. Me, Kyle, Jim, I was doing whatever I could to goodbye. That's Budweiser. So I'm not an alcoholic. I have no issues with substances. I have a lot of fucking issues but no issues with substances. But we're drinking Budweiser. I'm eating Taco Bell and in and out every day and we're literally doing manual labor 12 hours a day for six months straight. Then we opened the gym. October 2020. Seabass saved me so much but he wasn't there then. So for the first six months, I'm opening the gym. I'm here about 5.30 in the morning till 3.30, 4 o'clock in the afternoon. And then I would just go home and rinse and repeat. I wasn't training. So I slowly started to build myself back up. What do they say? TLDR? Too long did not read. Mental health. Mental health got me there. Plus COVID because I didn't have access to the gym. But COVID didn't necessarily affect me that bad. And now we're about a year and a half back into it. There's the long story short, fam. Maybe different than what I would coach somebody or what we would suggest when you're losing weight. When I suggest you go into a cutting phase or losing weight is you want to train as similarly as when you were bulking or maintaining. So the type of lifts, the volume, intensity and the frequency, keep it as the same as long as you can. The difference with me, you rewind this video, give a thumbs up and subscribe. Mine was coming from a mental health place where I didn't train for a year and a half. I was slowly trying to build habits. Beginning I was only training twice a week. No cardio. Once I found a habit and I had to find some fun of switching my exercises up. My goal was to have fun and find myself in the gym again. Way different than optimizing your muscle in a cup. Then I went to three days a week and built a light structure in my head. Now I'm kind of on a more structured program. Squats Monday with back and biceps, deadlifts Tuesday with chest and shoulders, Thursday squats, back and by Friday, deadlifts, chest and trie. Kind of train my upper body like a body builder, hypertrophy, catch a pump, lower body for strength performance. Would you say that being around me, Avi, Niko and Tim and all them kind of helped you find yourself within the gym? The energy of like the squad in general helps a lot. The squad is kind of new. Like C-bass here is crushing weights, but he's only really trained, trained for one, two years. He's only done two meets. Kyle played pro sports, but he's never been like a meathead meathead. Dan's starting a business. He used to power lift obviously competitive with me, but now he's starting a business. Avi's kind of new to the squad. She's been here a year, but on the team three months a month. Obviously have the game day guys always feels good, but my role in this whole thing is like this mentor coach thing. So to feed off of their energy and see how excited they get 100% helps me just want to be here rather than like train. My training is just going to be it is what it is, but having the energy of a squad and that's why I tried to organize it. Hey, we're training at noon. Hey, we're training at noon and I would bring the squad and do that. And hopefully, and we're already there, we got a group of, you know, five to 10 of us that show up any day, but we'll continue to build Thurs Street's community at different hours, but noon every day. Man, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, if you guys want to train, that's where we get it. Ladies and gentlemen, new video every Tuesday, Thursday. Appreciate you so much. There's literally like 300 questions. We're going to get to them. We're going to continue to try to help have fun, have a good time in the gym, not take myself too seriously, but still help your journey whether it's fat loss, muscle gain, whatever it might be. So keep commenting below, we'll answer questions from here too in the next video. More fat loss tips, more lifting. We got some travel coming up. I'm heading to Vegas to hang out with the Kwanze, my boy Tyka. Appreciate you guys for everything. Man, catch you in the next one. Be a part of something bigger than yourself. We over me, 3SB.CO, selling like a mile.