 Hello everyone, welcome to Mind Pump. In the first half of the show, we talk about one simple thing you can do today to improve muscle growth, fat loss, and your overall health. We also talk about a popular muscle building supplement that can actually improve your memory. There's no debate, there's no debate anywhere. In the second half of the show, we coach three live callers on questions such as, my energy crashes after eating carbs, what can I do to prevent this? I want to lose body fat, should I do more cardio? And I'm lifting weights, but I'm not dropping body fat. What's going on? Finally, do you need a little fitness information snack every once in a while? Hey, let's say you're taking a little break at work and you need to get like five minutes of fitness information in. What we have here back over at Mind Pump Cliffs, go over there and subscribe. All right, enjoy the show. There's literally one thing you can do that will significantly impact in a positive way, muscle growth, strength, recovery, and fat loss. Steroids. Not that. It's one thing only. One other thing. And that is to improve your sleep quality and even sleep a little bit more. Just doing that alone, most of the time, will get your results moving in a positive direction. So if I sleep a lot, I'll look like Arnold. Not exactly. No, you know what's interesting about this is for the vast majority of people, most of us have suboptimal sleep or we have some days where they're great, maybe not so great other times. And we're really good at, humans are really good at operating at suboptimal sleep. And once you get used to it, you tend to think, I'm okay. But literally, I used to do this with clients. If I just focus on their sleep and had them do a sleep routine, had them really schedule that they're going to sleep for eight and a half hours, make sure that, and we'll get into this, make sure that on the weekends, they keep the same schedule so they don't get jet lagged on Monday and we'll talk about that. You would see fat loss start to happen, libido start to go up, strength start to go up. I mean, it's such a, it sounds so simple that I think a lot of people just discredit it because it's like, ah, sleep, what's the big deal? I feel okay. But no, it makes a huge difference. And you have to change anything else, just that. You know what's interesting is there's like a saying like abs are made in the kitchen. Yeah. You know, why isn't there like a muscles are made, you know, in the bedroom? Yeah. In the bedroom or at night or asleep. I don't know. You guys come up with something. There's no catchy phrase for that, but it really is like that's where all the magic happens. Obviously you're going to stimulate it throughout the day and, you know, put the work in, but your body needs, you know, all of the, the active building materials and everything. And then the proper amount of recovery is really what takes you to that place you want to go. Okay. That's true. Would you stand behind an argument like this that building a good sleep, sleep routine and or even utilizing good sleep aids that help you get a better night's rest could result in more muscle than even something as, as, as powerful and as well studied as something like creatine. Yeah. For your muscle building goals. Yeah. Okay. So poor sleep. Let's go in the opposite direction, right? So a profound effect on your hormones, on your anabolic hormone studies will show that like one or two nights of poor sleep and men would dramatically lower testosterone cortisol goes through the roof and both men and women. You see this imbalance of estrogen and progesterone growth hormone is thrown off. So just the hormones alone you, you start to see problems memory deficiencies happen with one night of poor sleep insanity happens with, I think like three or four nights of no sleep. There's a ton of studies on this where you actually start to like a, like a large percentage of people actually start to become insane. It's such a powerful thing. First off, this, this gives you a hint as to how essential sleep is evolution hasn't figured out how to get rid of it. And you might think, well, why would evolution want to do that? Well, think about it for eight hours a night. You're doing nothing. You're not gathering food. You're not building shelter. You're not hunting or protecting yourself vulnerable as can be. You become unconscious. If sleep wasn't one of the most important things ever, evolution would have figured out a way to keep us from not sleeping. But almost every creature that I think that we know of sleeps in some way shape or another. It's extremely important. And lack of sleep has been shown to change behaviors. So lack of sleep increases cravings for certain foods, changes, influences our impulsivity. And a lot of people think, well, yeah, that's if I get like really terrible sleep, but it could be like, you know, ideal might be eight hours of sleeping. You get seven every single night or six and a half. This is actually where people tend to fall about six and a half hours of good sleep. And I know what people do is they look at the time they go to bed and then they count the hours from there. That's actually really what you want to do is count the time you fall asleep. And then when you wake up and it's usually takes people about 10 to 15 minutes to really start to fall asleep. So you want to add that in there. And I tell people to aim for eight and a half hours of sleep because then we tend to fall back to about seven hours and 45 minutes or eight hours. Now here's the other one. This one's a huge one that I didn't figure out till later. I don't remember where I heard this, but this, I don't remember who it was that said this, but they said, you know, it's funny. People go to bed at, let's say 10 o'clock every night and then Friday night comes around and they're like, oh, I'll sleep in Saturday. So I'll go to bed at midnight and then I'll go to bed again, you know, one o'clock in the morning, Saturday night, cause I'll sleep in on Sunday. And then Monday comes around. They got to wake up early for work. Everybody feels like dog crap. And it's because you literally created jet lag. Jet lag, yeah. It's the same exact process, right? You've, you've changed your circadian rhythm and that takes like a couple of days to adjust and you're doing that to yourself every single week. So like one massive, powerful hack is to go to bed and wake at the same time every single day, even on the weekend. It's like diet. It's like everybody's good Monday through Friday with their diet and Saturday, Sunday screw up and they can't figure out why they can't burn body fat. Same thing with sleep. No, I asked the question about the comparing creatine to like sleep aid type of supplements because today we have a commercial for Ned and I know that they just recently created another sleep aid product and Mellow has been like life changing for me as far as my ability to fall asleep and then get better quality sleep. Do you know, I haven't tried the product out. So I don't know anything about it. Like I just know it's part of their sleep, their sleep category. Again, I think I saw that it has magnesium in it, which that excites me because I think that was obviously what was so, so powerful for me and Mellow that made such a difference. So it's got that and in conjunction with some other herbs and stuff. Yeah, it's up there. So, okay. So here's what, so just on that note. So I gave my parents Mellow and I had them try it and they, my mom texted me this morning, she's like, do you have more of that? Like your dad and I are getting some of the best sleep we've had in a long time. So Mellow is phenomenal. The difference between Ned's Mellow and their new product called Shadai Chai is that the Shadai Chai also has Ashwagandha chamomile. It's got a dandelion root. It's got the theanine, but so does Mellow and it's got the magnesium, but so does Mellow. So what they've added to this were these kind of natural adaptogenic compounds known to help relax the body. Now, these are different than like taking something that makes you drowsy or, you know, kind of in like melatonin or something like that. These compounds have adaptogenic properties. They actually help the body deal with stress. They're not themselves. Like you can have chamomile and ashwagandha earlier in the day. It's not going to make you fall asleep, but through using them on a relatively consistent basis, it does improve your body's ability to deal with stress. So that's why it's called an adaptogenic and it improves sleep through that process. So it's, it's like Mellow, but then they've put these other things in it to make it even more, I guess, long term effective. Now, pardon my ignorance, but in terms of chai, is chai specifically a spice or is it a combination of a bunch of spices? Oh, I don't know. That's a good question. Maybe Doug knows. I don't know. How do you not know that? I mean, I know what chai tea is. It is a combination of spices and that's what they've put in here like cardamom, cinnamon, clove, that type of thing. So, but I don't know the exact, you know, ingredients that typically go into chai. I like the taste. Yeah. Cause I was talking, actually, I got a chance to talk with the guys from Ned at our Christmas party quite a bit. And what's cool about what they do is they