 Adam, you were a late bloomer, right? When you're growing up. I was you went to be like you, you were, you were little and puberty when I all of a sudden you sprouted. No way. No, shut up. When did you, when did you hate your? I don't think anybody goes through puberty, 22. That can happen. No, when did you finally, when did you hate your, your, you know, when did a puberty kick in for you? Cause it was later. Yeah, I was like a eighth grade, I would think somewhere on there. But when your height though, right? And weren't you? Oh yeah. No, my height didn't, I didn't sprout up until my senior year of high school. That's a little while. Wow. Yeah. I was, well, remember I said I was five three as a freshman. So I played point guard my freshman year of high school. And then by my junior year, I was playing like power forward in center. So I was six foot tall, uh, my junior year. So it was the summer between my sophomore year and my junior year when I started happening. Yeah. When the magic started happening. I guess. Did you know, you know why I'm asking these questions? No, I don't. I have a theory. What, let's hear it. Because, uh, we're, we're watching the video of us doing the, uh, the drinking game, you know, the Z-bytex game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that one, and you, and you won, what a great tournament, right? Yeah, I love to win. And you let out your, you have a very distinct, like your signature victory scream, yeah, but you instantly lose your voice. I do. It's very puberty. So when I used to, I don't know why, I don't know what you're singing out in the hallway, like it sounds like a 13 year old Adam singing. So I wonder if that's, I feel like that's going to kick in later. I don't know, man. I don't know what, I don't know what the deal is. So that used to happen to me. I couldn't, I could never control it happen. Once every boot camp, every single, every single, it was, yeah, it was the joke, like every, every morning. Yeah, no, you knew that at one point, at one point it would, I would squeak and the whole class, the whole class would just bust up laughing. Yeah, everybody thinks it's hilarious. It's so funny, bro. It's not funny when you can't control it. Hey, your kid's going to grow up and you're just going to be like, my dad never yells. He's always calling, but he doesn't know if you want to yell because the squeak will happen. Oh, speaking of this, this, yeah, all fears gone. Speaking of that, I did my first, like, no to Maximus. Did you really? Yeah, I don't even remember what it was. I was, he was doing something like, uh, I think he was biting. He was biting with his teeth on me, on my finger. He's got teeth now, right? His bottom teeth came in and, and he kept doing it. And I've yet to do that. Like I have not raised my voice. We have nothing like that in our house. And so, you know, this was the first I looked at him. I said, no. Did he cry? No, he didn't cry, but he froze. He completely froze. I traumatized him, bro. I don't say that. I don't say that, but it did, it did spark up a discussion with Katrina and I, because she says like he's, he's now, he's bit her too with, with obviously when she's feeding him. Oh, I can't even imagine. That's right, right. You're nursing, right on the nipple. And she told me the same thing that that's the first time that she's kind of like giving him the no, you know? And she says like he does, he did this because I was telling her this happened to me and she, I guess she told me that, oh yeah, no, I've, she says I've had to tell him no, like sternly, like for the first time and he freezes and I'm like, yeah, it's exactly what it did to me. I said, you know, it's, it's interesting, right? It made me think about like the household that I grew up and there was a lot of screaming and yelling and all that shit and there has to be some, some value and power to that and, and probably a lot of people don't think about it and they, they use that a lot. No, don't, just screaming and fighting in a house and then, and then the kid gets to a point where you, you go to discipline them or you have to raise the level every time. Right? It's, it's the same on the opposite end of that as the whole boy who cried wolf thing, right? If they're like, you know, outside and they're making a noise that's like really loud and like you, you're like in panic mode out there trying to like help them out, but it's really like a small thing and you're like, you can't, you can't do that. You can't like go to that level every time and freak me out and it is one of those things. Like it's overused all the time because it's effective, but you want to hold that as like, right? Well, what I was telling Katrina is like, you know, I think it's important to for us that we think about that, that don't waste those, you know, don't waste those every time he does something you're not, you don't like, don't, don't waste it on just every, every time to correct him. Yeah. Use it when there's a major lesson behind it. Like, you know, you hit another kid or you do something that like that's just, no, that's absolutely not, you don't, or where they could potentially hurt themselves or something that reaching the light socket or whatever. Yeah. So things that are dangerous, things that are really bad behaviors, stuff that you really want to correct and you can actually educate and speak to save those moments of that stern, hey, don't, you know, or that getting, getting on with otherwise, if you every single time they're doing something you don't like them to do or they're, you know, playing with their toys and throwing it or whatever, whatever kid shit, right? If you waste that, that stern voice every time, I would, I would imagine it would start to fall on deaf years after a while. And that was a conversation we had last night. It was the first time that I had done that with them. And I was like, oh, wow, look at the power of that. Like he like froze in his tracks and was like, looking at like, I've haven't heard this from dad yet. It was wild. I used to, I used to be able to make my kids cry just by looking at them. I'm serious. If I gave them a look, like I'd look at them and they start crying. You stare at goats, men who make kids cry. Yeah. Do you just wait till you, did you, have you felt bad? You haven't felt bad yet. No, that was, this was, yeah, that was, that was the first. Yeah, right. It's coming. Oh, that was like the other day I answered on my questions. I think I brought this up to a podcast. So the, you know, the biggest fear I have as a father is knowing that it's inevitable I'm going to do something wrong or whatever. It's like, it's what is it? What is it I'm going to do? Hopefully it's something. I spank my son once and my daughter never. And I spank my son because he threw a block at my dad, at his grandfather, hit my dad in the head. So I spanked his little hand and he looked at me and then he hugged me and cried. Oh, fuck me up. Only one time spanked them on the hand and never spank my kids. Really? Oh, I'll definitely spank money. No. You know why I won't? I'll tell you why. Because it's weird. I'm way bigger than that. It's so weird. It doesn't matter. Physically. To me, it doesn't have to be, you're not, you're not. I haven't had to, you know, here's the deal. Here's why. Because I've been effective other ways. That's what it is. Well, I'll never, I'll never, I'll never spank like I got spanked. I'll never kick them. I'll never spank like I did, which is like, you know, every time you did something wrong, it was, you know, you're coming home and it's the belt or the spoon or whatever. And you had to wait in your room. It was a big old deal. I'll, the same way that I use the stern voice is the same way that I think I would use like a whack on the back of the diaper. Like when he's doing something that could either hurt himself, like to catch him off guard and go whack. Like 100% I will do that. Just a little course correction. Yeah, not a fucking hit him. You know what I'm saying? Like it's not designed to hurt him. It's designed to get his attention right away and correct whatever it is that I, that I see doing. I don't see it. Justin, were you worried? I thought I'd do it more, to be honest with you. I don't. I don't use it very often. Like, if at all, like it was only when they were like during their like terrible twos and, you know, sort of like in where they were just kind of going all over the place. It was very chaotic. And I was trying to like, you know, show boundaries in certain areas. Like it was, you know, when it was like in an act of pure defiance. And I would like determine what that was. And I would, even before I would spank it, I would like build it up. First, I wouldn't do it right then. I would, I would make them go to their room. And then I would like kind of try and like get my heart rate down and I would breathe. And then I would go and they knew it was happening. And so it was like, I don't know. I guess it was more like procedural. Like I was like, you know, like I was setting them up for it. And they knew it was like the whole thing behind it was the anticipation of it. And so then I would barely even, you know, hit them to where it was just like smack, and then they'd start crying. And it was, and it was just to, for me, it's just to kind of slow down and like make a point that this is something that I'm not going to tolerate. And if you do it again, then, you know, the cost, there's consequences, real consequences. Did you catch that cell? He lets it build up before he spanks it. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's your words. I mean, it happens like, you can use that in other directions. Did you know that makes sense because I think if you Which part? Thank your kid and not that one. That one too. But if you if if if you spank your kid and you're angry, you're more likely to display the anger. Yeah. You know, rather than I'm not I'm not pro that. Yes. Yeah. This is what you do when you're angry, you know, you know, and I got to check myself because I do have tendencies towards that. You know, because I mean, I've been in, you know, very violent sports and you know, like there's like dire consequences for certain things. And like, you know, my my tendency is to kind of like react in and so like I've been very, very conscious of that with my kids. Did did now temper tantrums? Did your kids when there were two, three throw temper tantrums? Did they did you see those? Yeah. Yeah, I saw those, you know, like one kid versus the other sometimes like more. And it was and I had to learn how to navigate through that. A lot of times it was like I had to learn how to give space for certain things. Like if if I was like trying so hard to like, you know, let's go. It was usually like when we're trying to leave somewhere and they were like so fixated on this thing, like, especially like my youngest, he gets really fixated in an activity he's doing. And I had had to like really learn how to like, give him proper warning. And then like, OK, when we're leaving, you know, it's 10 minutes, like five minutes, you know, one minute and like, you know, let's break it off. Because like if I just like rip the band-aid, there's hell to pay like he's just as stubborn as I am. Dude, my daughter used to throw temper tantrums that I swore to God if there were a way to tap into the energy that she was producing, you could power a small town. Like I couldn't it was just turns into Blanca from Street Fire. It was it was incomprehensible. I would look at her go. How was this energy possible? Just wow, this is insane. One time she was at the store and she threw such a crazy tantrum. She hit her own head on the on the on the what is it the cart or whatever. So I had to like put my hand behind her and like kind of protect her from hurting herself. Yeah. And just let her burn it off. Wow. Just lose your shit. That's fine. We're going to be here for five minutes. I'm already embarrassed. So I'm not coming to get more embarrassed. Yeah, that's perfectly fine. Well, isn't that the prevailing theory on that is that when they have those, you're supposed to let them have it out. Don't react. Yeah, right. Let them have it out. Don't don't react with your emotions and then actually have them articulate what they're feeling and and actually have empathy for what they're going through. It is though. Oh, I know. I imagine a time schedule. Oh, dude, you try to get a two or three year old kid throwing a tantrum in a car seat. It's the most impossible thing. You can do it. Yeah. I mean, I mean, you can if you're going to use like massive, you know, if you're just like, no, you're getting in the seat, but they will stiffen out like a board and you can't fit them in the chair. You can't block them in. So you're going to be late wherever you're going to go. You're going to be late. It's such a challenging. Oh my God, especially have multiple kids. I don't know how my mom, why? I know how my mom did it. She used to throw shoes at us. That's what she did. She said I really when I was a kid, I remember because my mom had four kids and we were bad. We're all bad kids. We just we do all kinds of remember when I was and I was the oldest right. So I got a little older and got out of that stuff. But then I had all these younger siblings. So my mom, I would witness my mom lose her shit because, you know, she's got three little kids or whatever. And I remember thinking too as a kid like, man, my mom, why she lose her temper like that's crazy. And then I became a parent and I'm like, oh, I get it. Yeah. I know why she did that. You know, oh man, one time my brother said we went grocery shopping and she would take all of us. So have you ever gone grocery shopping with one little kid? Oh, it's the worst. Okay. It's the worst experience of my life. Okay. Go with four kids and three of them being little though, you know, you have the youngest is like, you know, one and a half and all the way up right. Little kids. What are you guys is how many years apart? So it's four years apart between me and my sister. And then it's only one and a half or two years apart between all of them. So I'm I'm much older than the rest of them in comparison or whatever. But we were at the grocery store and my brother was he was just a terror. He was just a terrible little kid. And he escaped the the shopping cart. My mom will put him inside the shopping cart, keep all the kids in there to kind of control him. Yeah. And he would just climb. She turned around. He escaped and he ran and he was hella fast to was a fast little three year old and he jam and then he was just pulling shit off the shelves as he was running and my mom wasn't fast enough to catch him, you know, and this is in the grocery store. So get back and then she'd tell me get your brother and so I'd run after him and he knocking shit off. Finally, I see a slipper fly through the air. Hit him in his little grocery store. Hit him in his leg. You know, he falls down and the people looked at my mom like, how could you ever and the look she gave back at the little angel? Dude, the look she gave back at them was like, I will throw my shoe at you too. Yeah. Don't you understand? Yeah, I understand those shopping cart like it. Oh dude, just going to the grocery store is like nightmare. Take off it's anarchy. It's grabbing stuff. It's I want this one with that and they just take off on you. Where are you? Oh, dude, it's it's it's it's I'm not I'm not looking forward to that. It's like a transformation to they go from being like a sweet little, you know, baby taller and then boom, they realize they can say no, they realize that they can yeah, they have this cereal. Yeah, like no. Yeah, I'm not doing what you want. You ever have your kid look at you dead in the eye and then do some shit? Like you tell them no. And then my son did this a couple. He would do this. Yeah, I would say don't do that. And then he would look at me in the face and then do exactly what you do. Yeah, like I'd say do not spill your juice on the floor or whatever. And he'd look at me and he'd slowly pour it on the floor. It's a power move. Yeah, like what are you going to do? Dad, you're shit. I control this house. Justin, aren't you aren't you adding a new family member to your I am. Yes, you can go through with it or what? I mean, apparently it's happening. So what are you doing? So we have had this while we I'm including myself in this now because it was originally Courtney's idea. But we are getting another dog. So we're getting a puppy which was supposed to be I tried to put like as many roadblocks to this as possible just to see like, you know, is this really what you want? Like, are we going to add another sort of thing into the mix? Like we're pretty balanced right now. We're doing well as a unit, you know, and like I feel like like everything's kind of working like. And so, you know, I think that being home and then being with the dog and seeing how, you know, crazy, the dog just cannot get worked enough, cannot walk enough. It needs, like he just needs more like constantly. And so we were actually talking to your sister about because she's had the same breed. The Wymerators are just like so high energy and like they just need to just run and they need to play with another dog and all that. So anyways, I knew that ahead of time too. I was like, they do better with like two dogs. And so I guess like. So you're getting another one? Small. No, we're getting a smaller dog. So actually, it's funny to me because I look at it like we're getting a pet for Arlo. He's gonna have a little pet, you know, to hang out with his be his little buddy. And hopefully his energy will then sort of like draw his energy down. He's the theory. It's all theoretical. I don't really know if it's going to play out that way or not. But could multiply the energy as it could do. It definitely could. And I that was my argument. And so but you know what? I'm supporting her in this. And so, you know, and I love dogs. So I'm all about it. But you got to get rid of the chickens. Okay, we got to get a fence up. So all these things like we can keep them confined more in our property. And so like all that stuff's in the works and and so I was like, okay, if you do all that, so she's flying down while we're in Ohio with the kids to go pick them up and bring them back and we'll see. Dude puppies are a lot of work. I know, man. There are a lot of work. It was supposed to be like more towards one year old. And then the breeder was like, no, you know, like I like there was some miscommunication on the date. And it turns out we're getting him when he's like four months old. Oh, my God, what? No, what's the breed? It's a doxin. Oh, I love those. Many doxin yet. It's cute as hell. It's got like, like a unique like spotted pattern to it. I'll show you guys a pig. So do you know now you're still dealing with the rat problem? Yes. Okay. So Dotson's are great for rats. Oh, a little, little like, yeah, they're great rat hunters. That's right. That's why they're they were bred them interiors, right? Yeah, they're bred to be long, small dogs because they would hunt animals in their holes, their little burrows and stuff like that, like ferret animals. Yes. Yeah. So you might have, you might have saw maybe. Yeah. I didn't even think about that. No more chickens. Huh? Yeah. Are we doing like a barbecue or something this week? I was gonna say, we're gonna have to do a Hot Ones episode where we do wins. So I mean, how many do you how many do you have still? I mean, are you still? I have four and they're actually going to go to one of Courtney's friends who has her own like, I don't know, harem of chickens, what do you call it, flock of chickens? Yeah. But yeah, so she's taking them in and I'm just like, Hey, great. You know, I am going to miss the eggs. That's it. Yeah. But yeah, like so they're going to be gone and then that whole space opens up for me. So now I have plans to