 With the Zen Dudes, I'm your host Dan. We got our other host Brandon out in Los Angeles. Let's do this. Let's do this. I'm so happy to be here. Yeah, I really appreciate you paying for all my expenses and getting me set up here at the Long Beach Hyatt Regency. Don't worry about it. ZenDude Fitness takes care of their people, don't they? Hey, you like that LA hat? I got you too. A little gift. You're in the LA. You know what I mean? We want everyone to know that. That's why we have the LA and the New York hat on. So everyone knows where we are in the world. I want to get sponsored by New Era so that we can just wear the hats of whatever city we're in. I like that. Then people just know. We don't have to say it. We're in New York. So if we make a video and there's a thumbnail and someone's like, where are they? We'll just look at our hats and you know. Yes, that could be a thing. I like that. That could be a thing, bro. Hey, we got some people from our community who ask questions and I want to answer them. Yeah. First of all, guys, the meetups are happening. Venice Beach, it just happened. Just happened. We had nine of us. Nice. And just the coolest dudes ever. Just such then dude. Nice, dude. That means there's... I'm psyched, man. That's super awesome. I know you have to get going, so I don't want to... I just want to remind everyone that the Philly meetup is this Wednesday, May 31st, then Boston's June 3rd, then...no, sorry, New York is June 3rd, Saturday. New York or Boston is June 7th, the following Wednesday. You know what I'm saying? So check those out on Facebook, Zendu Fitness. That's all I have to say, man. Yeah, we'll get those linked up in the description. Yeah. We'll all know when it's going down because it is really the most gratifying thing ever to hang out with other Zendudes. Like, what I did yesterday was I went... we all did a real hardcore workout. I was like, what do you guys want to do? I saw them warm it up, and all these dudes were like, badass with jump ropes. They were doing criss-crosses, besides double-energy, name it. I was like, let's do a workout. So we went hard, and then we just kicked afterwards. We had some fish tacos. We hung out on the beach. We went out to watch people skateboard. They helped me. They were part of the vlog. Yeah. Cool. Dude, that's super fun, man. I like it. I like it too. Okay. We can get into the questions. I just wanted to gush a little bit about how happy I am to everyone in that community. Yeah. I feel you, man. I'm slick to get out there, bro. I am... Oh, my God. I got a lot of energy about L.I. What kind of year? You should, because the energy here is... First question. Hit me. Sarah. Sup, dudes? If a lot of weight is lost and a little muscle mass while doing the lean course, what should I do without lifting weights, though? If a lot of weight is lost and a little muscle mass while doing the lean course, what should I do without lifting weights, though? So she's saying she doesn't want to lift weights, but I'm assuming she wants to gain a little more mass. So, Dan, do you want to answer that? Like, what would she do if she wanted to maybe, like, put a little bit of that muscle back on? Yeah. I mean, honestly, girl, lift weights. It's just going to be the easiest thing for you to pack on that muscle. I don't know what your reasoning is for not wanting to go... Like, if you just don't want to go to the gym, I get it. But if you're looking for a specific result that requires X, just do X. You know? Like, you can, yes, you could do a bunch of body weight exercises to build mass. That's what Brandon and I are doing right now. But you're going to build more mass. If your sole goal is to build muscle, then I would do the thing that's going to get you there faster, which is going to be lifting weights. So if you don't like the current result, I would say, like, if you want to get bigger and grow your mass, like, lifting weights is the most obvious thing to do. Having said that, if you want to still maintain muscle mass and grow a little bit, but probably grow slower, do just tons and tons of body weight exercises, push-ups, squats, pull-ups are the main ones that come to my head. Andres asks, I decided to change my feeding time from 4 to 12 because I'm typically at the gym from 9.30 to 11 p.m. What are your all thoughts on that? Is it okay to work out and eat so close to bedtime? Yes. Yes. And yes, my friend, total number of calories and macronutrients making sure you hit that is always the number one priority. When you eat it, doesn't really have anything to do with what you're going to look like. Even eating at night, there are like studies, that's like an old fitness idea. They used to say, like, there used to be studies that said, if you eat like carbs at night, you're going to get fat, totally not true. Your body just cares about the total number of calories and macronutrients on a daily basis. Yeah. Maybe that's some pseudo-science. Yo, that's just pseudo. Sudo. Sudo, man. Sudo. Yeah. Work. Wolfie is a little pissed, because we haven't been answering this question. He keeps asking. Wolfie asks us, why are you guys so awesome? Wolfie. Wolfie. Wolfie. All right. Dude, Wolfie, I'm going to go ahead and sort of counter your little question there and ask why you're so awesome. That was me dropping the mic. Yep. Love you, Wolfie. Love you. All right. Dude, he's really awesome, man. I just want to say a thank you to Wolfie, because he in the dojo and the four week challenge group makes a bunch of tutorial videos and he's always challenging people. And we, like, we love that from our community members. So Wolfie is definitely a guy who goes in and goes all out. And that's why he's been getting results and continuing to lean his body down. So, Wolfie, you're the man. And Wolfie just like, he has good energy because he gives. Like, a lot of people don't understand how happy you feel when you give love. And Wolfie just gives love all day in the group. She's helping people and everyone loves Wolfie because he helps everyone. And she's just like, cycle of love and feeling good and smiling. So, great example. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Gerardo, what's y'all's favorite sweet-cheat, something that you won't share? Something like a cake, a bread, ice cream, candy, fruit? Dude, I just ate it. I just ate it, bro. Really warm apple pie heated up in the microwave with vanilla bean ice cream on top of it. Just, oh my God. Y'all had two pieces, two big pieces. It's Memorial Day here. It's Memorial Day here in the U.S. So, I'm, I had a little cheat day today. It was fantastic. Oh yeah. So Gerardo, mine is carrot cake and a nice dense carrot cake that has a good amount of frosting, but the dough, the cake is not just whatever. The dough has a lot of flavor as well. So, the frosting and the dough, is it dough? The, whatever's not frosting. What do we call that? Yeah, just, is that called cake? I think that is the cake. Okay. So, the cake has to have a lot of flavor. I love carrot cake. Moving on. James asked, Brandon, how do you keep the mamba unhealthy? Seems to get a lot of unhealthy ends for twisting it over due to hair thing. Wow, James, this is a great question. Dude, show them, show them. My, dude, I got, my hair doesn't look very good right now because I'm wearing a hat and then when I wear a hat, kind of pushing my hair back, it makes it look like I've received a hairline a little bit. So, let me talk to you about the bun really quick. Wow. Yo, Medusa. Medusa, I'm legata. All right. So my man, I actually don't know because my girlfriend is just giving me shit for not knowing how to like deal with my man bun. I wash it with shampoo probably once a week because if I wash it too frequently, it gets too straw-like, you know? Just not a next texture. Yeah, you don't want that. Alex asked, two quick questions about the macro calculator. The web that gives me 45% carbs, 35% fat, 25% protein, but in a simple meal system for endomorphs, it should be more like low carbs, high fat, high protein. What should I do? Gotcha, bro. So listen, man, the calculator is going to give you, if I'm not mistaken, we don't have like ectomorph and like body type built into the calculator. The calculator is just going to give you your percentages and then the balance, if you're an ectomorph, that's when you go to the simple meal system and you can adjust your macros based off those numbers. So for example, if you are, first of all, I would say, don't worry too much about this because if you're eating calories, like the right amount of calories, whether you're at like 50% carbs or 40% carbs, I promise you is not going to make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things as long as you're hitting those calories. But I would say, dude, is if you see that and it doesn't match the simple meal system, like what you would get for what is endomorph, then plug, then change your numbers to meet like keep the same calorie count, but change the ratios of carbs to fats to proteins to make it meet that of an endomorph. So that, I just want to throw a rough example. That might be like lowering carbs by 10, raising fat by 10. The simple meal system should tell you how to do that though. And I would also add like a lot of people don't know what to do like if they just follow the numbers in the calculator and after you're like a certain amount of time at plateaus, it might not be a bad idea, Alex. Like, do you see results for a while with the exact numbers the calculator gives you? Like, following the suggestions of the simple meal system may be a great thing to do once you do see a plateau because then you know how to adjust. Because we always talk about like, do the minimal amount of like kind of work that you have to do until like you hit a wall and then you can like add a little bit more and you're adding a little more would be like refining your macronutrient distribution based upon your body type. Yeah. The show. The show. Alright, Shannon. I'm wondering if you guys can make a video about stretching post-workout not so much an ask as any question just a request. Yeah. You know what we should do? Maybe Dan and myself will do a vlog one day. We'll just do like a stretching routine that you guys can follow. I can do that. I don't mind doing that. I do some stretching and some working out my body before I jump before I do the thing so I'm happy to show that. I did post it in the group the other day but I can do like a more extensive video on that. There. I'm writing it down, Shannon. I am taking it as a note. You best believe I'm taking a note. On the 4A Challengers, Samson asks, how do I transition from counting calories to estimating macro-fulfilling