 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump, we do a lot of talking in this episode about the differences between training naturally and training on anabolic cells. You know, juiced up. Yeah, like what would the difference be? Do you need to change your, yeah, a lot of really good stuff and then we do some updates on our nutrition, you know, Adams testosterone levels. We talk about Justin's carnivore diet. I talk about the value of trigger sessions, which they always blow me away. We do mention a couple of our sponsors. We mentioned Everly Well, who does the, they do hormone testing. You could do it at home. We are sponsored by them. So you can go to everlywell.com, enter the code Mind Pump, get 15% off any test. And then of course we also mentioned lots of meat because we talked about Justin's carnivore diet. My savior, butcher box. There is a huge promotion with butcher box right now. If you go to butcherbox.com forward slash mind pump, you'll get free bacon. You'll get two ribeyes. You'll get $10 off and free shipping on your first order. Damn. They're giving away, and this is by the way, high quality, high quality grass fed meat. Some of the highest quality you can find at competitive prices. Also, I do want to mention there's only six days left for the MAPS anabolic 50% off sale. So right now MAPS anabolic, the program to start them all is under $60. It's 50% off. There's only six days left. You can find it at mindpumpmedia.com. You can also find all of our bundles at mindpumpmedia.com. These are where we combine multiple MAPS programs for particular goals. We have a sexy athlete bundle. We have a build your butt bundle. And we have a super bundle, which is a year of exercise programming. Again, all of those, including the 50% off MAPS anabolic, is at mindpumpmedia.com. Dude, I forgot how, I always do this. I forget how fucking awesome. You are? Trigger set. No, I don't forget that. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, I was gonna say, you never forget that. No, I'm, you know, I honestly, I never, I forget how awesome trigger sessions are when done consistently. Like the difference between doing one trigger session a day or two and doing three. Three. It's like. Like a magic number. Bro, here's what happens. Here's what you experience when you do trigger sessions properly. So you should be doing, they should last between five to 10 minutes. You're doing four, three to five exercises. It's low intensity. The goal is to get a little bit of a pump, feel a little bit of a burn in the muscle. And that's it. And what happens when you do them consistently is throughout the day, your pumps get successively, first of all, easier to attain and bigger. And it charges your energy levels up. Dude, I just did, so right now I just did my, I haven't done trigger sessions consistently for a while. And I'm using them because of the contest that we're doing. And it's been a while. And the thing about trigger sessions, and I get it, can be a pain in the ass, especially if you're doing three a day because midday you got to stop and you got to do your thing or whatever. Once you get in the rhythm though, it's awesome because it feels good. You make moments for it though. Yeah. Initially it feels kind of weird like, oh, well I have to stop what I'm doing right now and like do, but once you start to kind of get in the rhythm of it and you have bands like on you or whatever, even if it's just body weight, you can do it anywhere. Bro, the pumps I start to get throughout the day are just better and better and my muscles feel more charged. And it's like, it's fucking magic. My favorite thing to do is to, I keep them up and ready to go on my closet door downstairs at my house. And because I have this tendency, sometimes I have these days where maybe I didn't get great sleep the night before or we had a lot of stuff going on at work. And so I come home and it's four o'clock in the afternoon and I'm just feeling lethargic and tired. And I just, I could easily just plop my ass on the couch and stay there for like the rest of the day. And when I'm, I have a chair that I sit in and the bands are directly in sight. And so I'll be looking at them going like, I don't feel like doing shit, but I need to get, and then finally I'll get up, I'll walk over them like, you know what, okay, at least I'll do a trigger session real quick. And it never fails me. Every time I do that, aside from the great pump, which is great, but you get this surge of energy from it that just, it reinvigorates me to keep going for the rest of the day. So, and I strategically did that because I know that I have a spot in my house. I'm sure everybody does, right? Do you guys all have a spot where? I do. Well, now I have my project. You're gonna be lazy, you're gonna just plant yourself there and not move. No, it's something that, you know, when I first wrote MAPs on a block seven years ago, six years ago, seven years ago, it was the one thing that I thought was gonna be mind blowing for people. And, you know, I think people focus a lot on the phasing of the workouts, the exercise selection and all that stuff. And that's all very important. And of course, that's the foundation of it, right? Cause without that, then it's not gonna, you know. Yeah, trigger sessions. Are I gonna do a whole lot? If you don't, if you don't. Yeah, it's not gonna do a whole lot if you don't have that backup of it. Although, I will say this, okay, I do believe that trigger sessions are part of what saved me during this whole going through the hormonal shift for me because there was times where I couldn't even get motivated to go lift and hit the gym, but at least I could do some band work for 15 to 20 minutes a couple of times a day. And I did feel like that it helped with the atrophy. I felt like it, you know, it's hard to say cause I can't measure that against another time where I've gone through this exact same change or whatever. But for me, I know my body and how if I stop exercising and working out and my diet starts to reduce in calories and I'm not moving very much, I see how fast my body loses muscle. And I really do feel like the trigger sessions kind of help mitigate that a little bit. And I think another, you know, one way, and you can use them in different ways. Like the way I use them is traditionally is, you know, with a full body routine on the off days. And I do, you know, three times a day type of deal. But even people doing a split or doing their own routine, I'll say, look, pick a week, pick like two or three week body parts. So this is how I use it, yeah. That's how I use it. I've always used it. Every day you do. Cause I, the way I'm, you know, since day one on the show, I've shared that I'm the guy who cares about the look of the physique, right? So that's kind of my motives, right? So when I go do trigger sessions, it's always lagging body parts. It's like, oh, I could use some more rear dealt work. So I'm using it to do like reverse flies on there where I want more chest work. And so I'm gonna do chest flies on there. So I pick a couple of muscles that I'm trying to increase the frequency on. And that's how I use the trigger sessions. Yeah, the thing that trips me out is as you do them, like I said, throughout the day, you see and feel changes that day. And I don't mean like I'm building muscle, but I feel the pump, it hits me faster by the second one. By the third one tonight, when I do my last one, I'm gonna get pumped after a few reps, which is kind of crazy. And then when I do them consistently on all my off days, by the second or third day, it's like, I don't know how to explain it. It's like I added an extra week of working out or something like that, or part working out. My body just, I mean like Doug was out there with me right now doing his trigger sessions, and he comments on the same. He was one of the first testers. I thought you guys were having sex. No, that's what it sounded like. It did sound a little bit like that. I don't sound like that when I'm having sex. I don't know. I bet, let's be honest. That last one was a little weird. Who for sure makes the worst noises while having sex, Justin? He doesn't know that, you haven't heard me, but you're like an animal for sure. I mean, if he has sex anyway, he eats. I don't think he knows you're right. Think of anything. Is there anything that Justin does with finesse? Like a ninja. Sex. That would be funny. I'm like super delicate. He's like feathers. Are you really? No, I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. It's probably a mix of both. You know, it depends on the mood. Some animal that comes out, who's most likely to like roll their girl too hard aggressively or something or grab her too fast or too hard or push her off the bed. Who's more likely out of the three? It can't be me. I'm talking about my wheelbarrow moves. He's like, ah, last Tuesday, actually. Rodeo wrestling, you know, that kind of stuff. The problem is some girls like that roughness. And so I think some guys take it too far. Like, oh, like a rough, you know. That's why you have to have like, you know, you