then, you know, the summer build out the deck and then everything outside is going to be more groomed and, you know, like it's it's good progress for me to then build you know, what I want to do out. So looking back, is that like a complete failed experiment or what do you think about it? I don't know. I think that was me get a lot of free eggs out of it. Yeah, I got free eggs out of it and the kids initially were all about it when they were like little chicks. And then we actually went through that whole thing where the little chicks they grow up, we feed them and all that. And then they moved outside. And so they but then they lost pure interest in it. And it was just like there's just chickens and there's shit and it smells and, you know, all that kind of and there's rats now. And you know, and then it was starting to like, you know, there's just like too much going on there. So I think that it was cool at the time. But now it's time to move on. Yeah. I wanted to try those eggs. I still haven't. Oh, really? You ever have? Oh, you know what? I saw them. So I'll bring some in. I would love it. You ever seen the difference when you crack those? Yeah, they're like. So I I get the past super bright. I get part pastor raised organic eggs or I've had eggs from friends who brought them over. Then you buy the regular organic eggs or whatever they look dead. They look pale compare in comparison. Like those eggs are are like a bright they're like depressed like a bright gold reddish gold color. And then the regular ones like a pale. It's not the same. Yeah, definitely not the same. What's that you get? Okay, so I can't find the link. I'm so irritated. Somebody sent me a link and I've lost it. Apparently there's this destination like party place that you can go to where there's like no rules and you go and they you do drugs and it's not a visa. No, Haiti. No, what's it called? Haiti. How do you spell that? I don't know. Is that it? H A I T I is no or as a H A D E maybe or something like that. I don't know. I don't think. No, anyway, there was just there's this place where it was like that's how they were advertising it. They were advertising it where you show up. You pay a ton of money. Yeah. And it's anything goes. It's like a Dan Bilzerian Island or what? Something like that, which I think is hilarious. Although do those places ever turn out the way you think? No, dude. I know. I know Haiti was like always a bunch. It was like we're all the swingers went that's been around for a long time. And that that was a popular place where everybody goes and you know fucks each other. That's in a day party and drink and do I think I know what you're talking about. But I don't think it's been around for a long time. I think it's called something else though. Isn't it called Doug Paul? Maybe Sex Island? Whoa. Whoa. That might be it. Sex. Sex Island where the guest part paid a party with prostitutes. Holy shit. Well, that's I see that's a little different. Yeah. No, there was another. There was another place to do that though. Asking for a friend. Yeah. Boy, I don't know. We had a new sponsor. Colombia. Yeah, anchor, you know, down. Yeah. Well, it's never ends. You know, it's funny. Now that we've had the show and we have people following us. Have you guys gotten people listening to us? Yeah, I know. Have you guys gotten any messages from swingers, quote unquote swingers or people trying to we've met them before. I mean, there's been people. I remember when we first started, I feel like this question is a trap. It is. Stay away from answering this. I know. Thank you. Thank you, Adam. I'll tell you, try to save you from my safety. Dude, it's it's crazy. I take the fifth go ahead and finish your story south a while ago. A while ago. No joke. There was a person that DM me was acting whatever. I just ignored them. Then they went to Jessica and they tried to message her and sent her pictures. And it was a girl that was doing all this. That's awesome. There's a lot of no, it's not bro. I mean, I'm not mad if someone's trying to send Katrina naked pictures. It's a chick. You know what I'm saying? Like, all right, whatever. Hopefully he shares him with me to talk about it. What do you think? Do you know who this is? You know, show me more. I can't tell if I know. It reminds me of like my friend a long time when we were like teenagers, like, dude, I know where a nude beach is. I was like, oh, wow, that's so cool. Like we're going to see like all these naked chicks. And we get there and it's just like like the like if there was a girl there, it was like somebody's grandma, you know, like just sunbathing. That's what I'm saying. We drew eight. We drew we drove eight hours for one boobies. And then like all the dudes like just like right next to her just like like putting like lotion on on their like, you know, uncircumcised hogs. Oh, my God, I don't even see all this. So would you say you drove eight hours? We drove eight hours for one in high school. We were seniors in high school and that's what you do back in the day. No, I totally when you when you have your you have your lot you've only had your license for what two years by that time or in my case, I was only seven hours. And we're like, what should we do this spring? It was a spring break. What should we do this spring break? Let's go find a nude beach and let's go to it. And I remember we searched for a nude beach. And I think the closest one that we could find at that time was down in San Diego. And so we straight rodied all the way to San Diego. And we had so he my my friend that one of them friends that we were there was four of us that went down there. He had an older sister that that went to San Diego State and she had a little apartment down there. So we're like, oh, we'll just go crash at her apartment. But the main purpose of the trip was, you know, go down get drunk fucking go down to a new beach. Yeah, it was so terrible. We saw three naked bodies and they were like, I don't think any of them were under the age of 60. That's what I'm saying. It typically works out that way. Well, when you're when you're a kid, you think nude beach, therefore, everyone's going to want to as soon as they show up. You think of like the, you know, you think of like the Playboy Mansion naked, like you're like, yeah, it's probably what's like, it's very like it has to be super rare. You're gonna find hot people. Yeah, there's a there's a there's a nudist colony up around, I think near you, Justin, right up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, isn't there one? It's called I can't remember the name of it, but they're supposed to be up one. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, I can't imagine too many hot people up there. I mean, Vegas has got some top pools that are pretty legit. I mean, you go to Vegas, you get some, some, some, well, there you go. Yeah, you know, somewhere like that, I'm sure that the pool is a little better. Yeah, I went to even take us this direction. I don't know. I just felt like talking about that. Yeah, you know, what are you gonna do? What did you do this last weekend? Oh, dude, I gotta tell you guys about the wine tasting trip we did. It's good to hear. Yeah, that's it. Right. So my aunt organized a like a wine tasting trip for all her siblings. So it's my aunts and uncles and then the older kids, the ones that could drink. So there was a it was a big group. We got on a bus and then we went to different wineries had a total blast. So when she organized it, this is when we first started working with Zebiotics. So I thought what a great opportunity because I have been waiting to be able to talk about this. I said, what a great opportunity to test out the Zebiotics for the listeners don't know Zebiotics makes a it's a genetically modified bacteria that produces an enzyme that breaks down something called acetyl aldehyde in the body and acetyl aldehyde is a byproduct of alcohol metabolism and it builds up in the body when your body can't catch up with breaking it down. If it starts to build up too much, you get these side effects that are the hangover. It's like a hangover. The headaches, the stomach ache, nausea, all that inflammatory feeling, that toxic feeling or whatever. Yeah, achy. Yeah. And so and we tested it ourselves. Obviously before we worked with the company, we tested it a bunch of times. I tested it in Maui and every single time it's it's funny. Every time I test it, I think to myself mind blowing. Yeah. Every time I test it, I think to myself, this is the time it's not going to work because there's no way it's got to be chance. There's no way it can work that well. So did you hand any out to any of your relatives? I did. So I told and these are remembered. These are all my aunts and uncles. They're all in their fifties, sixties. And then my cousins who are all in their, you know, thirties and early forties. Dude, because wine gave me the worst hangovers out of all drinks in my entire life. Yeah, the worst hangover I've ever got hangover I ever got was when I drank too much red wine. It was terrible. So these all these people, family members, 50, 60, nobody in my family is a drinker. Most of my mother, the people in my family has bad, you know, side effects from alcohol. So if we do drink, it's super rare and then everybody kind of maintains a little bit and doesn't drink too much because they tend to feel bad the next day. So we had a big group thread and I told them all, hey, this is the company I'm working with through some research. My, my, you know, my aunt is a, you know, she's a certified dietitian. So she's researching it. You know, most of my family's into health. So they were into it. So they're checking out. Everybody wanted to try it out, brought it on the trip. Everybody did the protocol, took the Z-biotics and then we went wine tasting and none of us, except for, I think, my aunt, one of my aunts, everybody drank the wine. So you know, when you go to wine tasting and you go from place to place