 In this episode of Mind Pump, we answer fitness, health, and life questions from listeners like you who post these questions on our Mind Pump. Just like you, Susie, media, Instagram page under the QUA meme. So if you want us to answer one of your questions, go to Instagram, go to Mind Pump Media, ask us a question, and then we may pick it. We also talk about our lives, studies, and random things. We do that in the intro portion of the episode. So here's what this episode was all about. We opened it up by talking about the random pre-podcast supplement stack that I found in the closet. Maybe we'll reveal that someday. A lot of companies send us random supplements and stuff, and a lot of times we don't work with them, but I find the stuff and I mix it together and give it to the guys and see what happens. And boy, did we get weird, but it did remind me of how much I liked the four-sigmatic coffee. They actually make coffee now, but they infuse it with things like ashwagandha or lion's mane. That's my favorite one. The lion's mane coffee four-sigmatic was fire in my brain. Now we do have a special Mind Pump code for you if you want to check them out. Go to four-sigmatic, that's f-o-u-r-s-i-g-m-a-t-i-c dot com four slash mind pump and use the code Mind Pump at checkout. You'll get 15% off. Then we talked about Justin's chicken didn't make it. Justin's chicken did not make it, died. RIP. We talked about scary stories on Netflix and how Justin and his wife couldn't sleep that night. There's a apparently a haunted house that if you can make it through, you win 20 grand. No one's made it. That's kind of weird. We watched some crazy videos on that. Then we talked about NCI certifications. This is a company that we're working with that provides quality nutrition certifications for trainers and fitness coaches. And then this, they came out with this insane promotion. Ready for this? Anybody, anybody who goes to this website, ncisertifications.com forward slash mind pump can get a free gut health course. Look under your chair right now. So this is a whole course on gut health. It's a $600 course. It's free. So all of you, even if a thousand of you go on there, you'll get a free course. Make sure you go check that out. Then I talked about a study on how younger moms are more likely to have children with ADHD. And then we talked about the ideal age to have children. And then I talked about how Twitter is not going to be doing any political ads this coming political season. Move Twitter. Then we got to the fitness portion of the episode. First question, do macros really matter? Macros, proteins, fats and carbs are those really important to pay attention to? Next question. This person wants to know what the hierarchy is for variables that you adjust in your training reps, sets, uh, you know, the tempo, the exercise is like, which ones should you change first to get your body to continue progressing? The third question, this person wants to know how we deal with all the people in the industry who preach that their diet or workout is the best one. Um, and the final question, this one's kind of off topic, but because we consider ourselves experts in everything, we decided to answer it. Go for it. The question was, what are our tactics for keeping our wives on our side and happy tactics? Mental warfare. The way it was worded even was terrible, right? Yeah. Yeah. Also, uh, right now we're having a launch special of a new program. It's maps power lifts. So this is a workout program designed to get you super strong at the three main power lifting lifts bench, press, deadlifting squat. In fact, if you're an experienced lifter and you want to compete in a power lifting competition, this is a great program to follow. So you can enroll in it. It's 12 weeks. We'll take you from where you're at now to ready to compete. Now for those you don't want to compete. It's a phenomenal program for strength building, muscle building, metabolism boosting. I highly recommend it to people who want to take their, uh, their focus off of their body and onto their performance. So if you're body obsessed and you kind of stressed out about weighing yourself, looking in the mirror and you want to just have a three month period where you just worry about getting stronger. It's all you're doing. Yeah. Wonderful program. Now because we're launching it and we're in the beginning phases of the launch, there is a $40 off promotion. There's only two days left for this was 48 hours left as of the airing of this podcast. This promotion is going to end Sunday, November 3rd. Here's what you do to get $40 off. Go to maps power lift.com and use the code power 40 P O W E R Ford zero. No space for the discount. And by the way, you'll also get a free maps power lift T shirt. One more note. This program is not going to be going on sale again. No more this year. This entire year. So if you don't take advantage of the $40 off now, you'll have to pay full price until possibly mid next year. Again, it's maps power lift.com and use the code power 40. What did I give us? Five minutes ago, 10, 20 minutes ago, something fire. You guys feel weird. I feel about as weird as the taste out of my mouth. I know that much. I feel about as weird as your socks. Oh, you like these? These are my camping socks. I mean, they look warm. Your ankles are very covered. I have some of those. My grandma knits them for me every year for Christmas. That's weird. Your grandma knitted these for me too. Yeah. They're super cozy. You guys don't like cozy socks? I do what I'm sitting around the fire in my house at night. I spit fire. So I might as well wear them. Another one. Bing, bing. That's two in a row. I don't know. That was forced. Anyway, speaking of stuff that makes you feel interesting. Well, I see what we did is we just took a bunch of random supplements in the bag. I love how you guys just take you whatever. Wheel of supplements, dude. But dude, did you guys like the four-sigmatic coffee? Yeah. Okay. Love it. Okay, go ahead. You guys tried the one with Ashwagandha and Tulsi. Okay. Yeah. Balance is it out. Yeah. I tried the one with lion's mane. Fuego. I haven't had that one. Fire. But have you had the contrast of both? Yes. So you know what the other one's like. Yes. Back up because I always forget. Because that's a nice even. Like it kept me like really sharp for a long period of time. Yes. Back up, back up. Explain the, I always forget. I confuse all my mushrooms all the time. Explain which ones for, why, why the difference for eating. Why, why, why is one, why is one have, why is. Well, Ashwagandha and Tulsi are not mushrooms. They're just adaptogenic herbs. So this is what's cool. So four-sigmatic put Ashwagandha and Tulsi in one of, so this is actual coffee. So for the listeners listening, it's not the mushroom coffee that they make. This is actual coffee, real coffee. And I can confirm it's good. Yeah. And then they put Ashwagandha. Finally. Yeah. Adam's super picky about everything. That's the taste. In fact, I gave him a random supplement and he's like, I'll never take this again. It was garbage. Just retching. Like a big baby. Anyway, this is coffee and then Ashwagandha and Tulsi are both calming adaptogenic substances. So the caffeine with the calming effects of Ashwagandha and Tulsi means you get an even high. So it takes away what that jittery feeling that some people get from coffee. Just smooth. You just feel smooth. Similar feeling like theanine gives me. Yeah. I like theanine is one of my favorite things to take with caffeine also. Yeah. Now, lion's mane is different. That tastes like butt though by itself. What does theanine? What are you doing tasting? It's a capsule. Yeah. What are you doing tasting butt? Have you even tried that? Butt or theanine? You don't do that? No, I don't open the capsule. It's sprinkled in my mouth. On my own here. I'm on lonely island of experimentation. Jess is like, it's going to work faster if I sprinkle this to my face. Yeah. That's snorted. It tastes familiar. What is that? Lion's mane, this is statistically proven, increases BDNF, which is brain derived neurotropic factor. And there's something else it raises too. I got to look it up. It's another... Yeah, but what does that mean? These are things that are basically like... Like you're sharper? They're like miracle growth for the brain. So when I did that one, I did that one yesterday before I worked out, because I did a 5 a.m. workout with Jessica, drank that in the morning and was just, I was on fucking, I don't know what I was on. What did you guys listen to? Don't lie either. Huh? What did you listen to? What did we listen to? Oh, 90s hip-hop. 90s hip-hop. No, no, we don't listen to Inya. Oh, okay. That's how I was searching for her. No, I think she gave in, dude. In the morning? Yeah. Now she's just like, put whatever you want on. So I'm like, all right. You know why? Because she listens to the podcast. She feels bad. Feels bad? Yeah. See, we hooked you up, bro. We hooked you up by fucking Razzie about that. Now she's like, that's all right. God damn it, I feel bad. Yeah. Make my man listen to Inya. Yeah, you're being a good sport. And yeah, we just helped you. Anyway, dude, Justin, so how was your experiment with feeding your chickens, chicken nuggets that they survived? What? Did you... You did not do that. No, I didn't. No, what he's referring to is I woke up. Straight to hell for that. Hey, I wouldn't do that. I'm not turning them into cannibals, man. I'm not into that. I just bullshit you. He said his chicken died. Oh, died. So I'm