 One of the worst strategies for long-term fat loss, sustainable fat loss, is to simply move more and eat less. Yes, I know studies show you need to eat less and move more in order to lose weight, but if you don't do it right, and that's all you do, here's what will happen. Just slow down your metabolism. You'll lose muscle, you'll gain the weight back, it'll all be body fat. This is why people fail. It's the wrong approach. You've got to be a little smarter about how you lose weight. Maybe the most difficult, I think, subject to tackle with a client who you, you know, fires a long conversation. Yeah, especially when they have, you know, 50, 100 pounds to lose, to try and tell them that this is a awful, or tell, or even more challenging. They hire you and they've already lost 50 pounds or so from doing that. And then you try and tell them that, you know, let's, that's not the best approach or I don't want to do it that way. We need to add potential calories to the diet. Like that is so difficult to overcome. Yeah, what nobody communicates and what people need to understand is that the body is an adaptation machine. It adapts to its environment in the best way that it possibly can. And one of the things that we evolved to be able to do very well was to modify our energy expenditure in order to match our energy intake. Okay. And that's why we did this because for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, this was essential for survival. All right. So what does this mean? That means if you simply eat less calories and you simply move more, so you're actively moving more throughout the day, most people would choose, let's say, cardio to do this, right? They get on a treadmill or a bike or something like that. If you do that, at first, you do have an energy imbalance. At first, you are burning more than you're taking in. But very, very quickly, what your body does is it tries to match the energy burn with the energy intake and it does this by slowing down the metabolism. And this is why people hit such hard plateaus when they lose weight and they find themselves in a situation where they need to move more and eat even less. And then this continues to happen down the line. And then they get to a point where they're like, I don't want to move more or I can't move more. This is not sustainable. Or I can't possibly eat this little. Or I went on a vacation, I can't believe I gained so much weight just from going on vacation. How does anybody do this? How does anybody stay lean? This is just, it's just too hard. This doesn't make any sense. And it's because they were doing it the wrong way. What you have to do, what you have to consider is, yes, you need to burn more than you take in, but you have to figure out how to teach your body to burn more calories. If you don't do this, you will be on this hamster wheel of, got to move more, got to eat less. Got to move more, got to eat less. And each time you hit a plateau, it gets harder and harder. And then forget about sustainability. The vast majority of people gain the way back after they lose it. We see this in the data. It's very, very clear. So you have to think to yourself, not how do I eat less and move more, but rather, how do I teach my body to burn more calories? And how do I eat in a way to support that? And that becomes the sustainable approach. And by the way, if you simply cut your calories and simply move more, just to get into a little more detail, one of the primary ways your body slows this metabolism down is it simply gets rid of the most calorie burning tissue in the body. It makes you lose muscle. And I'm not just saying this from experience. The data is extremely clear on this. Weight loss through this approach results in close to half of the weight coming from muscle. So you lost 20 pounds, eight of it came from muscle. And now you have a much slower metabolism. It's a terrible approach. There's no reason why it's no wonder why people fail. Yeah, initially it might feel good because you're losing size. And maybe, you know, you had some size to lose, but if you keep going down that thread and keep going to the point where you're going to be weak, you're going to be fatigued, you're going to be frail. Like there's really no upside if you take that approach and you keep applying that same formula all the way down. And to the point where it's at a point where you're eating just barely enough just to get you going and your energy to barely even move around. So I mean, there's just a lot of negatives to that approach as to what initially you might see as a positive, which is the hard part because that's what people will see and hold on to that fact initially. But since it's unsustainable, your body will reject it at a certain point. It'll go back on to that where you're eating a lot of calories again. And the cycle continues. Yeah, the inevitable happens, the burnout. Like, I mean, I don't know, have you guys ever had a client that you had or that you inherited that had lost 100 pounds from, you know, doing the calorie cutting hardcore and lots of activity. And then they kept it off. I mean, I sent over the other day, I shared this with you guys. I saw that our friend Erica fit love, who is a, you know, considered a fitness professional right now. And I remember when we first met and had her on the show. So that she's just absolute sweetheart. We love her. And I remember telling the guys, like, you know, I'm really worried that the direction that she's going with her training, that she'll be able to maintain that the weight loss is the success that she had because of the type of training that she was drawn to. She was high intensity cardio circuit. And then her weight training was circuit training. She had had a lot of success from the, the, the biggest loser show and the cutting the calories and, and restricting and going out and everything was like about movement, moving more and high energy. And just every client that I ever had that, that used this approach to lose weight, the inevitable happened, even if they were super dedicated and motivated for a year, you know, or two years, I could think in her case of staying consistent, eventually it breaks and you, whether you have a mental breakdown, a physical breakdown burnout, it's just not a sustainable way to train. And unfortunately we think because we're lifting weights and we know the, the positive benefits of building muscle that you think maybe you're doing the right thing. But when you are training weight training and you are stepping up between sets and jump roping and, you know, short rest periods, strength training, you're not, you're, you're mostly doing cardio. And when you're also doing that in a calorie deficit, the signal that you're sending to the body is, is to adapt and become more efficient. And when it, when it becomes more efficient like that, then it's, it's not ideal for being able to sustain a lifestyle where you can have a flexible diet and not have to work out five days a week or more. Like we want, I always wanted to get my clients to a place where they could strength train two to three times a week. And as long as they went for a few walks here and there and made pretty good decisions eating wise, they could maintain a very healthy fit physique and that's, that's possible. But it's, it, it isn't possible through the, the motivation, hype, high intensity circuit, go, go, go, go, go way of training. Eventually that fails, even if it worked temporarily for you. Well, even in that situation too, like in, in it is somewhat working for them, there's no margin for error. You ever have that client that has like a drink or has like a cookie just like one time, it really does affect, you know, their performance. It affects the next day in terms of them, just that little bit of calorie increase or those decisions will affect them negatively much more so than if you allow yourself to have much more flexibility by building. Well, it's all, it's all the, it's the, I remember explaining this to Katrina when, you know, we, we were training at the same time. This was before I got her, she was early on in our relationship. She was a cardio bunny, burn, burn, burn to lose weight, cut calories, you know, on and off the wagon. And she would make comments like, so not fair. I eat, you, you, you eat that and it doesn't look like you put on any bite, but I eat that and I swear the next day I looked at it and I said, well, that's because you've slowed your metabolism down to, you know, 1500 calories is your maintenance minus 4,000. So if you go and have a, you know, donut that is 250 calories, the percentage of your daily intake that you can have is significant compared to mine. And it's, and we can build yours up. You may not ever get to 4,000 where mine is because I'm a six foot three, 200 something pound guy, but we absolutely can take you from 1500 to say 2,500 or 2,800. We're now that 250 calories is less than 10% of your day versus it being 30% of your daily intake. And so it's all relative to what you've got your metabolism up to. And if you have consistently chronically dieted, while also overly excessively trained and, and cardio bunied for years, you've got to a point where the metabolism has slowed all the way down that these small little calorie surpluses feel like they stick to you. Look, we've known this for a long time. This isn't, you know, groundbreaking science. We know this. You see studies on POWs and they'll survive for years on hundreds of calories. Obviously very extreme, but their bodies adapted to allow them to survive on almost nothing. You look at studies on modern hunter-gatherers. Like these are people that live like we did 50,000 years ago. They move a lot way more than the average person. They have to hunt and they have to gather and have to get their water and they move all the time in comparison. Their resting positions aren't even sitting down. They sit in a squat. So they're even active when they rest in comparison, the average person. And guess what? They burn about the same amount of calories as the average person in the US who sits on a couch. Why? Because their metabolism adapted. They had to. You're not going to find tons of calories in nature. So the kind of the approach where you try to move to burn the calories off and you eat less on top of it, all you do is you trigger a very ancient, powerful, primitive adaptation system. One that has been passed down through generation after generation after generation for thousands and thousands of years that has led to you. And you trigger that it will win. You will not. Now here's the thing you could do. You could work with your adaptation systems to make it so that fat loss becomes easy. And the way you do it is by building muscle. You have to send a signal to your body to build muscle. And then you have to fuel yourself to do so. You have to give your body the nutrients to allow it to do so. And then, like you said, with your example, like you got your wife to burn a thousand calories more a day with her metabolism. You have to do a lot of exercise to do that. A thousand calories is like an hour and a half or two hours of exercise. Now imagine if you could just burn that off. Super intense exercise. Yes. That's a lot of extra. That's like hard. That's not just a walk for two hours. That's like, like you're busting your butt. I mean, what a hard way to get to the same, actually a, an even worse result versus teaching your body to speed up its metabolism. So we've known this for a long, okay, I'll give you another example. Right now, if you look in the news, Osempic or the generic, uh, name of the peptide semi-glutide. This is a GLP one agonist. It's all over the place because it's one of the most, if not the most effective pharmaceutical interventions that has shown weight loss. Like it definitely will make you lose weight. People take it and they lose weight. And this is why they're selling out like crazy. Now, now here's what's happening though. Because they're just eating less, people are losing fat and muscle. If you just eat less, your body tries to match the lower calories that you're consuming and it does this by paring muscle down. Now this doesn't mean Osempic or semi-glutide makes you lose muscle. No, no, no, it kills your appetite or it brings your appetite down through some interesting mechanisms, which we don't need to get into, but it does make people eat less. And if your body doesn't have a really damn good reason to keep or build muscle, okay, and it's also not being fed the building blocks for muscle protein, which is very satiating. So if your appetite drops, you're probably gonna eat less protein on top of less calories than you just lose muscle on top of body fat. You lose both. Now, if you combine Osempic or semi-glutide with a high protein diet and strength training, well, now this is a medical intervention that can definitely work. Uh, but this is, again, this is true whether you use Osempic or not. You have to absolutely have to consider your body's metabolism and you have to signal it to speed up or at the very least, not to slow down because this very ancient powerful adaptation system will kick in and all that's going to happen is you're going to hit a plateau that's impossible to break or if you have a lot of willpower and a lot of discipline, you're gonna break that plateau by working more and eating less than you hit another plateau and you're going to get yourself to an unsustainable place or a crazy place that sucks. Who wants to live like that? Where I just, if I, if I miss a workout or two workouts or if I go on vacation, I'm gonna just gain weight and body fat. This is just impossible. Nobody wants to live that way. The thing is fitness and health should improve the quality of your life. But if it becomes a stressor because all the work and effort you're putting into it and you feel like you're spinning your tires in the, in the dirt, now it's not really something you want to keep doing. There is a right way to do it. Just nobody does it the right way. If you do it the right way, I promise you, I'm going to say something crazy. A lot of people are going to, I'm telling you right now, if you do it the right way, in comparison to the wrong way, okay? In the context of the wrong way, it's easy. It's actually easy. Swear to God. If you've always done it the wrong way, you do it the right way. What you'll probably, what you're going to say to yourself, this is what clients would say to me later on when I got better at this and I could teach this, is he'd come up to me and they'd say, whoa, this is weird. How am I getting leaner? I don't feel like I'm doing that much. And then I knew we're doing this the right way. It's, it's easier physically. It's more difficult psychologically. And that, because the process takes patience, it also takes an understanding of what's happening. Because if you're doing a good job of sending a good muscle building signal, which by the way, a good muscle building signal is not circuit training with weights. It is not tri-setting, supersetting low rest periods, high repetitions, jump plyometrics in between. Just because you are lifting weights and stimulating the muscle, that is not a ideal signal to send that. So sending it the right signal, giving it good rest periods, feeding it correctly. Training like a bodybuilder or a power lifter. That's right. We'll build muscle. Now here's where the mental challenge comes. Building muscle sometimes results in the scale going up or staying the same. So even though you're moving in the right direction metabolically, which is going to make this process much easier to your point, Sal, it's very difficult mentally when you get somebody who wants to lose 50, 100 pounds and you tell them like three weeks into their training, we're kicking ass, we're doing so good. And she goes, but I'm up two pounds, Adam. What do you mean? I'm doing good. I hired you to lose 50. Yeah. But