really want to get like a hands-on with any of these products to usually go wherever like the source or the root of it is. So they actually went to India. They went to India? Yeah. That's cool. Is it Hassam or I forget the region of India, but they traveled all the way there and like, he was telling me all these crazy stories about who they met and like what kind of spices they tried through that whole process, but it was like a very hands-on experience that they had with it. And then we're able to source, you know, what they really liked. That's cool. So here's some answers for you. Oh, thanks, Doug. So chai is actually the Hindi word for tea. So there you go. Okay. But typically the traditional way is to take black tea, mix it with strong spices like cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, ginger, black peppercorns. Now, doesn't tea normally naturally come with caffeine too? Depends on the type of tea. So I'm assuming this doesn't because that would make a lot of sense to have caffeine. No, that would be terrible. We put caffeine in our sleep form though. Yeah. I thought most chai is actually naturally had caffeine in it. If the black tea has caffeine, green tea has caffeine, but like, like, I would say it's more chai spices that they've put in there. There's no tea that I can see in this. You know, I'll tell you what, it's what's interesting about this is, and I ignored this forever as a kid. So I, you guys know, I dived into like muscle building, you know, methodologies and I dived into like how the old-time strongman worked out and how did people, what did they say to do back before, you know, even anabolic steroids existed and supplements existed. And they always said a few different things, all of them. They all said, eat lots of, like eat lots of meat and eggs. And they talked about drinking milk and heavy cream. They talked about training the full body three days a week, not beating yourself up. They would say things like leave some in the tank for, not in the tank, but they use different verbiage, but basically allow yourself to be able to work out hard again a couple of days later. And then this is what they always, always said to prioritize restful sleep every single night. Which one of those things do you think I ignored as a kid? Oh yeah. Totally, but they all said it every single one. You read any book, any, any publication from the late 1800s, early 1900s, and by the way, these strong men or these strength athletes had feats of strength that would blow anybody away. Like if you, like a one arm bent press with 300 pounds, like that's at barbell, above, like above your head with one arm 300 pounds, like insane feats of strength. They looked incredible and they all emphasized like good night's sleep, good night's sleep, good night's sleep. What do you think it is that that keeps us, I mean, we've known it for forever. And it's not like even when I became a trainer, like I didn't hear that. It wasn't like it was a new science that, oh, we get great sleep and it makes a huge difference. Why do we tend to ignore that if it's that powerful, that beneficial towards our results and goal? Why is it never even making anybody's top five list of what they focus on? There's a few different reasons. This is actually- So productivity driven. Well, it's not, yes. And there's a few different reasons. It's really interesting when you look into this. When electricity was invented, so before electricity was invented, the sun went down, it was dark and you used candlelight. But if you've ever had a house lit up by candles, it's kind of dark and it does make you sleepy. People used to sleep a lot more. They also were much more physically exhausted. So people were ready to go to bed at nine o'clock. Now we're so physically inactive today that you get this kind of wired, you know, kind of wired, tired energy. And if you've ever been on a computer all day long and it's time to go to bed and notice you can't sleep, that's kind of what's happening. They got more sunlight, so we get less sunlight. And we have more ways to fill the time. Back in those days, when it was dark outside and you had candlelight, like what are you gonna do? You're gonna go work, you're gonna go, well, you're not gonna really do anything. So I guess you could read a book by candlelight. You ever try to read a book by candlelight? You're gonna be asleep in 20 minutes. Now you got TV, you got your phone. In fact, with like tablets and phones and computers, sleep has gotten worse, not better because people are keeping themselves up. So you combine all those things together and it's like we're just like walking zombies, you know? Like I do this to my kids. I see my son will complain about not being able to sleep even though he hasn't been doing anything all day long. I'm like, oh, it's because you haven't seen the sun. So you're like a vampire and you're not physically. So I'll take him on a hike, have him move, go outside, and then I'll be like, how did you sleep last night? Oh, I slept really good. Yes, it's that weird combination. So like wired energy that you don't express. And then that kind of just, it's this low level kind of stress you just carry with you and it goes with you into the next day and then the next day after that. And it's interesting to me. And two, like in terms of like your immune system, like, you know how it is when you're run down, right? It's like, you're just susceptible. Yeah. And so there's just all these effects of like not being fully recovered that, you know, our body and then not getting sunlight on top of that. It's like, we're just working against our body right now. I see a huge difference. It's one of the worst feelings is to feel mentally exhausted, but not physically exhausted. It is like a recipe for the worst sleep ever. I've many times have felt where, you know, especially when we do these things where we talk a lot, where we talk for five, six hours in a day, like I've got a headache. I feel so... And we're in here with the electric electric lamp. But I haven't done anything really physical. And so my body is not that exhausted, but my mind is. And so then you lay there and you're so restless, and then you get this awful sleep, even though you feel like you should be... So uncomfortable. Oh, it's the worst. I know a huge difference. And then just simply getting a good workout earlier in the day and getting outside for just a small period of time, makes a tremendous difference. So think of it this way. Today, you have to go out of your way. You have to plan to be active in modern times. This wasn't the case not that long ago. Couple generations back, you know, if I told my great-great-grandfather, yeah, I go lift heavy things and put them down. And he's like, well, what are you building? Well, I just do that for myself. He'd be like, this is so weird. Why are people doing this? Because that's what I do for work, right? Are you mental? Yeah. So you have to plan physical activity. You have to plan to not overeat. This also didn't exist not that long ago. And sleep was not something you had to plan to have be good in the past because it just happened. It got dark. Like try this out. For anybody who's listening to me, try this out. Do something really physical all day long. Then when you come home and it gets dark, don't turn on your lights and use candles and tell me your ass isn't going to be asleep by 9 p.m. It just naturally happens. So my point with all of this is, you have to plan to have good sleep. That means you should have a sleep routine. So maybe two hours before bed, you dim the lights. Or so what I have, I have Himalayan salt lamps. I have these little night lights and salt lamps. And we dim everything. And so it's just kind of nice and dark and glowy in the house. That makes a huge difference. Or where blue light blockers is another alternative. I don't eat right before bed. I wait at least an hour and a half or two hours before. And then I'll use supplements or things to help like things with magnesium and theanine, which help calm the brain, help calm the mind. And if you do that on a consistent basis, I promise you, you'll notice brand new gains in your body strong. In fact, do this for two days. And I bet many people will hit close to PRs in the gym. It just makes a huge difference. All right, here's the giveaway for today's episode. Maps Aesthetic. This is a bodybuilding inspired workout program. And here's how you can enter to win. Make sure you leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Also subscribe to this channel and then turn on notifications. Do all those things. And if we like your comment and declare you the winner, we'll let you know in the comment section. We're not going to let you know any other way in the comment section that you want free access to Maps Aesthetic. We also got a sale going on right now. Check this out. It's the at home holiday bundle. Okay, so it's maps anywhere, maps suspension, maps prime, and the no BS six pack formula altogether in a bundle. This would normally retail for over $330. But right now with the special bundle, you get all of them, all of them for one price, $99.99, that's for all of them. So $99.99 and you get all of them for that one low rate. It's pretty awesome. It's only happening this month. If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below