have to have different gears, bro. I get yelled at. Only when they want it to go in that gear. You know, I'm gonna warn you ahead of time. I'm capable of a very wide spectrum. I get, Katrina gets mad at me when I slap her ass when we're not having sex. Why? Because then she wants to have sex? Well, no, because she's just like, ah, she'll scream. And she's like, don't do that. You like it. You like it all the time. And she's like, not when we're not having sex. Oh, I said, oh, there's a time that you like it when you don't like, okay. I always picture with you guys, I always picture with you guys where she like comes up to you and you're always like, I'm not in the mood. Come on, let's, no. She's gotta kind of work it a little bit with you. Okay, we like the reverse. Yeah, well, if I'm honest, that's kind of how the relationship is. For sure, she's the one who's always talking shit to me. She talks shit to me, you know what I'm saying? Does she really? Yeah, yeah, no, she talks shit to me. You better fuck this pussy. Oh my God. Wow. Wow. I have a weekly quote up, bro. Oh man. Yeah, or she's out, dude. Period or no period, don't matter. Like if she don't get it three times a week, like I'm fucking put out, I'm in the dog house. We'll see what happens. I mean, you guys are, if you guys have a kid, hopefully that maintains that way because it does change a lot for women. Sometimes changes quite a bit after having kids. You know, they lose it. So this has been like a discussion between her and her mom. And her mom just looks at her, she goes, honey, not in our family. Yeah, she tells her that, not in our family. And I was like, damn it. Yeah. It's like, I need a break. Yeah, hopefully it'll slow down just a little bit. Supposedly it's in the gene, so. Speaking of which, how is your libidos? Because you always use that as a gauge of your testosterone. I'm really, really excited for the next Everly Well test. So I... Because you could feel a big difference. Yeah, I don't know if I'm going to wait until the... You could see how excited you are. Well, thank you. Well, I mean, again, this, you know, the Everly Well test is different than what you go do to go get your blood tests. Your blood tests, they use different markers, but they basically use the same parameters, or they just use a different way of measuring it, right? So it's a number like 56, I think is what we were, what I was, excuse me. And so the fact that I'm in the low normal range and that my body fat percentage was over 14%, I'm really excited to see when I get down to like 10% body fat or so to see where I'm at. And do you feel different versus when you did it last time? I do. Yeah, for sure my libido is higher than it's been in almost a year. Because it's been eight months, a little over eight months now, we're in July, right? Okay, so we're in the middle, almost in July. And so it's been eight full months of zero testosterone. And then since November of last year, I was really low as far as how low I was tapering down. I think back then I was doing like a half a CC every two weeks, I think that was what I was at for. That was back when you were telling me like, hey. Go slow. Yeah, go really slow. And so I had been tapering off. You did everything the right way. So if it's gonna work, you've given it the best chance. You've done everything right. You took the advice that I got from, one of my doctor clients, which was to slowly, slowly taper down. You did the post-cycle therapy, both conventional and unconventional. You've done the sleep and proper exercise, nutrition. You've done the red light therapy in your knowledge of exercise and nutrition in corporate. You've done everything right. So I think if anybody has a chance of recovering after a six years of continual, testosterone use, it's gonna be you. Well, you know, I think that's important to note is that it's, I think it's taken all of those things. I think, and I get a lot of people that inbox me and like, that are going through the same thing. You'd be surprised how many people are in a very similar situation. City situation again. As I am, I get a ton of, it's probably the most popular thing that I get DM'd for now. So is somebody else that's asking, you know, testosterone hormonal type questions and you know, what have I done protocol? And I've really done it all, you know? And I've really done my best to be as consistent with all of it as I possibly can. And I really believe that it's taken kind of all of it. I don't think, I think when you're dealing with something so serious like that or severe, I don't think that one, I don't think a Juve light is gonna take me. By itself. Yeah, by itself. I don't think, you know, just taking some, some herbal supplement is gonna take me there. I don't even think that a single cycle or two of HCG or PCT. Many times it doesn't work. Yeah, I had, I'd already done that a couple of times and I, you know, initially sure when I was taking the HCG, I felt good on it, you know? Like it was, oh, and I would get me excited. Like, oh. Yeah, then I come off. When was your last one? About a month and a half ago? So if you're gonna feel a dip, you should be feeling it right around now. Now, and I'm not. I feel anything, I feel, like I feel better. Yeah, I feel better. So the last time I did an HCG four-week run, I felt really good, obviously during it. I felt good for about two weeks after it still. And then I started to kind of, yeah, where right now I'm over a month of not using it and I feel that I've sustained that. This is the number one reason why when, cause I get this question daily. Every day somebody asks me, hey, what do you think? I wanna try getting on a cycle. What do you think it's a safe way to do it? What do you think? And the number one reason why I recommend people don't is that, like, at some point in your life, you're gonna wanna go off. And that's gonna be a very difficult process and it's gonna suck. And what you're gonna feel while you're going off is you're gonna regret that you ever went on the first place. I bet you right now, besides the learning process and growth you got from it. So that's obvious. Cause I'm the kind of person, I'm like, I think we're all like this, where I don't necessarily regret anything because I grew from it and learned from it. But let's just say you could get all that still and you went back in time, would you have convinced yourself never to do them? And I think most people would probably say yes. Yeah, no, I definitely, what will be interesting? So I'm really curious and like, this is curious about myself, like what will I do? Like what I'm really good about is saying, never saying never, right? Like I don't believe in saying like, sure, I'll never do this again. No ultimatums. Yeah, well, I just know that I wouldn't, I would never put myself, cause who knows? Maybe I will, you know what I'm saying? Maybe I will want to, I don't know. But I do feel this desire to never have that feeling that I just had before. And so I do feel like if there comes a time, you know, in the next year, two, three years, where I think I want to run a cycle, I think that it'll be very easy for me to pull back this feeling that I just have gone through the last year, especially since I'm telling you guys right now that I feel great, I feel good, but even that's all relative. I feel good, great compared to what I felt like six months ago. I still don't feel, yeah, I still don't feel like me, you know what I'm saying? I'm not crushing the gym. Like I'm used to like going to the gym and like working out and feeling amazing before and after the workout. Like I've just now moved away from feeling like it was fucking torturous work to go to the gym and do the things I need to do to like, I'm starting to enjoy it now. It's like, this is cool. Like I'm enjoying seeing progress a little bit. My body too, like one of the things that was really, really hard was doing all the exercise, putting the work in that I needed to and not seeing the change. Being somebody who prides himself on being able to flip the switch and like dial everything right in. Like I'm really good at that. I mean, all the competitions that I had to do over the last three and a half years or whatever really trained me well on like when I make this mental switch I had like, like I said, everything down to my music. Like I have this system of what I do with my music, what I do with my water intake, what I do with my food and my tracking and my weighing and my measuring and my steps. And like I have the, and it's like when I was doing those things and my body was not responding. And that was like, fuck, that was really, really tough. So at least now I'm seeing it. But I tell you what, you know, of course the natural game is completely different than the unnatural game. Do you now, do you feel like you're having that you're gonna have to relearn or learn how your body responds now differently than before? Or do you think, because you're so acute in terms of listening? I think that, I think what made me so successful at competing and how I moved up so fast was that I applied all my, all