teasing him right now. I walked outside. Well, first, I guess Courtney noticed that, you know, one of the chickens was just like laying, sprawled out, just like, with its eyes kind of like back. And so I went out there and I'm, you know, it totally was, was Riga Mortis had sat in everything. It was like super stiff as a board. CPR? Yeah. I figured it was because I was peeing outside, you know, I was getting a big shock there. Whoa. What? I don't know. I'm just trying to come up with theories. I have no idea what killed it. Maybe it was sick. Maybe it choked on something. I have no idea. I'm trying to play into your whole chicken fucker thing. Okay. You guys aren't with me today. It's like, I can't eat that worm. Oh my God. It's so big. Oh my God. Heart attack. Nobody got the joke. So I had to discard it and, you know, I just threw it in the trash. I mean, like any American. Is that what you do with a dead chicken? You just throw it in the trash? You don't fry it up? No. What are you going to do? I mean, we're going to have a little ceremony. It's like, I look at it as food. I mean, that's what they are. Like, they're not like pets to me. She looks at more of his pets. So I tried to kind of be cool and, you know, respectful about it and all that stuff. But like, I honestly, they're just walking around. They're like the dumbest animal, dude. Chickens are so dumb. They're super, and they're aggressive. But I love their eggs. So I was a little bit upset about that. And what was it? I wasn't going to get more eggs. Which one was this? Because you named them, right? Or the kids named them? This one was feathers, I believe. Rural original. So that one went. That's like my daughter. But the cool ones are still there. How many are you down to now? I got three now. It's crazy. Like coyotes have gotten one. Like a raccoon got one. And so now this one just sporadically just croaked. Now, is there a reason why you're not replacing them? Are you just like, we're going to run this until it's out? Yeah, I kind of had a deal with Courtney about that. I'm like, once they're gone, it's sort of like, I'm slowly going to be taking over that part of the backyard again and using it for other things. So we'll see. But like it is like, I don't know, I go back and forth a lot because I do enjoy having eggs and having that fresh egg kind of thing in the morning. So we all like benefit from it. All the kids eat like, that's one of the main things that in bacon. How many eggs do you make every day? Or do they make every day? So we have at least, sometimes we have six to, so they'll either do two eggs or sometimes they'll just do one. So every day? Yeah, every day. Oh, wow. Yeah. And are they, are the egg yolks real like gold because they eat the bugs and stuff? Yeah. Yeah. So we let them out like in midday, we'll let them out and kind of forage around. I wonder if that's why you're getting the rats? Are they coming because the chicken? 100% dude. We didn't have them before we had the chickens. They totally attracted them because of the feed. And then like, we'll throw all this scraps. Yeah, scraps of like leftover vegetables and fruit. That's exactly why you have fucking rats in. 100%, dude. That hella sucks, dude. So that's another reason why I'm like, let's get rid of these because then we'll get rid of the rats. And then the whole ecosystem is going to kind of close down and it'll get back to normal. But yeah. So I didn't even think about that. So 100% why you have those rats now. Yeah, totally. And if you go and look it up and it's very common. Yeah, like chickens, you're going to expect you're going to get rats. Damn, dude. That's crazy. So are you guys watching any scary movies right now because it's Halloween? Hell no. Yeah, dude. Of course you don't watch that. We watched a few of them. There's this, on Netflix they were doing like a series where people tell their stories and then they reenact them. And there was some like super creep. We watched two and then we had to watch like a comedy, something to decompress afterwards. That's what Jessica does. Oh my God, dude. There was some of them that were so freaky. There was one like demon that was living inside this basement that would like mimic the people and like kind of show himself. And then anyways it was like so disturbing visually. And then I forgot about it and I had great sleep. Courtney was just like grabbing me all night. She never cuddles and was just like holding me like for dear life. I'm like, what do you do? Dude, that's Jessica. We'll watch a scary movie and then she'll be like, okay, let's watch something else. I'm like, I'm sorry, babe. It's 10 o'clock. Time to go to bed. Yeah, I can't sleep though. Like no. Katrina Wonnie doesn't even like to watch like a drama or a thriller before bed. We always have to put some like. I love scary movies. Yeah, lightweight comedy. By the way, have you guys seen Schitt's Creek yet? I haven't seen it yet. No, you were talking about that yesterday. Yeah. So I've seen the title or whatever. So I always like to have a show like this. I love finding a show that has like, I think it has five seasons. So I had never seen it before. This is the neat thing about Netflix. Netflix recommends stuff and it pops up and I'm like, oh, what is this? And it's like a 20 minute, 24 minute episode. You know, they're short episodes. And it's totally silly. You know, it's not like you have to be really into it. But that's a perfect example. Like if we watch something that's really heavy, like it doesn't even have to be scary. Just a heavy movie. Katrina does not like to go to bed on that. Like we always have to watch something light or sports. So we're watching sports a lot of time before we go to bed. But if we're not watching sports, I've got to finish the night on like. See, I went to watch. The mind just keeps running. Yeah, my cousin was like, dude, you got to watch the fourth kind. I'm like fourth kind. He's like so scary. It's about alien abductions. And then they show a split screen between the actual hypnosis interview of the victims and then the reenactment. So they're showing what really happened. And then it's all I'm like, what? This is kind of interesting. Like it's showing like real people talking about their experiences and shit. So I'm watching it and I'm like, this looks, the reenactment, the supposed real video looks too good. So then I did a little research. It's like Blair Witch Project. 100%, dude. Same scam. Yeah. In the beginning of it, the beginning of it, the actress comes out. She's like, all of these stories are based on truth. You get away with it for like the first week and then it gets out. And I'm like, you can just fucking lie now. You don't even have to tell the truth. You just come out with a movie. You go all based on true stories. They're working for the news, right? Yeah. No, they're not. They're based off of true stories you made up. That's like the macro nutrients that FDA allows you for labels. Yeah. It's just a lot of room, a lot of wiggle room there. Kind of around here. There's got to be somewhat of a true story in this. When I was a kid, I used to watch Unsolved Mysteries. Do you guys remember that? Yeah. That was fucking creepy. The music that would come on and then the unsolved mysteries would appear on the screen. And it was always based off true stories. That's what would fuck me up. What was in the host? Like he was like compelled to kind of start that show because like something had happened that somebody had been abducted or taken. No, that's America's most wanted. Oh, it's America's most wanted. Where his son was kidnapped. Getting those confused. That guy, the host's son was actually kidnapped for America's most wanted. Right. That's why he did that show. That's crazy. Now Unsolved Mysteries had some weird stuff like ghosts or aliens or Bigfoot. Oh, right, right, right. I'll tell you something so funny too. I almost nothing scared me, you know, the scary movie wise or whatever or stories. But the two most random things used to freak me out and they still get me freaked out a little bit. Bigfoot stories. I don't know why they scared me. They're just weird. I always think to myself like fuck, if I'm in the woods, you know. Now, do you think that's because, I always think when you have something like that, it's because you probably saw something when you're a little kid. Like did you watch Harry and the Hendersons when you were little? Yeah, that wasn't scary. Oh, see that was scary. I was a little enough that was scary. You were scared of Harry and the Hendersons? Well, don't forget you're like fucking 20 years older than I am. I'm like, I'm three years older than you. That was really little when that came out. Okay, let's look at the Ghostbusters. Let's look at the date. Anything over 12, I'm going to make fun of you. You better be, you better have been eight. Yeah, that's right. I think so. I think it was that. I think, yeah, I'm pretty sure it was pretty young. Yeah, no, no. Bigfoot and then alien. Alien stories and shit. Freak me the fuck out. Me were just like demon and like exorcist stuff. Like that always got me. Like I just couldn't, because, and that was another one that we had watched it and it showed this lady. 87, I was six, bro. Fuck you. I guess you're right. Hell of scary, bro. You're six. You got six years old. He's got such a nice smile. Hold on a second. Hold on a second. So friendly. No, no, no. I'm going to do the math. 100% you don't watch this at the movies. Came out in 87. By the time it hit TV 1990, you're like 10, 11. No, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You watched the shit on TV. No, I guarantee we rented this movie if we did watch it in the theater. Sal's the best. Yeah, no, I saw that. No, nice try. 1987. Oh yeah, maybe 89 or seven. Maybe two years later or a year later. Six, eight. Let's get it out of here, bro. That's young. That's young enough. You know what I remember? I remember when they hit him. That was like, that was the scariest part. You're all with the car. Yeah, they hit him. And then you're trying to figure out what it is. And it doesn't even jump out when they first, because he's alive. So he comes alive later on. They put him on his roof and then they find later on he comes like a tarp over him. Yeah, bro, six years old. Hell of a scare. Well, see, because when I was younger, when I was in elementary school, we used to have like, we could go to the library and pick whatever book we wanted to read for book reports and stuff. And I was always getting the weird, like unsolved mystery books. And they had this whole series and like, one was on Bermuda Triangle. One was on the Loch Ness Monster or whatever. And I'd read all of them and just freak myself out, dude. Every single time. But the big foot in the alien ship, man. Aliens scared of shit out of me. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Oh, dude. I told you guys my scary story. That's why I like the paranormal stuff like gets to me. Oh, when you were playing the music. Yeah, dude. But you were hella stone, you said. I was. Didn't one of you guys see that time? That's the second. It had another occurrence when I was totally sober. Was it you guys or was it one of my friends that was telling me that they do like a haunted house that pays like 20 grand if you ask? So it was you? Well, no, I didn't do it. Somebody had sent me a link to this story about that. Like there was this company that had invested all this money in this haunted house and like nobody's ever gone all the way through that's done it. And you have to like sign all these waivers, have a doctor kind of sign off on your mental health. That's part of the show. Regular health. Yeah, exactly, right? But then they find out like what scares you the most and they kind of get that. And then they build it around that. And then like the whole thing is just about like... What? I have no idea like that. How do you not get through for 20 grand? Right? Yeah, even me. Can't you just like... I'll laugh it off. I'll go through some shit like that. I'll be solid. If they can't touch you, like what can they do? I don't know. What are they as scary with? Like our IRS? I guess they show you some really fucked up video first to even see if you have the ability to get through like the door of it. Wait, if you know it's not gonna kill you, right? I mean, unless they're pouring spiders on you or some shit. I feel like Sal should do it. Yeah, oh I wonder if they could do it because that would creep me out. Like if they do actual bugs and shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. Dumb a bucket of spiders on you? I would run out for that. 20 grand, not enough. Yeah, not enough. Not enough. They're going in there with a machete. That's a good thought right there. That would get me out of there. Yeah, that's cheating. I'd be so angry. You know what I mean? Make it towards the end and they throw cockroaches on you. Be like, you fuckers. You cheated. Did you guys ever see that there was like a half marathon or I don't know, it was like a run and it was called, I think it was called zombie run or something like that? That's an app. That is an app. Okay, well there was an actual run that was like this erase where you're running and you're going through a maze and it's supposed to be like a workout run or whatever and then people jump out and chase you as you're running. Well, that's the idea of the app. Is it running? Yeah, you're supposed to be running from zombies in the app. So this is like a real live role play kind of an experience, huh? Like you're literally people dressed up as monsters or zombies and they come and they chase you. Tell me I want to give you the best freaking work out of your life. You know what I mean? All adrenaline. Because you know what happens as you're running, just because you're running, your brain is already putting in your mind that you're already scared. Then something starts chasing you so you just start running a little faster. Hey, did either one of you guys get a chance to talk to Danny since he got back from NCI? Yeah, he said it was really good. He loved it. Yeah. He said it was really good. He's a picky little fuck too. He's been to all of them too. Like all the different certifications. Everything. Yeah, he'll break it down. Yeah, no. Danny has everything and he's like, you know how he is, right? There's a few things that I would do. You know what I'm saying? Like he's quick to point everything out. Loved it. Yeah, no. He said that the way that they showed you how to apply the information that you're teaching was what was crucial. Yeah. Because a big thing with personal training courses or certifications, the big problem I've always had is, okay, that's great. You learned all this great information. How do you apply it to your client? Right. How do you deal with these? What does that look like? That's where you get the value. But apparently with the courses at NCI, it's all based around that. So they'll have case studies like, you know, 39-year-old Mrs. Smith and these are her things and here's her goals. How would you design her nutrition? What are the first steps? So he also, did you know that he also took all their master courses too there? So he did the whole deal. Yeah, he did like the whole deal which is like a sponge. And I love what we're doing with Jason right now. This is probably one of my favorite companies that we're working with right now. Dude, he's giving away. I know. This is crazy to me because I actually asked him to correct this several times. For MindPump listeners, all of them, doesn't matter how many people go to the site, all of you will get a $600 gut health course for free. Yeah. Every single person. I feel like you're Oprah right now. No, I feel like he's Oprah right now. So you literally will go on the site, which is ncicertifications.com forward slash mind pump. And you'll get a course on gut health for free. And the course is normally $600. Which is, I wish they had something like this. That's a huge deal. Well, me too as a trainer. I mean, it's not just like learning about gut health. It's also how to apply that knowledge to your clients. Dude, I don't care if you're not a trainer. I would go on there. If I have, if you have gut issues, go on there and learn how to apply the knowledge on yourself. Yeah, it's free. Because, you know, gut health is a, you know, you guys know I talk about it all the time. It's a super common issue now. It's crazy. Yeah. It's going all over the place. So anyway. Yeah, no, that's awesome. Yeah. Dude, I was reading this article and I wanted to bring it up because it highlights. You know how we always talk about how you should kind of look deeper into studies and, you know, try to think of them from different angles. Because sometimes it's not what they necessarily seem to be. So there were these studies that came out that showed that younger moms, so women who have children in the younger ages, are far more likely to have children with ADHD. Really? Yes. So now at first glance, without digging deeper, right? At first glance, what do you automatically want to think? That having a child when you're young increases the odds for some reason being young, having a baby is going to be more likely to give them ADHD, right? Well, yeah. Okay, my theory would be because they're put them in front of electronics and things like that all day long to be babysitter. Maybe they're not quite as mature yet. Yeah, they're probably not as mature themselves and think about the importance of probably spending time and parenting them and so you just kind of throw them in front of things. Well, so that's part of it. That's part of my thought too is, you know, ADHD symptoms get worse according to what I've read that when kids are like that, when they're not engaged with, when they're, you know, Not playing with others. Socializing. Yeah, they're doing these kind of distracting type of things and without structure, it can make ADHD symptoms worse. But there is a very strong heritability with ADHD. They've actually shown that quite convincingly that if a parent has ADHD, their child is likely to have ADHD and it's biological. So then if you go even deeper. So is the age matter then? Well, that's what I was going to say. Okay. People with ADHD also tend to be more impulsive. Impulsivity could lead to- Having a baby early. Right. Young sex, unprotected sex. So this, as I'm reading this, I'm thinking this and in the article, they even touch on it a little bit. But you know, to the average person who doesn't really dig deep, they're going to think, Oh crap, I'm going to wait to have kids later because, and even if they're ready, because I don't want them to have- Right. The reality is the healthiest physically that you'll be to have a child is younger. But then there's also a lot of other factors, like money, maturity and that kind of stuff. But if you're, these days, if you're impulsive, the odds that you'll have unprotected sex probably go up. So then, okay, I have ADHD, impulsive, young sex. My child is more likely to have ADHD. Anyway, I just thought it was a good