meals? In parentheses, I've reached an ideal weight. I just want to maintain it now. Okay. Can you ask that one more time? He wants to transition from counting calories to being able to estimate how much you should be eating throughout the day. These are just the weight that he wants to be. This process is very simple. The only reason you're tracking your calories and macros and it talks about this in the simple meal system in our dojo that is linked up below, by the way. The only reason that you're tracking your calories and macros in the first place is because you want to be more self-aware and repeat meals. The whole goal of tracking calories and macros is to find about 20 meals that you love and just repeat them because then you know the calorie-macro-nutrient ratio. When I got to a restaurant now, I know that a bacon cheeseburger and fries is about somewhere between 750 to 950 calories and I know that it's somewhere between 35 grams of protein to maybe 55 grams of protein. I know that can seem like a big difference but what my point is that you just need to find meals that you want to repeat and so when you eat them at multiple different places or make it at home it's still within this same calorie range. Be sure to check out the simple meal system if you haven't, that's also linked up below. The simple meal system tells you like ranges of the meal because it's not actually very accurate to say like this meal has 610 calories and blah blah blah like unless you make it perfectly every time so there's like meal ranges in there and once you build that self-awareness that's how you can just looking at food and being like alright there's 700 calories there's my 800 and there's my remaining 700. Lawrence has said yo how do you stay motivated and work out while it's dealing with school at the same time then he just said a bunch of stuff around like it's hard for me to poke some bull things this is actually a question we get a lot younger dudes in high school and college and Dan I'll let you start with this and then I'll hit you up once. I'll just answer it short and let you take this because dude I would just say habit it's got to be a habit man it doesn't matter if you're in school because guess what happens after school you start working you know there's never going to be a time in your life where you just have free time that you can choose the perfect time to work out every day my thing man would be start a habit even if that's starting with like 10 minutes a day of jump rope just so you build this habit of doing the thing every day right what would you say yeah I mean dude just piggyback around that like you just have to make it a non-negotiable non-negotiable for your life like it's one of those things that need to become the same as like brushing your teeth every day or taking a shower like I'm sure you just do it actually maybe a shower is like a great example like you know I'm like a pretty clean guy I shower just about every day but some once in a while a day goes by I don't shower and working out is very similar to that for me now like I just have to get it in I get it in every day and if like for whatever reason like I don't get it in like I get in the next day and it's just like something that's showing me it's my routine that it's then non-negotiable for my life like it's not like oh am I going to do it today it's just like of course I'm going to do it just like of course in the shower also dude if you're feeling stressed like you have to work out like if you the way to be like be happier and like if you're feeling stressed because you have all this stuff like what's that saying when you're the busiest that's when it's time to exercise because by just working out for 30 minutes you're going to be able with all the you're going to be able to deal better with your busy life yeah I think there's like a Zen a Zen Buddhist in quote that was like if you don't have 20 minutes to meditate every day then meditate for an hour I feel like the same goes for like working out if you don't have 20 minutes to exercise in a day then like maybe you should be sitting off an hour to go exercise and just give yourself more self-care yeah I agree man I agree alright Omar Omar I just said Omar Omar Omar Omar it says it's Ramadan Ramadan in his country so the question is of course what's the perfect time to jump rope before or after eating now this is going to be a little different Dan I will leave this just because this is a little different than most fasting questions because like with Ramadan like they're not like drink water or eat yeah yeah and that worries me just a little bit like someone like not having any water intake I'm worried I'm worried was that yeah or food until after the sun goes down usually if you're like legit and you're really following the program I think it's supposed to be pitch black outside which should be pretty late at night so I would actually say like if you can either do before the sun rises practice before the sun comes up maybe get up even earlier eat and then you can do the fast for us today or in the evening maybe right after a couple hours after eating so that's my suggestion cool cool I'm attached says I observe substantial body fat reduction when I first started my jumper workout however since the last two or three weeks I've seen the plateaued out how do I work this case