natural science and knowledge to with steroids. I think that, I think that's the mistake that a lot of anabolic guys do and girls do is because they're on it and there is so much room for air that it doesn't force them to like really hone in like their skills and knowledge of nutrition and exercise science and really understanding human physiology. Like you just don't have to, like if you just fucking train hard and eat a lot of food, you're gonna gain. You just get away with a lot. Yeah, you get away with a lot more. Now the, I think I move, I mean, I never, I never cut longer than as long as anybody did. Like my most shows, four weeks, four or five weeks. I think the longest I ever, I think for the USA's was my longest cut. I did six weeks. I've never cut longer than that because I always kept myself relatively close to the body weight that body fat that I wanted to be at going into a show. I did it a very healthy way. I never did more than two weeks of like real strenuous, getting up early type of cardio or anything like that. So I think that the only, the thing that I see now is it's just, it's a slower response time. Like when I, when I start tweaking things, like in the, when I was on something, it's like instant results right away. Like I would, I would see change like day, every day, every day I'm getting better and better and better and better. Where now it's like, I feel like there are three to five day shots, meaning like every, I can't, I can't be so hard on myself day to day. I have to look at myself more at three to five days and go like, okay, be very, I need to be extremely consistent with everything that I'm doing. Let's evaluate myself at the beginning of the week and at the end of the week to measure my progress or lack of progress where before I can make changes daily and like see the how it responds. I think the biggest change is gonna be, I'm not comparing, yeah, and not comparing when you were on your competitive doses. I'm talking about when we're comparing to your replacement doses. There's a big, big difference between competitive doses and natural and replacement doses and natural. When you're on replacement, your testosterone levels are supposed to be maintained in the upper end of normal. That's what testosterone replacement is supposed to do, right? So you're similar to someone who's natural who has high testosterone naturally in that sense, but you still have some other advantages. Like another, like here's a big advantage. A big advantage to somebody who's on replacement testosterone versus someone who isn't is your testosterone levels are elevated in the upper range regardless. Regardless of what you do. Regardless of sleep, regardless of, yeah. That's right, like I could test my testosterone today and it could be high in the natural range and I'm a natural guy and I could easily tank my testosterone with two, three days of shitty lifestyle, drinking, not going to bed, whatever. I could hammer my body for two, I could even work out too hard for two or three days and just beat the crap out of myself, get my testosterone levels checked and I'd have a 50 to 70% drop. So check this out. So this is something I haven't shared yet. And it's quite frustrating. I find it a blessing in disguise somehow too. So my gynecomastia is fucking extremely sensitive. And one of the things that would get me to go back on testosterone, the therapeutic dose, is that it kept at that at bay. When I was taking a therapeutic dose, I had a nice level of testosterone. It kept my gynecomastia suppressed. Because your estrogen to testosterone ratio was good or whatever. So no sensitive nipples, nothing. I didn't see any fat tissue at all like that. You couldn't tell. Where now that changes day to day for me. Like some mornings I'll wake up and it hurts to touch. It's so sensitive. Oh, your hormones are still balancing out. Yeah. That's why. Yeah. Cause eventually what'll happen is you'll have way less of it and it'll almost go away. It could also be, have you started to reduce cannabis conception? So I have played with that and it does help. It does help for sure. Like if it'll exasperate it, if I actually start smoking a lot or have a day or like weekends, if I smoke in the afternoon or anything like that, it's typically on a weekend. I wouldn't do that during the weekday. So I notice it flare up more with the extra use of cannabis. So yeah, that does. But even with or without that, I actually, food, food does it. Which foods? I don't know. That's what I don't know for sure. Interesting. I'm not sure, but I do know. You're not eating soy. Yeah, I was gonna say. That's what I have soy. Sure, I have soy. You have soy? Sure. For sure I get soy. I get sushi all the time. So that's in the diet. So that it's not. What, just the edamame? No, no, no. I dip my soy sauce. Oh, the soy sauce? Yeah. Often you're eating that once a week. Oh, that's not too bad. Right. But you might be so sensitive. Yeah, and I, oh yeah, I'm that sensitive that like if I. I would look at all your products too. Look at your hair products. Look at your skin products, your deodorant. Look for Xenoestrogens and that kind of stuff. Because you may be so sensitive that even that may be causing some kind of a reaction. Yeah, well, most of that stuff has been pretty damn consistent. Pretty good now. Yeah, well consistent my whole life. And you know, I use like an. You're just more sensitive now though. Maybe, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. And it's, there's times where it's not like I consistently, you know, wash my body, brush my teeth, use my deodorant, you know, so those things are extremely consistent where I will. And it's something related to my diet and I'm not a hundred percent sure what it is. I've tried to. Interesting. This will be a good time while I'm going through all this. I'll tease some things out. But I definitely do. Some days I'll wake up and I can't feel it at all. I can't feel it. I feel great, feels totally fine. And then a day later, all of a sudden, I'll feel it in a super sensitive. Do you get, when's your last, when was your last general physical? Last two years ago. Yeah, I would get two years. Not, not, I'm not trying to freak you out. And I doubt that this was it, this is it, but you should get your liver enzymes checked and see if your liver is actually getting rid of estrogen the way it's supposed to. Cause sometimes that could be a byproduct. There's a supplement you could take called. Milk thistle. No, that's for liver. Yes, that might help indirectly, but directly DIM. Don't know what the full name of it is, but DIM helps your liver convert estrogen into a less potent form of estrogen and see if that lowers the risk of that happening. But that's interesting. But it could also just be that you're off everything and your estrogen and testosterone levels are still trying to balance out. Yeah, it's really, it's weird. It's, but that's, it's been quite some time though now. So to still see, and like I said, I'll have streaks where I'll have a few days in a row where I feel amazing and then all of a sudden something will throw it off. And definitely the cannabis thing, I've put that together that absolutely does. Yeah, you know, it's funny too as I was doing more research on cannabis and for sure it reduces sperm motility and sperm count in people and when they take high doses. And in animals it consistently does affect hormones. Now in humans the results are kind of mixed, but the way I look at it is, you know, if you're using, if you use cannabis for medical purposes, I mean, okay, that's fine. If you don't use it for medical purposes, do you really need to use cannabis more than once a week or something like that? It's kind of a lot, right, for most people if you really think about it. So I've kind of reduced mine as well. And now I'm down to like once or twice a week. It's funny, I did go through withdrawal for a couple days. You said that. Yeah, I had like weird vivid dreams, dude. And I was restless. Really? That really pissed me off, by the way. I was like, are you kidding me? I actually built, I had a, you know, I'm having withdrawal from something. Yeah, you actually built up something there that you felt effects of that on not having it. Yeah. Do you feel you're using it more for like sleep, like on a consistent basis? I was just, you know, I had it for medicinal reasons for my gut. And then I just got in the habit of using it on a semi-regular basis at night because it does feel nice and you relax and you know, you hang out with your girl or you watch something cool on TV. And then I started thinking to myself like, you know, if I don't have it, how does that make me feel? And it kind of makes me like, ooh, I want it. And then that made me question, okay, I'm gonna reduce my usage because I don't like to feel attached to anything. Yeah. I don't care what it is. Well, that was my purpose of even suggesting I was doing it, like a 30 day fast, had nothing to do with like, I'm not anti-ed, I'm not trying to stop it or it's not like a habit I'm trying to cut. I was just like, I don't ever want