to get set up. All right, here comes the show. Talking about sleeping, you just reminded me of something that I'm struggling with right now with my son. And I may be afraid that I overcompensated a tiny bit in a direction here. And I'm not sure yet what I'm supposed to do. So I've talked on the podcast many times about Max and his environment with Katrina and I and that he's never seen yelling and fighting and just, he's got this unbelievably sweet and sensitive personality. And it's powerful how I can just slightly change the tone in my voice and just, it will freeze him in his tracks. And last night, he, you know, so we have the Nannik Cam and it alerts us when he moves or whatever like that. And we now don't, we don't, you know, lock his door. We, in fact, we leave it cracked a little bit. He likes it to where he can see a little bit of light coming in and that's kind of how we leave him. And we go to bed. And a lot of times we go to bed and he's still awake, but he's, he knows that he's supposed to stay in there and he'll normally stay in there, toss around a little bit and fall asleep. Well, Katrina and I are downstairs and we're watching TV, sitting by the fire and stuff. And she goes, oh, he's up. And I'm like, is he up up or like out? She's like, yeah, he's out of the room. And I, so I go running over to meet him before he gets, he's walking from his room. He's like, like, you know, sleep walking almost. And I hear him, daddy, mommy. And he's walking. And I, he's coming towards the stairs. I'm hitting the bottom stairs and I'm like stomping intentionally up the stairs so he can hear me coming. Maximus, you get in bed. I say that and he, oh, and he turns around and like starts crying, crawls back in his bed, covers himself up and I hear him. What a shitty dad. I'm just like. That's the worst feeling, isn't it? It is. That's the worst. And I know, like, I did it intentionally because I wanted him to hear me be stern, that, hey, it's bedtime, you know. And I don't normally get stern like that with him. But just that was enough to like make him cry. He had a bad dream or something. And the cry. He just wanted you to hug him. No, there's a difference. By the way, as in parents, I know probably can, I mean, at least I know, I'm sure you guys would agree that I can, I can actually tell a difference in the whining cry if it's like fear. Yeah, sure. Right. So I know when it's like trying to get out of bed and just want to make excuses. You shenanigans or if it's real. Yeah. Or versus like I really had a nightmare and I'm scared I could hear it in the cry. That's the toughest thing about parenting. It's when you do something and then afterwards you feel like just bad. Like, what did I do? Why did I do that? But so what you're saying is like, I know I made it so like calm. Yes. Even the slightest. So like, I know, I know that's right. Right. I know that that has to be a healthier, better environment, right? Then chaos and screaming and yelling around my kid. I know that. But have I taken it so far and so extreme that he's that sensitive to like a little bit of a time? I don't know. And so this as a dad now, I tend to do this where there's things that I set that I go, okay, I'm going to be this type of father or I want to be this type of parent or I want to work on these things. And I'm wise enough to know that I will, these things that are very, very important to me, I'm probably going to overcompensate a little bit, probably too much on a lot of things. For example, that's what's nice about having a partner who doesn't always agree on how you want to do things. It was up to me. Max would have two toys. You know what I'm saying? That's it type of thing. So I would throw everything else away. Probably not a good idea to do that. It would probably traumatize him if I threw all his toys. One of the calculator here. Fear Chanel. That's your first toy. So thank God for Katrina to balance me out a little bit that way because I would probably go too far. Does he have, do you have him hang out with a lot of cousins and friends and have other, okay, well there, you know, you see that. Yeah, I mean, he does. Here's the thing too that sometimes kids have a natural disposition and Max definitely is a lover. He's the sweetest, he's such a, Aurelius the same way. Just this loving little kid. Then my brother, my brother has a son and he's also a lover, but he's also, he's a spitting image of my brother. And he is, this kid will climb and jump. He has no idea of peril. He sees no peril. He'll jump off the top of the stairs. He doesn't care. He's fearless. Totally. Just doesn't even realize it. Whereas Aurelius, I mean, he could be 13 years old. I'll say don't get out of your crib and he won't. Just stay in there. Yeah. So I think there's that also, but I know what you mean, dude. I don't know. It's such a weird, like, what do you do? It's a dance. Yeah, I know it too. Like just the difference between both of my boys, it's substantial in the way that I present my own voice and carry my voice with them. So you do that. So if you're disciplining Ethan versus Everett, you'll bring a different tone even to each one of them. Oh, you will. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah, because yeah, much like Max, like Ethan has a little more of a sensitive kind of way about him. So I have overthrottled and I've learned with him that, like for a desired outcome, it's really what we're looking at here is like how they're their behavior shifts. And I don't really have to do a lot. I just have to, I have to abruptly, like I have to get it right away. Like so I like to interrupt that train of thought. And so if it's just kind of like a quick, like, hey, you know, and I'll catch him in the moment and in the act or just in his like back talking or something, you know, it's like a boop. Hey, like I'm paying attention. He's like, oh, like it's it. But with Everett, I have to like sometimes like because you gotta shake him up a little bit more. Yeah, yeah, it just becomes like a bit more of a spiraling. Like I'm, he's already very self deprecating and very like, you know, like punishing himself. I have to break his thought process a little more aggressively and bring my tone a little more like, I'm glad you said that because a lot of people, some people say you got to treat all your kids the same. I don't think that's true at all. Your kids are going to be different and some you need to push and some like my daughter, she's so ambitious. She's so insanely ambitious that if she misses the mark, I don't talk to her about missing the mark. In fact, I do the like, oh, it's okay. You tried your hardest or whatever. Whereas with my oldest, he gets away with kind of skating. Sometimes he's a really sharp kid. And the conversations with him might be a little different. Like, no, no, no, you got to push yourself and not applying yourself as much. I can't treat them the same because they're different. Are there people that actually think that that you should? Really? Yeah, people say that. That's so funny because I think that, you know, obviously being a parent is a leadership role and leadership when you have a team of people. What a great example you just gave. Yes, exactly. And you, you, you cannot. You're not going to manage a team exactly. No, no, absolutely not. I mean, there, I mean, we've, I think we've mentioned this before, you know, like Justin's a classic example because we've been together for so long. Like you can't, uh, there's no reason to come down hard if there's something that he fucked up or did something wrong because nobody is harder on him than himself. So coming at that angle is only going to backfire by, by treating him that way. Then you have other people on the staff where I've got to kind of wake up that way or else they'll procrastinate on it or they'll put on the, they'll get distracted or they only, and they need to be shook up a little bit like, Hey, this is important. This is an issue. And, and they're, they don't take it the same way. Right? So I, yeah, I don't think that, I think that's crazy if someone thinks that you've got the personalities. Now, what I wanted to know, Justin, is that did you, um, did it evolve that way? Or do you even think that your parenting style was different with Ethan early on and that formed him into that way? And so now you have to be different than the way you were ever. Or do you think it's like that was in their DNA? I think it was there the whole time. I think that I, um, I think I read it wrong initially. And, uh, just because of my own, uh, what was modeled to me from my father in, um, the stern kind of like energy and the, uh, authoritative kind of presence. And so I've, I've had to like check myself if that's really the, the right tool to apply. And it, it, it took a few mistakes really to, to, to form the way that I handle it now, uh, to alter that. So I, I have like tried to alter and be flexible and change, uh, based off of like, like I spun him out a few times because I, like I came in too hot, you know? And like it didn't, um, it didn't produce, you know, obviously what I wanted. Was he, was he able to communicate that back to you? Or did you piece together by the way he react? Like you're like, oh, shit, that was young. I mean, he probably doesn't even know. Yeah. You saw