let me tell you, look at what we got our squats up, our benches up. I know you are stronger. You are building muscle. We are speeding this metabolism up. I don't give a shit. The scale is hovering around the same or even went up a pound or two right now. We are building this metabolism right now and it is going to make not only the fat loss easier, but way more sustainable when we get there. If you looked at, if you were to match two graphs on what the weight loss looks like on someone who does it the wrong way, they just move more or less. And then someone who does it the right way, build muscle, speed up the metabolism, feed myself appropriately. The graphs actually look opposite. Here's what the wrong one looks like. Fast weight loss, massive plateau. So initial fast weight loss, hard plateau. Here's what it looks like when you do it the right way. Weight loss on the scale looks like it's not moving. And then it starts to accelerate and you get this snowball effect and that snowball effect eventually lands you in a place where if you do it right where you want to be, you're actually eating as much as you did when you were overweight or more and yet you're leaner. What a great place to be, right? I'm eating more or the same. And what the hell? I'm a lot leaner and this hat. We used to do this with people all the time. This is real. You can really do this. And again, like Adam said, when you first start, it's a bit of a slower process. You know what it reminds me of? You guys ever remember that? It was like a, it was like a riddle where it was something like, would you rather have $500,000 today or a dollar today that doubles every day for 30 days or something like that? And then if you did the math, the dollar that doubled to two to four that could after 30 days turned out to be like millions of dollars, right? So initially 500 grand right now. Ooh, that's way more money. But in 30 days, if you just waited a month, you'd have way more money. It's almost like that. Like you'll lose 10 pounds real fast. If you starve yourself and run on a treadmill of what's being promoted in culture. Correct. Yeah, it's delayed gratification. Yeah, that's it. Which is like one of the number one predictors of success in children, right? Yeah, it's no different than us as adults. It's like, we have to bring it back. I mean, there's so many benefits and so many directions to, to wait and trust the process and, you know, go through that where you really have to, it's hard psychologically to, to believe in it in a sense. But you do have to really understand what you're trying to do. Yes. But that, but to say delayed gratification, here's why I don't like that term with this, it makes sense. It's true. But here's why I don't like it. It insinuates that you arrive at the same point with both, with both options. Like, oh, one way you do it fast. And then the other way you do it slow, but you get at the same point. No, no, no. You don't get to the same point. The way that we're talking about it, you get where you want. The other way you're not going to get there. And if you do, you're with a lot less muscle and it'll come back. So really it's just about, I got to do this the right way and it's going to take some understanding of what's happening right now. Well, you could technically get there the wrong way too. I mean, it happens. People continue to cut, cut, cut, move more, more, more. I've seen people get lose 50 pounds the wrong way. And even though that was the goal and the desired outcome, it was the wrong approach. And what I always know is going, what I always know is going to happen is it's going to come back and it's going to come back with a vengeance because of how they did it. When you lose that kind of weight, here's the thing that sucks. If you lost 30 pounds and 10 pounds was muscle and then you gain 30 pounds back, you didn't gain back that 10 pounds of muscle. No. You oftentimes, you're in a worse situation, worse. And then what happens is this, and this is what, this is, this is where people who do chronic dieting and chronic training and do this on, off, on, off. What they end up finding is each approach is harder than the one before it. Yeah. Because the starting point is with the slower metabolism than before. Yeah. This is when you get somebody who's 70 pounds overweight, who gains weight eating anything over 14 hair colors a day. And they just like, and then they come, and then this is what they think. I have the worst genetics ever. It's my genetics. It's like, actually, without realizing it, you trained your body to do this. You have taught your body to really be thrifty and to really try to store body fat. And we just have to teach it the other, the other direction. We just have to train it in a way that does the opposite. Hands down, the hardest clients, for sure. I'd say that and menopause was probably the hardest. Those two were the two hardest clients I ever had was somebody, because most people that hire you, they've already tried this on their own for years, sometimes decades before you get them. And if you've chronically dieted and yo-yo, hardwired, oh man. And it's a constant conversation. And the unfortunate is I have to prepare them for what could be a long road. Yeah. Whereas if like you had somebody who like just over eight didn't move ever and they're like, okay, it's time to change my life and instantly came and hired me like, oh, this is going to be a cake walk. It's going to be fast. We're going to tweak a few things, just be consistent with it. And you're just going to see change, change, change. But someone who is like chronically, you know, over-trained and under eight that and for a very, very long period of time and have failed many, many times over and then they come hire you, you know, sometimes that's even longer more. So the longer you wait to do it the right way, the more difficult it's going to be for you. The sooner you make the decision to do it the right way, the easier it's going to be. It's just unfortunate that that's not how our culture is. It's the quick fix right now. In fact, if you were to ask somebody many times like, you know, if I could just, if you know, they come to you, they want to lose 50 total pounds and you and you say, and you say, well, would you, would you rather me lose you 10 pounds right away this week or tell you that, you know, in a year from now, we'll have the 50 off. They would probably go, oh, just drop the 10 pound. They would say that, you know, and that's that's what you're you're working against is that we you want that so bad they have this idea of just get it off and then I'll figure out. It's going to be great. Then I'll figure out. I hate that. I hear that. I used to hear that all the time when they'd say, OK, well, that's great. But what if I just did it the fast way and then you help me afterwards get it off and we did it right. It doesn't work that way, bro. It's like you built a house without the foundation. Then you tell me to build a foundation afterwards. Yeah. Sorry, I got to tell the house down back. Yeah, I got to tear the whole house down before, you know, we could we could redo this. No, no, no. If you start this and you do this the right way, I promise everybody listening right now, it works because you're working with your body. Stop fighting your body. That is a losing battle. And you've probably already experienced this and it didn't work. Why didn't it work? And by the way, people will be like, it did work. I lost 30 pounds. You gained it back. That means it didn't work. Something that wasn't didn't allow you to keep it off means that it failed. It didn't work. Today's program giveaway is the Super Bundle. It's a lot of workout programs you can win right now, but here's how you have to enter in order to potentially win. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it, subscribe to this channel and then turn on your notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comments section. We're also running a sale right now. Maps, symmetry and the RGB bundle, half off, both of them, half off right now. If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, here comes the show. God, I read a crazy article today that I don't know. Did you guys read what happened that plane that had to stop and do an emergency landing turn around? You guys hear about this recently? Oh, no. OK, so I saw some video that they put a spirit airline on there just because people jab at spirit airlines all the time. But I don't think it was that airline. No, this was United, I think. I think it was United. OK, this was an emergency on the plane and he was like cussing. No, diarrhea. Right. It's only different thing I saw somebody on the plane. First of all, to bro, they have an emergency stop for diarrhea that had to go. Can you just like listen, I've had embarrassing moments in my life. Could you imagine if this was you? I would be like, I don't know what I'm just going to live in a cave. I don't know. I guess somebody had terrible diarrhea on the plane and pooped all the way like down the aisle to the bathroom and they had to and the pilot gets on. He's like, we need to land that it was Delta flight. Oh, Delta. Yeah. OK. So there was a quote from one of the pilots that was terrible. I don't know if you can find an article, Doug, but they showed video of it and they had to use like blankets and stuff to like cover. Oh, yeah. Because the sky was just. So does it OK? Does it does a biohazard? Does a plane like that? I mean, does a company like that do you comp everybody? Because someone else. I mean, I guess. I mean, do you have insurance? Say what? Some type of insurance that the plane has. Yeah. For like, unexpected diarrhea insurance. It's not in the fight. Oh, you're on you're on that plane. That happens to be a fight. Get your ticket company thing. I would hope so. I wonder if they did. OK, I mean, I think they're responsible for the flight. I would think anyway. So, dude, this reminds me and this was like horrible. But I was waiting tables and it was a busy night and there was this like poor old guy who was like part of this family and party. And like he had incontinence, obviously, he got up like they're like, oh, we need to move grandpa, you know. So they're moving him through and he was like all the way on the other side of the restaurant. The bathroom was like, I don't know, let's say 50 yards or something. And as he was moving over there, it started trickling out. Leg of his pants. And I could just tell you like there's water in the toilet for a reason like that diffuses a lot of the pungency of the smell of it. And it was like just because it's like it's probably that on that plane cleared the entire restaurant. Everything shut down. Everything in the restaurant. Did they call somebody? Bus boys, dude. Oh, that's when I quit right there. I know I felt so bad for them. But, you know, it's like it had to be handled because it was we had to like operate. Everybody's like out. Everybody's had an emergency leave me at home by the time when I get when I get to I can only imagine a little tube airplane where everybody has to like in your stuff, your air. Oh, and the guy walks by you and just I'd be puking. I mean, everybody's had a situation like that where you barely make it. Like how I feel for the person that happened to because then you're on the plane and everybody's looking at you like you mother. Oh, I don't ever. I stay in the bathroom till it lands. Yeah, yeah, I don't come out. There's if that if I shit down the hall like that and I go lock myself in the bathroom. I'm literally I don't care if it's a fucking flight to Europe. I'm in there for 14 hours. I'm going to find the parachute. I'm just going to let I'm going to sit in that one until you're in there until I'm here. Oh, yeah. Everybody just growling until the plane lands. There's no way I'm going back and facing everybody that has just that. I'm just totally tortured. I'm hiding in the back. I only know what that guy ate. Yeah. Oh, well, he's obviously he's got to be sick. Did it say how old he was? Was he an older guy? I don't think they listed his name. Thankfully, that's nice of them to do that because I'd be messed up. They hit they hit the identity. Oh, they did hide the idea. Yeah, dude. Because nothing. That's good. We didn't get like a white veil. They always say anything like that. Nothing or no, they didn't give it an idea, huh? No, no, but it did say that the people weren't comped. They just had to wait like six hours. And then they did the fight again. They weren't comped. No, well, everyone flew again later that day and it's a nine hour flight. Like a delayed flight. That's a bunch of bullshit, dude. Such bad service these days, man. Bad service you everywhere you go, man. I swear to God, it's gotten so... Is it me or is it just a grumpy old man? Like doesn't it feel like things have gotten so bad with like service? Well, I don't know about, yeah. I mean, airline companies are notorious, but have you had a teenager serve you food anywhere recently? Yeah. Why? Are they like that? Why are you such a terrible... Why do you hate being here so bad? Get out of here. This was our discussion this weekend with my aunt. We're talking about like my uncle's... My uncle's... You know what I can't stand either too is this new movement at Starbucks with the tipping for the drinks to leave. Everywhere. And the kids don't even make eye contact with you. They just spin the stupid screen. They spin the thing around and they look the other way. Like what the fuck is that? I know. Like, first of all, just me. There's no like, you're not eating dining in. I'm getting my drink. Now do you give them a tip or do you zero? I do tip. I'm like, I'm easily guilted into that stuff. I know. You know, I'm a sucker for that. Now, here's what I do. I go minimum. Ruling that behavior. If I was... Hey, bro, if I was a struggling college student, though, I wouldn't for sure. It's like, I feel it like charity, right? So it gets me like that, but it still annoys me. So when they flip, they spin the screen and they're like, whatever, I'll do the minimum usually. Like whatever, here's a dollar. But if they give me good service, I'll hook them up. On top of that, on a drink? On anything. If I get really good service, which is rare. What is really good service for a Starbucks drink? They fucking do cartwheels over here? No, they're just friendly, you know. You look so handsome today, Sal DiStefano. You get a huge jettler. What do you do? What do you... One for me, one for you. What do you do to deserve a abnormally... I'm gonna throw another shot in there, sir. Crazy. What do you do at Starbucks that... Well, I'll tell you, the last time that happened, we were driving... Please do. We were driving with the kids up to Truckee, which by the way, driving with little kids for longer than 40 minutes is a nightmare. I was just being honest with you. It's just for the love of my kids, I do it. But every time I do it, I question things, you know, as I'm driving, like why did I even have kids? Why did I do this? But anyway, we're driving, and it's just, yeah, I got a nine month old, I got a two and a half month old. My wife has to sit in the back and entertain them the entire time. All, however many hours it took, she has to entertain them, otherwise screaming will happen. And we have to pull over at least two or three times every time, whatever. So anyway, we pull over, we go to Starbucks, and the girl working there was just, she was just entertaining my son and playing, you know, talking to him and whatever. And oh, you can have this and whatever. I'm like, you get a big tip, you deserve it. By the way, you know what he did, made me so proud. So we're in there and I'm trying to run him because he needs to move. So I'm making games for him, like let's see how fast he can run over there. And I'm timing him, he's going back and forth in the Starbucks. As he's doing