result over time he's talking about just a plateau yeah and I mean I need your reaction is like what's going on with your nutrition but Dan I mean what it's always nutrition I feel like it's always nutrition you have to like you really seriously have to ask yourself am I hitting my calories and macros every single day because if you don't if you don't track that that is the biggest contributing factor to how you're going to and if you're not paying attention to that like your body is just on this roller coaster but it doesn't know what's going on in it it doesn't know like if it should lose weight gain weight and so it just goes in this like you know up and down up and down phase can you slow slow bro get your nutrition on point because he is I'm attached I'm assuming you were really pumped that like you started jumping rope and you're losing body fat except it is just getting your nutrition on point good good G whatever the challenge is based on your transformation what are the challenges you face undergoing a transformation I'm not being consistent people give up not because they can't do the work or they can't eat right it's because they don't take small actions on a daily basis and so they they're not consistent I think the biggest struggle that people have is they don't do something for long enough to see it through to the result ladies and gentlemen to let you know really quick you're probably like why is it dark out and why did Brandon and Dan have different shirts on even though we have the same hats well ladies and gentlemen that's because we got disconnected because the internet at my parents house is not the best internet it's the best got it yeah so we're gonna we're back now we're back we're gonna finish up because we finish stuff we're finishers okay every time that's right no matter what even if there's a fire dude we will finish and you know what if the fire is not totally finished we'll finish the fire you know what I mean yeah peony exactly man Kabir asks when does the body lose muscle what exactly is the science behind muscle loss does that have anything to do with macros great question I love these kind of questions Dan I'll let you leave yeah I think it it does have to do with macronutrients so basically the short science of it is when you don't feed your muscles properly they look to your body looks to get energy from certain places and instead of turning to your body's fat stores your body basically goes to your muscle and says well I could use some energy so I'm gonna take some of your muscle so that you don't die so that is the catabolism catabolism that's right and that's that's the science of it right there yeah so that's why you wanna get your protein Kabir get your protein get your macros use the calculator get your protein yeah the body's I mean just real quick like the body's just a bunch of atoms made up of things that like like the way I think about if you're a certain size and you wanna maintain that size your body is constantly either losing weight gaining weight gaining muscle losing muscle so like your body has to have a certain level of substance each day substance being calories, macronutrients are a certain level of protein in order for you to stay getting less it is kind of logical that your body's gonna get smaller because of it and you're gonna lose muscle so Tavanesh asks how does sleep play a role in keeping fit or achieving the Zen state well a big thing is like when you don't sleep enough your hormones get out of balance like your cortisol is gonna go up and cortisol is like the stress hormone and when your cortisol is up in time it could actually help it could like muscles getting eaten away you know your left inch can be messed up which is your hormone that controls your metabolism and so a lot of your hormones get out of funk when you don't sleep enough and when that happens you're more likely to put on more body fat and lose muscle mass so that's why it's so important to figure out what is a good amount of sleep for you personally we've talked about this in past some people need 10 self experimentation yeah I agree I agree with you Bart asks does intermittent fasting cause pimples? I'm 47 years old I've never had an issue with pimples I recently incorporated IF in my lifestyle I'm experiencing acne like a pre-pubescent teen no intermittent fasting does not cause acne dude something else is responsible for that and I just I don't think that changing the way in which you eat like you're still on a diet here there's nothing intermittent fasting doesn't really do a whole lot that would cause your body to break out in pimples if you're not taking care of your body or if you're working out and then you're keeping your smelly shirts on and then you know I get dude my back breaks out because sometimes I work out and then I come home and I sit around and edit video for three hours instead of getting in the shower and that sometimes causes pimples but I really I think definitely does not cause pimples or acne but I highly I do not think at all that that has anything to do with pimples to balance with you what do you think man yeah I don't think so either I know that for different testosterone therapies like some of the protocol is intermittent fasting because it has like a correlation with helping improve testosterone but I don't think it's dramatic enough to