to have something that I feel like I need to do. Like I like to have full control of my body and know that I have the discipline to implement something like that and say, hey, I want to fast from something from 30 days and not do it or whatever. I just haven't done it yet because every time I decide to do it, like, ah, this is too good of a time for me to smoke. That's what I'm saying. The funny part is though, like, you know, I've had things where I've battled addiction before and stuff, so I'm very aware of what that feels like. The hardest is probably what, opiate. Yeah. That's gotta be the nasty physical withdrawal. Yeah, that was not, there was nothing. Although the testosterone, I don't think is acutely as bad as, but it lasts longer. They're both, they were both were fucking monsters. I mean, it's like, I mean, I guess one of the things that I appreciate having gone through it is that I think now I have something that I can share and provide for somebody who may struggle with this or been through it or even considering doing some of it, it's like. I think the best thing you ever did with that, because I do the same thing, is I tell people that I'm going to. And then it kind of helps me stay accountable. Oh, man. You know what I mean? Like if I keep it to myself, then it's like, ah. My favorite, I mean, fuck, who knows if, if mine pump would be where it's at today, had I not done that way back with Instagram. Like that was the beginning of like the, you know, building a, you know, quote unquote, social media business was, you know, I'm going to put it out there. Like I remember waking up and going like, holy shit, I'm in the worst shape of my life, you know, at 30 years old right now. And I remember going like, I've been talking about starting this whole Instagram thing and building a social presence, like this is putting that out there. Like that's what I loved Instagram for. I loved like, at least for me, it worked so well because I am the type of person that's very committed to something that he says. If I profess it, if I say I'm going to do something, like I'm the type of person that won't say shit. Like if I'm even, I think about doing a lot of things. There's a lot of things I'm like, oh, I might want to do it. Yeah, you're saying this, you know. But I don't say, but if I come out and go like, I'm going to do this, it's, I will fucking do it. What's the same with the, I mean the podcast. And that's why like these challenges and stuff, it's like, I stay reserved because when I do commit to something that's the same thing, it's like, yeah, I'm doing it, you know, 100%. Like there's no, like, I don't have a problem with discipline, that's not my problem. It's a matter of like priorities and like a hierarchy of things and what's working with my lifestyle. So it's like, yeah, of course, you know, like I can ratchet it up at any time, dude. I'm ready and willing, but like to say it and to verbalize it and to have people kind of rally and know what you're doing is a totally different thing. That's what I appreciate probably the most about you guys is I know that you guys, I know if you're going to say something like, oh, this is what I'm going to do. Like, well, that's what's going to be done. There's no question in my mind that you're going to do what you've said you're going to do. Most people are not like that. That's integrity, man. It's for sure one of the most attractive qualities I find in other humans. And it's one of the most unattractive things when people don't have it, man. Oh, it's such a hard thing for me to deal with. It's annoying that it's hard to find. You know, I just wish that was the standard, you know? Like, let's all just be what you say you're going to be. Like, if you, you know, are a man or a woman of your word. You guys see that's getting- I'm going to hold you to that. You think it's getting better or worse? Like, worse. I think it's gotten worse for a long time. You know, it wasn't that long ago where if you shook somebody's hand, you just shook their hand. Yeah. Like, that was it. You did it. We didn't need lawyers. Sorry, lawyers. And socially speaking, if you didn't adhere to that handshake, you were a pariah, like nobody wanted to be around you. You're dead to everybody else. Today, people will brag and be like, well, we didn't sign a contract. I actually had somebody do that to me once and we did sign a contract. And they told me, and they still tried to, you know- It's a weasel on there. Yeah, I had to take them to court. It was so stupid and I hated doing it because I looked at the person and I'm like, you know, as well as I do, what you agreed to, we even signed this thing that has your signature and yet you're still, that is, how do you, I don't know how you would live with yourself, you know? Completely, those people just, you're dead, you're dead to me. Like I'm done with you. Like if you're that kind of a person, like you're just gonna be filtered out of my life. Don't you think those people though, like internally have so much shit that they have to do? Like, I feel like as much as that, like was frustrating for you, right? Like the fucking sucks that you had to deal with that. But I always try and think like, you know what? At the end of the day, like this sucks for me, I have to deal with this bullshit, I'm angry, but you know what? I feel more sorry for that person because they gotta live with themselves. Oh yeah. For the rest of their life. Oh, it was hard for me to even- To go the rest of your life, you know- Keep justifying these like shitty decisions. Knowing you're a fucking fraud and a pretender, you know, like that, what a shitty way to go through life. It was hard for me to take that person to court for that reason, because I actually felt bad for them. And the reason why I did is because I did, I'm also simultaneously the person that I'm very assertive and I will not be taking, like you will not walk over me. I don't care what it costs. I'm not gonna let somebody do that to me, especially if it's because they think I'm a nice guy and that's I know what happened. They thought, well Sal's a nice guy, so I'm gonna get away with this and that's what made me, that's what gave me my resolve. But otherwise, you know, this is the kind of person I am. Let's say we make a bet, right? Let's say we, okay, how about this? We did make a bet. We made a hilarious bet about a year and a half ago here at the studio. I was far away from the little basketball hoop with garbage. I had a piece of paper in my hand. And I'm like, and I'm like- He's gotta get his car. Don't worry about it. No, no, no, no, here's the thing. I'm not joking about it because I don't think you won't do it because I know you will, but I'm like, oh, I bet I can make this basket. I was held far away and I was like, if you do, I'll buy you a car. And I threw it and it went in and now Adam's like, oh shit, I gotta buy your car. Now here's the deal. And I'm the only reason why I'm saying this because I know Adam has incredible integrity and so it's not an issue, but let's say we're two years into the future, financial times are hard, and Adam buys a car and I know he's struggling or he goes and attempts to do it because he knows, you know what I'm the kind of person I'm gonna do? I'm gonna be like, listen, man, I know I lost that bet and I appreciate you trying to do this, but you don't need to do that. You know what I mean? You gotta save your money, whatever. But if he was the kind of person that was like, no, I'm not gonna do it, man. No, stupid, it's a stupid bet anyway. Then I'm gonna push. I'm gonna hold your feet to the fire, you know what I'm saying? You know, that's the kind of person I am. But I do think that a little bit of that is, I think a little bit of that is lost today and it's too bad. So anyway, I wanna get back to what we were talking about earlier, which is training while on gear and training while natural. Like let's talk about the biggest, I guess the biggest difference. Let's talk about the benefits and then the misconceptions, right? Because I think that a lot of people think it's like the magic sauce, but then also at the same time, you're only gonna get the maximum amount of benefit if you apply it correct. Well, I always like to point to a study that I read a long time ago. It's kind of, it was popular at the time because the muscle magazines were printing it because it was so hilarious. But they would take, they took groups of men and compared them to each other over a, I think it was like an eight or 12 week period. And to see how much more muscle people would gain on antibiotics. Now, the reason why this study was so popular was because they actually used doses that the common person would use. Like in the past, there were studies on antibiotics and they give people like these low doses. But these guys, I believe were given two or 300 milligrams of testosterone, which isn't super high, but that's what a dude who lifts weights in the gym will probably start with. And there were three groups or three or four groups. One group of men took steroids, worked out. The other group of men