this, one of the workers, she's walking out and she's got like four garbage bags and she walks up to the door and my kid, like one of the most proudest moments of my life, he runs up to her and he goes, let me get the door for you. He's two and a half years old. He pushes the door open and she goes, you're so sweet and I'm looking at my kid like, good job buddy. You're going to get a lot of girls, boys. Making it up for all the screen news. Making it up for that, dude. Made up for that. We flew and somebody asked me, they were asking for tips on the stuff that we do like when we fly. And so I've had- You don't count, your kid's easy. One, two, I don't know, maybe. He just, he's just super easy. I know, I always feel bad telling my stories after you tell stories and I'm just like, that's not Max at all for sure. He's definitely like, I mean, every time we go out, somebody makes a comment about like, dude, your kid is like so well behaved. I'm like, yeah. He's going to be a terrible teenager. You know how you say that. We'll see, we'll see. I can't prove you wrong and for another 10 years. You know they say that in my culture? They say if it's an easy kid, or a teenager or vice versa, I hope it's not. Yeah, I don't think so. No, he's a good kid. Yeah, so we, so I think I've had a hack for one, two to three and now four. So one, I think one of the best things on the plane ride is to save your breastfeeding for that, right? So if the one year old is on the nipple for most of the flight, I think that one, they're busy with that, then they tend to sleep afterwards, which I think that's a big hack. That's my ears pop. Two to three, one of the most brilliant things that I think we'd ever come up with. I think it was Katrina's idea, so I credit her. She would go to the dollar store and she would buy like six to seven toys under dollar and wrap them because from two to three, he's at that age of fascinated with presents. And so every half hour to hour, she would pull a new one out and the excitement of unwrapping it and then a new thing to play with it, even as simple as a dollar thing. You just can't let them see that there's a lot of other ones. No, no, no, that's all right. That's part of the hack is like, you got to keep the, he never sees it ever, right? He doesn't even know when we had it on there. She puts it on the carry on, it's packed away. He doesn't get to see it. He's on there. And of course we don't even try and use it until he gets kind of restless. And then it's like, oh, did you want to open a present? And then he gets all excited. Then he opens it, plays with it, let him do that for a while, he's bored. And so we do that. So that was a hack from two to three, four. He's now entered into the interest into Legos. So this was great. We just, and these Legos, man, they get these intricate pieces, these Mario pieces that we do. I mean, that could take two hours to put one of those together. So him and I, you know, we got a Lego, a new Lego set before we got on. He's already excited that he's got it. I make him patiently wait till the plane's up in the air and we're cruising altitude. And then we open it up and then it took the whole flight to piece together Legos. And he was completely entertained. Next to that age range, I got one for ya. These shapes that, it's almost like a puzzle, like a 3D puzzle, but like Courtney found these, you can make like, I don't know, like 75 different shapes out of them. And so it's like all these triangles and this long string and you can kind of like fold it together and like make all these, and like it's challenging because you're like, I've made this shape before and you're trying to like figure out how to do the next one. And there's so many different variations of it that it just keeps their mind busy though. Oh, he loves puzzles too, so he'd probably get a kick out of that. And then we do have the, like, and I do have the iPad, right? So I think I showed a video of him using the iPad a little bit at the airport. So, and again, we just were, we use it so minimally in the week that when we do use it, it's such a treat. And I think that's the biggest hack with that is that if you already use it all the time during the week, it's no, it's a habit, it's a routine. They don't think of it as- It's not exciting. Yeah, it's not exciting. It's not a treat. It's not a big deal. Like, whereas if we pull it out in occasions like that, it's such a powerful tool to engage in. My kid gets, he can't be strapped in for too long. He starts to hate the straps and then we gotta figure that out. Well, anyway, I'll tell you what he did the other day. It's just pretty funny because he's definitely a rambunctious, curious, mischievous little guy, right? So that's what he does the other day. He goes in the bathroom, he locks himself in there. Now I know how to open it so we don't freak out. First time he did it, I was like, open the door, buddy, open the door. And I figured I could open it from like, okay. So first he tells Jessica, he goes, leave me alone, leave me alone. And you know, he's probably gonna do something he's not supposed to when he does that, but we're like, whatever. He goes in the bathroom, locks it. We wait a little bit. I'm like, I hope he's not doing anything. He comes out, everything seems fine. So we're like, okay, whatever. Anyway, I get a text from her this morning. She goes, so I went to put makeup on my face with the makeup brush and it was wet. I'm like, why is my makeup brush wet? Well, it turns out- He was using the toilet? He put it in the toilet. So she put toilet water all over her face. I was like, babe, can't make out with you for a few days. Gotta make sure this, make sure nothing happened. Yeah. I actually had to learn how to like pick locks because of that. Like my kids locked themselves in the room a few times like and had to like get those hairpin and like figure out how to like do that. That was scary though. It's like when they'd lock themselves and they're like freaking out, can't get out. Oh, yeah. No, dude, if you leave your phone out, he'll take your phone and he'll go hide it somewhere. So he'll put it somewhere. Yeah, so we're like, where's my phone? I can't find my phone. Where's my phone? And he won't say anything. And then I'll be like, go check in his like toy box with his car. Sure enough, there's a phone. Hey, did you take mama's phone? I did. Well, why'd you do that? This is his answer to everything. Why did you do that? I do that. Okay. Whatever. I guess you do. It's my MO, dad. Yeah, this is what I do. Max has this hilarious bathroom cork. I don't know if I've shared this on the podcast or not, but he hasn't grown out of it. He still does it. I don't know when we're going to grow out of this, but he wants to poop in the dark and he has to have a flashlight. And he takes a half hour at least. You want to say? He's a man. Yeah, he's a man, dude. What are you talking about? He's a married man. We got to the park city house, right? In the dark. Bro, that's so funny. I can just imagine looking in there. That is so much more fun. There's a little can of the flashlight. So we get to the park city house, right, this last weekend and we travel with my aunt, right? So that was the, like, we brought her, Kase, Katrina and I wanted to get out and do our thing on our own. And as soon as we walk in the door, he goes, oh, mommy, I have to go poop. And I said, okay. And then she goes to take him and the thing like that. And he's like a flashlight and he's asking my aunt and my aunt's like a flashlight? She's like, what? I don't understand. What does he need to fly? I'm like, oh, he has to have one for when he goes bathroom. And like, we literally have flashlights because we know this. I saw it. When I was at your house. I thought it was just for emergency. No, there's flashlights in every one of my bathroom and it's for my son because he has to have the lights off. He wants his privacy. Like you can leave the door cracked, but he wants his privacy in there and he will stay in there for 30 minutes until he is. He'll poop and he like, he has to do like three poops. It's not like one poop. It's a poop. And then you wait a little bit longer and you come in there and you know what he's done. And you can see in the toilet and you're like, are you done? No, not yet, dad. Okay, go back out, like call me when you're ready. And then he finally calls you when you're ready. He's a dance. That's how I go. Yeah, exactly. I was like, he's an adult. So funny, dude. Yeah, no, when we were up in Truckee with my cousins, they have two daughters and they're much older, but they're like, you know, 10 and I think, 10 and eight or seven, I want to say. And you know, my two and a half year old is chasing them. He's playing with them. And eventually he's like, you know how little boys are. It's like, they get your attention. They tease you, some little boys, right? So that's what he's doing. He's pulling the hair or whatever. Then he decides he finds it funny to bite them. And the reason why he thinks it's funny is because they run from him and they laugh because he's trying to bite them. So now he thinks this is great, right? So the whole time he's chasing them, trying to bite them. So Jessica picks him up and she goes, they don't want you to bite them. Don't do this. And he's like, he starts crying. And we hear him across the room. We were dying. He goes, but I want to bite them so bad. Oh my God. He's a vampire. So I forgot that that's what he's trying to do something right there. I forgot when I read that, because Max went through a phase where he wanted to like bite people. It's like a sign of affection or communication for them when they do that. I just think he wants to tease them. Oh no, no, that's a, look it up. Google, I remember when I looked it up because I thought it was so strange that he went through this little phase where he would bite people. And he did it in this way. It's like when he, like being affectionate, it was like the weirdest thing. Interesting. Yeah, obviously he got into the chasing part, but I remember looking it up afterwards and it's a sign of them trying to communicate or say or do something. I don't remember what it is. Are you looking for it right now for me, Doug? I am. It says they may also learn that biting can be used as a tool for accessing a desired item when they want something. Yeah, it's a form of communication. Yeah, pay attention to me. I don't like that. That's what I'm seeing here anyway. Well, I know for adults, you ever get the urge when you see a cute baby or you squeeze your teeth? Or you just want to bite their little chunky leg or something like that? And you think, why do I want to bite this kid's pinch? Yeah, or something like that, right? Yeah, you do that with like puppies. Yeah, you're a cute puppy or something. The theory is that the way we fed our young in the past is we had to chew the food first and then spit it out and give it to them. So the instinct is to chew because you want to care for them. Little baby birds. I've always said that's weird. You have it when I do it. I know I do it, I'm sure. When I see a cute baby, I almost break my teeth. Yeah, I get with Mac sometimes like that when I'm playing and I'll grip my teeth or like a puppy. That's the only time I notice that. And it's the weirdest, it's the weirdest thing. So you think it has something to do with me, like the evolutionary, you would chew food. That's the theory that I read. I mean, the guessing, right? They don't know what's going on, but that's the guess. So it kind of makes sense, I guess. Anyway, did you guys, have you guys finally, please say yes, because I'm going to be annoyed if you say yes. I don't know what it is. Have you guys tried the peak performance stack? The Organifi stack. Yeah, I told you I did that last time. Did you mix it? Yeah. With pure and peak performance? What'd you think? I like it. Isn't it great? Yeah, I mean, because I've done just the peak by itself, but yeah, that was, I was trying to get back on to pure because even just pure by itself, I like it because it's like, it lasts probably the longest set of any of the new tropics stuff that I've done before. So the peak gets you up a little bit more in terms of like the caffeine and fuel and the focus sharpness, but then it like, the pure I think helps to take it a little bit further. Yeah, they call it the mind pump performance stack. So actually put that together for us and then... Oh, did they name it that? They did. Yeah, because we were on the phone and I said... Is he still rolling a deal on the bundle? I know they had a deal on it before. Yeah, it's a discount. Yeah, I think you get a discount plus our discount when you go through our link, but it's a great combination. I had my cousins try it up in Truckee and they're low caffeine people, right? So for them, one scoop of the peak power was enough because it's 100 milligrams per scoop and they mixed it and they were like, whoa, this is awesome. Well, I'm always drinking caffeine, but I don't like intentionally time it or anything. And so I took it like before workouts and it is a big difference when you're focused and you're like sharp when you're working out, which is something that, you know, I don't always consider that. I can only imagine. I've loved Pure since we started working with them. It's just, it's a different, it's a different type of feeling than the caffeine. Caffeine can give you that the up and downs and the jittery feeling. And then you made the peak as a lower caffeine doses. So are you only doing 100 milligrams with it? Is that what you're doing? No, my caffeine, it takes too high right now. I gotta go back and say one skew. Listen, everything I've ever done that has potential addictive properties. You say caffeine is the hardest for you. The hardest. I can stop almost anything and it's always a struggle if you got a bad relationship with something. The caffeine is nasty, dude. I cut that out and I just hate life, you know? And it's so readily available, you could buy it anywhere or anybody could take it, use it. It sucks, man. So I'm high right now. I'm like 400 milligrams a day, probably. Which for me is a lot. I know for you guys. I mean, that's two of my drinks and I'm at three. So that's, holy shit. That's like what I... Six is my peak. I cranked down to that. Yeah, that's like as low as I guess. Oh, dude. Justin sweats. I gotta have something. I pick at 600 and then I come back. That's always... How low do you go? Oh, I'll go to nothing. So I'll just keep going. So I'll go from the three drinks that are the 200 milligrams and I'll come down to two, then one and then I'll just do like a cup of coffee and then it'll be nothing like that. The best feeling in the world is when you come off caffeine for a week or so and then you have some. Oh, yeah. Oh, that first time when you take it, it's like the best. That's how I try and motivate anybody to do it. Like when someone's like, why should I do it? And I'm like, it's the same concept with marijuana the same way too. Like if you like the effects of cannabis and you are someone who uses it on a regular basis, like the motivation to come off of it is the, it's amazing when you re- Yeah, when you reintroduce it again, then it has that same, with hardly anything too. I mean, that's like one of the, both caffeine and that can become an expensive habit to like just keep going higher and higher. Plus what happens, you go higher doses, you get more of the negatives, less of the positives. But it's like the more caffeine I get, the harder the crash, the more I get the shitty jittery feeling and the less awesome amazing feeling I get. So it's like, you know, it's cool that just recently it happened and I'm like, it's actually surprising to me that this is still, can be a thing with how kids interact with each other and like how they're so screen driven and everybody's like sort of socially awkward now. Like a bunch of kids like moved into our neighborhood and it's kind of like a difficult neighborhood. It's not like it's flat and you could just go over, you have to like hike through the mountain. You got to go all the way through these trails and things to like hang out. But Everett made friends with a lot of these new kids in the neighborhood and there's like probably like four or five of them and they all have different houses. Like, so Courtney was able to meet with the parents too and they've all, we've all set up sort of the system where they have walkie-talkies. And so now like Everett's just okay, I'm gonna go hang out with my friends and he'll leave and he'll go hiking in the woods and then go meet up with them and then they all meet at each other's houses and they kind of go different. And it's so old school. It's like they're taking their bikes and they're like parking their bikes in front of the house. That's so awesome. And I was like, dude, I would have never anticipated that that would be a thing again. That's so sick. What's great about that too is the walkie-talkie technology has to be so much better than what it was when we were kids. Yeah. It goes far. Yeah, remember when the woods were like after 50 feet, it's like, yeah, fuzzy, you can't really hear where I bet the ones now are like radio signal. But think about the independence they're getting, the exercise, the sunshine, the lessons they're out learning without adults, having to intervene. I mean, that's amazing. Yeah, no, it makes me hopeful for sure. Well, dude, what a... So, okay, are you guys doing this then? So do you have one for home for you and Courtney? Yes, so they leave us one. So then we're like, hey, dinner. And then we just do the little... That's rad. Yeah. I wanna buy one of these. Yeah. How far do they work? Well, you can get ones that go far. Because we used to use them for when we snowboard. So I could be on one side of the mountain, some of you on the other side of the mountain, you get on this right channel. Yeah, they make good ones now where you can be like... I would say, yeah, a few miles. Yeah, you could be pretty far away. Take a look at the cell phone. And get to it. Here, call me home. No, that's perfect for where you live. That's such a great idea. And fun. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, they're totally digging it and getting into it. And then making forts and stuff. And doing all this stuff like I used to do back in the day. So it's pretty cool. I just actually have a study on screen time, speaking of screen time, that they connected it to learning disabilities or with childhood development delays. So a recent cohort studies found that the amount of screen time spent by one-year-olds is associated with developmental delays. I mean, this to me seems obvious, but now that we have studies to kind of show this. And I mean, they're talking about developmental delays in gross motor skills to other aspects of learning. So I mean, it's not great. I don't know if you guys used to make fun of me for talking about irresistible so much. Like seven years ago, six, seven years ago. Give me shit when I was saying. Adam Attler or Alt. What did you say? Adam Attler, yeah, I used to say something else. Alter. I used to think it was Alter. I thought it was Alter and it's Attler is what it is. But I mean, that was like a big, I read that book a long time ago and I remember reading that. Yeah, I think we're getting to the point now where the awareness is starting to get. Oh yeah, it's definitely like when I said it back then, again, everybody was teasing me and I was like, oh, no big deal. You know what I'm saying? I remember we even had, remember the guy who we had on the show that countered it? Yes. I forgot his. He's just like, the whole time, like we didn't have enough data really to prove otherwise. But like, because his argument was that it's the person using it that. Yeah, and it was like self monitor. And he made the case like newspaper versus, you know, there was a time when. He's like, thank you for smoking. They had the same kind of fuel. It's like saying, you know, super processed foods. Well, you just got to, you know. We'll just stop eating. Yeah, just avoid it. I was like, well, yeah, duh. But boy, you make it hard. Oh, things are engineered to really. I would say that's probably the most addictive thing I can think of, especially for kids, even more so than candy, you know. So it's, it's way more. I've had way more with that than I had with anything else. And it's, I mean, you can see it's, it's crazy to me that people can't or haven't made the connection of like the behavioral change in the kids right away. Like I can see the difference in the type of stuff that he has the iPad on. Yeah. Like if it, if it's something that like, that has been engineered to loop him in and give him the. Oh, you take it away. The reward of like. They took away their drugs. Oh yeah. I know. Like, so Katrina has like, there's certain apps on there where like we've trained Max. They're like, can I play that one? And it's like, no, not that. Yeah, you can't play that one right now. Or oh, two minutes before we go to this, you can do that. And we tell him how, like literally, you can only play for a little bit because if you let him sit on that one, like it's crazy the difference between the types of apps. I told you guys to notice that with the Nintendo. I love bringing back the old NES. It's not. I've done the same. Yeah. And he's he'll sit on, he's not even playing. He just likes to sit and watch with me and we interact. And then when I say we're done, it's like we just get up and leave and there's no. Oh, dude, especially that article you showed me about Roblox. I was like, I am out, out, out. Well, you're not allowed to play. It's connected to the open internet. Yeah. And so all kinds of weirdos. And that's what they attract. Like ridiculous. Listen, it's a fact. You're going to find weirdos, creeps, pedophiles, whatever, where kids are, that's where they're going to be attracted. Right, right. So Roblox is this open internet game. Lots and lots of it's impossible to monitor every single thing that happens. Yeah. Where are they going to go? They're going to go in places like this. That's just the fact. Where are you at? Can you, your two boys, do they still not have cell phones or do they have? It doesn't, but we it's very regulated. His time that he is able to use it. So he was, so we've gone back and forth a few times where we take it away. You know, it's like it's taken away a lot. Like he really has it. Yeah. But it's just like we try to give him some independence with it and it's kind of like a constant conversation, I would say. It has to be. There's really not like a firm like you can't ever, because he's going to use a cell phone. I get it. Like I'm not trying to be like a purist about it and have him be like some weirdo kid that like can't ever like text his friends or anything. But once we started to see any kind of slippage of homework, grades, this, that, the other, like. Or just attitude. Yeah, attitude, just him like isolating himself from us, like whatever it is, like we'll start, we'll address it first and we'll give him morning. And then so what we do is basically at night, like I'll take it when I'm kind of like putting them to bed and I'll take his phone, then we plug it in in the kitchen. And so he has it there in the morning, but he can't because we found that like, even though he's asleep, like at three in the morning or something, one time I got up and like, I know he's on there. Is he light glowing or something? Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, you're not getting good sleep. And of course, you know, he's cranky next morning and you're like, and I know where all this is coming from. So yeah, so he doesn't have it. Ever doesn't have it. He's he had access to his iPad. We're pretty much done with that. So my daughter's phone, my ex-wife said it so that it's you can only use it from like 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. So I still monitor in between or I try to. Yeah, you can set standards. Nothing will work past 10 p.m. or before 6 p.m. Or 6 a.m. Literally, she can't go on any, only thing she'd do is call or text, but she can't use any app. She can't go on the internet. She can't do anything else except for that. And I've told you guys about that Canopy software and we've tried that and it it was good initially. It was because you can set all these parameters and so you can't like visit certain websites. Like you can limit the amount. Like if there's people not wearing as much clothing, like it's able to screen all that kind of stuff and then set limitations on certain times of the night and all that. So but then it wouldn't like download certain things that he needed, you know, it kind of messed with. And so he used to get so mad. Canopy, I can't do this. You come home just pissed off. So, I mean, obviously the, you know, one of the hardest things is to, you know, put the toothpaste back in the tube right after you've let it out. So since both of you have experienced already, what would the advice you would you give to someone like me who is entering? I mean, obviously I'm not happening anytime soon, but like, what, like looking back now, how, what age would you have waited till when you did introduce it? Would you have introduced it differently? Like, wouldn't you, thinking back now? Here's the best thing I could tell you because you're gonna figure this out. What's the best for you, I guess. But I would say, mistake I made was being too lax for sure, but I have a different mentality now. And it's really this, it's that the fear I think a parent has is, well, my kid is gonna be different than all the other kids and they're not gonna live in this world and they're not like everyone else. Yeah, who cares? Yes. But look at the data on everyone in the world or in the modern society. Yeah, I don't want you to be like, your kid is, if you want your, yeah, you don't want your kid to be like every the kid, anxious, depressed, comparing themselves. Like, so you gotta be the weirdo and you gotta have the kid that's gonna push back all the time and that's just, it's unfortunate, but that's just the way it is. That's the best advice I could give because that's the thing that used to push me. It's like, whoa, but his friends are, I don't want him to be. You gotta know your kid too in terms of their tendency to rebel and like what that might, the backlash of that, right? Like being super restrictive on everything. Like it always sounds great on paper to say these things and to be like, you know, well, they're never gonna have this or never gonna have that. And like it's easy to say that until you start seeing reactions and behavioral changes in them and like what they're doing in terms of revolt. So there's sort of a balance there in a fine line but I do, I mean, you'll know that because you know your kid and you're the parent. I have a family member who's- Spend time with them as much as you can with the device. And so you understand their behaviors around it. I think it would be my suggestion. Yeah, I have a family member whose family was so strict when it came to sweets and stuff like that. So strict it was overbearingly so that when they moved out, they all became obese because they just rebelled in the other direction and had as much as they possibly could. So that's the other fear is do I create this environment where they don't do this because they respect me and they value it. They're just doing it out of fear. And then when they leave, they feel like, you know, they can go in the opposite direction. I do say, wait as long as you can is what I'm gonna say. Yeah, I definitely think I'll postpone for as long as I possibly can until I feel I absolutely have to or need to to let him whatever, for whatever reason, school and things like that or he's starting now to be away and I need him to call us back. But there's something else that you do really well, Justin, I think that like, I mean I do this with Max already with things and I think I've shared this on the podcast. Like I take a lot of responsibility that if I don't want him doing those things like that then it's on me to find other things for him to do or entertain and do stuff like that, right? So you're- Off of an alternative? Yeah, like so one of the things I see you do a lot with the kids is you're constantly, they're doing stuff. Like yeah, you're out, you're doing stuff. Because that's where I think it becomes, presents the first challenge is like, if you're always in the house and you're kind of not really doing stuff all the time, it's like, and if dad's watching TV or dad's on his phone, then why can't I do something like that? I know that's going to be probably one of the hardest things. And then who am I to be like, you can't, but your mom and I are going to. So it's like, I know that when that time in his life comes up, I'm gonna really have to kick up the, let's go play basketball or let's go, you know, throw rocks or let's go, you know, shoot the slingshot or like, so I think that that is a big part of probably combating a lot of the probably bad behaviors that I think kids start to create around the phone. They're too busy doing other stuff that they like, you're probably right. Yeah, I mean, because that's how I kind of feel I am already with him. Never once has my son asked for TV or the iPad and I've not been able to be like, let's go build Legos or let's go, let's go play, you know, Mario, you know, or let's go role play and roll around outside or wrestle. Like if you're willing to do it, it's always more exciting. It is. They want to hang out with you. And it takes more work and I'm tired and sometimes I just want to put my feet up. But I think. And you want them to just here distract yourself. Yeah, but I think it's in those moments when it really matters the most that I step up and I'm like, fuck, I don't want to do this right now. But I also know that I don't want to default to just get on your phone or just get it from the TV. I know it's like when my youngest, he loves it when I tell him stories, when I make up stories. So he's always like, Papa, tell me a story, Papa. And sometimes I'm tired and it takes a lot of energy because I got to get all animated when I do it. And what I tell myself is he'll say, Papa, tell me a story and then I'll think to myself one day he's not going to want me to tell him a story. Yeah, yeah. So I got. That's what motivates me. I got to get myself. That's one of the hardest. I mean, yeah, I've never, we've never missed a day of reading every night. Like for because one day he's not going to want to. Yeah. And but there's been plenty of times where I'm tired and I don't want to. And it's like, I like, I just, you ever do the thing where you skip pages so you can read faster? Every parent does that. I feel so bad when I do that. Well, he's in this phase where you sum it up real good. We're at a, we're at a worse part, dude. He's at a part in his like where there's parts of the book that he just wants me to do over and over. So I got to do the same over and over. The same voice. Yes, yes, yes. He wants me to do the same like funny voice that I do. And you're tired. Oh, and I'm just like, I'm not a silly dude. Okay, two more times. That's it. Ready? Two more times. Daddy's going to do this. And it's like, okay, okay. One more time. It's like, oh, I got to go to bed. I want to give you guys an update real quick on Dynasty. This is the company that you guys know. It's the audience doesn't know. Yeah. We invested in my cousin's company. They are crushing. So here's what they do in a nutshell. You can, you can create a trust for yourself for free on their website for free. And they figured out a way to do this. They use, they use technology to do this. It's totally, it's all legit legal. The whole deal. Instead of