study to kind of break down why you want to look deeper into- Now you guys obviously, and this isn't saying that you would do anything different because I know you love your children and we wouldn't change that. But knowing where you're at in your life right now and your age, your wisdom, and then also when you had your kids, do you, would you say there, you know, there was a sweet spot of timing in your life that like, Oh, you know what? Probably having them at this age, I think would have been the most optimal for me. Boy, I think having them young was slightly an advantage actually, getting through the weathering sort of the storm of what you might be experiencing right now. Like I'm glad that's over with, dude. I'm not going to lie to you. And now like having, being more relaxed and mature and being comfortable with where we're at in life, like I feel like it too, where like I could be involved. Like the way that like, I guess now, since our business has gotten to a point now where I can be, I can coach like after we're done working or I could do some things where I'm like really more vested. Whereas before that, I was like grinding bell to bell. Right. You know, just trying to get to a place where I could like make sense of like creating space for that. So you were 29 or 30? How old were you? Yeah, I was, yeah, I was 30. I was 25. You were young. I had my son. Yeah. And you know, there's a plus, there's a, there's pluses and minuses to either. It's hard to say because obviously I would never change anything because that's why, that's why I'm trying to, but if we're being kind of like, exactly as both. Let's say I'm talking to someone else and I'm advising and they don't have kids yet. And they are, remember I was married. I had been married. I was 22 when I got married. So I'd already been married for three years. I had already owned a house. I was already, you know, we were stable, no debt, that kind of stuff. So the monetary stuff was okay. I had lots of family around that could help. Of course, maturity level not as good or you're obviously gonna be more mature the older you are. The pluses of being a younger parent are this, you have a lot more energy. Yeah. You really do as a 40 year old man now and I'm healthy and fit and all that stuff. But boy, it just seems so much more daunting because of the amount of energy that it requires because it just takes a lot of energy. And it's funny watching my parents watch because my parents had four kids and we weren't, we were rambunctious kids. We weren't quiet, easy kids. And seeing my parents now, babysit, my sister's kids and my kids. And I see my mom was just exhausted by the end of the day. And my mom was like, energize her bunny when I was a kid. She was a young mom too. She could just go on forever. So the energy thing's a big one. The other thing is, you know, as you're older as a grandparent, if you have grandchildren, you'll be a younger grandparent. You can enjoy them more. But then again, if you take care of yourself and you're fit and healthy, you should live a healthy, long life. The drawbacks are, you're not as mature. You're probably- You're more reactionary. Yeah, you're- That was very like, ah, you're in the headlights. Less secure with who you are. Right, so knowing both those sides, if you were to give just a fake number, right, to it, or to somebody, you're talking to a young teen, you're talking to your boys, okay? You're talking to your boys about getting married and having kids in the next 10 years, right? And you, what would you say? I know you wouldn't say, son, don't wait till you're this age. I know it doesn't work that way. But what do you think is a sweet spot age for each of you? I'd say early 30s. Yeah, for a man, I would say early 30s. For a woman, maybe a little earlier, because they have biological clock, although fit and healthy that can stretch out to. But I would probably say early 30s is what I would say. So this is what always made me wait as long as I did was, I used to ask that question to all of my clients. I was just curious, all of them that were successful and lots of them that had multiple kids and kids that were old and grown. And the most common thing that I heard was everybody loved their kids, was happy when they had their kids, wouldn't change anything. But they all would say like, but if I waited a few more years later, I would have been just fine with that. Nobody ever said, I wish I would have had it earlier. Nobody said that, not one. Have you talked to a parent who had kids much later? Like 45 or older? Yeah, because I had some clients. Not anybody like that. So I've had some clients like that. I've had some male clients who had second marriage and they were in their early to mid 40s when they had one man who had one client who was a guy who was 50 and had another child. And they were all like, oh boy, it's so hard with the energy and stuff. Yeah, I can imagine. 50 I would think is crazy. Yeah, 40 is probably fine. Even 40 as a man, especially if you have a little bit younger wife, I think, or you're both are really fit. And you're healthy. I mean, Katrina and I, I mean, Katrina is 39, I'm 38. And you guys are both fit and healthy. Yeah, you know, so, but that was a lot of the reason why I think I waited as long as I did was, I used to ask that, I asked that every time in my class. So curious what everybody else thought. I think at the end of the day, it's up to the individual dude because like, look at my parents, right? My parents got married when they were 19, had me when they were 20. My dad was mature. My parents were mature as fuck at 20. My dad has been working full time, okay, like 10, 12 hours a day since he was nine. You know what I mean? I've known some people. Like one of my friends was like that, like even in high school was working like two, three jobs. And then like basically graduated from high school and then just like had a kid like right after that. And he was like totally ready. Like he was, he was an old soul. Well, it's, you know, modern society is really stretched out adolescence. You today need so many more skills and be more prepared to support yourself than you did a hundred years ago. Like, you know, a hundred years ago, 17, 18 years old, you're, you've got all the skills. You've been working since you were 13, whatever. Today it's like, you know, you're not going to do very well. You need, you need to have a lot of training, a lot of experience. People live longer. But now we're kind of budding up against our physiology, right? Cause, you know, a woman's. You know, the thing that I think was most important for waiting later was, because if you, like you, Sal, if I had a kid at 25, I, you know, had my house made really good money, 401k benefits. Like I was in a very secure place in my life. I've been considered an old soul since I was younger. So pretty mature for my age. But what I hadn't worked completely through is a lot of my still deep rooted insecurities. And I think I would have allowed those to bleed into my son. For example, like a big one for me was coming from nothing. And then the early years of making money, I overcompensated because of that. I spent a lot of money. I flashed a lot of money. I paid for a lot of other people. And if I'm being completely honest with myself, what I probably would have done to my son is he would have had all the most expensive clothes, would have had all the crazy toys. And it would have been me living vicariously through him and still working through my insecurities, not knowing that I was probably setting him up for a fucking... Well, plus you weren't with Katrina at that time. It all works out, I think, exactly the way it's supposed to. I really do. And it really depends on the individual, man. I know a lot of 38-year-old, 39-year-old guys that are not ready to have kids. They should not have kids. You know what I'm saying? And then I know some in their 20s that are probably going to make phenomenal parents if they were to have kids now. But nowadays, like I said, I think it's... What's the average age of a parent has gone up quite a bit and it depends a lot, right? That was in that book, iGen. They went over the stats on that. It's continuing to get pushed out. Do you know if the stats are going down still in terms of earlier... Because for a while there with Tinder and all these other options out there, people were having a crazy amount of sex and then the number started to drop. No, kids have less sex. Yeah, less sex. And they have it later. They're more likely to get married later. They're less likely to do drugs. So you know when we talk about how kids... Crazy swing. Well, you know how we talk about like the helicopter parents and how kids are sheltered and we complain about it all the time? I wonder if the... That was the one positive thing. If the good side effect of that is, sure, we have more anxious kids that are kind of entitled, but we also have kids that do less bad shit. I don't think it has to do with that. I think it just has to do with awareness. I think a kid now, and Enzo's a great example of this, maybe I'm thinking about doing some drugs. I'm thinking about trying some cocaine out and you could easily Google worst part of cocaine or scary cocaine store. You start Googling things like that. There's no mystery there. Yeah, there's no mystery anywhere. Where back when we were kids, it just wore to the mouth and your buddy who's trying to... I tried it, it's fine. Yeah, old man. It was like, oh. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. So I think it's too much. I just think that it's the accessibility to information so quick that there kids are a little more reluctant to probably take more risk and do things like that because they... And I believe that was in the book Eigen. I think they actually asked. You don't think that has a lot to do with more parenting? No, they surveyed... In the book Eigen, they surveyed these kids and they actually asked them why that was. Why are you not having sex? Because they know divorce rates and they know they can look them up and Google what the chances of them getting divorced if they get married by the age of 20 versus the age of 25 and that keeps them from doing that. I wonder if the ease of access to porn has reduced the amount of sex. I think that has a big contributor. I do too, dude. I'm sure that has too. Yeah, because think of the numbing effect that the kind of accessibility that porn... There is with porn these days. Imagine if you were a 14, 15, 16, 17, 18-year-old today with the kind of access... He's got a cap all the way up. 14, 16, 17, 31, 32, 33. Look how excited Dan Bilzerian is to have chicks on his arm. He's just like... Yeah, he doesn't even... Like, are you serious? He's bored. He's just bored with it. I think he's so unhappy. Oh, I agree. It just looks like that. I think he's got some darkness in him. Totally. Yeah, I just see his pictures. He's posed like douchebag central with his Instagram. He's collecting some winners in his entrees these days. All the fitness douchebags are... I'm not going to name them out. Name them all. No, let's do that later. You sure don't know who they are. But you go on. It's like having parties and inviting all these fitness douches. Hey, we're all... I need some guys. Combined IQ of 50 with all three of us. I'm tired. At least I'm bringing in some guys. I think that a lot of people that live on social media and post so much like that, you have to be really empty inside. You're missing a lot of personal content. If I posted that, part of why I don't keep up with even my Instagram today is it takes away from time with Max. It takes away from time with my best friends, with my family. And it's not that I don't want to engage with my community and talk to the people that are following our business and things like that. Like that's important to me too, and I try and make time for it. But the amount of time that some of these guys spend and girls too, spend in there, you have to ask yourself like, if you're spending all that time in this internet world, like how much are you really connecting and interacting with real people that really care about you? Not somebody who's taking a picture with you because they have X amount of followers and you have X amount of followers and you're cross promoting each other. I wanted to talk about this a little bit too, because I was watching this show, it's all about design, and they're going through Instagram and the people that basically created the UI for it and like revamped it and all this kind of stuff. And there's this guy that he looked so, I guess he was, he just had this conscious about what he had done. Like he felt so guilty about the fact that before, I don't even know if anybody remembers even, as he used to scroll, he used to stop. And then it would have like a button at the bottom where you could kind of go back to the top and all this. And then he just like eliminated the whole thing and made it an endless scroll. And after that they looked at the numbers and statistics and people were wasting just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours per year as a result of that one feature that he changed. Really? Yeah, they have no influence, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So this is the thing, like the near and all, right? Great conversation, like had super solid bulletproof points, right? But that was an engineering decision that literally just took like everybody by storm and they're just like monkeys. Just... Well, speaking of social media, the whole debacle of the last election and people blaming fake ads and political ads and stuff on Facebook and Twitter, did you guys hear what Twitter did? Banned all political ads. You cannot... That's a move. You cannot pay Twitter for a political ad anymore. That's cool. Isn't that crazy? Well, I mean, I think it's interesting. It's cool. I didn't like taking the politics out for a minute. I like that you can't buy. I mean, the conversations can still be had, debates can still be had on there, which I think that's a great platform for that. That's a good point. Actually, I didn't even think of that. I wonder how many... I wonder how the political parties are going to squeeze that out. Pay for like fake bots. Have a bunch of people go on there. Yeah, you'll definitely... They'll find a way to hack into it, right? But I mean, better that than just paid, you're getting paid ads. I think that they did it to get themselves like no blame. Oh, right. You know what I'm saying? Like, hey, we don't sell them. Exactly. Now, Facebook commented on that and said, we're going to continue to sell political ads because we think that it's important to have political discourse. I think it's because Facebook makes a shit ton of money. I don't know what you're doing. We're trying to do it. We're going to get all the money. Yeah, we're going to keep it there because it's the right thing to do. Oh, really? Is that why you're doing it? Yeah. So it's going to be very interesting because this next election coming up, I think the war that's going to be waged... It's going to be weird, bro. It's going to be weird. And it's going to manipulate you. Listen to me right now. If you're listening to this podcast, okay? Here's the... This is how manipulation works. You don't know. So really stay awake. And here's... Why am I buying maps right now? It just happened. Here's one tactic. One tactic is to find a crazy statement or something for someone from the opposing side and then pretending like it's what the other side says all the time. So they'll share... Republicans will share liberals saying that you can't eat Mexican food anymore because it's appropriate and whatever. You'll be like, those damn... In reality, nobody's doing that, but they're making you think they are the same thing on the other side. So pay attention. It's going to get really freaking weird. Look out. First question is from Max Abon Jr. Do macros really matter? Absolutely. No, not at all. They definitely matter. It's important to know what is in your food, know what... So macronutrients are proteins, fats and carbs. And those three macronutrients, macro meaning big because then you have micronutrients, which are things like your vitamins and your phytonutrients and stuff like that. But each macronutrient has a specific function in the body. And two of them are essential. Okay. What that means is the two essential macronutrients are proteins and fats. And if you don't eat enough of either one of those, you'll have some pretty bad health consequences leading up to eventual death. Possibly. I mean, you could go so far as to cause your body to break down. So two of those are essential. So you at the very minimum want to know what your minimum intake or requirements are for both proteins and fats. Well, and how often did you guys, especially later in our career, when in this probably you probably became more aware of this, but how often did you assess a diet and go like, oh, wow, this is probably why you feel this way. Your fats are extremely low. Right. You know, or you're not getting enough protein. Well, no wonder we're not building any muscle. Totally, totally. And so this is where macros really do matter. Now, it's funny because it's actually, I was actually just thinking about doing a post around this. This is great that we're going in this direction. If all you cared about was losing 10 pounds on the scale, just 10 pounds on the scale, then it doesn't matter as much. The thing that matters the most is calorie restriction, is going from X amount of calories, reducing that by 500 to 1000 calories every single day, or creating more calorie expenditure, and you will lose weight. Now the problem with that and what I would see a lot with people that did this that would, and this is common when you get clients that switch from eating bad food or by bad, I mean, fast food and tons of sugar and processed foods, and then also they go to salads and chicken breast and eating like super low calorie, and then running on the treadmill, and then they lose 10 pounds. But then we test their body fat when they start, and then we test their body fat again after they've lost us 10 pounds, and you know what happens a lot of the time? They get fatter. As a percentage. Right. Their body fat goes up and you're like, well, how's that work? How's that possible? They lost 10 pounds. How could you get fatty? Like the pause like that? I was like, I was trying to wait for it. It's fat. Boom. Well, it, I mean, how many people, I mean, at least for me, this was common. Did you see that that just demoralized them? How many, I mean, I used to have clients where we would do like the hydrostatic way or body fat test, and even though I was telling them to follow something, they were still kind of doing their own thing, you know, going, doing more cardio, pushing harder, restricting calories, you know, they, they turned it into a game. Can I work harder? Can I restrict even more than what Adam's saying? And then we would remeasure a month later and they're down 10 pounds on the scale and they think