to place all day long. Yeah. After a certain point, you just taste the wine and you pour the rest out because you're smashed. Yeah. Everybody just kept drinking it. They were all trusting that this thing was going to work or whatever. Wow. So a lot of faith, wine faith. Yeah. So it was fun. We all got totally, you know, health ambassador was there. So I mean, I felt they probably felt like if he says it's good, it's good. So we all got totally we all got destroyed and smashed and the next day I get messages from everybody. It feels fine. Everybody's feel fine. Now here's the same thing that we experienced. Still had bad sleep. So it's not going to fix that for you. You still need to make sure you got to drink water, but nobody got hang. Excuse me. Nobody got a headache. Nobody felt felt that toxic and flame feeling. Several of my family members. No, throwing up. No. Wow. So and now you're still going to get drunk. If you take this, it's not going to prevent, you know, alcohol toxicity. So don't be stupid. But everybody was totally so I'm blown away. I'm like nine for 10. I like everybody I know that I can give it to that. I know the drinks I give it to and only one person has told me they didn't notice anything. But that's like they're like, I couldn't tell if it really helped or didn't. I mean, I wasn't hung over the next day, but I wasn't sure if it really helped out or not. Everybody else literally was like, Holy shit. Yeah. Yeah. Where do I get it? And then I'm like sending it to him right away. Well, when we tested it, that was the that was the clincher for me because I haven't I haven't drank like that since I was 20. Well, we we fucked up. It's what we did. We missed worse than I was 20. We met. We miscalculated the the the rules of the game that we were playing. And we just went way too hard. And that was the most too hard too fast in 20. I hadn't been that drunk in 20 years, at least 15 to 20 years. So and the fact that I woke that I even woke up the next day and was able to come to work. Yeah. And I did work out. I'd hang out some episodes. That was impressive. So put it good. No, I was just going to say, speaking of sponsors, you had brought up something the other day about our other sponsor, Butcher Box. And you said that something about customer service, like what happened? Well, so Butcher Box, I've gotten DMs from people about their their customer service and how responsive and good they are. I've never had to use. Have you guys ever had to message them for anything at all? I message them when I wanted to change my my cadence once a month to every other month and they were like fixed it right away. It wasn't a big deal. So here's what happened to me, right? So I got my so I'm on the monthly subscription. So every month my box comes and I have New York steaks in there. And I think I have ribeye and some some bacon and ground beef, whatever. And it just comes like clockwork. Totally forgot that it was going to come right when I was on when you were leaving when I was in Maui with I did the same thing. Now I remember. Did you? OK, so the box came and the way the guy the way where I live either will get delivered at my front door or it'll get delivered for your garage in front of my garage. Hey, when they do that, I know when it when when and that's just the person delivering right when it comes in the front door and I've had this happen before I have really cool neighbors. They'll see it and they'll take my package or whatever when I come home. They'll tell me but with there has been some some male theft in the area. We I had never experienced this. It got delivered to the garage where a lot of people aren't going to see. So I didn't expect to see it there when I got back and sure enough, it wasn't there. So it must have got stolen or whatever. So I sent a message to the butcher box team and said, hey, you know, I was on vacation. Just want to see what their protocol was. Didn't they didn't know that it was, you know, mine pump or whatever. Just a customer. I was talking to regular customer service person and they sent me into the box. Yeah, it's cool. Just like that. I told them no questions. No, someone stole it. Hey, actually, in fact, they sent me a long message that said, hey, we're really sorry that that happened. You know, make sure you check to see if it's over in different places. Let us know what happened. I email him back. I'm like, no, it looks like it's gone. No problem. You're going to get tracking for another box. We're just going to replace it for you. What great. Oh, it's awesome. I had where OK, so I'm doing this this diet right now where I'm like increasing obviously the amount of meat I'm eating every day. So we we upped our amount and we didn't see that in our box. And you know, I just had to barely mention it the next time, you know, was was basically like almost triple. It was like double the amount. But like it was with some extras in there with a bunch of bacon and a bunch of like, you know, ground patties, you know, and all kinds of stuff for me to eat. So it was awesome. What now? What what is the most common piece of meat that you're eating right now? Because you're you're eliminated. You're doing like the like a hardcore elimination like strip steaks and primarily trying to eat as much steak as I can and then ground beef. And then, you know, I'm trying to cycle in like this week some fish or salmon or halibut like we're trying to like get that like somewhat in there. But mainly like it's literally just steak, like it's much steak in the morning, you know, afternoon and then, you know, sprinkle in like right now I have like deli meats in between, which is kind of not, you know, great because it's all processed. So I'm trying to eliminate that. But like it just takes a lot of prep on, you know, grilling at all. I'm becoming a master at the grill, though, I'm going to be honest, like I've been like just destroying these steaks are so good. Is your is your heart your heartburn symptoms, all that stuff gone? Nothing. Well, yeah, nothing, dude. Wow, wow. It's crazy what you can figure out with an elimination diet. I was always blown away with clients when they would do that and see things like skin issues or dandruff. I had a client once who had just issues with dandruff most of their life and they would control it with certain medications stuff that the doctor gave them. And just through our own training, I had them do an elimination diet because I tend to do that with clients when I first start working, depending on the client and their dandruff went away. And we actually pieced together that there were there were certain what was it? It was bananas was something really weird that was causing this issue that they ate all the time. So they cut it out and the dandruff went away. I never thought that food could affect the body. And that at that time, at least in that way, I was actually a bit in disbelief. So now it's your strategy right now to just do it as elimination diet and slowly start to introduce stuff. Are you trying to follow it for a while? This is the second time you've done this now. So what's the plan here? No, yeah, that's the plan. It's it's going for another like I want to do close to a month. And then I'm already going to probably like three weeks more realistically than the fourth week, I'm going to start adding in vegetables one by one. And then just assess it from there. And then maybe like three, four weeks after that of just meat and veggies, then I'm going to do go back to like the full balanced carbs, you know, fats. Are you doing it alone or is it were you in Courtney's doing it with me, which is good. I was actually doing this mainly to support her in wanting to do something outside of her norms. She's never done anything other than like drop, you know, reduce calories somewhat. So this is between that we realize too that like we're cutting alcohol out, which is one thing that she was like, I didn't really consider that part of it, you know, I'm like, yeah, like, you don't think like meat and water, like, that's it. Right. So it's already having like a dramatic effect with her and her bodies like responding. So it's pretty cool. Like it's cool. She's getting excited about that. And then just kind of using as a catalyst to then now pay attention, pay attention to what you're reintroducing coming back into the diet, what how you respond to each one of those and what you can, you know, really take from that going forward, what's benefiting you and what's not. Now, what is she noticing? You're saying her body like, did she have was she having gut issues and stuff? Yeah, she was carrying like a like a constant bloat all the time. Yeah, she was very much pushed out. And like it was like, she thought it was like a postural thing, you know, like we were working on that quite a bit, you know, with her hip position and everything else. And then it's just, it was just this thing that like some days it was like it felt flatter. But for the most part, it was always like this little push, this little pooch, and that's already getting like, like dramatically like tightened up. Oh, nice. Sometimes I wonder like the results that people feel from this, like how much of it is is a result of the all meat or, you know, if you were to actually track calorie wise, like if it's a sub reduction. Yeah, like are you like, you know, I wonder if it's taking somebody from 2900 or 3000 calories, which is probably somewhere around where you eat on a regular basis. And now you're like eating 1500. Totally. And if you were to just say, Hey, I'm going to stick to a 1500 calorie diet for X amount of time, would you potentially feel some of the similar effects? I'm always curious to that when I hear you could make a great argument for that. And I totally would buy into that because and that's the other things I think a lot of people that are like less attracted to tracking would, you know, see lots of benefit with this because you eat and you're satisfied. But