spending thousands of dollars working with a lawyer or whatever, you go on there, you create a trust for people who don't know why you would want a trust. If you have any assets and something happens to you, it goes to the state, goes to probate, and it could take as much as a year and a half for them to figure out where it goes or whatever. A trust protects your family. Typically it costs a thousand dollars. You go on there. So anyway, I talked to them the other day and they are moving. They're crushing and they're getting a lot of attention from big Silicon, I can't say who, but big Silicon Valley investors on. This is such a disruptive technology and site. Well, that's why I'm sure it's super exciting for Silicon Valley people around here. They always see some potential like that. Like, oh, wow, this is, you know, one of those things that kind of breaks through a lot of the, the, the tape that, that, that it takes to set. And it's, you literally connect all your assets on there, online. Easy, your stocks, your, your savings account, your, whatever, shoe collection, if you want, your house, your car, and it just goes on this app and it's easy to switch. You're not the higher lawyer every time you want to change. Well, the biggest thing I learned from him was the value of doing that even before you have all these assets, right? Cause I think as a young guy who didn't have a lot of assets when I was younger, I thought, well, I don't really have anything. Why would I start this day? It's so much easier to start it now and then add into that, the trust than it is to restart it all. Yes. Right. And then you're also protected all the way up before and after that. Two things you have to do when you start a family. You have to life insurance. Cause if you're the, if you're the, the breadwinner, you want to have like, I don't care how young you are, what you don't want to do is one of the, one of the number one ways that, that children and single parents get into poverty is the death of the breadwinner. It's almost a guaranteed way of your family going to poverty. Yeah. So get a life. And if you're young, it's cheap. Life insurance is super cheap. And the second one is a trust. You got to do those things. If you have a family, if you want to protect your family, you used to cost thousands of dollars, but now it's like I said, it's free. You literally go on there. What, what does it get? Dynasty.com. You go there and I think it takes like five minutes and you're all set. Now, Doug, you're the, you're the most familiar with this space. Um, what, what was your thought about, about dynasty? Like, is it really that much of a disruptor for what? Well, just to give you an idea, I had a trust set up living trust $4,500 with an attorney. Now you can go through like legal zoom. Uh, there's some other, you know, services out there. You can get it for $1,000 or something like that. But the challenge is once you do that, how do you use it? Right. So, um, I think what dynasty is set up is obviously putting that, those bare bone things together, like legal zoom has for free. Okay. And it's on an app. Yeah. And then they offer additional services that you can get where you can get some additional help from attorneys. If you need it and so on, uh, to take it to the next level. So that's what I got from this was like, everybody should do it. It's free, get it done, it's set up. Now, as you make more money, acquire more assets, then that's where you, you get, you, you would call up or look into them for more, for more services on, okay, what do I, I've now got two properties or I got a stock portfolio. What do I do with this? Where do I move it? And then that's where you would hire the services. And even then he said it's cheaper to go through them to hire the lawyer, even than it would be if you were to go do. Oh, sure. Absolutely. So for the bare minimum, you have a bank account, you got some assets, like, you know, some savings accounts or something like that. Get the trust, hook it up, you know, so that the trust owns the account and then if something were to happen to you, especially if you have a family, like you say, then you don't have to go through all the rigmarole with the state and all the time it takes. Yeah, it's exciting for, for, for my family, because it's my cousin, he's a, he's a very successful guy, hard worker, smart dude. And I'd say, when he showed me this, I'm like, I mean, he already crushed it in another business. He went to this when he showed me, I'm like, dude, you're going to be, this is a billion dollar company. Yeah, it's exciting, man. So it's, you know, it's really exciting. It's really exciting. Very cool. We have a shout out today. We do. Uh, I think Adam already mentioned this artist in a prior episode. Oh, did you get his stuff? Yes. Nick VZ, V-E-A-S-E-Y X-ray on Instagram. Oh, I'm not even following on IG yet. I want to follow up with myself. Nick VZ X-ray. This is the one that uses the, um, the cadavers. This is cool. Yeah, this was pretty interesting. Pretty cool stuff. Discover the benefits of cannabinoids. Now you've heard of CBD. It's got some incredible benefits. Anti-inflammatory and zeolitic can help people sleep. But there's other beneficial cannabinoids that work with CBD to produce better effects. There's also terpenes. These are the things that make the hemp oil have its distinct odor. Well, that also gives you positive effects. Well, anyway, there's a company called Ned that uses full spectrum hemp oil extract. That means it has CBD, but all the other cannabinoids and the terpenes for maximum benefit. In fact, if you've tried CBD before, try this one. You'll feel it. You'll literally feel it within 45 to 60 minutes. That's how powerful and effective it is. And you'll also get a discount if you go through our link. Go check them out. Go to helloned.com. That's H-E-L-L-O-N-E-D.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump and get 15% off. All right. Back to the show. Our first caller is Dan from Minnesota. Dan, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my call. You got it. I'm like a lot of your listeners. I'm a recent mind pump fan. I guess you'd say it. I found you guys about six months ago, but I've been catching up on a lot of older episodes and what not. As I'm educating myself down this health and fitness journey that I started over the last couple of years, as I alluded to in my email, I'm a 40-year-old male. I've always been active up until, I don't know, six months or so ago. I, by the definition of what you guys would say, I was over-trading and beating my body up quite a bit. I'd run six or seven miles every day, seven days a week. I was restricting calories, all in the name of trying to be healthier. I was eating healthier. One of the impacts of that is my testosterone levels were really down, and it was impacting my libido. Over the last three or four months, when I was going through some bingeing episodes and wasn't in a good place, I realized I had to do something. Through some of your episodes, I realized I was over-training, so I was admitting that to myself. I've been seeing a therapist and a life coach for the last couple of months. I'm not nearly as active as I was. I strength train 45 or so minutes, five days a week, and then I walk three or four miles a day, compared to what I was doing before, where I was running six or seven miles a day. I'd walk four or five miles a day. I might do some HIIT cardio. I've significantly cut a lot of that back, and so I feel like I'm in a really good place. I'm eating more, I look leaner, I feel better. But I still don't feel like my testosterone is going up or where it needs to be. I had my annual checkup with my doctor in May when I first started this kind of, I guess you'd call it a transition. And my testosterone was low, and he suggested that maybe getting on some testosterone therapy, but we both agreed on it's not worth the side effect. I would assume if I'm not over-trained that maybe this is just temporary, that it might come back. Is there something else I could be doing? So that's where I'm looking for guidance of is this something that's going to be with me the rest of my life? Could I do something different that might bring it back up? I don't know. There's a lot to unpack here, Dan, but let's start at the very beginning. You said that you were over-training because you wanted to be healthier? Yeah, and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed running. I played a lot of sports when I was younger, and then I did intramurals and softball and tennis and soccer through work and various other clubs. And I enjoyed being active. Part of it was the fitness aspect of it, but I just enjoyed it. And then we had a fitness center where I work, where I would go down and use that facility. They do kind of circuit, hit type classes five days a week, and I would go do that. But I never really watched what I was eating up until the pandemic hit, and then I was forced home, and my wife and I really enjoyed making meals for our kids. Because we couldn't go out nearly as much. And I think I got too focused on... I started to look a lot better. I lost a lot of weight, and I think mentally I wanted to keep that. But I still like being active. Even if I'm not working out to gain a lot of strength, I just enjoy it. I enjoy the mental aspect of it that it gets me. It's kind of the time that I get to myself where I don't have three kids and work in all that responsibility that goes with me. So, Dan, if I can be frank, by the time you noticed you were overtraining, there were probably a lot of signs that you were ignoring up until that point. By the time your libido was so low that you felt like, oh my god, something's going on, you probably have been ignoring signs up until that point. Okay? Yep, that's a very safe assumption, so I would agree with that. So, and the reason why I asked you, you said you wanted to do it for health, I don't think that's why you were doing it because I think if you were doing it for health, you would have noticed the signs and you would have not gone in the direction you would have gone to. And you said you're working with a therapist. I'm assuming that there's a bit of a relationship issue with exercise or activity and diet where you abuse both of them. There was, yes, and it's gotten better, but yeah, now we're looking at anxiety. Do I have some side of anxiety that might be driving it to that's behind it? Okay. We've got some of the food aspects, I think, under control, and I'm not beating myself up like I was. Okay, I don't mean to put you on the spot, but, you know, I think- No, it's fine. Yeah, I think what you need to do is define what health really means or redefine what being healthy really means so that you have something as a guide, okay? And being healthy means you don't use exercise like a drug. It means you feel relaxed and comfortable around your diet. It's not like an over-focus, okay? It means you have good energy. Your sleep is not disturbed. Your mood seems pretty appropriate, right, for the situations that you encounter. And your libido is healthy. That's what health would be, but you're going to have to really redefine that for yourself, otherwise you're going to keep running into this problem where you go too far because you're using exercise as a way to do something, either distract yourself or run from something or there could be body image issues. There's a lot of different reasons why it could drive you in this direction, but defining health, if that is important to you, which sounds like it is, I think redefining that with maybe your therapist would give you a nice guideline, and I'd want you to write it down because it doesn't sound intuitive yet, but it will get there once you really start to kind of pay attention. Now, as far as libido is concerned, here's why testosterone goes down when we over-train or over-stress. Testosterone is a driver of fertility, natural testosterone, and if your body believes that you are not in a place to support another child, okay, so this is an evolutionary thing, then it's going to lower your testosterone and take that drive away from you. It's going to reduce the risk of you procreating or going out and doing things that maybe require more energy strength and risk because you're over-trained. Really, what it's doing by lowering your testosterone is it's trying to get you to rest. Low testosterone feels terrible. It makes you tired, you lose motivation, lose drive, and so in under normal circumstances, what that would do is that those signals would make you go, I'm tired, I gotta sleep, I gotta rest, I gotta do less, but if you have a bad relationship with exercise and diet and all that stuff, then we just push past it. We keep pushing, we keep pushing until the signs get so loud that we can't ignore them, and sometimes that looks like injury. Sometimes that's a catastrophic sign. So will your testosterone get back up or get up to where it was before? Likely, but it could take a little while. Now I do want to address the side-effect aspect of testosterone replacement therapy. If done properly, you're going to feel like you have good high normal testosterone. The real, I would say, negatives of replacement therapies that you gotta give yourself an injection every week, really. If you do it right, there really aren't any of the side effects that, you know, or very minimal, I should say, if it's done properly. So I wouldn't worry about that necessarily, but I think your hormones will balance out. It just, it's a lagging signal. So first what happens is sleep gets a little better, energy gets a little better, mood starts to lift, joint pain, strength, those things start to go up, and then the lagging signal is libido. That can take a little while before that starts to really pick up. So I would say to stay patient, continue doing what you're doing, and it should come up. Now if it doesn't, in the next four or five months. Oh, I'd like to change what he's doing. Yeah, well. I would like to change what you're doing. I would like to either one, take your five days a week of strength training and reduce that to three days a week. If you need something almost every day like that, that you feel it, then I go maps 15. So either I want you in maps 15 or maps anabolic. That's the protocol I would want you on. I would also want you to be focused on gaining strength. And so I'd actually want you in a slight calorie surplus. So let's feed the body a little bit more. Make sure you're definitely hitting your protein intake. Maybe give yourself a couple. Let me know what I'm doing. Okay, good, good. So stay with that. Maybe add a few hundred calories to your day every day. By the way, I'm going to reduce your movement and still also add a few hundred calories. I'd let you choose. If I said something like go down to three days of strength training and that freaked you out, I go, okay, well, we can train six days a week and do maps 15. I'm okay with that. I want to reduce the total amount of intensity and volume you're doing of training right now. And then I would, I would want no, no hit or intense cardio. I'm totally fine with the hikes and the walks. That's, that's cool. But that would be our focus right now would be to pull back the intensity on the training. Maps 15 or maps, anabolic would be the, the recommendation increase calories a little bit, no high intensity cardio. And then I think, and then of course, continuing to focus on improving sleep treat, be competitive with being good at your sleep, meaning, you know, make the way you probably focus on your weight training and your exercise and the stuff that you really like to really be that way about your, your sleep, really try to get a good sleep routine and be consistent with it. And, and like really focus on, on the little things you can do to improve that. Dan, Dan, real, real quick, think of it this way. Cause, cause sometimes people, they'll