they're winning and they look at the body fat percentage and it goes up and then they look at me and they're like, what the fuck? Well, how is that possible? How is that possible? If you lose 10 pounds of muscle mass but kept the same amount of fat mass on your body, that total fat mass now is a larger percentage of your overall body weight. And you don't even need to do that. All it has to be is one more pound of it. So you could actually lose four pounds of fat but you lost six pounds of muscle and your body fat percentage will go up. That's right, because it's the percentage, right? If you took the body fat of somebody who's, you know, if you took someone a 10% body fat but they weigh 120 pounds and you take their body fat and put it on someone who's got 200 pounds of lean body mass, that's, you know, they're going to be shredded because it's about percentage. So that's a very good point. The only thing you want to pay attention to is this, is besides the minimum requirements of the essential macronutrients, proteins and fats, there's also optimal amounts of especially proteins. Studies are pretty conclusive on this. If you want to maximize the muscle building effects of protein when you combine it with resistance training, you want to eat roughly 0.6 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight if you're a relatively lean individual. If you're really overweight, then you want to use your lean body mass is where you take your body fat percentage, remove the body fat from your weight. Now you have your lean body mass. Studies show this pretty consistently. Eating within this range means you're going to build more muscle which means, you know, indirectly you'll have a faster metabolism and you'll typically get better results. Protein is also more satiating. So if you eat a higher protein diet as a percentage of your overall calories, you're more likely to eat less calories. Now part of this is because protein itself is satiating. The other part of it is because oftentimes in a person's diet, protein is where they get their whole natural foods. If you look at the average person's diet and you were to just categorize their food in two categories, heavily processed and unprocessed. Most of the proteins would be the unprocessed foods. In fact, that might be the only things that they eat that are unprocessed. And unprocessed foods tend to also be quite satiating. But there's this thing about macros and calories. It's that they're important things to understand. You just don't want to get stuck obsessing about them all the time. But that doesn't mean you ignore them. You want to learn about them first. Yeah. I mean, definitely calories are your first priority in terms of being able to make sure that you're under a certain amount if my goal is to lose weight. But to bring it back to your satiating point, that was a big one for me to be able to relay to my clients in terms of being able to satiate yourself so that way you're not still eating calories. And it makes it easier, the process of being able to delay the hunger onset. And so for me to eat like that was always a better strategy than to try and just minimize the amount of calories and keep that same balance of carbohydrates that I had before. Right. A 2,000 calorie diet where the macros are not ideal means you're going to feel worse. You're going to have less energy, less strength, hungrier, maybe even worse mood versus a 2,000 calories diet where the macros are ideal for your body. You're going to feel much better. Now it's more complicated than that. But those are the two big rocks that you got to tackle first. It's calories and macros. Understand them and learn them. Then you can kind of move into a diet that's a little more relaxed. We'd have to look at those things so much. It's funny that the bodybuilding community gets a really bad rap for this, but I actually really like the way a lot of them do this. And many bodybuilders don't even pay attention to calories. They only manage macros. And what ends up happening when you- If you manage macros, if you eat your macros, you're going to eat your calories. Right. And that's all they focus on. They're not really worried if it's 20 or 30 calories north or south, that's less important to them as it is making sure that, okay, if I started off this muscle building program and I was allowing myself 300 grams of carbs, 120 grams of fat, and 200 grams of protein, that's my starting point. And if I'm trying to build, I use typically carbohydrates or fats to increase those calories. And you can interchange those if you want. If I'm trying to cut or reduce, I reduce from carbohydrates or fat and I can interchange those. And as long as I'm staying in a healthy range for my fat, I'm pretty good. And I think that learning to manage the diet that way, although it is a little more challenging for people, I think the lessons that you get from that that will carry over into long-term intuitive eating if you can eventually get there. Because I think you have to do those things first. That's the steps. If you're part of the education. Yeah, if you're ever going to get to a place of intuitive eating, I believe you have to get to a place where you're not only counting calories, you're also tracking macros. So you kind of get an understanding of what... I mean, in an example of why I think this is so important, I mean, over 10 years into my career of even counting calories and doing things, I actually had never done, I had never weighed a sweet potato until I started competing. In the past, when we started, this was well before Fat Secret, My Fitness Pow, we used to have to... I had a book called Calorie King. I remember that. And I would have to flip through it and I would look down and it would be sweet potato. One medium sweet potato. Right. It would be small, medium, or large. And I would look at a sweet potato and I've got like five of my... And I see what the large one is to me. That's the big one. And then I see what a small one is. And then, oh, this must be a medium one. So I, you know, medium. That's... It's a comparison to the three that I have at my house. This is a medium one. So I put them here. Oh my God. You know, off. When I started weighing it, I wasn't just kind of off. I was three X off. Yeah. The medium is like bigger than their large. Yeah. It's big. Exactly. And so that was such an eye-opener for me. And, you know, I... So I was guesstimating my calories off by 300 plus calories just from that one food. And that there's examples of that and all kinds of different... Remember the first time you weighed out five ounces of chicken breast? Oh, yeah. You know, you get those big old, you know, monster chicken breasts that they make that they... They're 10 ounces. Yeah. It's like a pound of chicken. You don't even realize it. And then you go, well, I need... I'm supposed to eat five. Let's see what five ounces look like. Half. Right. Or you go to a big, juicy steak at a restaurant, you know, that's like a 16-ounce steak, you know what I'm saying? Like, oh, that's probably like six or eight ounces. Yeah. So there's a lot of things that you... There's a lot of value you get in, you know, diligently tracking your macros. And I never recommend someone staying in that place to like Sal's point. I think you can become obsessive about it. I think that it could also lead to an unhealthy relationship with food. But there's a tremendous amount of value with tracking for a period of time for you to get a really good understanding. So at least you know when you go through your day, oh, I have a pretty good idea. I was eating about this much, or I'm really low on my fats, or I was really low yesterday on my fat. So today, I want to make sure that I up those. And so I think that that's important. The true takeaway is that there's a maxibon senior. All right. Next question is from Prime and Glory. Is there a hierarchy when adjusting variables in your training? Should you start with changing reps before changing tempo or weight? Would this apply to beginners and advanced lifters? Oh, this is kind of a cool question. Yeah, it's a very good question. You know, thinking about this, I would say the first thing you'd want to change, definitely not the exercise. Here's a big mistake that I made as a trainer early on. It's a big mistake I see a lot of trainers make when they design routines for their clients. As they'll say, here's your workout for this week. Here's your workout for next week. Here's the workout for the week after. Radically different exercises. And that's because you think you got to make the workout super different and weird and exciting each time to keep the person's interest. The problem with that is that the client never builds the skill around the exercises to really reap the benefits. Like for example, when the first time you learned how to do a barbell squat, a lot of that initial learning process is just learning how to do it right. Once you kind of get to the point where you feel comfortable with the squat, then you can really start to reap the benefits. Well, also I think, yeah, like a tempo would be like my first sort of, you know, variable. I'd change it for a beginner. Like that would be something like slow down. Yes, you start slow and then you start, like gradually increasing the speed with that like first and then we'll go to reps. Reps would be the next one. Reps, you know, if you're doing a workout, let's say you're following a workout for three weeks and you want to change things up to get your body to respond again, change rep ranges. Maybe