you're still really low calorie. Yeah. And it's that's really the benefit of it. I mean, for the most part, besides like you do get nutrients and everything from meat. So it's not like you're super deficient. But at the same time, like, you know, it's not the ideal way going forward. Well, that's how I thought about keto. I mean, I remember when we ran the keto diet years back, like it definitely it was hard for me to get enough calories. The just constant eating high fat and protein and a lot of meat, you know, a lot of a lot of red meat that we are consuming and butter and so with that, like, I was just satiated. I didn't I couldn't get a lot of fatigue gets you pretty hard. You just don't want to eat more. And then what's funny is they make keto processed foods to and so people start snacking on those because then you can't eat more. You know, right? Not funny. That is fun. Dude, I are you guys seeing what's happening in San Francisco right now? No. Okay, so so like a war zone there. Well, they're reaching some interesting levels right now. They're reaching peak insanity. I think Walgreens is starting to shut down locations. And you know, Walgreens has a real strong presence in San Francisco. Yeah, they're shutting them down because the laws and the the the policy there is to not go after people who are stealing for like under I forgot what the amount was like under $600 or something like that was like an amount. So if you steal under that, you basically they don't do it on the rest. Yeah, they don't do anything to you. So their car theft in breakings are through the roof. But what's happened now it's a new thing. People are walking and I just I just watched a video of this. My brother, he lives in San Francisco. He sent me a video of this. People are walking into Walgreens with their with a bag, a plastic garbage bag and just just throwing no, they're not. Yes, they are. No, they're not. Yes, they are. I will show I'll find the video and I'll show you. They're literally it's aggressive. Just throwing just taking deodorant or razors or whatever. And they're smart. They're going under the amount that the that where they'll start to get in big trouble and they'll just put it in their bags and then walk out and the the people there can't do anything. If they try to stop them and get physical, they could get hurt or if they hurt the other person, they themselves could get in trouble. The cops are like, what are we going to do? We arrest them. They're out that same day and they go back and do it. My brother says that he saw some of these guys doing this, dumping stuff in their bag, taking the bag, going around the corner, laying it out in the street and then selling them for like, you know, deodorant for 50 cents or a dollar or whatever, making money off. So Walgreens is like, we're shutting down. If you guys aren't going to protect us, that city is going to become a wasteland. Yes, what's going on? Dude, it's Mad Max. It's getting really shit. It's getting really crazy. I mean, what is the desired outcome of setting a law? Like, what are they trying to do or who they trying to protect by doing that? These are policies that sent that are feel good, sound good policies. For example, we don't want to arrest people who are not hurting anybody, but doing drugs on the street. We should leave them alone. So what's the result of that? Again, my brother lives in San Francisco. He's very successful, makes a lot of money. So it's not like he lives in a bad part of the area, whatever. But he'll walk outside of his complex, turn a corner and he'll show me, he'll film it. And there's there's people just injecting themselves with heroin, heroin right on the street, half naked or taking a crap right there on the street. Cops rock right by. Don't say anything. Don't do anything. He's like, dude, he goes, I don't know what to do. This place is getting crazy. I just don't get, you know, people that live there love that place, dude. I don't get it. It's still there's of course there's a culture. Like, oh, it's got so much cold. Oh, yeah, it sure does. There's still some things. Look, there's some amazing places there. Still has some great stuff, but it's starting to to turn a little bit that residents there started to get in that way. Pista, you know, they have the city pays for groups of people. I'm I forgot what they call them the poop patrol or whatever. And they're there. Yes. San Francisco's. Maybe Doug can Google the Google this. San Francisco wasn't it? You told me that somebody was just like takes a shit and it was in a store. People were doing stuff. Yeah. Oh yeah. So and so again, you don't get in trouble for it. So they shut down like public restrooms or some of that. But then they can't stop you from pooping someone. I forgot what you told me. No, just they just they don't they're not persecuted. The cops are told that it's a low priority. So so they have these. This is how diseases spread. Big time, dude. The people like this is why we have laws to prevent people from doing shit like that. Well, California like L.A. for I think has already gotten sued because L.A. has got a big problem with this some of the stuff, too. Because when they poop on the street, it goes right into the sewer. It doesn't get treated. Yeah, washes out to the ocean and then it's killing marine life. And so environmentalists are like, what is someone? Oh yeah, look, look at that. San Francisco has a poop patrol to deal with its feces problem and workers make more than one hundred eighty four dollars a year in salary and benefits. One hundred eighty four thousand dollars, thousand dollars, excuse me, one hundred eighty four thousand dollars a year to be on the poop patrol. Yeah. Wow. How we should apply? Does that? That's like well paying job. Does that not sound like insanity to you that your tax dollars are going to pay these people six figures to walk around and clean up human that has to be bullshit. There's no way someone's getting paid a hundred right here. All members of the city's poop patrol workers are entitled to seventy one thousand seven hundred sixty dollars a year, plus an additional one hundred twelve dollars and nine hundred eighteen. Oh, excuse me, one hundred twelve thousand dollars in benefits, such as health care and retirement savings. The San Francisco Chronicle reported. It's just getting crazy over there. It's it's it's insanity. It's it's it's extreme. Now we're not policy. Now hearing that makes me think that there's like an underlining motives and it's really more about creating more jobs that we can tax more so you can pay. That's not a job you create. That's just a waste because it's tax money. I mean, you just created a job. There was no such thing as a poop patrol. I've never heard of a poop. Well, that's what I mean. Now you have special interest in a pop patrol. That's a great cartoon. Now you can actually make make six figures picking people's feces up. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. And what what do you have to what what does someone have to do to you for you to take a shit in their store? Well, so like seriously, like I've been pissed before. Like I was just when we were up at Tahoe just recently and I was so mad we were we were waiting. I this bothers me so much when you're at a grocery store, especially when it's a busy one. And there's like two checkers and the the line like was all the way down the the aisle. Like one and everybody's still just like putting stuff on the shelves. Yeah, just like I'm like, can't you guys call another checker or wouldn't you think that you would schedule on busy weekends to have more than that? Like that almost made me take a shit on the floor. I'm waiting a little too long. Yeah, make me wait any longer. I'm gonna shit on this floor right here in San Francisco. You can you can get away with the illegal. No, they just elected an attorney general in San Francisco that said and so what it is that they're feel good laws. So the attorney general says we don't want to make homelessness a crime. It sounds good, right? We don't want to make it a crime. But what that really means is they're not going to go after people for pooping in the street, doing drugs in public streets right in front of people with dirty needles, leaving the needles on the floor. They're not going to do anything to to enforce that kind of or people doing petty theft because, you know, well, you know, for them or whatever is a crime. Yeah, so it's sorry. It's it's it's getting crazy and it degrade everything just because it makes it feel better. And again, my cousins have lived there for 10 years. My brothers lived there for five, I think, and they're like the last few years it's gotten really, really bad. So it's going to be interesting to see at what point the voters there go, OK, hold on a second. Maybe we should not vote for the same idiotic policies. Oh, I know I'm very conscious of this, too, because it's even somewhat in Santa Cruz. And we just had like a whole voting thing. And so I'm looking at like who has good ideas versus who has these same types of ideas that they're doing up there. I already see how this is playing out up there. And I'm just like, OK, we need somebody that's like going to come in and be like, you know, have a hard stance on this kind of thing. Hey, did you use a mental illness issue? Did you send a message to us this morning about the Fed reducing rates? Yeah, that was as of the recording of this episode. They're they cut them down by a half point, I believe, in response to the coronavirus fears, which I think is this has to be it was already at an all time low. I think they raised it and then they brought it back down. OK, back down to where it was before. I think so. But what a bit kind of sends a bad message. It sends a message that, oh, we are scared. We need to inject more money into the market. And you know what it did? It just flattened the market out. It didn't even give us a big boost. It boosted for a second and went back down. And