worked out with no steroids. The third group of men didn't work out and took steroids. And the fourth group of men did nothing, okay? So of course, who do you think built the most muscle, right? The steroid working out group. Second place was where it was shocking. The guys that took steroids and didn't work out. They still grew. Actually built more muscle than the guys who worked out who didn't take steroids. Yeah. Which says a lot. That's kind of fucked up. Yeah, it is. Now I think that's because it was a short week period. Sure. You extend that over time. And again, this whole anabolic signal thing, which you've stressed with coming up with maps and stuff, it's definitely part of the recipe that it gets your body to respond and it provides this sort of stimulus to overcome its environment. Yeah, I mean, if you take the average dude who lifts weights and maybe he's, whatever, he's lifting weights and eating and he's plateaued, right? Let's say he hasn't gained any muscle for a year and he's just training. And he goes on a decent cycle of anabolics. He probably gained anywhere between eight to 16 pounds of muscle. Just doing the same thing. Just doing the same thing. Problem with that is that guy, when he gets off, it all goes away too. He doesn't learn anything. Yeah. Doesn't learn anything. Yeah, no, there's things that I can tell. Probably the biggest thing of everything that I noticed right now is recovery. I know that I'm not even hitting that intense and I tend to be more sore right now. Like I can tell that my body's not recovering at as fast of a rate, so I see that. Which means you can't cycle through the intense workouts as quickly. Yeah, oh yeah, so you can't repeat them quite as quickly. Right, so in the past, you know, I would just go to the gym every single day and there would always, now I find myself like, you know what, I should probably just take today off. Or maybe I'll just do some trigger, mobility, or walk where I would go get after it. Because I know like, I'd rather push the limits a little bit because I know that I'm enhanced. So I do notice recovery and then the mental stuff too. Like there's a lot that you get from the mental side. Like, you know, when I'm on testosterone, it's crazy, like I dream about my workouts the next day. I can't wait to get to the gym as soon as I touch the weight. Because every workout is fucking great pump and also. Epic, epic, yeah, every workout is epic, you know? It's almost every workout, you can see strength gains. I mean, that doesn't happen in the natural world. In the natural world, it's more of an ebb and flow and up and down a little bit, like it's oh, this work, I just did, right, like maybe I like, so I just did squats yesterday, okay? And so I'm prepared, I know this, okay? Cause it's not my first time obviously training naturally. It's just been a long time since I have, you know, I'm getting ready to go into squats. Well, this is the second time I've lifted heavy on squats in the last month or so. And when I'm going into it, of course, I want to see myself as strong or stronger than what I was three, four weeks ago. But I didn't, you know, I was a little bit less. Like in fact, I squeezed out five reps of something that I only squeezed out three reps yesterday. But my calves are fucking hell of sore because I did my calves for the first time like four days ago and they're still sore. You know, my hammies were sore still from doing some hamstring work a few days before that. So I was still not, I wasn't fully recovered and rested. And so it really hindered that workout where in the past, one, I probably still wouldn't even be sore from that if I was on anabolic. And two, I would be able to push through that. And three, the gains come on so fast that it would almost negate that. So these are some of the things that you start to notice without the anabolics, like, okay, I have to take all this stuff into account, you know? Yeah. It makes me wonder, you know, cause like I know a lot of people in our industry and a lot of them have taken anabolics consistently for years, which in and of itself is kind of interesting. It wasn't like that like 15, 20 years ago. No, when I first did it, it was like cycles. It was a big deal to go longer than like eight weeks. Yeah. 12 weeks was like, oh shit, you're doing 12 weeks. I remember I was scared to do 12. Like I did like little six to eight week cycles when I was younger because I was scared to death. And then I finally had somebody, I mean, years later go like, oh man, you gotta run that for a little bit longer than eight weeks. Dude, you run that thing for like 12 weeks, no problem. And then you see 16 weeks. And now it's become like a lot of guys that I know who are in our space years, they don't go off. Well, my peer, well, because I think the science has come out now where back then there was still this big scare of testosterone, like, oh, what could happen to you and. I'm wondering if it's better to go on and off for natural tests. It's gotta be right for your body's natural testosterone levels. Who was it that was actually just debating that with us or not debating with sharing information with us? Who was that? We just talked to him just a few days ago. Fuck, I don't remember. Anyways, we'll probably roll him under the bus if we bring him in. Yeah, that's what I'm not saying. Right, right, right. Oh, I know. Yeah, we'll go ahead and keep talking. Yeah, we won't roll our friend under the bus. But anyways, he was sharing that he actually was saying that he was reading somewhere that it's more advantageous to stay consistent with it at moderate levels. So here's what a lot of people do, especially smart people, is they'll be like, most of the evidence will be counter. Then they'll find one piece of evidence that supports what they're doing. And then they're like, that's the one I'm gonna. Oh, good. I like this one. This is true. Yeah, I'm gonna cherry pick that. Everybody does that. I don't think staying on all the time for years is going to make it easier for your natural testosterone levels to come back versus going on and off and allowing things to. Wouldn't it start sort of replacing natural production? It does right away, right? If you go on, here's a funny thing, people don't realize, I could give you one shot, one of testosterone right now, and your natural amounts, your natural levels will automatically. Of course. Start to decline. Yeah, we've got more than we need. And then if you don't go on another one, then they kind of kick back up. The longer you stay on, most the literature shows that the harder it is for your body to. Well, I mean, that's what I've experienced. I feel like- Because I was on a therapeutic dose too for a very long time, which is not much at all, but I had a harder time just recently coming off than I did ever before as a kid where I'd run these little six to eight weeks cycle. I feel like you may start to cause more permanent damage or long-term damage where the cells that are responsible for producing testosterone in your body, as those atrophy or stop producing testosterone, and then they stay that way for a long time, you got to keep this in mind with the body. Your body doesn't keep what it doesn't need. It prunes it. Yeah, because otherwise it's a waste of energy and your body's always trying to become more efficient with energy. So if, you know, use it or lose it, right? Remember that old saying? Yeah. I feel like if you're not using it and your body's constantly sensing exogenous testosterone, so it's not gonna, or exogenous as Doug would say, did I say it right that time? Good. It doesn't produce testosterone. I feel like your body's gonna be like, well, we don't need these cells anymore. I think we could just kind of get rid of them and then that becomes, you know, that's now your new normal. So, but you know, that's the thing nowadays people stay up for a long time and it makes me wonder, like, I'll meet someone and you know, they're, you know, big. Wonder what they would look like with that one. Well, and it makes me speculate too, like if you start like really like losing the ability to produce your own natural testosterone and that being its version from your own body, like your own body's producing this versus, you know, exogenously you're introducing this, like how high a grade is that regardless of how pure you think it is, you know, in terms of like, yeah, just in terms of like what you're injecting into your body versus what you could produce. That's a whole another problem because you know, you're dealing with the black market. Well, the other problems who is thinking, and this was my mistake as a young, you know, 20 year old that was messing with it, is thinking that it is so magical and thinking that, oh man, this is, because I really believe that what was separating me from the guys on the covers of magazines because I was a trainer, I thought I was knowledgeable, I thought I knew about diet, I thought I knew about exercise. I worked hard, you know, but I didn't look nowhere near what these guys look like. They must all be on steroids and that's what's