it, right? Yeah, totally. Yeah. It was really just reading his reaction for the most part. And then now they're better at communicating with me. Like this is how you made me feel. Cause like I'll come in and I'll discuss it later, uh, in terms of like the rhyme and the reason why, you know, if, if I am coming in hot, like I always want them to know, like there's a reason why I did that. And it's not just like I'm reacting to something. You know what's something that my, uh, mom did when I was a kid that was so powerful was that she, I don't remember exactly what she did. This is how powerful it was. I don't remember what she did. I remember her apology afterwards. Right. Where she literally sat me down. You know how powerful it is to have your parent sit down and say, didn't we just talk to a live caller or a, was it someone at the live event about this? Maybe. We're talking, and I was talking, the lady was talking about something that she did. And I'm like, dude, the best thing is to just, Jen Cohen. Oh, it was Jen. It was Jen's interview. We talked about this. So that'll come out, right? So you guys will hear that. We talked about that in there. Yeah. I remember my mom literally she apologized like, Hey, I, I totally reacted wrong. I was whatever. And I remember as a kid, like it was so powerful to me to do that. And I think that's important to show your kids that you're, you're, you're, uh, what's the word? I don't know, advanced enough, mature enough, smart enough. You're modeling to them. And you also make mistakes too. Yeah. Of course. But also like, like if they see that you, because kids aren't stupid, they're going to know like, oh, my dad made a mistake, whatever, but they won't even admit to it. Well, now they're going to model that, right? Versus being self-aware enough to, because we all mess up, man. I mean, there's, I mean, God, there's, there's a few things I remember with my older kids that just still taught me. I remember one time my son wouldn't finish his eggs and he had this habit of not finishing his breakfast and I sat there and made him eat it. And as he left the table and walked upstairs, he threw up. He was sick. Oh my God. And do you know how big it was? I feel like a tyrant. You're like, oh man, like the biggest. I've done the same. Oh, like the biggest jerk of all time. Aurelius recently, you know, his mom, because we, we have the baby now, right? So we have the infant and Aurelius is two. So he's a toddler and he's adjusting to the fact that mom and dad now also have to take care of this infant. So he's kind of, he didn't have to get all the attention like he was getting before. And he was really acting up. He'd jump on Jessica when she's holding the baby, this whole thing. So she, you know, I, she didn't snap on him, but she got, you know, she said some stuff and got upset with him. Well, he left and he came back to her and he goes, and he does the sign, you know, for sorry. And he goes, I'm sorry, mama. And she was like, oh my God, she was destroyed. And she's like, listen, I'm sorry. Mama got mad and upset. I said, you know, I spoke to you in a way that I didn't want to, you know, I love you. I mean, he's only two, but oh. I was going to ask you if he's, if he's going through, because that's super common, especially with like a toddler with a new, a new baby in the family is the intentionally acting out because they're losing the attention that they used to get because they were all of the attention. Are you seeing that happen right now? What it looks like is he, he wants. So what I, what I, what we, what we're consciously doing to offset that is we include him in helping in everything that we do so that he doesn't feel like his baby sister is taking anything away, but rather he is now a part of taking care of his baby sister as well. So he gets the diaper, gets the wipes, you know, you know, kisses her. Hey, mama's feeding the baby. Can you, you know, rub her leg or whatever. So he's a part of it, but also with chores. He's even more involved now with chores, which it's great. Sometimes it sucks. Like last night I'm trying to eat my steak and he's like, but I want to help you cut. Help you cut. So I got to like, he puts his hand on my hand. Every freaking bite, he's got to help me cut my meat. It is a little bit of a double-edged sword because I've been, I've done this also. There's times when you're like in a hurry and you need to get something done and then he wants to help. Bro, everything I do, 30 more minutes than I expected. Anything, washing the dishes, cooking, doing laundry, sweeping. He's got to help. So I was like, oh great. Here we go. It's going to be, you know, one out of 10 minutes. What a beautiful, what a beautiful lessons though, lessons for ourselves, right? Just to be patient, to take time, that everything we're always in a hurry for. It's like, okay, you know, maybe I do need to just slow down. Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rather than acting out, you know what he does is he tries to act sweet and cute, which just makes me feel worse. You know, like he's not getting attention and you'll make this cute face and, you know, buh-bye and hug me and I'm like, oh, you just want my attention, buddy. It's funny. I even wrote on here a little bit. It's somewhat related, but like, so ever it's latest things, he's really, really honing in on my mannerisms. And initially I was like dying laughing because it's like, you know, okay, you got me. You know, because I'm very much that way with them. Like I pick up on when they're frustrated or when they have like certain like, certain sayings that they do, like I'll use it against them to make jokes, you know, and I'll make fun. And so they're starting to kind of figure out how to like make fun of my laugh and like how to do it. And so- Are they hitting that line of like, oh, that's enough now. Yeah, exactly. So like, you know, they got me when I like, I do s, you know, noises when I'm like laughing or like also I'm gonna laugh like a hyena. And so anyways, so I, he'll like bust that out now when I'm like frustrated or like I'm, I'm not like, I'm like, buddy, I'm not in the mood, you know. Buddy, I'm not in the mood. Oh, you keep doing it all. I'm like, I'm about to slap you. And it takes like, I'm like seriously boiling at this point. Courtney looks over me like, all right, I'm just gonna go outside. I'm gonna go outside, you know, but then they're like pushing and pushing and pushing these days, man. I've had those conversations because you got to show them where the line is. And I've had those conversations. Yeah, I feel like, I feel like Dometico would be a little bit of a smart ass and push that line. He does. He's got that wit too. Well, now he's older, so he kind of figured it out. But there was a period there where he would go a little too far. And then I sat him down. I'm like, listen, I'm your dad. So at the end of the day, you got to show me respect. So I'm cool, but I'm not that cool. So you got to stop. You got to know when you stop. Exactly, yeah. You know, when we start doing that, that's hilarious. Does Breanna get you? Does she get you like that? Not really. Yeah. Because I don't get her. You know, so we kind of have this thing where we just, you know, don't play that game. Yeah, you give her a lot of space and latitude, I feel. Yeah, my brother, oh man, he used to give me such a hard time about everything. Which is probably why you don't at all. And to his own kids, I think at times. And I always felt like I didn't like it. I don't think they like it. So I don't want to model that for her. Yeah, there's definitely a fine line, right? But between like, we're having fun and then you make them insecure or whatever about something you're making fun of, you know what I mean? Yeah. So I could see that for sure. Right now, Max, this is so cool. You know, we talk a lot about the negative sides of technology and being wary about, you know, how much screen time and stuff like that and 100%. Now there are some things that I think are really cool that we just couldn't, we didn't have this option. So Max is finally, he's at this age now where, you know, he knows who his friends are and they play and they do stuff. So this new thing that we can do with him now is we allow him to do, you know, FaceTime, you know, once a week or so with like one of his like friends, like my best friend's son, Hunter, who is like a year older than he is. So he's four and the Max is three and they FaceTime play together. It's the funniest thing. Wait, wait, wait, that's so adorable. Oh, it's the cutest thing I've ever seen. Like they're playing. So he'll prop it up against the love sack on the iPad and we'll call him. So we'll first call his mom and be like, Hey, is Hunter playing? Oh, yeah, yeah, they can call. And we'll let him talk. And they sit there have, you know, full on, he gets his transformers and his, you know, Pokemons out and they're showing each other like, Oh, this is the new Charmander. And like it's what's funny is that Hunter is a year ahead of him. So his conversational skills are ahead and Max isn't quite there. But what I find so fascinating is that, you know, Hunter still loves communicating with him. And I feel like, dang, that's crazy that Max can't even say half the stuff he can say. But yet they're in their own