you're training in the eight to 12 rep range. Try going in the three to five rep range or the 15 to 20 rep range. And stick with the same exercises. Master those exercises before you decide to switch up, you know, the movements themselves. That's usually the last thing I'd say. Now, what I want to add to that is that I 100% agree, especially when talking about beginners. When talking about an advanced lifter or how I do things personally now, because I've done all the exercises, I've done them at all different tempos at all different sets and reps. And I feel pretty comfortable doing anything and I can get right into the groove of just about every exercise because I've done it so much. I actually like to kind of manipulate all at once because then I know I get the greatest adaptation and I get the greatest change from that. You know, if you manipulate one variable, you are sending a different signal to the body. So you'll get some change from that, which is great. And that's per, and for a beginner, that some change is going to be much greater. As you get more advanced and you've done all the tempo changing, the sets, the reps and all that stuff, so many times over, that change gets smaller and smaller. But it still happens, but it's smaller and smaller. So now, like when I change something, I change everything up a lot. So a lot of times I go, okay, I'm transitioning over into a new program. I'm going to change the exercises. I'm also going to maybe go a little explosive. I'm going to change the weight. I'm obviously going to go lighter because I'm doing an explosive way of training and I'm going to train that way for a while. And then I go, okay, what is the most drastic from explosive and lightweight in these movements? Okay, maybe something that's more foundational, grinding and slow and heavy. That would be like the polar opposite. So I'm always trying to manipulate mini variables because I'm advanced. Well, that makes sense because over time, your body's going to be less responsive to these minor changes, right? In the beginning, it's going to be very risk, everything it's going to respond to. So now to kind of like piece that together and sort of like, if you were to then stack like two variables and then go to three and then go to the full spectrum of variables to shift, it makes a lot of sense if you've been in the game for a long time. And now being advanced means you've been working out for a long time and you know your body and you know how to move in a variety of different exercises. Now, most of you don't fall in this category. Most of you, radically changing your workouts, you probably want to keep it to maybe once a quarter. So I'd say every three months or so, then you can radically change the exercise. So if you're following our programs, if let's say you're following the MAPS programs, well, that's roughly four MAPS programs or five MAPS programs a year, where you start off with one program, follow it all the way through. The programs tend to change the rep ranges, we'll change some of the exercises in there, maybe sometimes the tempo. But then after three months, it's a radically new exercise. It's a new program, excuse me, radically new exercises or new program. That would be how I would design it for most people year round. But I think that the takeaway is that these are very, you don't want to get stuck in a variable sequence for too long. Getting stuck in any program where it's the same reps, same sets, same exercises, same amount of weight. If you get stuck, your body won't budge. It's just gonna, at the very least, you'll maintain, excuse me, at the very most, you'll maintain. At the least, you may actually even go back a little bit. Sometimes switching up variables is what keeps you from regressing, especially as you get older and you reach your kind of genetic limit. Sometimes you got to switch it up so you don't start sliding backwards. And the opposite is true also. You don't want to be switching it up so much that you don't give your body a chance to adapt and get good at one of the movements. So there's that sweet spot. And obviously if you fall, and I know, I know Priming Glory has, I think most of our programs. He does. And so, for you, if you've gone through all the maps programs, you're now starting to move closer to the advanced and you have more room to play with some of these things. But for most people, I would recommend that they go through all the, because we do all this for you. That's the idea of the programs is we phase them for you. We manipulate reps. We manipulate tempo. We change the complete adaptation. So you're focusing on something totally different every quarter like Sal was saying. So yeah, once you've kind of gone through all that once or twice and you've done that, like you can start playing with some things. Otherwise, we've kind of figured all that hierarchy out for you and we've implemented into the programs. Next question is from Thomas VP Graham. How do you deal with all the people in the industry when they preach to you that their diet or workout is the best one? When I hear that, I know I'm dealing with someone who has little to no experience working with a lot of everyday people. Here's the thing about fitness and nutrition. There isn't a lot of good, big, long studies done on lots and lots of people. They're just aren't and they're hard to control. If we were to do a big study on 5,000 people, we'd have to lock them up in the lab, control the factors, see what works when, and then we can start to make some general statements. It's unfortunate because it would dispel a lot of these myths right away. It would. So the best thing that we have is experience. And I know when I hear someone say, oh, you know, paleo, that's the best diet ever. It's the absolute best diet or keto or vegan or kettlebells or machines or going to failure, not going to failure. It's the best. This is the best one ever. I know I'm dealing with someone who hasn't worked with a lot of people. This took me a while to learn. I remember the first time I worked with a client who genuinely had the best performance and the best health eating a purely vegan diet. I remember the first time it happened. I had a couple of these where there was a gentleman that I trained and he was a doctor. He was very meticulous about his tracking. He wrote everything down. He did everything that I told him was kind of like the perfect client. And then he went off and did one of those Doctors Without Borders volunteer work or whatever. And he lived in this poor part of the world and all he ate was a vegan diet. And he did a lot of hiking and a lot of walking in order to get from one village to the next to perform his services or whatever. He comes back and he's like, dude, he's like, Sal, I got to tell you. I've never had so much energy in my life. I feel amazing. He goes, I think it was the diet. I think I just not eating meat. I think meat makes me feel not so energetic. Now here I am a personal trainer. This is probably seven years into my career. And I'm like, yeah, meat's got a lot of nutrients. For most people, it's the best thing. At this point, I hadn't really settled into the individual variants. I had kind of developed some dogmatic views on certain things. We experimented. And sure enough, it worked best with him. I couldn't argue it. I've encountered a couple other people that way. Now I've encountered people who are like that with carnivore. I've worked with people who have a reaction to almost any other food. So they eat just meat, no shit, and they feel best and perform the best. So when I hear someone saying they have the best answer, this is it, I know that they don't know much. You just haven't worked with a lot of people because you can't make that statement about. There's general truths, definitely. So there's definitely some crazy shit that's out there that won't work for anybody. But boy, when you consider, for example, the human metabolism, it's one of the most complex things that we've ever identified in the universe. And when you add to that your microbiome, which is very unique to you, your emotional experiences with food, your cultural experiences, how you were raised, your how you react to certain things, context, all that stuff. When you throw that all into the mix, boy, how you respond to food is going to be very different from person to person with so much biodiversity. It's not only that, when you understand that your body is an adaptation machine, that whatever was best for you 10 years ago may not be best for you today. That's right, we're not the same person. So even if that statement is true, that this is the best workout and the best diet, and somebody followed it and they're like, yes, this is true, this was the best diet and the best workout, it might be, for that moment in your life, and I would challenge you that in five years from now, that's not true. How much is the diet that works so well for you at 25, would it work for you today at 40? No, it wouldn't. The way you were training, the programming that you did when you first started and you saw your first gains in muscle, did it work for you? Fuck yeah, it did. Would it work for you still today? Probably not. So when you understand that the body is constantly trying to overcome and adapt and get good at whatever you throw at it, then even if it is the best thing right now, it probably won't be from later on from now. So to say things like that is just naive to me. So I just chuckle when I hear that. It's super naive, but it's super common. Everybody has