so it's looking a little iffy. So we'll see what happens. But again, it's election season. So they're going to do everything they can to not to not show everything out of the hat. Well, what are your predictions like based off of who gets elected? What will happen to the economy? If if the Democrats win and if it's someone like Bernie Sanders, the stock market will take a matte. The status that you all just say it. Hello, communism, the stock will the stock market will take a massive first crash because he's going to go after taxing and regulations and that kind of stuff. Elizabeth Warren, no chance she has in winning the nomination, but let's just play if she did. No, no, it's not going to play her. Let's play Bernie, Biden and Trump. That's really and maybe Bloomberg, right? Well, you know what? I'm not sure when this episode airs, I think we'll know who the I feel like economically you have the best chances with either Trump or Bloomberg economically. Bloomberg is probably not going to get it. Again, I don't know when we're airing this episode. So I think when this episode airs, we're going to know who the the nominee is. Oh, that comes out this week. Yeah. Today's Super Tuesday. Oh, yeah, we're recording this when they're when they're going to figure it out. Super. Remind me what that is. Yeah. Well, that's when they're going to figure out who gets the most delegates and who's going to be the nominee for the. It's not official, though, after today, it could be. Oh, really? Yeah, it could be. If it's like that much of a landslide or what? Yeah, but we're seeing Biden surge right now. So I think I don't think they're going to. I don't think that the Democrat, the party is not going to is going to allow Sanders to to win the nomination. That's my personal opinion. So I think it'll be Biden versus Trump. But we'll know when this airs. We'll see if my extreme move. We'll see if my prediction is correct. So is that what is that your prediction that we're going to see Trump versus Biden? That's that's what I that's what I think we'll probably have. That's interesting because he looked like he was completely out of the race just like a month ago. It looked like. Well, what'll happen? What it looks like is starting to happen. Explain how that can happen because what I was reading when I was watching was Biden got absolutely destroyed and Bloomberg put pumped so much money into his. He took he went sky rocketing and then it really came down to everyone saying that it's either Bloomberg or or Bernie Sanders. And I thought Biden was completely out of this. Now you're saying that he's got to how you have to. You don't just win the nomination by having a majority of delegates. You have to get a certain number. There's a number you have to hit and it's pretty much impossible for any of them to get the right amount of delegates. Even if one of them is in the lead and wins a majority, they don't have the delegates. Then what happens is they the super delegates can decide what happens. But here's what's looked like. Here's what it looks like is happening. And again, we'll see how well this podcast ages by the time it airs. But what it looks like is the Democrat Party does not want a open socialist running as their nominee because that'll be a massive extreme left turn for the left. Now who is saying that just to just the right is saying no all the all the the old school, you know, lifelong Democrats, lots of Democrats in this, you know, that I know are afraid of Sanders being the nominee. The party doesn't want someone that extreme. They don't think he has a they don't think he has the power, the ability to get elected in a general election. He's never been asked really straight questions like why was your honeymoon in the Soviet Union or you're so against millionaires, but you have three mansions or stuff like that. Nobody's ever asked them that. So not only that, but socialism is even though it's more popular today than ever has been. Generally speaking for a general election, it still would do very terrible. So they know he would lose. They think it would destroy. It would damage the party itself for electing him. So what I think might happen is that the other candidates who know they have no choice will convince their delegates to vote for Biden. So now you'd have Bloomberg and Warren and everybody behind the scenes. They might work together to try and snub them out to snub them out. And so then Biden will end up winning the nomination. But again, we'll see how well this this episode ages. Not having like any like affiliation with either party. Like when I got my ballot, I'm just like, what? I didn't have any options to vote for the presidential candidates, even for the not for the even nominee. Yeah, I was like, I was like, what? Like, what is this? I could do all like the, you know, the local community stuff, but you couldn't do like the main, like most important thing. Yeah, I don't know. Let's do that bullshit. We'll see. All right. Our first question is from Jake Parker Fit. Why do bodybuilders always almost always seem to opt for strictly clean eating as opposed to a flexible dieting approach? I picked this question just to piss Justin off. Oh yeah, I got so much for this. No, I think no, I think there's a good point here. First of all, we've talked before on this podcast and this person probably has not heard us talk about this, so I figured this would be a good topic for labels and fast food and eating food that you did not weigh, measure and cook yourself can be off and can be dramatically off. You're talking 20 to 30 percent different from what the label says or what the fast food restaurant tells you. When you are competing or or if you're a bodybuilding, if you really take that shit serious and you're tracking weighing and measuring and you have quote unquote flexible dieting to where that allows you fast food every week inside your diet or a cheat day or whatever that in in the diet on a consistent basis, really tough to be precise. I mean, there's no way. So I had like a when I was competing, I had a I would say I, you know, and I hate flexible dieting and all these terms and show that. But if we were going to if we're going to use that, I had a flexible diet up until probably the last four to six weeks, because I could still be off by 20 percent of my calorie intake and still be seeing progress. If I was, you know, changing my programming up really well, I was, you know, increasing my my steps and movement and slowly starting to restrict overall calories. And and I would be fine, even if I was off, give or give or give or take 20 or 30 percent on a meal or two, it wasn't a big deal. But once I hit about four weeks out, for sure, sometimes even about six weeks out, depending on how how for sure I or how precise I needed to be or how far out I was body fat percentage, I would I would not do any flexible dieting. I would cook and make everything that I was going to consume. And I would just I get to really comes down to how serious you you take bodybuilding. If you want to be the best at it, or you want to have full control of your results and know why or why not, you're not seeing the the change that you should be. You don't take the chance of, you know, even Chipotle weighing, you know, scooping your food in. Have you ever gone through a Chipotle line and watched what one kid makes for your fucking burrito bowl? And then what another one does? Yeah, you got the heavy handed kid and you got the I memorize the heavy handed one. I'm like, I'm going when he's working. And what people need to understand is that the label that the Chipotle or five guys puts up there that they they have measurements that everybody is, you know, supposed to be following that that those those macro nutrients are supposed to be within 20 to 30 percent. Right. So but that doesn't take into account also that the kid who's been trained to scoop exactly a quarter cup is scooping a quarter cup. So not only can the macro nutrients be off on the label because FDA allows that much flexibility for restaurants and labels, but then in addition to that, you have human air that's in there also. So I mean, I and I've done this before where I've taken a Chipotle bowl and I've gone home and I've separated it out, I've measured it and waited and seen. I mean, we're talking like a three, five hundred calorie swing. That's fucking crazy. Yeah. And it's usually more. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's almost always because the other direction. It's in the best interest of a food company to under less. Yeah, under report calories. So they'll put together their meal to get tested or whatever, and they'll report five hundred calories. But then when they make the food, it's also in their best interest to give you more than the calories say. And the reason why they do that is because, you know, you you get more food, you're more likely to buy more food. So because you think it's more value so that the the measurements can definitely be off. I mean, one thing you need to understand about body building is of all of all sports I can think of off the top of my head. Bodybuilding, nutrition plays the most important role in bodybuilding more than any other sport, because with body building, when you're down to three percent body fat and you're on stage, a little bit of water retention can make you lose a contest, you know, the difference between your mom, your muscles looking a little bit fuller can make you lose a contest. And this all boils down to precision. It's like precision engineering with your nutrition. So an easy way to do that for a bodybuilder is to weigh and measure whole natural foods. They know exactly what's in it. And if you look at bodybuilder's diets, which by the way, I don't think anybody should follow bodybuilder diet except for a bodybuilder who's competing. When you look at the meals and stuff that they they post on social media, what you end up with what you typically see are the same meal