little world like playing and showing each other all their toys. And like, yeah, we'll let them do it for like a half hour where they're just sitting there going back and forth. Wow. It's cool to, it's really cool to watch. Aurelius has his relationship with his Nana, which is Jessica's mom is almost entirely through FaceTime. And he has a relationship with her. They get on the FaceTime. They talk to hang out. So when she comes to visit, he runs right to her, recognize her. It's not like she's like a person that he's like a stranger. We've been able to do this with all of our family now. It's become something that Katrina is incorporated with like my mom, who we don't see a lot. And even her mom, who we do see a lot, loves to see him anytime he's got something new or did something new. And we prop the iPad up and then they sit there and engage and talk and play with it. And I'm like, yeah, that's pretty cool. You know, that's something that we did not have access to. And for me to be able to allow him to still have that interaction with them virtually is a pretty cool thing. Dude, this is just reminding me of something. So I texted this group thread that I'm in this morning. Getting over here to work out was a bit of a nightmare. My two-year-old woke up Hala early for some reason. He was waking up Hala early. Jessica's nursing the baby. I got to get him. I'm trying to feed him. He doesn't want me to leave. He's crying. Jessica hasn't got her coffee yet without her coffee. She can't function. So I'm getting her coffee. This is going to tell us stuff. And so I sent to this group thread, hey, like, oh my god, getting out of the house with a toddler and an infant is like a nightmare. And then one of my buddies was like, yeah, I got a two-year-old in my dog. And it's really, you know, really hard. And I hate it when people compare pets to kids. You ever have people tell you that? Oh, I got three dogs. I know what it's like. No, you don't. All the time. You don't know what it's like. You don't know what you don't know. Pets, you love your pets. It's all good. And not to say it's kids. Stop saying that. Listen, you could just leave them in the house and then leave. Okay. Not all pets. Can you do that? Oh, yeah. Well, there's a lot of them you can. Okay. If you train them or you put them in a cage, you don't do that to kids. Sorry. No, there's, there's not close. You don't put your kids down when they're really sick. No, there's different levels. I know in the defense of the pet people, right? So we don't hammer all all pet parents, right? Is Katrina and I have not had. You did not give birth to your pets. So I'm calling parents. No, no, no, no, no. So they, it's a thing now. That's how it happens. So we, we have not had a dog for the first time in 12 years now. And it's, it's been what, two months since Mazi's passed. And I have to say there, there is a lot less stress because it's, it's one of the hardest. It's very easy. We have enough family and friends that if Katrina and I want a date night, if we want to go somewhere, everybody will raise their hand to take Max. Nobody has days, but nobody wants to take your fucking bulldog. So nobody wants to watch your bulldog. Nobody wants to drive to your house and do this and that. So it actually, in, in their defense, I actually find it easier as far as so when we leave and do stuff is actually someone to help us with Max and to help with our pets. Listen, pets, pets definitely a lot of work. You definitely care about them. That's part of the reason why it's challenging. But I hate when people come. No, they're not even, they're not even the same universe. That's just the guy. I'm a pet guy and a kid guy now. And it's like, they're not even the same universe, but I have said to Katrina, you know, it's been nice. We've been able to stay out late. And we don't have to hurry home. We was like, oh shit, Masi's been in the house all day. And like, if we don't get home soon, either you're going to chew something up or piss in the house. And so we would find ourselves rushing home, you know. I gotta tell you guys, talking about kids and all, you know, all work and challenges, I did this tweet and actually got some controversy underneath it, which is kind of cool because that hasn't happened yet. But now I got some comments underneath. And, and this is the tweet that I said, I love you guys' opinion on this. I said, a hard, busy and challenging life is better than a boring, easy life lacking any challenge. That's the secret. Easy isn't better. Boring isn't better. Not being forced to grow isn't better. It's torture and it's devoid of meaning. Don't fall for that lie. And so I actually had people on there kind of trying to debate me and this and that about, you know, oh no, easy's good and this and that. And what do you guys think about that? Yeah, I've always, I don't know, I guess that's always been sort of my mantra is just because of the value I've seen from approaching challenging hard things, the other side of that is just so much more fulfilling. And I think that, I don't know, we can justify a lot in our own mind with the way that we do, we carry ourselves the way that we, like, so I could see how people would just want to be comfortable and just want to be safe and just, you know, I just want to live the easy life and to relax. And I mean, I'm sure you could kind of get in that mentality, but for me personally, I've always been much more drawn to something that's going to take me out of my comfort zone, it's going to force me to grow, it's going to bring me to a new level I've never seen in myself. And I don't know, I guess there's not a lot of, not everybody shares that, I guess. It's interesting how a life filled with challenges and struggle naturally creates purpose. When you don't have that, searching and finding purpose sometimes can be really difficult for people. I had the opportunity to hang out with a friend of mine, it's a little bit older than we are, like he's in his late 40s getting ready to turn 50 and comes from a lot of money. Like he's tremendous, his family had tremendous success. He inherited a lot of it and he did good things with it, like he didn't squander, he reinvested. And I mean, the dude has got everything. I mean, he's got all the toys, can travel over the place, rental properties all over the country, on a whim, could pretty much do anything he wants. And we actually were having a conversation around a similar topic and he made the comment of that, I wish I had more adversity. And I think that's so interesting that, and this is someone who's obviously later and they're now almost 50, they've gone through having all kinds of stuff and toys and play and travel, and yet they aren't seeking more things or more stuff they want, they were seeking adversity and challenge. And so, I mean, I also think it speaks to what we talked about with the whole Spartan and obstacle racing, how there's something in us that I think we want that war or that struggle or that challenge so much to the point that here we are paying to go beat ourselves up for three or four hours and climb through the mud and in the cold and it's kind of fascinating, but I think it's in our DNA that we need it. It 100% is. There's a reason why anxiety and depression is continuing to go up. It's continuing to go up when we are objectively, objectively life is far easier. We have more access to food and shelter and wealth and things work as far less demanding physically. It's not dangerous. We live in very peaceful times. Life is actually incredibly safe and yet we're more depressed and anxious than ever. Now I know what people say, well, that's because we diagnose it more. Look, just look at the last 20 years. Just the last 20 years, we continue to see this explosion and it's because we make things, we, and by the way, I don't want to confuse people and say that efficiency isn't good. Efficiency is great. It's the challenge that I'm talking about. The lie is that a life devoid of challenge is better than a life that is full of challenge. That's false. That's 100% false. A life devoid of challenge ultimately leads to hedonism because you're constantly searching to figure something out. And this is why you see these great, these, you know, celebrities that get addicted to drugs and commit suicide when they have all this access to everything. And also too, it just, when you're in that kind of mentality of trying to remove yourself of challenges and create this sort of like easy going, you know, like safe kind of space, when you are actually then presented which inevitably you will be challenged again. You just can't avoid that in life. You're going to have challenges just thrown at you. It becomes substantially greater because you don't have that kind of resilience. You don't have that muscle of overcoming these challenges. So it becomes all the more detrimental. Look, I saw my dad get challenged with this. He retired because his body was just beat up and broken. Dude, you know how common this thing is that you're about to say now? I know. It's like super common. So he worked very, very hard since he was a child. Very poor, very poor, worked his butt off and worked for years and years and years and years. Started developing lots of just physical issues like arthritis in his spine, all sort of stuff. So eventually he had to retire. He retired early and then he went through a long period of depression. When I remember when he was working so hard, he said, oh, I can't wait till I don't have to do this anymore. Well, he didn't have anything to replace it. So he went from that to nothing. Now I'm at home all day long. Now what he's had to do is find ways to volunteer his time to go out and do things where he finds some purpose in his life. But you see this in retirees, people who say, oh, I want to retire and drink my ties on the beach. No, no, that actually will get old real quick. And you'll find yourself in a very, very bad place. You have to find challenge. In fact, growth doesn't happen unless you're uncomfortable. People are like, oh, I grow. No, you don't. You really don't really grow unless you're very uncomfortable. Otherwise it doesn't, it's not going to happen. And I think another thing that I've found that I've always associated like, you know, this crazy sort of painful process to it in terms of my mentality as I'm struggling. It's like, oh, I'm going to like bear through this and like, I don't have to have that mentality while I'm struggling. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like I can, I can enjoy it and I can reframe it and I can like actually like, oh, get excited about it because I know that I'm going to do better. I'm going to grow more as a human being on the other end of this. And so why not enjoy, you know, the process of instead of like dread it? Bro, it's the difference between challenge struggle and suffering. You don't have to suffer. Through it, which is very different. So I'm glad you said that because I think a lot of people think suffering is what I'm talking about. Yeah, they associate that a lot. Yeah, no, not the same thing. Anyway, I got to bring up a very interesting, I say interesting study because these studies come out and they crack me up because all those quote unquote old wives tales, they come back and they start to get proven right. So I remember being this dickhead, right? So my mom would say to me, oh, put a jacket on. It's cold outside, you're going to get sick or, you know, don't go outside with wet hair in the winter because you're going to get sick or whatever. And I, you know, know it all, you know, teenage sal would be like, mom, that's not how the body gets sick. It comes from viruses and bacteria that doesn't have to do with anything. And this is what you would read in the medical textbooks and whatever. And I, you know, Mr. Smartass. So my mom was like, no, no, no. If you get cold, you get sick. No, don't, whatever. Anyway, old wives tale, it's baloney. Actually, new study came out showing that cold air dramatically reduces the immune cells in the, in the nose and in the throat that can fight bacteria and viruses. So being in the first line of defense, being in the cold, this is, they think now why illnesses increase dramatically in the winter is cause your immune system does get affected. So my question would be then, is then if I do a good job of training in extreme cold temperatures like the cold plunge, does it make me probably more resilient? You probably are teaching your body to adapt. 100%. I don't think that. And I think a hundred, because if your immune cells are getting affected, because it's really the change, if you look at the winter, when is the cold and flu season? It's when the, when the, when it changes, not when you're deep into it, right? Cause I'm sure you set a abrupt change. Yes. So I think a hundred percent. I think if you go throughout the year, you know, getting your body cold, like a cold plunge that you're probably going to get your body to adapt. So it doesn't get that, that, you know, that reduction in immune ability when the winter comes. So cool is that. No, it's super cool. All right. More studies. Another study on creatine came out. It improves memory. Why are we still doing studies on creatine? There's no debate. There's no debate anywhere, anymore that it, how, how effective it is. Yet we're still studying it like crazy. Can we just replace, you know, your multivitamin with creatine? Well, I mean, they're going to put creatine in all the time. I think that's for sure. I mean, you called that a long time ago that we would see that in basic health products. It's going to be everywhere. Here's the conclusion. This was a huge, I mean, you were talking about, actually you starting to give it to your kids even now. I do. I give it to my kids now every single day. So this is a huge meta analysis. And it says the conclusion, creatine supplementation, enhanced measures of memory performance and healthy individuals, especially in older adults, 66 to 76 years old. So if you're older, or you're listening right now and you have relatively healthy, you know, grandparents or whatever, the reason why I say that is, of course, if there's any organ issues, kidney issues, liver issues, then you might want to check with your doctor to take anything. But otherwise, they would be amazing candidates for supplementing with creatine and would notice just profound benefits across the board, including improvements in your memory. Well, that's sort of the last straw for me because that's been the biggest focus going forward is anything and everything I can do for memory recall and for just improving brain cognition. I'm like, all in, like if I'm in a supplement, you know, it's probably going to be more in that direction. Have you, have you felt- You just forget to take it? I just forget. I haven't started yet, obviously. You know we got creatine in there, by the way, in the closet? We do? Yeah, bro, I keep, come on, you know, I take everything. You always take it. I have everything in there. You can take whatever is in there. All right, I'll just go check everything in there. All right, another interesting study. Damn, dude, a hell of a study study. I got a great study. You got something for a commercial seed or what? Oh yeah, we'll get, we'll mention seed in a second. Damn, you got a hell of a study. No, check this out. This is out of the University of Leeds. Here's the summary. Increasing intake of protein is a way women could reduce their risk of suffering, a hip fracture, according to new research. Food scientists have found that for women, a 25 gram a day increase in protein was associated with, on average, a 14% reduction in their risk of hip fracture. Is that just by itself without even strength training? By itself. Oh yeah, well imagine if you add strength training to that. Oh yeah, you add strength training, you're, I mean, that's massive reduction. Reinforcing it, yeah. Yeah, but I think what's happening is because women tend to under eat protein that that increase in protein did lead to a little bit of muscle gain, which then always leads to a strengthening of the bones. I mean, we had a call today and I just, I'm glad we took that. It's been a while since I think we had that conversation. I just think that is the most common client that I used to get was the lady who called in. Where are she from? I don't remember what's- South Dakota. South Dakota, that's right. They called from South Dakota. I take rating. That you're in this place of trying to lose body fat and get better shape and you really truly feel like you're making good food choices, you're keeping your calories low like 14, 15 or less in her case and doing really good. You're consistently lifting weights three times a week and you're just not seeing the body change. And a lot of times, or if not almost all the time, it was, you know, they were grossly under consuming protein consistently. And it's like you, you were sending the signal to build muscle, but in this low calorie, low, almost, you know, almost less than 50% of your, you know, requirements of protein, you're not going to build. You're not going to speed. And the idea of that messaging that we talk about lifting weights to get strong and eating at, I mean, in order for you to build that muscle to speed that metabolism, you've got to give it the building blocks in order to do it. It's going to be really hard. Otherwise, what you're mostly doing is just burning calories. Trying to build muscle on a low protein diet is quite challenging. I've had clients like that. For other reasons. And they will build muscle. They will get stronger in comparison when they don't lift weights, because that's the contrast. But it is profoundly different when they increase their protein intake. It is like the difference between low protein and adequate protein or optimal protein for building muscle is the difference between not lifting weights and lifting weights. That's how big of a difference it makes in people. All right. One more study. And this is a controversial one. You ready? We're going to get people who are going to totally message us about this, but I didn't make the study. This was from MIT. Some people would say some of the smartest people in the world come out of MIT. Here's the summary. You ready for this? This is the controversy. A new study confirms that the planet harbors a stabilizing feedback mechanism that acts over hundreds of thousands of years to keep global temperatures within a steady habitual or habitable, excuse me, range. So in other words, the Earth's climate has undergone some big changes from global volcanism to planet