separating me from looking like that. So let me try and do this. And then it was like, oh, let me try one cycle and then didn't get shit really from it. And then I was like, well, people are like, oh, well, your first cycle, some people don't really feel it or no sense. So okay, let's do a second cycle and see what happens. And I was like, okay, now I notice I get strength. Well, maybe I'm not eating properly for it because man, when I, the first couple that I had did, I have this ectomorph body type. I'm super active. I was still playing basketball, I was still wasn't fueling the body enough calories. So I was strong. You think you're at the building block. Yeah, I didn't give it, exactly. I didn't give it the nutrients that it needs. Like, I mean, I was getting stronger in the gym. Like I could feel my strength go up because I was anabolicly enhanced, but then I wasn't fueling my body with enough nutrients for me to pack on muscle and actually hang onto it. So I put up a couple of pounds. I mean, I went up like five. But you got a good straight gains, you said? Yeah. Okay, so you know it's real. Yeah, oh yeah. Cause that's the other thing too. Sometimes I think guys are like, doesn't work in a second cycle. Oh no, there was no ejecting sesame oil. There was, yeah. There was no doubt. Check your dealer. There was no doubt that what I was taking was the real deal because like 100%, and then I felt like, I mean, I had erections around the clock, you know? So that was all crazy. That I noticed that the erections and I noticed the strength in the gym, but I didn't put size on until way later, until like maybe my fourth or fifth time running a cycle. Did I realize like, oh shit, I need to really push the calories or and or reduce my movement because I'm just, I'm still, my number one problem with building muscle my entire life was nothing to do with anabolic. It was always the challenge of getting enough calories from my body. I'm a tall, lanky guy who moves a lot as active, I'm fidgety. You also don't naturally have a huge appetite. Right. I've noticed that about you. I naturally don't have a huge appetite. I have everything working against, I mean, I have a small skeletal structure, like everything about me is said, I'm supposed to be this tall, skinny swimmer who doesn't need a lot of calories. Like that's, it's not this bodybuilder guy. So it's taking a lot of work. And it's, you know, the blessing in it is that it's taught me, I've been forced to learn a lot about nutrition and human physiology and exercise science and really understand that in order for me to take a body type that really is not meant to be in the bodybuilder category and then turn it into a bodybuilder physique. I would, I, you know, I just, I'm going to speculate here because I've experienced that the, you know, the designer steroid over the counter stuff. And I did, I would do four to eight week cycles of that stuff. And for all intents and purposes, I was taking antibiotics. And so I did notice a big difference. And I'm going to make a speculation here and say that intensity becomes more important when you're on antibiotics and frequency becomes a little bit more important when you're natural. And what I mean by that is, you know, when I was on those, when I was on those cycles, I could do these, you know, these traditional body parts splits where I would hit a body part once a week. But if I hit it hard and really, really hard, I would build more muscle. When I was natural, that shit didn't work. I had to hit my body more frequently and be smart with intensity. So it's like, okay, I'm hitting my whole body three days a week now, but now I need to work out easier on some days and harder on other days and have to phase them. Whereas before it was like, oh, if I want to grow, I just got to work out harder, which maybe, and here's the thing with the muscle building industry. A lot of the information that's filtered down and feeds what we think to be is good information comes from the top. And what I mean by the top is it comes from these genetically gifted, anabolicly enhanced body builders. So it's like what they do is what everybody tries to do. But what they do works really well for that category of person, which most people, which is, you know, high, super high fucking intensity, kill yourself in the gym, and then rest for a week type of workout. Well, rest for most people doesn't work. That didn't even, so I know for sure. Like the number one thing that has kept me from becoming huge or what took me from being the skinny 170 pound kid to being as big as a 240 pounder was 100%, nothing to do with steroids and everything to do with nutrition. I shouldn't say 100%. Every, almost everything to do with nutrition. You know, and I remember when we first met and talked with Ben Pakolsky. And this was like, this was such an aha moment for me because I've always known that about myself. But then it really made me piece it together for someone like him. Like a guy like that, his, that is so much bigger than I am. Has so much more muscle than I do. Only having to consume 3,500 calories was just like mind boggling. What an advantage. Yeah, huge advantage. Huge, huge, huge, huge for a guy like me. You get more out of the same, you get more out of less fuel. Yes, I mean, I cannot be 230 plus pounds and not be consuming north of 4,500 calories. It's impossible. The moment I let off the throttle calorie-wise, I would just, now this made it, now there's obviously, there's always a flip to every, or another side to it, right? This made it easy for me to cut. Once I put all the hard work into getting that much size, man, once I just kind of laid off some meals and restricted, my body would just plummet. You know who blew me away with that? Who completely blew my fucking mind with that, was when we went and hung out with Robert Oberst over, we did like three days. Right, and saw how he ate. We all ate. I was expecting, I was expecting like, this dude's gonna eat everything. And remember we're all prepared, like, all right, bro, whatever you want us to buy, we're gonna have it around, cause he's gonna get angry, he's gonna eat me. Yeah, no, he ate like, he probably ate 3,000 calories a day. Maybe, maybe some days were like less. And he's a massive human being. How much does he weigh? He's like 300 something. Yeah, he's gotta be like, yeah, upwards of 380 or so. He's just a big dude and big strong dude. And then remember, I talked to him about it. I'm like, you know, bro, I said, and I remember telling him like, if you wanna eat more, I thought he was being polite, you know, because we're buying all the food. I'm like, if you wanna eat more, you totally can, dude. And he looked at me and was like, I actually don't eat that much, people are surprised. And it's funny, because had I not lived with him for three days, never would have believed him. Right, that was like the Ben Pakolsky thing for me. Seeing guys like Ben Pakolsky, seeing guys like Robert Oberst, who have the ability to eat that low of calories and be that size, like, no, my body just let, and this is where everyone's genetically different. Like, I'm not saying this is for everybody, but if you're a kid, this is also why, since day one on the show, that when we were kind of like, the anti-protein movement in the bodybuilding world, I always kind of pushed back, because, and I'm dealing with it again right now, like I'm having to include shakes into the diet so I had to make sure that I'm hitting these protein levels of 180 to 200 grams of protein. Otherwise, when I hit these 150, 140 days, the way my body works, I lose body fat, and I lose muscle. Like it's just, I don't have one of those body types where I can just lean out and it just shreds body fat, and I hang on to every bit of muscle. But my muscle really needs that nutrients. And this is the variance that we all have. Some people aren't like that. Some people can eat 50 to 60 grams. There's vegan bodybuilders that eat 60. I always trip off those guys, man. I just saw one in the day someone shared, and they tagged us, and they were like, could this be true or this or that? And it's like, absolutely. There's outliers all over the place. Yes, the variance of humans is fucking ridiculous. We're all so uniquely different, and you may have a body type that can eat 50 grams of protein, and you hold on to 180 pounds of fucking lean mass. Well, good for you. I am not that guy. Now, normally that guy or girl struggles to lose body fat. That's just kind of how it works, right? What's great about their body is they look at weights and they pack on muscle. Their problem is they could run their ass off on a treadmill, and they still hang on to all this mass. And then you get the freaks that could do it all. I had this dude. I've talked to him out of him before, and I can't remember his name one day I'll remember, but he worked my front desk late at night at the 24 Fitness in Salinas. And this fucking dude, man, I'd see him eat, and he would eat like a pop tart or like a 99 cents cheeseburger. We had a train. Justin remembers a train that he sold for us, so I