the best answer. And even the workouts that we create, we wrote our workouts to work best for most people, but I know that there's going to be some of you that they're not going to be the best workouts for you. Not a lot of you. We base our workouts based off of all the clients that we've worked with over the last 20 years. And so we generally know what's going to work best for most people. But you'll never hear us make the statement, this is the best for everyone. Yeah, and even then we're trying to consider all the different avatars of people we've come across. And so there's still room for a very specific direction that they can go with their training program that we haven't even scratched the surface of yet. And it's the same, that's what's so frustrating about diets. Because if you think about it, they have to sell it that way. They have to sell to get your attention that this is the answer that you've been waiting for. Even if it doesn't specifically apply to you, maybe one out of a couple thousand people it does, now they got you in the system. It's like this net they're casting out and they're trying to get you. I'll give you a great example. I think resistance training, if you had to compare it to any other form of exercise in the context of modern life and you only had to pick one form of exercise because you had limited time, like most people, I think resistance training for most people would be the best, absolute best form of exercise. Now, why do I say most people and not all? Well, let's say Mrs. Smith is listening right now and she's like, I got 60 minutes or 90 minutes a week to work out. Sal said resistance training. Hey, what do you guys swear, though? Yeah, resistance training. Sal said resistance training is the best, but I really fucking hate lifting weights. My gosh, I hate it. I can't stand it. Every time I do it, I just wish I wasn't doing it. Guess what's not the best form of exercise? It could be physiologically the best form of exercise for her, but she hates it so much, she ain't gonna do it. So it's not the best form of exercise for you, Mrs. Smith. We need to do, we need to pick something that you're gonna actually do. So that's just one example. There's so many different factors that it's so silly for somebody to make statement like, this is it, this is the best for everybody. Totally wrong. When you hear that, you know you're dealing with someone who is either full of shit and they know it or they're full of shit and they don't know it. Either way, they're both full of shit. Next question is from Neal Robert Curran. What are your tactics for keeping your wife on your side, such as keeping communication smooth and avoiding arguments? Having my wife angry is a main stressor for me. Who picked this question? Justin, he like asked me if you should put it up. And I'm like, yeah, let's talk about this. It's fair. My wife doesn't listen anyway. I'm like, Scott Free. You spike her drinks, right? That's how you do it. I do, I do. How do you do it? How do you do it, guy? Let's hear it. No, to keep the peace, I mean, there's lots of like mental warfare you gotta play. There's lots of strategies you gotta apply and you gotta be constantly looking like you're doing things. That's what I've found that out. They really hate it when you're sitting down and enjoying yourself. They're like, no, this cannot happen on my watch. So you just gotta, oh, wait, I'm too busy. Yeah, yeah, I'm like knitting or I'm doing something. I'll just grab something. Shopping wood. I'll tie the kid's shoes real quick just to make sure. You know what I hear when I hear this question? It sounds like a guy that is a poor listener. I mean, to be honest, it sounds like a, you know what I mean? Like, hey, what do I do? My wife's always pissed off. I'm like, well, maybe she's mad for a reason. I mean, maybe talk to her. You might be dealing with a crazy person. Sure, but you might be, it might be your fault. You know, maybe why she's saying, I'll tell you, what's a big one that I learned not that long ago. This is a common, apparently this is a common problem among a lot of people, but especially men. When somebody, when your wife or your girlfriend comes to you with a problem, an issue. She's complaining about something at work or she feels bad about a certain thing. Your job, it's not your job to fix it unless they ask you to. Did you, do you remember Whiteman Kent Jump? Yeah. Dude, remember that scene? I forgot. Remember that scene where she throws the water in his face? Yes. And she's like, I don't want you to get me a glass of water. And he's like, what the fuck? You said you're thirsty. I didn't ask you, I didn't ask you to solve my problem for me. He's like, so confused. I don't get this. No, this explains everything right there. Dude, this is a big one. So I'm reading this book by Dr. John Gottman, his brilliant researcher on relationships. Actually, probably one of the only researchers on relationships you should pay attention to because not only did he follow couples for decades, but his studies and his conclusions have been duplicated several times. The thing about studies on relationships and psychology, very few of them are ever duplicated. So it's hard to trust any of them. His have been duplicated by different people several times. So there's definitely some truths in there. And one of the things that he communicates is, don't, you don't need to fix anything. If your wife comes to you and is like complaining about something about the kids or whatever, just be like, man, you're right, that really does suck. Like empathize. Like, yeah, I can see how you feel that way. Like that really sucks. I would feel the same way. And it's like a way off your shoulder. Yeah. Like you start doing this. You know, I was, you know, with Jessica, like we'll have these conversations and I'm always trying to fix, which just causes fights. Then I tried doing some of this where I'm like, yeah, that does, you know, cause she'll come to me and be like, I don't know, she'll say. It really is the most common thing. Cause you do want to get in there and be like, well, this is how I would handle it. And then you kind of coach them on it. Yeah. Bad move. Yeah. She'll be like, oh, I, you know, I've got a headache. This she'll come up to me. For example, here's a column. I'm like, she's like, oh, I got, I got a really bad headache. And I'll be like, well, maybe, maybe you should need, you know, chocolate past eight o'clock or maybe, maybe it's this thing that you're doing. And it's just causes a fight. Instead I'll be like, fuck, that sucks that your head hurts again. And then we're done. You're like, well, I don't got to fix anything. This is great. You know, it's really a bit. It's a, it's a real common one. So the, the ninja move that I was going to give you was just practice not giving your advice and your opinion until it's asked. That's the same one. That's like, like literally like she comes to you and she's venting or she's telling you the problem she has or she's upset at you. This is that agree and ask questions. Agree and ask questions. Agree and ask questions. Why honey? Or how do you feel that? What makes you feel that way? Oh really? And just keep prodding and asking questions and just listening until you get the, well, what do you think or what should I do? If you don't hear what do you, what do you think or what should I do? Don't fucking tell her what you think and don't tell her what she should do. And literally that hack in itself will save you so many fights. And then the other thing that has helped us like tremendously in our relationship is actually just carving out time every single day. I guess this is what happens when you get older. I'd never thought that this would be something that I have to prioritize. But going for a walk after we have dinner has just always been an incredible hack for our relationship. We both have busy lives and a busy day and lots of stuff going on and that could be that we're dealing with or whatever and it could not even have anything to do with her but I'm frustrated with work stuff or other stuff. And if I don't get a really non-distracted conversation one-on-one with her, sometimes that will bleed into something she is doing or to Justin's point, what he is not doing. Like don't allow that to happen. Make time for yourselves where you don't have kids around, TV's not on, your phone's not in front of you and you're just you and her. And it doesn't have to be a long time. 20 to 40 minutes, carve it out. I recommend walking. We're a fitness podcast. We talk about health. There's lots of benefits to just moving and walking. Go for a walk with her on a daily basis. And just how was your day, hun? And be there to listen and ask questions. Compliments go a long way. This is another one I've heard. Soda flowers, right? Massages work really well but don't expect, don't do massage, thinking you're gonna have sex. No, no, no. They know that trick. Every guy does that. Yeah, they know that trick. Hey, you want a massage, honey? Start massaging the glues. Unless you're dating my girls. Sex seems to solve a lot of our problems. I'll tell you what, don't and what not to do. Don't blame her problems on her mood. That does not go over well. You sure you're not just in a bad mood? That's terrible. Doesn't work really well at all. That'll backfire. Terrible. Anyway, with that, go to mindpumpfree.com and download our guides. They're all absolutely free. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin, Adam at Mind Pump Adam, and me at Mind Pump Sal.