cooling ice ages and dramatic shifts and solar radiation. And yet life for the last 3.7 billion years has kept on beating. So it has a natural way to regulate this. Yeah. So this is MIT? MIT. Now, how much pushback is this getting in? Or how much does it even be talked about? I haven't heard this. The people that counter the climate change alarmists have been talking about this. And of course, the climate change alarmists, and I say alarmists, not climate change scientists. There's alarmists and there's people that talk about climate change that they're pushing back, of course, because a lot of people need to realize this, by the way, this is a heavily politicized issue, meaning on either side you have special interests that will take a narrative and run with it. Well, and it's increasing based off of what you've seen in the news from people like gluing themselves to walls, stopping traffic, like throwing tomato sauce on like priceless pieces of art. It's like, it's very much of a movement that is escalating right now. Yeah. My argument with the whole thing is that life on earth has been built on industry. We are a petroleum-based, I guess, species, right? So if you look at the discovery of oil and its use and all of its uses, because it's not just in making cars drive and stuff like that. It's used in lots of medications, lots of textile, lots of different things, that it really is connected to our growth and how we survive and all that stuff that if you're talking about replacing that, you have to talk about the loss of life that that switch is going to make. You have to have an alternative that it's like saving the pl- You know, okay, we're going to reduce pollution, but in the meantime, we're going to kill all these people already on the brink who just came out of poverty in countries in the world that are very susceptible. So this is the balancing conversation that needs to happen. And it's usually not that way. It's either like super extreme over here, super extreme over here, like over here, eliminate all oil. There's lots of talking points, right? There's never a shortage of talking points of like plans and solutions, but, you know, I just pay attention to the actual, okay, so what are the actual actionable steps and who's actually innovating in that direction versus just talking hot air? Yep. And what are the actual facts I mean, that's important, right? Like, because it is an emotional thing that drives people. Like, nobody likes to see pollution and nobody likes to think that we're just ruining our planet. So before getting emotionally struck by that, I always like to just kind of pull back and see, well, where actually could we center our focus to be most productive? Well, what makes me laugh is that when people say, oh, it's the, the, you know, the big bankers and all these, you know, they know, they know what's going to happen. It's like, well, why are they giving out 30 year loans on like coastal properties? Like, you know, big banks would not be doing that if they thought they were going to lose their, you know, these properties or whatever. So you said it already, that it's been politicized. I mean, it's, I feel like you can't even, you can't even quite, much like when, when the vaccine was going around. Like you couldn't even question the efficacy of it or what we knew about it or didn't know about it because then you were an anti-vaxxer. It's like, basically I can't ask questions or be curious about. You're going to put me way over here? Yeah. I also don't have to go in the, that's how I feel about climate change. It's like, if you say like, well, you know, I think that we're going to innovate and, you know, we don't know and there was a time when it was warming and then it was cooling and then we've seen it kind of go back and forth. Like now all of a sudden you're, you're a denier of climate change. It's like, no, wait a second. I didn't say I'm denying climate change. It's a fact. It changes all the time. We don't recognize it's warming up. Yes. And there's changes. And we may be playing a role. The question is, what are the best solutions that are not going to result in also another loss of life? And is it as the, are there alarmists just doing that? Are they using fear to get people to act? Of course there is. They're always, they're all on both sides. Right. Always. It's going to be that way. So it's, so funny to me when people get played into, you know, taking a hard stance on each one of these sides. It's like, dude, you're just a pawn right now like on the political side. Totally. When they're scaring the shed of you, that's when, you know, there's something they're trying to say. I'm always alarmed when people use fear as their, their main driver of information. Right. Yeah. How many times have you heard this? This is the most important election in history. I've heard that every year. Calm down. It's always the most. Everyone calm down. I know. All right. So let's talk about seed. We're supposed to mention one of our sponsors seed. You know what's funny about, so seed is a, a probiotic. And what makes it unique is the capsule that it comes in ensures that the, the actual bacteria stays alive and moves through the digestive system and gets where it's supposed to. And this is why it's so damn, one of the main reasons why it's so damn effective besides the, the strains of bacteria it use. But anyway, have you guys had, had any family members try seed yet? Because I've had my sister has a great Cassie does religiously. Okay. Oh, so she's got cut issues. Yeah. No, she's a long, she's in line with you. Like she's had the opportunity to try so many different. Because she's had lots of good brands. And it was you who said, like, stand alone. This is the best. Cause I think she was on, she would was consistently using another brand. I don't remember what the brand was that made her hop over to seed. And now she swears by seed. Yeah. Everybody I've had try it is like, I've never had a probiotic be as consistently good as this one. Like literally, if I take it, my gut is going to be okay. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Courtney had, I think, you know, I told you, she had Hashimoto's and had had to change in her diet, like real substantially. And, and while she was going through elimination and then kind of repopulated, like she was using seed and that really helped. So I know, I probably don't use it the best the way I can. But I do, what I am good about is if it's like a Friday night and Katrina and I are ordering five guys and I know I'm going to have something that I know is going to mess my gut up. And I proactively take it. It definitely mitigates the feelings that I get after eating that food that would normally tear me up. So I, and I'm bad about consistently doing it every day. Like I get on a streak for a while and then I'm, and then I like anything with the supplements. I'm, I'm not like you. I'm not consistent with taking them every single day like that, as I should be. But I have gotten trained at least that I know like, okay, if we're ordering this, this burger, some fast food like this that I know is going to upset my stomach. If I at least take this before, I know it makes a dramatic difference on my digestive process. It feels way better on me than had I not done that. Excellent. So do you guys have any pages you want to shout out? I know we've been doing that. I do if you don't. Yeah. Go for it. Yeah. So I, and you know, remind me too, this is a, when does this go live, Doug? On Tuesday. Let's see. So this will miss. Okay. So this will miss the most recent one I did, but you know, I've been getting tons of feedback on the conversations that I've been having with Chris Nagibi with the higher standard podcast. So he's become a good friend of mine. He's a banker, lawyer, and a real estate broker. And we do these, you know, once every two or so weeks, we'll get on my Instagram and we'll do a live story. We have a conversation around the Fed and the real estate markets and investing. And so if you're not giving him a follow already, I think he's a great fall. He, he was inspired by mine pump years ago. He's been a long time listener of mine pump. And our whole model of disrupting the health and fitness space and calling out a lot of the Charlotte tens and providing really good, non-biased fitness information is what inspired him to do it in the financial markets. And he's the one who's made me more privy to a lot of these social media people that are famous for giving you financial advice as much of their advice is biased to their courses, their masterminds. And he doesn't do any of that. He doesn't sell anything like that. He's got, he's very successful in what he does. And this is more of a passion project for him. So he is, he's led with this, this similar type of, you know, presentation with his space as like we did. And I think that his, his content is awesome. So Chris Nagibi, is it? I'll spell his last name. It's N-A-G-H-I-B-I. So it's Chris and then his last name, Nagibi. And I mean, it's, you introduced me to him and he's, he presents it very easy, very smart, very non-biased. Yeah. And his podcast is cool. They have a, they have a podcast called Hire Standard podcast. It is one of the ones that and all in are probably the two most popular podcasts that I follow