over train for a while. They'll cut the volume down a lot in comparison to what they were doing. And then they'll hear us say, no, no, no, you got to do less. And they're like, what do you mean I got to do less? Like this, that's, that's so little compared to maybe what I did a few years ago or before I started over training. Think of it this way. You're, you're, when you were over training, you were digging a hole and you were getting deeper and deeper into the hole. You cut your volume. And so you stopped digging a hole, but you're still in a hole. So what you got to do now is allow yourself the ability to fill that hole back up. So that means you got to do less than you would do if you were not coming from an over train state. Does that make sense? Yeah, actually it does. Okay. So what that means is you may eventually get to the point where five days a week is fine. But right now, because of where you came from, you know, you got to do a lot less to give your body the ability to time to catch up. Your body needs to build. In order to build, it has to recover. So you can do all the work you want to do, but you know, your body doesn't have a chance to really build what you want and to be in a healthy place. And so that's, that's the hardest part is the discipline of that mentally, because you know, like we've, we've said a million times about how that doesn't really translate to a lot of other things in your life in terms of work and, you know, putting effort in all these other directions. But so this is all about balance and the right dose and allow your body to do its thing and to be able to recover and build itself and repair itself. And so that's where the testosterone and everything else will start to balance its way back out. Now, the exciting part about this, if we do this correctly, and we do give the body extra calories, reduce the intensity, you will start to feel it right away. You'll start to feel better and any sort of weight you put on is going to be good weight. You're going to put muscle on, especially if you're hitting that protein intake, we're staying consistent with your training. You increase those calories, you will start to feel better and look better and get stronger. Like that will happen relatively quick. It might take a little while for the libido and testosterone to kind of catch up, but if we do this correctly, you should already start to feel like, okay, I'm moving in the right direction. And then the only real challenge is what Justin was alluding to, which is the, the mental, because you have kind of an athletic background, have kind of a go-getter attitude that like doing less is more will be a little bit of a challenge at first. But I think that, and by the way too, I want the audience that's listening, like, you know, we didn't talk a lot about hormone therapy replacement very much, saluted a little bit. Obviously we're all very pro that as when needed, but I would always want to do this first. Right. Let me see what you and I can do too. As far as you can, yeah. Yeah, let's see what we can do first by addressing what we think are the big rocks and doing it all naturally first. And then if I feel like you and I have done a really good job of doing that, we're, you know, say, eight months to a year down the road again, and we're still testing extremely low and you're not feeling good in a little bit, then is when I would say, okay, let's venture into HRT. And by the way, you can do that for a while and come off and be totally fine. People think that a lot of the stuff that you hear about testosterone is linked to these crazy, you know, super physiological doses that bodybuilders are taking where you hear of scary stuff. If you're taking a very mild therapeutic dose, there's going to be nothing but positive things that happen from you taking it. But we wouldn't want to do that now and mask the other things that you potentially could do naturally. So I'd want to do that. Yeah, you know what you could do too, Dan. We work with specialists. There's a, if you go on mphormones.com, you can talk with them about accelerating your natural testosterone rising process. So you're going to do all the stuff on your own, increase the calories, decrease the volume, two days a week, strength training, or like MAPS 15. And then they have, they have peptides and medicines that can boost your body's natural testosterone and kind of make that happen a little faster. But I would talk with them first and kind of get a baseline and see if that's appropriate. That's a good point, Sal. Before I'd actually even go HRT with you, I would do HC, which is what they're probably going to tell you. They would do or Enclomaphein and HCG. They have the methods that will kind of kickstart your body's testosterone so you don't have to wait as long, necessarily. But I would talk with them first just to see if it's appropriate. And literally tell them just like what you're saying right now, which is, hey, I want to try and do this as natural as possible before I decide to go down the- TRT route. Yeah, TRT route. So what do you have for me that I can do? So make sure you express that. In other words, sometimes they'll just go to like, oh, you need it because you're so low. But if you express that, they'll definitely go that direction. Okay. No, that really helps. Kind of where I figured you guys would steer me to and I think I kind of needed to hear it to kind of confirm that that's what I needed to do. And given the changes I've made and the progress I've made in admitting that I was overtraining, I think I can commit to this and rely on the momentum that I've had to do and now that I kind of got more of a direction of where to go. So I really do appreciate that. And the sleep piece, if I could give myself one piece of advice going back 15 years is the value of sleep. I never really, until I started listening to you guys really understood the impact that that has. And I've built in a routine now. Awesome. My wife's not too crazy about it, but going to bed at 9, 9.30 at night, got my sleep mask and my white noise. It's awesome. I'm getting that solid seven and a half, eight hours of sleep. And I can feel it on the weekends when I don't get it, if I'm up late with my kids or whatnot. So I wish I'd have known that a long time ago. You're on the right path. You're moving in the right direction. Doug's going to send you MAP 15. And do you have MAPs and Ebola yet or no? No, I don't. That's the one I was thinking of that might be the best for. Because I could do the three days a week and those other two days do some mobility work or do some other relaxation stuff, stretching and whatnot to fill that void. Okay. So yeah, I'm going to have Doug then send MAPs and Ebola to you. And then if you know an option, which is not exactly MAP 15, but you can split that workout in half too. So like my clients that just enjoy, and I know what that's like, like I like going to the gym when I'm in a routine, I like the consistency of that for myself. So sometimes what I'll do is I'll just take the anabolic workout and cut it in half. And so I'm basically going every day almost, but just doing half the workout. I think you would benefit from that. So that's the option. Okay. I'll give that a try. That's a great idea. Thank you. All right, Dan. All right. Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. You guys enjoy the rest of your show and thank you again. You got it. Take it easy, man. All right, man. Yeah. When people are coming out of overtraining, I think what they tend to do, I know what they tend to do. It was a good analogy that you did with the digging the hole. Yeah. It's like they go down to a volume that they did before, but it's like you got to recover from what you just did. Still got to climb out of that hole. It's way less than you think because you just came out of this terrible overtraining state, you know. And for some people, when I get clients like that, I didn't even train. I tell them to take two weeks off. Yeah. It's a great analogy because you've done, you've stopped the digging. So you're not any... But you're still in the hole. Yeah, exactly. You're not going to get any worse, but you're still down there. And so we got to give time to fill it back up and the rest. And Justin hit it. The hardest part of this process will be the mental part, of course, knowing that. But if he does a good job of increasing calories, you know the one thing that we didn't hit on that I see in his note now that I think, I don't know if I heard him say it or not, was he was intermittent fasting. So if you listen to this, Dan, I'd actually stop you from doing that too. Yeah, yeah. So feed yourself on a regular base. Have a protein fat breakfast, please. Yeah, yeah. So cut that out. There's no need for you to be doing that right now. So that's the one other thing I'd add. Our next caller is Aaron from England. Aaron, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey, guys. How you doing? Good. Good. How you doing? Good. I'm going to be respectful of your time. So I'll just I'll jump straight in. So essentially to give a little bit of concepts, I've been strength training for around 10 years. But I haven't counted calories for about seven years. In like March of this year, I decided to start counting calories again. Just wanted to kind of really like focus and dial in. And I ascertain that I've been eating around 3400 calories. So I bumped up to 4000 and after a few weeks didn't see any kind of weight increase. I eventually bumped to 4200 and after about six weeks of bulking at that kind of caloric amount, I slowly started to put on weight. And so my question really, my concern is that as my kind of metabolism adapts to that, you know, I'm going to have to start eating like 4300, 4400, 4500. You just don't really think that's like sustainable. I was wondering if you guys had any kind of input on that. Yeah. So all right, a couple of things here. First of all, some people have such tremendous metabolic flexibility in the positive where, you know, and it's not super common. I guarantee you there's 90% of our audience right now is rolling their eyes because they wish they had your problem. It's not super common. But I was like this. I know Adam was as well where I would just bump my calories, especially when I was younger. And I was like, okay, where to go? Nothing happened. So you've got a lot of metabolic flexibility. Now you could try pushing the calories more and more and more, but at some point it gets crazy, right? 5000, 5500 calories. Like you're stuffing yourself all day long. It's not a great way to live. This secret really is to send a very effective muscle building signal with appropriate and proper strength training. You don't need a ton of extra calories when your body wants to build muscle. When it wants to build muscle, you need extra calories, but not a ton. And you will build more muscle. So I would at this point, with that many calories, well, let's talk about your activity. I was gonna say, let's dive into that because there's some little things that I know when I was in this place that I wish I would have known that would have made the biggest difference as far as like my activity level, the amount of volume I was training, intensity. What are you doing? Yeah, what does your workouts look like? Do you play sports on the side too? What's it look like? Yeah, so things are a little bit different since I sent the question in. We just got a puppy, so my activity is kind of drastically reduced. I'm doing match 15 right now. But I've also decreased my calories, kind of in line with that. But my kind of typical life, I was running anabolic, so doing like three workouts a week. And on workout days, I'd probably go for like an hour's walk. And on the non-foundational days, I was doing like probably two different walks of like 40 minutes to an hour each. That's it? That's it. How many steps, do you know how many steps you're taking a day? Are you like a... Yeah, probably averaging around 8,000. Oh, you're fine. You got a really fast metabolism. I know in your question you said, do I have gut issues? Do you have any gastro issues or does your digestion seem pretty good? And I think I'm probably lactose intolerant, but that's it on the majority of us. Okay, stick to what you're doing. Focus on getting stronger. Continue eating around four to 4,400 calories a day if you can. And eventually you'll start to gain muscle. As the strength goes up, so will the muscle. Have you noticed any strength changes with the bumping calories? Yeah, so it's not that I've been like, you know, not gaining muscle. Like over the past year, I think I've gained about three and a half kilos of muscle. Oh, it's not bad. No, it's like seven and a half kilos. Yeah, it's going well. It's just I'm just kind of thinking about the future and you know, how sustain it is to keep eating. No, it's not going to go on forever, Aaron. How old are you? 28. Yeah, it's not going to go on forever. And things start to settle as you get a little older, actually gets easier. 30s, bro. That's how I want to start to happen. And by the way, gaining eight pounds of lean body mass in a year is amazing. Eight or six. No, he said, he said, what did you say, three kilos? Three and a half kilos. It's almost seven, eight pounds. You're, you're doing okay. You're doing all right. I would just stay the course. Muscle building is a slow process. You don't sounds like you don't gain a lot of body fat. So the weight gain is probably all muscle. Do you notice yourself gaining body fat with this? Or is it just? Ed, yeah. So I tend to, I tend to do like a six-week bulk, then a two-week cut. And obviously at 4,200 calories, it's very easy to cut. You know, we're eating three and a half thousand calories, and then I kind of drop the fat pretty easily. Yeah, you're like Adam. Yeah. So I do want to address some of the mistakes or think challenges that I had. Like, you know, when I was in this place, I wish I was still in this place. So enjoy that. See, now, now looking back, don't you wish? Yeah. The grass is always greener on the other side, bro. Now is it mid 30s for you? Yeah, yeah. It was really around the mid 30s that it started, maybe even early 30s, it started to change for me. But one of the things too, I would be like super dialed and consistent during my week. And then on the weekends, I'd be like, because I could get away with kind of eating whenever I wanted, I'd be like tracking, I'd be training, I'd be super consistent money through Friday. And then Saturday and Sunday, I would be like, not really tracking. I was like, let myself be flexible on it. And I really wasn't hitting my macro targets. And that throwing my macro targets off on those two days was enough to kind of stall progress sometimes. So I don't know if that's something that you ever do or not. But and you've probably heard me talk about on the podcast, Win the Weekends. That was a big shift for me too, was like, okay, it's easy for me to be dialed in during the week. But I'm so over all over the board on the weekends that I need to become quit consistent with that. It became really consistent with Saturdays and Sundays. I noticed a little shift from there also. So if you haven't looked into that, I would look into that part of your dieting and training. I don't know if that at all speaks to you. But that was something that I was challenged with. Let's have some fun here. So let's see. How many of these calories are coming from liquid? Are you doing like protein shakes and stuff like that? Or is all Whole Foods? Yeah, one shake a day. Okay, so okay, here's the, you know, I'm working with someone with a fast metabolism. They want to pack on some size advice. And I don't give this advice usually because usually people are not like you. So here's what I would say. Try to add another 500 calories of liquid calories. I want you to make yourself some shakes and you take them in between your meals or right before bed. Literally keep eating what you're eating, add two or three more shakes. And in those shakes, don't make them water and protein. That's too little calories. I would go protein. I would add peanut butter. I would add, you know, you can't have dairy. So coconut milk is good. Add fruit to it. And have those in between your meals. Continue to follow programs like Maps Anabolic or Maps Power Lift and focus on getting stronger. It's not going to feel comfortable, okay, but it'll put on some size for sure if you do it that way. So this is the, you know, less comfortable, maybe not super health advice, but if you want to pack on some size, that'll do. I got a bomb homemade shake for that for you. So go vanilla protein powder. Do almond milk with ice. Do two tablespoons of peanut butter. A tablespoon of Nutella. Half a cup of oats. And a banana. You can't do dairy. I'll blend it. No, almond milk. Nutella. Is there dairy in that? Yeah, bro. You think dairy? Yeah. Can you use like a chocolate cocoa powder then? There you go. Use. We're new to this no dairy case. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. So do the cocoa powder instead. But everything else the same. And that's a real high calorie, good tasting shake that you can add. So add that into the diet and enjoy. I also used to do a thing too with myself where like so again when I was talking about winning the weekends, I would find that I was dialed consistent and then sometimes on the weekend, I would still kind of hit my calorie intakes but then I wouldn't hit my protein because I'd allow myself to have junk food and stuff like that just to get to my calorie intake. So I just made a rule for myself that weekend every day like if I wanted that burger and fries or I wanted those extra calories, I first had to hit my protein intake and then I would allow myself to pile on the extra stuff. So make sure you do that also that if you're eating outside, which I know you probably are eating outside of just whole foods to hit 4,000 calories. I know how hard that is all whole foods all the time. But make sure you get what your body needs first before you pile on the stuff that is just full of calories. So because that sometimes I would make that mistake of having candy or lots of carbs and you know, I was hitting the calories, but then those days would suffer on the protein. So hit your protein target, then allow yourself the flexibility and freedom to enjoy some things on top of that. And your best gauge is going to be your strength. If your strength goes up and it consistently goes up and you feed yourself appropriately, the muscle will happen just the way it works. And enjoy this why this lasts. Yeah, it'll make you fat later. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice window you have right now. Yeah, yeah. Is that? I think I was just, I was just concerned because I think I read that like Chris Bumstead was eating like 4,000 calories and I was like, that's huge. Okay, stop. Don't look at my soul. Yeah, don't compare yourself. Have you heard us talk about that? We talked about that with Ben Pokolski. Have you not heard that conversation about that? That was actually a mind-blowing thing for all of us. Don't look at bodybuilders. They're not normal humans. And bodybuilders can build a massive amount of muscle on low calories. Yeah. Yeah, I used to think it was the opposite. I used to think they had to feed themselves 10,000 calories a day. There's a great conversation we had with Ben Pokolski. It was one of the first interviews we did with him where we actually talked exactly about that. Like we had, it was like an epiphany moment for all of us of assuming that all these mass monsters must eat 10,000 calories a day. And he's like, no, it's the opposite. They have super efficient metabolisms that shuttle food to muscle. And they are very, very unsimilar to anybody watching this or listening to this. Right now, they are anomalies. So don't look at them. Episode 715. Thank you, Doug. 715. Yep. Thank Andrew. Oh, Andrew. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. All right, Aaron. All right, can I quickly just ask like a very short question? Sure. Yeah. Like a dating thing or something? Like a dating thing. Like a dating. Yeah. Intensity on map 15. What's the goal? Moderate high. Yeah. Not failure, but you want to stop a few reps short. Yeah. Okay. Same as anabolic. That's right. Yep. Yeah, same. You got it, mate. All right. Thank you. Awesome. Cheers, guys. You got it. Appreciate it. See how I said mate because he's English? I know. You know, always makes me cringe. So clever. Bro, listen. I could speak all the difference. You know what's- Oh, good eye, right? Yeah. No, that's Australian. I know. I was just throwing that in there. Okay. You know, boy, does that take me back, dude? When I was, I want to say 18, maybe 18, I had to eat so much food to get over 200 pounds. Like, I mean, if I listed the food that I ate for sure, therapist right now would be like, that's an eating disorder. It was insane to get over 200 pounds. Now- You just feel bogged down by food. Now, if I eat breakfast and nothing else, I'm going to be over 200 pounds. So it does change, but man, I remember it. I remember that where I would just eat more and nothing would happen. I'm like, what's going on here? Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you had this, but I know for sure that one of my challenges when I had a metabolism, that where it's like, I was never afraid of getting fat. It was like, I just couldn't put on weight. The, definitely the mistake I did make was like, I had to get candy. I had to have those things- Junk food. Yeah, junk food. Correct. And not eating protein. Yeah. And then when I actually measured my macros, I'd be like, oh, shit, I'm eating 4500 calories, but then I'm only getting 100 grams of protein. It's like, oh, wow. That's exactly what I did. So, I mean, that's where that rule came from. You're like, okay, I got to get my, what I need through Whole Foods, and then I'll pack on the stuff I enjoy after the fact. That made a big difference. I finally was able to do it by doing the following, which I don't recommend, but I'd eat three steaks a day and half a gallon of milk every day on top of everything else that I was finally putting on. I know. I didn't want to tell. So, the other thing I did was the sugary rock stars, which is not a great recommendation for anybody, but for health reasons. But I mean, it was like- Extra calories. Yeah, I was so active. I was like, I had to- And it was easy, right? I could just drink it while I was doing something else. Did you ever make tuna fish and shake and breast shakes? No, I did not. That's what I did. That's disgusting. Mm, yeah, dude. Wasn't that weird? Our next caller is Noah from Montana. Noah, what's happening? How can we help you? Not much is happening over here. Guys, how are you doing? Good, good, brother. Awesome. Well, I'm so happy to be on the show. I've been working out for the last six months really consistently, and I've been having some trouble getting my squad up. So I'm coming to you guys now. Okay. So I love some help. Yeah, what's your squad at? How much you weigh? So I'm about 54 right now if I had a big breakfast, and I can squat about 165 for three or four reps. Okay. That number has only really gone down in the last six months. I probably started out squatting about 165 for six or seven, and then that number has gone down. I think from listening to your episodes, I've figured out some of the reasons why. So I don't know if you want me to dive into a bit of background of what I think is going on. Yeah, I'll do that. Yeah. Yeah, why? Okay. So I know since about February when I started kind of really tracking this, I haven't been eating enough calories. I like the squad was just so busy. So I wasn't eating enough calories. I wasn't getting good enough sleep. Now I was going to technical failure. My ego was kind of pushing me to squat a few extra reps. In the last couple of months though, I've changed all that. I've bumped out my calories. I'm getting better sleep. I'm watching out for that technical failure, making sure to stay a couple reps shy of that. And I still haven't really seen much growth. And so in the last two months, I fixed all those things and I'm still kind of hovering at the same numbers. How old are you? 18, nearly 19. Okay. Are you following any of our programs? Not currently. I was following Maps and the Ballack during those first months or probably from about, I want to say March or April, I started Maps and the Ballack and finished it. And then I was at the gym the one day and one of the guys there, I just had a pretty good squat and I asked him what he was doing. And so I copied and did his squat program. So you were following our program, got strong and then you follow something else and you got weaker. Is that correct? That explains a lot. No, sorry, I was following your program and I was going to technical failure, not eating enough calories, doing all that stuff, wasn't seeing any progress. So then when I saw this guy at the gym who was lifting, I was like, hey, what do you do? And he sent me this program. I'm not sure if Doug can pull it out for you. It's a five week program. I'm currently on the last workout. And it's not working for you? Still not working for me. So I'm not quite sure where to go from here, which is why I'm coming to you. Like, what do I do for programming? Like, why are my legs? Real quick, in your question, you said your deadlift went up a lot but your squat didn't? Yeah. What did your deadlift go? Like, what were the changes in your deadlift? Well, I started deadlifting probably around, like, 135 for 10 or 11. And then, like, even throughout the same kind of phase, like, doing all those same things, I was probably not going to technical failure as much. I just, the ego wasn't pushing me there because I just kept seeing good gains. And now I can deadlift, what was I doing? I was doing 225 in, like, a five by five. So like, five reps, five sets. I could probably one-wrap 275 or more right now. Oh, nice. No, you're doing good, bro. Yeah, that's how tall are you? Five-ten. Okay. Just over. All right, so here's a couple things right here. Yeah, I think you should go back to MAPS and Ebolaq. I think you should do two foundational workouts a week, not three. And I think you should keep your calories high, your protein high, and don't train to failure. And you should definitely see your strength start to climb again, for sure. There also could be a bit of a technique thing here, right? So like, you obviously got stronger, so it's not like a bad program. Like the way the squats are programmed are similar to deadlifts, so you shouldn't see like this massive on one than the other, unless you just have, you do better at doing the deadlift than you do squatting, which I'm the same way too. Like it's, squatting is very technical and difficult for me to be really good at. It's taken me a long time to get really strong there. Deadlifting literally came natural to me. I thought like first year of deadlifting from you, I watched myself get stronger and stronger and stronger because it just felt more natural and I felt better doing it. These are very technical lifts. And so there's a bit of practice that comes with that. I don't know if you feel that when you're doing those two movements too, but I mean, the squat is difficult. It's a difficult movement for me. It doesn't feel as comfortable and natural as the deadlift. And so that can speak to why you're not seeing the progress also. So and then I want to make sure you're hitting your protein intake and being in a calorie surplus also. So that's like a big for sure. And then I would recommend the same thing. Either I'd go anabolic or I'd even do maps power lift. Those would be the two options. How many calories are you eating a day? I'm not currently tracking, but I do make sure to eat full three meals a day snacks. Like make sure to eat lots of food. I am kind of counting my protein. I know I'm not all the way up to that one gram per day, but I'm trying to keep like pushing that protein in eggs and lots of meat and supplementing and stuff. The best possible thing you could do is track protein and divide it up by how many meals you're going to eat and be consistent with it. Because unless you've done this for a long time, people overestimate how much protein they eat. Because like, oh, I had three eggs. Oh, I had some, you know, some, some deli meat. Then you actually add it up. You're like, oh my God, it's like way under what I need to hit. So I would be, I would be religious about hitting the protein targets every single day. Follow the maps anabolic, take it to two days a week. Don't do the three day week foundation. I'll do the two days a week. And I bet you'll start to see some strength gains on a consistent basis. Okay. Any suggestions for how to hit those protein targets like meal wise? Because like at $1.50, I could eat like four chicken breasts a day, which this isn't really practical. Well, there's your first piece of advice. Get rid of chicken breasts. They're gross. Yeah. Upgrade to steaks. Yeah. Steak, go steak, ground beef, or go chicken thighs. Okay. Chicken thighs. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Oh yeah. Chicken breasts. I don't know why anyone ever told me to do chicken breasts. It's a little bit more fat, not even that much more. It's just way tastier. Chicken breasts is gross. Taste, especially if you have to pre-cook it or reheat it. Like, oh my God, reheated chicken breasts is up there with some of the worst shit ever. So yes, get rid of the chicken breasts, go chicken thighs, do ground beef. I talk a lot about setting, starting the day. Like someone who has a hard time hitting protein, winning the day has a lot to do with how you kick off your first meal or two. If you're behind by noon, you're going to be behind. It's so hard to catch up. So I like to make a big dinner that let's say we do ground beef and rice and whatever like meal that you make, something like that, right? A big protein with a carb like that. Easy carb rice, sweet potato yams, quinoa stuff like that mixed all the other. And then I make enough that I could have four or five servings. And then in the morning, I literally cracked two or three eggs on that and reheated in the skillet. So it takes me like two minutes to make it. I add an egg on there or maybe some salsa and cheese. And now it's a breakfast, but now it's like a 50 gram protein breakfast. Noah, do you live at home? Do you live with your parents? Yeah, I am right now. Do you cook for yourself or do you eat when mom cooks? I'm a bit of both. My parents are both running the business right now. So I do a lot of the cooking at home. I cook up eggs in the morning. I'm often preparing supper and everything. So go bigger on the supper and then mix it with the egg. Best thing you could do, Noah, is once or twice a week, take your, whatever you're going to eat, do and cook it in bulk so that you have it in the fridge and it's ready to go. So like ground beef, here's the easiest muscle building meal of all time and it tastes good. Literally 80% ground beef. You don't want to go too lean, it doesn't taste good. Ground beef, rice, cook a bunch of it, mix it together. You could throw salsa on it. You could throw eggs on it, cheese on it. You could throw cheese on it, you could throw avocado. And it's like, and it tastes so good. Like I could eat that three times a day, no problem. And it's in the fridge. It's easy. Otherwise, what will happen is probably, especially with kids your age, what tends to happen is they'll have a day or two of good protein. And then they'll have a day or two of not so, and they'll like, oh, I ate a bowl of cereal. That was protein. And you're like, well, that's 12 grams. So, you know, give yourself a day or two where you just mass cook, put some music on, have a good time, make yourself a bunch of food, divide it up, put it in the fridge, and then that's your meals. And it'll make it a lot easier. If you're consistent with that and you do the MapSentabolic, you'll see some strength gains for sure. Awesome. And then should I go to PowerLift after then? Yeah. Yeah. That'd be the next program. So, you already have MapSentabolic, right? Yeah, I got Anabolic in prime. All right. I'll send you PowerLift right now. Yeah. You'll get stronger PowerLift. Awesome. Thanks, guys. You got it, dude. Follow up. Let us know how you do. I will. Yeah. Thanks again for all you guys do. I love listening to you. And yeah, keep on pumping out the fitness truth. You got it, man. Thanks, buddy. All right. God bless. Thank you. Good kid. I like when you're young, guys, dude. It makes me feel like we, okay, we're all right. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I know we're at that point. Just a few of them out there. I know we're in that footy, that footy, dirty phase. We think we're cool, but we're not. You know what I'm saying? Like, if you're 20, you're like, oh, those guys are a bunch of dorks. Like, yeah, they got all these intolerances. Think for yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Super cool. I'm just aware. That's all. I'm, well, you think you're aware. I got teenage kids. That's when you become really aware of how uncool. You know, kids like that, when I hear them, I can identify because that was me. Totally. Right? So I hear what he's saying and I'm like, oh man, I want to be able to help you out. And I swear, listen, if you're listening and you're young, I guarantee, and you don't track, I guarantee you miss it. I guarantee you miss those targets. Because I know what I used to do. I would have a few days of like really good eating and then there'd be a few days that were off and I didn't really realize it because I'm like, well, I'm eating. You know, I had some protein here, I had some protein there. And then when I started like adding it up, I was like, oh my God, I'm averaging. Or what you said, which I think, I mean, you know what's so funny? I remember years, Togo's extra large sandwich. And then when I actually looked up, it was like four ounces of deli meat. Deli meat. You just ate bread. It's like 14 grams of protein. There's like nothing in there. So you just, and then eggs, you're like, oh, I had five eggs. Five eggs isn't even that much. No, 30 grams of protein, you needed 50. Yeah. So, you know, you tend to really overestimate how much protein you're intaking, especially when you're having a hard time with that. Especially when you're 18, because he just came from literally mom making him breakfast, let's do it. And so he's like, I'm eating a lot more protein. It's still not enough. And I think that chicken breasts are the biggest lie in fitness. That's I'm going to say that right now. But it's the biggest lie. Like there's just a waste. Bro, that was the chicken breast industry. Mic drop. Chicken breast industry lie. They did. They just told us lies. Flip around, you're looking. You know what it was? I'll tell you right now what it was. This is swear to God. This is, I could totally see this happening. Chicken farmers or whatever were like, everybody's buying everything else. They don't like the chicken breast. It's dry and it's gross. Then all of a sudden you had this anti-fat movement happen in the US. And then anti-red meat movement. And the chicken farmers were like, oh, shit, now we could sell all this dry ass chicken breast. It's white meat and it's lean. And that's exactly what happened. Chicken breast sales were zero before the 1980s. Then all of a sudden they exploded. That's right. Your body, especially a young teenage boy, your body needs healthy fats. There's great healthy fat in a chicken thigh. And it's almost exactly the same grams of protein that you would get per ounce. Yeah, per ounce. And it tastes a million times better. So when you're trying to hit your intake, it's so much easier to... I could eat a pound of chicken thighs easily. A pound of chicken breast is like... You need water with it. Especially if it's reheated. You need a lot of bacon on top. That's why I used to blend them. Our next caller is Amanda from Illinois. Amanda, how can we help you? Hi. How are you? This is so crazy. Good. How are you guys? Good. We're excited to talk to you. Yeah, I'm a little nervous. So bear with me here. So I guess I'll just get into a little background and then I'll give you guys my question. So basically, the story is I've been overweight for most of my life. Had some family trauma when I was four. Parents weren't the greatest. Uncle wasn't the greatest, which led to overeating as a coping mechanism. My mom was a chronic dieter growing up. She was always on some sort of fad diet. She ended up having gastric about 10 years ago. She's still a fad dieter. Fast forward to my 30s. I was a single parent. My son is diagnosed with autism. I really wanted to get in shape for him. So I went on a typical cardio bunny diet, if you will. Six days a week of running three to five miles a day, low carb, high protein. I lost about a hundred pounds in 10 months. In the process, I became super obsessed with the scale. Either wasn't eating everything I did that day was dictated by what the number on the scale was. I ended up pretty much bashing both of my knees from the constant running. Had many injections in both of them just to make the pain go away. So eventually had to give up running. I'm 42 now. I'm married. I have two additional children. So Sal, much like you, I have quite the age gap. I have an 18-year-old, a four-year-old, and a one-year-old. I work full-time in logistics. And I am also right now in school getting my bachelor's degree. So we're pretty busy. But I guess my question is, so I've been at this for most of my life, just dieting. Actually, I was dieting. I was gaining weight, losing weight. I've been doing resistance for about nine months. I would say that I'm definitely getting stronger. I started out doing the at-home version with dumbbells. Couldn't shoulder press more than 10-pound dumbbells. This morning, I'm at 30. So I think I'm definitely improving. But I don't see my body changing. I know you guys always say, if you get stronger, you're making progress. But I don't weigh myself. I also do my best to not track calories because I was in such a... I don't know if I would call it eating disorder, disorder-deeding, but it just became so obsessive for me that I got pretty sick when I was losing the weight initially. I know that probably factors into why I'm not seeing a lot of changes, but I'm just curious what your guys' recommendation would be. I work out three to five times a week. It is mostly mass resistance three days a week, followed by in-kind walking on a treadmill, sometimes a palatine class. I don't run anymore because I want to have function in both of my knees. My youngest son, like I said, is on the spectrum. So longevity, functionality. Just looking for any advice on how I can get my body into better shape is resistance the right program for me. I have anabolic. I'll be very honest with you. I've been very hesitant to start it because I'm nervous to start it. So just overall, I listen to you guys every day while we work out. So we work out three times a week together. I've taken a lot of your advice and changed a lot of my programs and my eating. So overall, is anabolic the way to go for me? Should I be doing anything different? I'm going to back up a little bit, Amanda. Let me ask you this. How tired are you of dealing with all of this? So much so that I've recently started therapy about two months ago. Okay. You want some? I think it all is very much tied together. Yeah, for sure. It is. You want some peace. You want to be able to be fit, healthy, but you also want to have some peace around it and be able to relax around it. Not worry about it or think about it or have it just take over. Definitely. You're doing the right thing with the therapy. I don't think a different workout is going to be the answer. I do think maps anabolic would be fine for you, but I think the answer is going to come from trying to solve the root issue of what's going on. Okay. I think therapy is the right strategy. It could take a long time. There could be a lot of hard stuff that you're going to go through. I don't know. I think this will be legal in your state. I know it is in California and I think it's legal all throughout the U.S. I would ask your therapist about therapy with ketamine, ketamine therapy. Okay. I'm not an expert on this. I'm doing it myself and I know someone else very close to me who's also doing it. And what ketamine therapy has been shown to do is it's been shown to help people change the patterns or the behaviors that they've created through trauma. They're very, very, very hard to change. And what traditional talk therapy does is it helps you become aware. It helps you cope. But sometimes we just can't get to it. We can't even get to it. We can't access it. And then when we do, it almost reignites the trauma and we can't make the changes that are necessary. And ketamine is a disassociative that they've shown significant improvements in people with treatment-resistant depression or treatment-resistant PTSD, both traditionally almost impossible to treat with traditional methods. Now, I read your question. You didn't go into the detail of your trauma, but I see what you wrote here. So I won't say it if you don't want me to say it. It's not that. I didn't want to trigger anybody else. They know it's a very sensitive topic. So that's the only reason I wasn't going into this explicit detail. But yeah. Okay. So I would research it. I personally work with a company. There's no affiliation. I'll have Doug send you the link afterwards. I'm not going to say it on air. I don't know if they work in your state. I would look into it because the root of the challenge that you have is not the kind of workout or the kind of diet or anything like that. I do think you're moving in the right direction. I really does sound like you're trying to do this in a healthy way. It really does. And getting stronger is a phenol. That's the best sign we could get physically that you're moving in the right direction. But we have to address the drivers behind all of this. Otherwise, that piece that you're looking for is going to be really hard to get to. I want to address the, and you didn't say it, but I see it in here is the ozympic also. So lots of potential positive things that we've seen with it. The one drawback I think I see with it, with the people that have taken it is it helps them, you know, it curbs their appetite. They don't eat as much. But then that also leads to them under eating their protein intake consistently. And if you're definitely hard. Yeah. And if that's happened simultaneously, like we're trying to build muscle, running a program like MAPSynabolic, that could be just making it more difficult. Like sure, weight's coming off on the scale, but you lose four pounds, two of it was fat, two of it was muscle, which is not helping us from a metabolic standpoint. It might be helping us on the scale and overall weight, which is unfortunately that sometimes doctors just speak to that part. But with what you're trying to accomplish by lifting weights and speeding your metabolism up and getting healthier and being stronger, consistently being able to hit your protein and take is really important. And I think if you continue to see it challenging while you're on Ozympic, I might recommend you to come off of it based off of that. Now, if you hit it while also being on Ozympic, then more power to you. But that happens to be one of the negative side effects of Ozympic is people's appetite is reduced so much that they grossly under eat protein too. And that's so essential to, it's essential period, but it's essential to really what we're trying to do with your metabolism by building muscle. So if you think that you're not consistently doing that, you may want to consider coming off of that also. But I would aim for a protein intake that matches your target body weight. So whatever body weight you feel would be like a healthy body weight for you. Try and hit that in grams of protein. And then that's it. Don't track anything else, but you could just plan that out. So if it comes out to 40 grams of protein per meal or whatever, then just hit that and then don't worry about anything else. And with the Ozympic, that should be a fine combination. Okay. Okay. Well, thank you guys so much. I appreciate that. Yeah, no problem. Now, you have maps resistance. Do you have maps metabolic? I do. Okay. Put it in the forum. I was just going to say, are you in our forum? I'm not. I'm not. Amanda, I want you to at least every two or three weeks, can you post in there and tag me or the guys, give us an update. I'm going to have Doug email you. I'm going to go, when we come off air, I'm going to give them the link to the ketamine therapy and just read about it. I am not an expert. I'm not a doctor. This is from personal experience, profound, profound effects from doing that. I've only had a couple of sessions, but look into it because I think it could really help with the therapy, with what you're dealing with. Perfect. Well, thank you so much, but I really appreciate your time today. You got it, Amanda. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Mark. Yeah, I mean, you know, boy, when you have really, really deep trauma and your coping mechanism you've used for years, just changing your workout and trying to fix your diet, it's a band-aid. It'll be a struggle for forever until you start to really figure out the root cause of what's going on. This took me a long time to figure out as a trainer. When I started figuring this out with clients, it was like a game changer. Otherwise, it was like this up and down, up and down, and it was so tough. It's really hard to figure out because it affects your behavior so much like in so many different ways you don't realize. Totally. It's all under the surface. And it also can mess with your hormone profile. Everything. If you have this low level of anxiety and stress that's underlying all the time there. You just live that way. Yeah, and you just live. And to you, it's become, it's normalized because you don't even know what it feels like. Right, right. And so, you know, and a lot of times that could be something that's stalling your progress and you just don't realize it until you unpack it and solve the root. Totally. Root cause first. So, I mean, I hope she stays in touch with us. So do I. And I do, again, want to reiterate the thing on the ozempic because that is the one drawback of it. It just makes it harder to eat. Yeah, I mean, they've done a lot of now that people have been on it for a while and what they're finding is a lot of patients that have lost, say, 40, 50. Lost some muscle in there. Yeah, they weren't. They've lost an equal amount of muscle. They lost strength training and enough protein. Yeah, and so it's tough, obviously. If you're eating low calorie and you don't have an appetite. By the way, if you want to go the route of ozempic and you're watching this, that's the brand name. It's going to cost you a lot more money. You can go through a compound pharmacy. Yes, some aglutide. Yes, some aglutide. It's the exact same compound, way less expensive. You still need to go through a doctor and we work with people at nphormones.com and they do work with some aglutide. So you can check those guys out. Look, if you like Mind Pump, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out some of our free fitness guides. They can help you with all kinds of fitness goals. You can also find all of us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm at Mind Pump to Stefano and Adam is at Mind Pump, Adam.