had to chat on Taco Bell. And I talked to him like, I remember, I sat down with him, because I saw him doing, he was doing Skull Crushers, okay, with 225. So the bar, the bench press bar, 245's on each side, good form. And I remember, and he was jacked, and I remember thinking like, this, I'm like, he must be on every steroid known to man. So I took him to side, became friends with him, and I'm like, dude, I'm like, how do you, God, like, why are you so, like, I never see you eating or whatever. And he's like, to be honest with you, I don't have a lot of money, which is true. We wouldn't pay him much because he was a late night front desk guy. He's like, I can't afford to eat a lot or whatever. He's like, when I can't eat more, I gain more muscle. So every once in a while, I buy him lunch, and sure enough, motherfucker would grow every time I buy him lunch. I'm like, craziest genetics I've ever seen in my entire life. Those people definitely do exist. No, they're, I mean, and most of the people that we all aspire to look like and be like on these covers of magazines and that are the bodybuilding world. And this is the thing too, that, you know, I know that we have people on our forum that love to jab at me about not having the body type. It's like, fuck you, bro, I'll tell you right now, I do not have a bodybuilder body type. I've worked my fucking ass. There's two things you have working for you, for genetics. Like I'll tell you right now, honest to God. Small waist. Well, hold on. Small waist, wide shoulders, and you have long muscle bellies. Those are the three things that work for you. Right. So everything else in terms of like ease of building muscle on, you've been doing this for a long fucking time. Right, right. So it's not, it's by no, I do not have, then there's guys for sure that are my peers that man, my boy Sean dude, I think is just, that kid has looked like that since he was in high school too. You guys know what I'm talking about. Yeah, I do. Wicked Sean. He's got crazy, crazy lines. He is literally a fucking like. Why is he not the top, like number one dude? Because he did some shit way back when. Oh, the politics. That's on the internet. Yeah, yeah. So I know that's why. Otherwise, he has the most ridiculous physique in the game. It's not even compared, he shits on Jeremy Wendy. Yeah, I know, he does. He shits on Jeremy Wendy. Is there a video about that? Is there a video about that? No, I'm just kidding. I was like, no, there's not a video about that. I thought it was the video. No, no, no. Sean, look at that bro. He looks like that year round. Just filthy dude. He looks like an action figure all time. It's not Photoshopped, he looks like that. I hang out with, I've seen him a billion times. I trained him for one of his shows. And the guy is just a fucking freak dude. He should be, he should be the men's physique. But I know like, I know the politics and I know he's been hated on for a long time. And I feel so bad cause I know the guy goes to the gym like every day trying to work on these weaknesses. They tell him, motherfucker does not have a weakness. He does not have a single weakness. And he's got boulders for calves. You don't even see him right now in that picture. But his calves are like basketball. Does he do that too? Or he doesn't have to eat that much? Or does he have to get all crazy with his food? No, he doesn't have to get crazy with his food at all. He was on a very modest diet when we were training. Like he's, he's crazy, man. What are you looking at, Doug? That's not, oh my God. Whoa, Doug. Let's go down the page a little and there's some surprises. Hey, hey, we're gonna save that page there. That's on Google? Yeah. It's probably because of the word wicked, you know. That's a porn. Is that, yeah. Shout out to our boy. No doubt this should be the, should be the, if, if, if bodybuilding was judged correctly and I dare somebody to get on here and fucking challenge me on this that, that Sean, Sean does not have a more symmetrical physique than Jeremy Blundia fucking come at me with that. Oh, 100%. I agree with you. The dude does not have a weakness on his entire physique. No, I agree with you. Justin, I wonder what your grams of protein are at right now with cart, they must be through the roof. Cause that's the prime. Have you figured them out? 1.5, something like that per pound. How many, you have how many pounds a day? One and a half? Yeah, one and a half. Is that what you're averaging? So what's one and a half pounds? That's all you, no, no, no, no, no. I've ramped up to two. Yeah. That's not much at all. How much protein would that be? Two pounds of meat. That's a decent amount. Fuck. Is that 200? 200 grams? Yeah. By two pounds? Yeah. We'll figure every eight ounces is about 50. So that goes in. So two pounds is... 16. So what did that do the math? Did you do it though? 200. Oh wow. Yeah, about 200. That's what I figured. So that's not bad. So two pounds, you're getting two pounds. How do you break it up right now? I'm breaking it up into three. So in the morning I'll have like leftover from last night I grilled. I'll do like, you know, a steak in the morning. I'll do like a steak. Like... Brown. He's going to tell me. I do steak and then I'll do a little more steak after afternoon lunch. I'll get some more steak. Hold on, let me predict what the next meal is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have some steak? Yeah, there's some steak. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then some hamburger meat. He was like thinking real hard on that. Like, bro, is it really hard to think about what you're doing for your diet? It is when you're carb depleted. Yeah. Are you feeling that? It's hard for me to think. Are you feeling that right now? Little bit. It goes in waves, dude. Like sometimes I feel really sharp, you know? And then sometimes I'm like, I'll wake up in the morning and it's just like, oh my God, I feel super cloudy and like lethargic. What are the things you're liking about what you're doing and what are the things you're not liking about what you're doing? I like the simplicity of it. I like, that's about it. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't care for it too much. What about, I mean, what about your, your sleep stuff? What about your paint in the toilets? What about like digestion? Digestion's great. Okay, so I'll go through this part of it. Like I, I do feel like everything is like, my digestion's working out great. Like I don't have heartburn. I don't have like any kind of gas or indigestion or anything like going on with that. Like I could just, I eat meat and then it's like, you know, it's almost like I'm just, it's a functional thing. Like I'm eating, it's for function. And that's it. And so there's no like cravings. There's no like, I guess that's another good thing is I'm not really craving anything now that I got through sort of the first initial days of like not having carbs and like, I guess I'm still eating fat, you know, from, from the steaks, but like- And you're doing fatty cuts? Fatty cuts. So I've actually- Rib eye and stuff. That's, that's the only thing I've been like having variety with is like I'll alternate and I'll do like a different kind of meat. And- I'd be like rib eye and tri-tip every day. And tri-tip. So I had tri-tip. New York. Last night. And that's actually got like a pound and a half at night. So I kind of been trying to alternate the amount, the volume all, you know, for one meal versus like, you know, spread it out. So today I'm probably gonna do less, like probably do like one pound today, but like more towards the end of the day. And then tomorrow I'll go back to two and then like spread it out throughout the night. So here's what you could do. You could buy some, here's our recommend to try this out. Buy some chicken livers. And ground them up or grind them up and mix them with some ground beef. Make yourself some patties. Can you deep fry? Are you allowed to deep fry? You're not supposed to use oils. Oh, you can't even use oil. I mean, you could do it in ghee if you really want to, you know, but- Can you deep fry in ghee? I don't know. See, I haven't been like totally strict with it. Like I've put butter on, you know, as far as like, what do you call that technique as you saute sort of that style? So I've done that. Sande. Yeah, whatever. So I've done that, but just for different flavors and different spices and stuff. I think you could, he can cook in lard. Can he do that? Yeah, maybe. Yeah, you can, can you do that, Doug? Can you fry in like lard? Yeah, yeah. So duck fat, you can get duck fat. Yeah, that's what you should do. That's what you should do. Yeah, I'll do that then. Get some fried, use some fried chicken like that. Do some, do some chicken like that. Well, how are you gonna fry, what are you gonna batter the chicken with? Bacon. Bacon to me is candy at this point. You know, like if I- That's your snack. Yeah, if I'm in a pinch, like I have actually like a bunch of bacon. All in flour? No. Dude, how much money are you sending to ButcherBox right now with all that? Dude, I am, I