measured out five or six times. So you'll see five or six containers of identical looking, you know, chicken, rice and broccoli or something like that. And then they want it to be predictable. It is. So what they're doing is they're sitting down there saying, OK, you know, I'm now I'm down to six percent. I got to drop 300 calories. I need, you know, this many grams of protein, this many grams of carbs. I need this much fiber and this much fat. And so then they take all the protein that they need and they just divide it by five. So one here, one here, one here. And they have their all their meals planned out. It's definitely not a long term approach for success. It's definitely can contribute to a bad relationship with food. I've met more than my share of ex bodybuilders and competitors who have really, really bad eating patterns after they stop competing because the only way they know how to eat aside from eat whatever you want is to eat that way. So it's like you're either, you know, extreme in one direction. It's on or off the wagon or extreme in the other direction. But if you look if you're confused about flexible dieting versus strict clean eating, real quick, easy breakdown, right? So flexible dieting, you're just trying to hit your macro targets. That's it. So I'm eating my goal is 100 grams of protein, 200 grams of carbs, 60 grams of fat. And then I can whatever I can put in that, as long as I hit those numbers, I'm all good. Bodybuilders do that as well. But the difference is the way they go about it is not by just throwing whatever they want. They will typically stick to whole unprocessed foods that they can fit within there that they can measure with like Adam said, with absolute perfect precision. That in fact is what separates oftentimes what separates the winner first place from second place is was the first the first place guy typically was more perfect and more anal about their their food than the other guy. Well, the average anal, please, the average American that, you know, we know everybody knows that the average American diet is terrible. So the average American that that that eats terrible that decides they're going to flexible diet and diet any diet in that in a sense is probably better than what they're currently doing is is going to see pretty good results. And so there's a there's a lot of room and a little a lot more flexibility for just the average person doesn't have to get on stage in exactly six weeks and present the best version of themself. So, you know, who cares if they overeat by 300 calories one day and they stall their progress for a day? It's not a big deal if that person, you know, got the heavy handed Timmy at Chipotle for that one day, like, it's not a big fucking deal. You've got the heavy hand. Yeah, I mean, you're still going to you're still going to if you're making good choices and you're trying to follow a macro, you know, your macros and you're you're even being off by 20% if you're doing everything else, right, exercise and staying in a calorie suited diet, you're probably going to be just fine. But, you know, if you're if you were a bodybuilder you're your timing is everything. And you also got to think about this. OK, when, you know, I've only only one time of my I've gotten down to single digit body fat many times, but I've never only once that I ever get down below like six, five percent. There's only one time and the thing that tripped me out the most about it was a lot of weird things, by the way, that happened to your body when you get that lean. And I was quite aware I was an adult, you know, when I did it and I remember tripping out over a few things. One of the main things that I tripped out over was this if you're 15% body fat and you go up by a half percent or a percent, you can't really tell can't really tell that much. You're 4% body fat. You go up a percent. You just you just went up 20, 25% more body fat on your body than you had before. Yes. 25% because 1% is a lot more when you only have 4% body fat than when you have 15%. So it was like I had to be like I had to be very, very perfect with my nutrition because I go up a percent. When you see the difference between a 4% and 5% body fat on stage is glaring. Yeah, the difference between 15 and 16% can't you can't you can't tell at all. Not only that, but when you're really, really lean, water retention can look like it adds 2% body fat on you. Just stuff that makes you hold water. And one thing that body builders are really, really exceptional at is identifying the changes in their and water and their body by foods. So you'll see a lot of body builders like avoid, you know, zero calorie sodas. It says zero calories, but they'll avoid them because like now it makes me hold water or they'll avoid, you know, protein shakes or other things that even though the calories are all calculated and it still will keep them the same macros. Like, yeah, if I when I eat that I don't look as sharp and it sounds silly, but it's it's a real thing. I told you I tested this like I I did a prep where I allowed shakes and bars in every single day. Every single day I had at least one or two shakes or bars and I had less whole foods and dieted for a show and then I had another show where I didn't allow any shakes or bars and I did nothing but whole foods and the show that I did all whole foods, I looked better. I you know, I can't explain it to you. I can't for sure tell you why that is, but you do. When you when you get that lean, you notice the most subtle differences and for the average person that doesn't matter at all. Yeah, it doesn't matter. That doesn't matter. No, you want to go based off of health how the food makes you feel. Does it make you want to eat more? Does it make you want to eat less? But yeah, I think some of the stuff you'll hear from bodybuilders that sounds silly to people who understand nutrition like, you know, eating fish thins the skin, right? You'd hear it from bodybuilders and you roll your eyes and you're like, what are you talking about? I think what they're talking about is that some people will eat only a certain food or avoid other foods and just notice they're holding less water. They're just less inflamed and it could very well be that they went from eating chicken to eating fish and that's what did it because there's a lot of very complex things that happen in the body. 100% Bodybuilders are the most extreme dieters in the world and that's why you see them following a particular way of eating versus flexible dieting. Next question is from TravisCraft24. You often mentioned cardio adaptation. Does our body get too efficient at basic human movements such as walking as well? Okay, so I want to be really clear. I had this conversation with my, in fact, it was the day we went wine tasting like I talked about at the beginning of the episode. My cousin Alex was there. Really, really smart kid, super successful in the tech world and I love talking with him because he'll ask me questions about fitness and nutrition that are, they're just really good questions. They're good questions to be asked. So he says, you know, I listened to your podcast and you talk about how doing lots and lots and lots of cardio and cutting my calories slows my metabolism down. He goes, why is that a bad thing? And I said, it's not. It's not a bad thing that your metabolism adapts. I said, it's just, it can be a bad thing in the context of normal life where you have access to tons of food all around you and you're not that active. And so having a faster metabolism is just makes it easier for you to maintain a healthy body weight in this environment. But said other than that, it's not a problem. So this cardio adaptation, and so here, let me explain real quick what cardio adaptation is. When you do a lot of anything, your body gets good at it. And part of what it does to get good at it is it burns less calories doing it. So if you took, for example, two top athletes, one was a top level runner, like one of the best marathon runners in the world, incredible endurance. The other one was a marathon swimmer and was the best in the world. So both exceptional cardio, exceptional endurance, phenomenal performance. And you tested their caloric burn when they did the sport that they're good in and then you switch them. You had the runner swim and you had the swimmer run. What you would find is they would actually burn more calories doing the thing that they weren't used to or that they weren't good at because their bodies weren't as efficient doing it. So doing lots of, and that's one piece of it. There's more than that as well because cardio burns lots of calories, doesn't require lots of strength. One of the ways your body becomes better at it is by paring muscle down and making you just this smaller, less muscle, less calorie burning efficient machine. Not a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with that, but if you want a faster metabolism, it's going opposite direction, right? So does the body get too efficient at basic human movements? What do you mean by too efficient? There's no such thing. More efficiency is probably better. If you walk a lot, is that gonna slow your metabolism down compared to what? Let's say you walk seven miles every day because you're a- Yeah, versus what, sitting down? Exactly, so you walk seven miles a day because you're a male carrier. So now your body became very efficient at walking. Compare that to sitting all day, you're better off. You're far better off. Now compare that to lifting weights. You're gonna, over time, burn more calories, lifting weights just through a faster metabolism type of deal. Or at least I should say maybe not burn more total calories, but burn more calories at rest because you have a faster metabolism. So I wanna be clear because we talk about this all the time, and I don't wanna send the message that the natural metabolic adaptations that happen from doing certain activities or- It's a bad thing, it's not a bad thing. It's your