give you acne you know because then like that's where the acne comes in but I think that I have like he'll give you a small boost which shouldn't create like as much a hormone shock to create acne yeah agreed agreed all right the jeet asks can you jump rope after getting a new tattoo I got mine yesterday so can I jump rope my dude I hope it was a do the thing tattoo if it was Tigers on Instagram so we can check that out for different like for example the let me put it this way when you get a tattoo the best thing in the world you can do is probably not exercise at all like if we're talking like the top person the top tattoo artist would probably tell you dude just don't exercise don't put it in water just put coconut oil on it or some kind of ointment and let it heal having said that me being realistic like I didn't fully stop working out whenever I get tattoos but what I don't usually do is like this one was on my forearm it's like I won't do pull ups because that stretches it out if I'm just doing a little bit of jump rope I'll let that slide or if I'm just like going on a super long walk I'll let that slide I think you're fine to jump rope dude as long as you're taking care of it as long as you're applying ointment to it as long as you're cleaning it dude clean your tattoo that's a big thing that's that's what would be my suggestion Rahul Rahul asks how to perfectly rule a joint I guess we can't really answer that question but we've never smoked weed before I'll pass any thoughts on incorporating backwards jumping with the transition from forwards into a routine he wants to do backwards jumping rope followed by front row jumping rope in a routine I think he's just saying can I do backwards jump rope and in my routine and he wants some guidance with this with this I'm not on that I think we should do man when I get to LA let's get the excel rope out and let's just like have skill practice every day where we practice the you know our skills I saw you on there murdering that little cross oh no I'm not done crossing you know that was cool my this dude Eric at the Zendu fitness meet up at Venice Beach taught me how to jump rope like through one of my legs really it's like side wipe on it do that make that video man yeah make it nice anyhow I think what we're saying is we don't do backwards jump rope that much and we're going to start practicing and we'll incorporate into a work at some point yeah we promise promise yeah Alfon asked what exercise is better to get a six pack a plank crunches or sit ups players dude I don't think any of those can be honest with you but I'm a fan of like if we're talking research and stuff there's research behind why planks are beneficial like just locking your body in for like a minute two minutes three minutes like that that can be super beneficial I'm personally someone who if I'm going to work my abs I believe that like you should work your lower abs because that's really the biggest area that people want to see and better results for my own body by training my lower abs only so doing leg raises that's my that's my go to um yeah I'm a big leg raise guy so that would be that would be if you want my like favorite ab exercise that I think is super beneficial I would say leg raises and then plank after that that would be mine and I was doing leg raises I did oh leg raises but just way harder yeah a lot of thickness adding on to my my turtle shell on my stomach ah nice if you want to get wild Alphon throw it in there do it do it Alphon alright arena ass is it normal not to sweat during intense HIIT workout um I mean I know that like for example this isn't I've seen like girls go through intense workouts and they don't sweat as much as like I sweat like a pig to be honest with you dude Sarah and I did a workout today I was drenched she didn't sweat at all so and we did the same workout yeah so I don't I don't know necessarily though that um that is a I think you can still go really intense and get a great workout and not sweat buckets like someone like Brandon or I would like those buckets buckets yeah but also try to make yourself sweat like maybe it's also because you're not pushing yourself hard enough we always talk about you have to push yourself to 110% so do that 120 impossible yeah maybe 125 I don't know get crazy I don't care yo shout out to the homies over at cross rope they have the jump rope that you see in our instagram stories you see you get 10% off when you click the link in the description of this youtube video or if you're listening to the podcast just go to cross rope dot com forward slash zen fitness um and also holler at our boys athletic greens they got some great greens products protein a lot of goodies that are grass fed and just high quality so if you want to check them out again we linked them in the youtube video below we have a bundle for you guys and if you're listening to this athletic greens dot com forward slash zen fitness check them out ladies and gentlemen thank you for tuning in to episode number 17 can't wait to see you guys on next week week's episode I'm going to be in New York City I'll be in New York City are you going to be in Oregon? next uh I get into Oregon on Friday so um it depends when we do that episode I'll be in Oregon cool awesome ladies and gentlemen thanks for another one and we'll see you on the next Ask the Zen dudes