got- ButcherBox. The extra big ButcherBox, like so you can add in even more. Oh, they make a big, a super size box? Yeah, you have one where you can add more to it. And so I did that for this month specifically to ramp up my meat and- So 100% of our ButcherBox commissions may be coming from just- It's probably just good for me. Just as anybody else is in my- Doug's over there cashing the commissions check. He's like, man, we're killing a ButcherBox. I think it's just the most carnivore dieting out there. Yeah, thank you. That's hilarious, yeah. Well, you know, with, back on the anabolic versus training natural, what are some ways you would change the way someone trains if they're on anabolic versus natural? Cause I get this question a lot. Well, you get away with pushing volume. So push- At a faster rate, right? You know what I'm saying? Like where you have to be much more strategic and you have to listen to the body, like example, what you were talking about earlier and what I'm going through right now is, so I can't, when I was training anabolicly, I could literally map out my entire next three months. We're, I don't do that. You have to wait by- Yeah, wait, like how I feel. Yeah, no, I'm like, oh, I think I'm gonna, this is what I'm planning on doing tomorrow, but I might wake up and be like, oh, shit, I definitely overdid it yesterday from this, which means I need to kind of change this up a tiny bit because it was too much. So I find there's more of that going on for sure. So you have to change that up. You know, I'm now, before I'm not a big supplement guy as it is, I am taking advantage of the fact that we are sponsored by companies like Orc Anify and I can get a hold of like turmeric and things like that. And I'm using that more than I ever would, like to see if that actually helps like the recovery process for me. It's kind of early on to see, like I've been consistent with your four and four. Cool. Obviously I'm going through the pills pretty fast that way, but and it's hard because I have, what I'll do right now is I'll be very consistent about it and then I'll take it out and then see how I feel. Yeah, see if it's really helping that much. Yeah, I would say the same thing. I'd say if someone came to me and was like, hey, I'm gonna be on antibiotics now, how should I change my workout? I would say, okay, well, let's go harder and let's add a little bit of volume and feel it out and see how the body works. I think you probably get away with more of the pumping workouts and less of the heavy strength type workouts. I also think that you can get away with just a higher surplus of calories. So more of it's gonna go to muscle. Right, yeah. If you're anabolic 24 seven, then getting up and having a peanut butter jelly sandwich at two o'clock in the morning is okay because there's a good chance that it'll get. It's also way easier to get shredded without losing muscle. That's a big fucking difference. That is hard to get shredded without losing muscle naturally. So this is the one that I'm most interested at because I already know that's a challenge for my body. Like I already know that on the guy who as soon as he starts leaning out, muscle falls off. So that is what I'm most curious. And then this is also why when I said when we're doing this competition, I said, you know, I have my own personal goals. Like as much as I'm competing with you fuckers, I also don't wanna just get shredded to get shredded and I lose fucking eight pounds of muscle just trying to prove a point that I can get shredded. So I have serious goals of, I mean, I've set goals to myself to actually add muscle if possible over the six weeks while I'm also trying to lean out. That would be a huge win for me. But if I can just maintain it and then actually reduce body fat, I'll be really happy. I'm nervous, I won't. I'm nervous that I know my body pretty well that when I start calorie-restricted, it gets really, really tough. Because that's, I mean, that's one of the biggest things. You see somebody that's like super shredded. Like they've been on this massive cut, but they still have really like bubbly, like pronounced muscles. Like to me, like, and I know there's outliers out there that can actually cut for a long period of time and still look like that. But like, there's not many, dude. And that is the total like dead giveaway to me most of the time. Yeah, when if you're somebody who's running on a treadmill and you still got fucking boulder shoulders and stuff like that. But a lot of times that too is the genetic component. Cause even on anabolic, if that's why I had to be careful on how hard I cut and like I wasn't a hard cardio pusher because I knew as soon as I just restricted calories, I instantly started losing, you know. And even on anabolic, I would lose muscle. But it's- We'll see what happens. Cause if this kick starts me and gets me super focused in that thing, I may just attempt to get super shredded. But I may not also, cause I remember how shitty that felt. And so we'll see what happens after this. Well, don't you have a trip, not that long. I know you have a trip right after that. Yeah, but you know, getting soup, like I can get, okay, fine. 8% body fat, I'm gonna look good. I'm talking about getting down to 5%, 4%. That shit gets nasty. I get super cranky, dude. Dude, I get stringy, like my, I get striations of high body fats. When I get that lean, I look, it doesn't look good unless I have my shirt off and it's the right, otherwise I just look like, whoa, that poor dude over there. Yeah, give him some food, dude. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, you have the, you have this, you know, the gaunt face for sure. Oh, I'll get really nasty. So we'll see what happens. See if my girlfriend's still attracted to me. That's the big thing. Katrina is like, don't lose your ass. I don't want to see you lose your ass. I like right where it's at right now. Well, you know, when you think about it, like we're, especially now, cause I already know that I've started to lean out since we started, this is a very healthy, that this is, I think a good topic around what we're talking about too, is it's so funny the standards that the fitness space has put on what a healthy quote unquote, I look like our YouTube disproportionate. Right, our YouTube, right? Which is fucking Trollville, dude. God, damn, you know what? This is a shout out. This is, I'm calling all four members that love to talk shit. Like, get on the YouTube and get our back, man. Dude, it takes everyone. They talk so much shit. Yeah, you know, we don't pick up the brick. We don't, we don't really engage with them. Otherwise it would waste all of our time that we're putting into it. We would also encourage more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I tell you what, the fucking YouTube just lays into it. And a lot of the comments I'm getting is just like, you know, like I'm a punk, like I don't fucking look good. Like I'm not fit. I'm just like, listen here, motherfucker. This is mean. Yeah, I don't, I don't respond, right? I don't even respond to it or anything. But it's just funny that somebody would look at my body at, you know, 13, 14% that I'm at and go like, make, you think that, and I'm a 37 year old man, right? Like, and who cares? They don't know anything about hormonally what I've gone through. Even if none of that stuff aside, like I still look like an active fit person. You know what I'm saying? Like you can still see my muscles in my body. I'm healthy as fuck. You know what I'm saying? Like that's really crazy. The standard that we've put on the space that if you don't look- Bro, they do that to pro bodybuilders. Go on a pro bodybuilders page and you'll see underneath weak quads, weak delts. I'm like, he's 280 pounds shredded what the fuck are you talking about? Right. But it's just, it's- They were talking shit, they talked shit on all of it. They just talked shit to get a rise. Yeah, that's what they do. You'll see the most terrible racist, sexist, horrible comments ever on YouTube. It's just where they live. It's okay, you know what I mean? Because it's kids, that's why. I think it's mostly kids that are attracted to the YouTube platform. So you get a lot of fucking little trolls on there. Yeah, it did do. 16 years old talking shit. It's just like when you're playing video games online and you know, it's just, the words that come out of these kids, like you're just like, oh my God dude, like this still exists. Your parents need to beat you. Yeah. They'll slap you into the wall. Shit, anyway. Check it out. We all have our individual social media pages on Instagram. Mine is Mind Pump Sal. Adam is Mind Pump Adam. Justin is Mind Pump Justin. Also we have free guides. A lot of free guides. There's like 12 of them. Some of them teach you how to burn more body fat, do high intensity interval training, build particular body parts. You can find all of them at mindpumpfree.com. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps anabolic, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. 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