metabolism's acting exactly the way it should. Next question is from Ryan Megdans. How do you ensure you don't lose too much muscle when cutting? I'm very attached to the gains and don't want to see them go. Well there's research out that talks about this in regards to protein intake. This is when, this is probably when it's most important that you are hitting those upper limits of your protein intake, at least in my opinion. Now when you were competing, Adam, did you measure your lean body mass before you started your cut and then after to see- Oh yeah. So what would it look like and what would you do? What did you find that helped? So I mean here's, there's two things that I did that not a lot of my peers I felt did a really good job. This is also I think one of the advantages that I had. Many competitors would go into their cut and as soon as they're six or eight or some of them 10 or 12 week cut started, reduction of calories like crazy, intense cardio every single day and then that just got more and more intense and longer and longer as time went on. Now what I knew about that, one thing that all body builders did really well is protein. I mean that's like been the magical macronutrient forever, we all know that it's what builds and hangs onto muscle. So most body builders got that part right. So I've always did, I did that well, all of them did that well of keeping my protein at least to a one-to-one ratio. Maybe I'd even push 1.5 as I'm cutting grams per pound. But one thing that I was careful not to do is knowing that I'm in a calorie deficit is I didn't wanna do a lot of cardio. In fact, I didn't do any high intensity or long duration or bouts of cardio until the final two weeks. Everything up into that point was lists or walking. So it was all diet and exercise, regular exercise? Yeah, all of it was, I managed it through, and when you do that, the theory is, I'm not, to like to the last question we just talked about right now, is I'm not sending a signal to my body to become efficient at running and cardio. Because if I'm doing that like a lot of competitors are, I don't care how much protein you intake, the body eventually will start to pare down that muscle because it's not advantageous for it to have it while it's running on a treadmill for two hours a day every single day. So I didn't wanna send that signal to my body when I'm already in a caloric deficit. So I would keep protein intake up high. I would avoid high intensity cardio while I'm also in a caloric deficit. To me, that's like a recipe for disaster when it comes to hanging onto muscle. And for the most part, I did really, really good as far as keeping all the muscle that I built in the off season or when I was bulking. It's inevitable when you go to that extreme of a cut, like I would get to or getting down to 3% body fat on stage. I would always lose like a couple pounds, but that it would always come off in the very last couple of weeks when I was like just, I began pushing extreme. As soon as I get to that final, when I would say like, you know, everything, everything goes the final two weeks. When I come into the last two weeks, then it's like, I'm doing as much cardio as I can. I'm cutting as hard as I can health and as in a healthy way as I can, because it's my final two weeks and I just wanna shred everything off. And my body would respond because I hadn't done any intense cardio up in that point. But, you know, if I lost eight or 10 pounds in those final two weeks, you know, it would probably be almost a 50-50 ratio. 10 pounds come off. I'd probably lose five pounds of muscle and five pounds of body fat. Doing it, but that's what it would take to get all the way down to 3% body fat. But keeping it on, the two things that I'd coach clients on and then how I would manage my own diet is high protein intake of, and when I'm on a calorie-restricted diet, I'm actually avoiding doing high-intensity cardio. I think that's the mistake that a lot of people make when they're trying to shred down is they think that that's gonna get to their results faster and they will see the scale move faster by doing that. But you risk paring down muscle just as fast by doing that. Now, Justin, you have zero experience bodybuilding and dieting like that, but you have a lot of athletic experience and working with athletes. And I know in football, you typically don't have to try to drop weight, maybe some positions, but for the most part, it's not really. Yeah, for the most part, it's gaining weight. But what about other sports where people are trying to reduce? Wrestling. Yeah, because you're looking at, for wanting to keep muscle, I mean, athletes would want to do that too. If you're trying to lose weight and perform, you don't want to lose muscle because that's what helps you perform. Were there any strategies that you're aware of with athletes or was it similar to what kind of what Adam was talking about? Pretty similar to Adam. I mean, for the most part, it was really concentrating on heavy weightlifting and that was still part of the protocol, but it was manipulating carbohydrate intake for the most part and trying to lean out without bringing our protein levels up and then reducing that down significantly. It wasn't really, you can't really expect an athlete to reduce all their cardio because most of the skills training and everything is a vital component. So I would actually switch that up just a little bit and I would actually, with the athletes, we would do shorter bouts and so we would work more explosive cardio and we would do sprints and we'd do with the salt bike and we'd do little bursts as opposed to doing our long-winded endurance component to that. And for me, it was about gaining weight when I was playing football and so that was something where I wanted to gain weight but I didn't want to gain at all fat. So heavy weightlifting, but for the most part, I was working a lot more on my endurance. Well, the studies that they do on this, and I'm talking about general population now, right? So with general population, they've done studies where they have one group diet, plus cardio, one group diet plus lift weights and let's see what happens. Believe it or not, the group that loses the most muscle is the group that does cardio and diet. They actually lose more muscle than the group that just diets. Now the group that diets and lift weights either loses the least amount of muscle, loses no muscle and I've actually seen studies and this is probably because they had beginners in some of these studies, gain a little bit of muscle, which is a very, very difficult thing to do. I would gain when I was on anabox. When I'm on anabox and I was taking like a stack or something while I was going in, I could actually in a cut put on muscle while I'm also. Well, so this brings me to the most important point that I think is more important than even making sure your protein's super high, lift weights. That's the most important thing to keep that in the mix. If you're losing weight in your primary form of exercise is heavy strength training, then the odds that you're gonna lose minimal muscle are highest. That's the most important, because it's sending a signal. Your body is trying to prioritize muscle while simultaneously shedding body fat because you're in a deficit and that signal has to be effective, appropriate and loud and in my experience, unless you're super advanced and you know what you're doing, the best way to lift when you're trying to diet for general pop, low reps, long rest periods, traditional strength training. I also think there's a lot of value in scheduling a majority of your carbs and calories around your workout. So if I'm in a cut and I know I'm only consuming say 2,000 calories, that would be a really dramatic cut for me back then. I would wanna eat like a bulk of those 2,000 calories leading up to the workout and right after the workout. And that's just to fuel the workout. Yeah, the theory behind that is if I'm gonna be putting this physical demand, I was training pretty hard towards the end or heading into a show. So I know I'm training intensely. Even lifting weights, I wanna make sure I'm very well fueled because I want my body to tap into that. And again, not also pare down muscle to fuel me through a workout. So the theory is, okay, making sure that my glycogen levels are filled up. So I have that resource while I'm lifting and then right afterwards when my body's like a sponge and wanna absorb, I wanna make sure I'm loading it full nutrients. Then I don't really care if from hours, I worked out at noon, but from hours, five to eight o'clock, 10 o'clock at night, I had very little calories whatsoever because I'm not doing anything. I'm laying around, I'm watching TV, I'm sitting at home. I'm not pushing the body. And that pushing the body hard and also being calorically restricted is what that's where people end up losing muscle mass. And it's not that the body burns the muscle because you're doing that. It's just that that's the signal you're sending. You're saying like, we've got no fuel plus you're trying to push it really hard. So it's going to adapt and get efficient at that. And I don't want to do that. If I'm going to push the body, I want my body to know that it has reserve or calories or something there to utilize. So I don't send that signal. Probably one of the most important things you can do when you're losing weight, one of the most important things you can monitor is muscle mass. If you can prevent yourself from losing muscle mass while you're getting leaner, you're probably doing a lot of things right. That's a very important thing. If you just do that, the way I would do it with clients is either through body fat tests or just are you strong? How's your strength? If we're losing weight and you're losing a lot of strength, uh-oh, we're doing something wrong. But if we're maintaining strength or I see your muscle mass not going down and you lost five or 10 pounds, we're doing the right stuff.