consistently. Hey, check this out. Do you want to go on a vacation but also experience fitness hacks, bio hacks? Would you like to use red light therapy? Have an oeler cool you off or warm you up when you go to bed? Use cold dip, sauna, a great gym, and also be surrounded by beautiful nature. Check this out. We have a property that we decked out with all of these incredible things, only the way that mine pump can. Okay. You won't find this anywhere. And we're renting it out. So if you're interested in getting the mine pump experience in Utah, what's this town? Is it near Park City? Right? Near Park City is a great place to go. Email us at rentalsatminepumpmedia.com. All right, here comes the rest of the show. Our first caller is Steve from Ohio. Steve, what's happening, man? How can I help you? Hey, so how's it going? How's the baby, man? Oh, thanks for asking. Wonderful. Baby's doing great. Thanks. That's awesome, Adam. How's Max doing after his procedure a couple months in now? Yeah, yeah. No, he's doing great, man. It's been a world of a difference having him feeling good. Like that almost year there where we were sick, damn near every week was rough. So we've got a fun phase right now. Three years old is pretty cool. That's rough, man. I'm an empty nester, so I don't know how you guys do it. Having young ones. We're all about the same age. Oh, wow. Your kid's already out, huh? Yeah, but yeah. Yeah, I got the boy he just got out of the army. He's actually expecting here in March. So I'm about to be a grandpa. And here you guys are with newborns. Congratulations. Yeah, shit's wild, man. So I guess, like my email said, I feel best when I'm on a cut probably less than 100 grams of carbs a day. But my workouts definitely struggle as far as just strength and intensity levels and stuff like that. So I guess I didn't really notice it until I went on my first cut and I was in phase two of anabolic and about the same time I had lab work done with Dr. Cabral. And then everything just kind of clicked and made sense. I guess I didn't realize I was crashing until after I got my lab results. So they labeled me as a fast oxidizer and everything just kind of made sense. So I guess, I guess I'm looking on, I'm looking for your opinion on should I bump up fats to take care of the caloric desifit because I cut carbs or what would you do? Good question. Okay. So explain the crash. What do you mean by that? You eat a meal with carbohydrates. How long afterwards do you feel like you want to fall asleep? All quick man, like 45 minutes. Okay. So I'm similar to what you're talking about. So first off, you can bump fats to make up the difference with calories and you can build muscle on a lower carbohydrate diet. You will notice some performance drops from the lack of carbohydrates but you could do pretty well with a relatively low carbohydrate diet that's higher on proteins and higher on fats. But let's say you want to bump the carbs but you're like, man, I crash. What am I going to do? Well, here's what you do. You eat your carbs at night. Eat your carbs at night before bed. This is what I do. So throughout the day, I may eat around 75 to 100 grams of carbohydrates. And then a dinner time is when I have a larger carbohydrate meal and it works out perfectly because then I go to bed and I sleep like a baby and studies actually show that eating carbohydrates an hour or two before bed actually does contribute to better sleep for a lot of people. So unless it causes digestive issues in which case the advice will be different. But if that's not the case then you can bump your carbs by having a carbohydrate meal about an hour or two before bed. That actually makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I love that. There's not much I can add to that too. And he does have I see it says on his notes that he has zero digestive issues. So the fact that you don't, I mean loading up before bed and then that way and then I think you'll feel a difference in your workouts. I actually think that totally. You'll have better workouts because you did carb load. You just did it at the back. So back loading carbs is what that is, right? So and I've played with this before and I'm not quite like you and Sal in the situation. I actually feel the difference when I'm low carb going to workout. So I find that I have to have about 75 to 100 grams before I lift to get to really feel the benefits from them. So for me, I have to be a little bit higher carb but this is great advice. I think just to switch them over towards the evening and I think you'll feel a difference alone from that. Yeah. I'll eat a good 100 grams of carbohydrates or more with dinner. And so what it typically looks like is I'll have my main dinner meal and then I'll get up and help get the kids ready or whatever. Start doing the dishes a little bit and about 3045 minutes later then I'll start having some fruit and that'll typically add another 20 30 grams of carbohydrates. And then I'm winding down. By this point, it's like maybe 745 8 p.m. I put the baby down. I put Aralea's down. And I don't go to bed till about 930 or so. So then my wife and I hang out a little bit. I feel myself, my energy start to come down. I start to get nice and sleepy. And I sleep like a champion. And if you watch how I eat during the day, especially while I'm podcasting, I don't have more than like 35 grams of carbohydrates really throughout the day. It's not till later when I don't mind my energy dropping. So I would say give that a shot. Now, have you also, have you played I'm assuming you might have already tried this. But I noticed a difference on the types of carbohydrates and how I feel like that too. Right. So totally. I will feel sluggish and sleepy if I have things like bread or pasta like that. Like you described 45 minutes. But if I do have things like fruit or sweet potato, those things don't seem to make me crash like that. Have you noticed that? Are you like that? Or what's it like for you? It's kind of intermittent. And it's weird because I don't necessarily crash all the time. It's just it's different every freaking time. So but I do well with fruits and and rice and potatoes. But it just and it's not even a very long crash. Like I might just crash for it's a roller coaster. It's just up and down all day. I might crash for 20 or 30 minutes and then it's over with. And then I feel fine. You know what you might want to try what might actually bring you some value is a CGM. Yeah. I knew you were going to say that. Yeah, because I do it. Yeah, because you could see then what is giving you these insulin spikes and crashes. Because I look when we work with nutricents and they have they work with CGMs and with nutritionists. And when I would look at my chart, the big spikes and drops 100% is when I get those crashes. When I would eat carbohydrates that tend to not do that to me, then I would feel much better. And so I identified for me which carbohydrates tend to make sugar does it for me. So if I eat like anything that's like processed sugar, I'll do it. And definitely gluten containing carbohydrates will do it for me. But if I eat like white rice and I combine it with protein and the fat, not an issue. If I have oatmeal and let's say the carbohydrates are no higher than let's say 40 grams, then it tends to not be an issue for me. And then fruit, whole fruit, not fruit juice, whole fruit tends to not be an issue. But it's going to be different from person to person. Yeah, I think I think there's tremendous value in at least where like I don't still wear my cg but I think the wearing it for a little while just to see those and just the how individualized it's so fast. It's fascinating at the least to see and maybe you can start to create some correlations between how you're feeling and what types of foods you're eating. Are you a coffee drinker as well? Do you do caffeine in the morning? Man, I definitely have a caffeine problem. Okay. Not necessarily the coffee so much, but yeah, I'm probably around a thousand milligrams. Oh, yeah. That's your crash, bro. Yeah, I was going to say that's usually what I noticed. I mean, you're probably right, but maybe 700 on normal day. But if I feel like getting after it, then then I take the pre workout and then, you know, that bumps at 350. Okay. Okay. I feel like you hear it. Okay. Yeah. So I'm glad you asked that. Justin asked you a key question there. That caffeine caffeine 100%. I'm going to make I'm going to say right now is contributing to these. So not only that you're like literally right at the number. Okay. So I have my rule is when I go over 700. So as soon as I go over because what I've what I've connected for myself personally is when I go over 700, Justin and I were literally just talking about this in a day. I was telling him like, dude, isn't it crazy when you start to push to the your upper limit of how much caffeine you should have? The last caffeine drink actually makes me tired. Yeah. Like I'll have a 200 and something milligram rock star, but if it's if it's the one that pushes me to 800 to a thousand, I almost feel sleepy after it. And that's always my sign that I'm hitting my threshold of caffeine. And I know it's time to bring it all the way back down. And I bring it all the way back down to like one cup of coffee in the morning and allow myself to reset. Steve, do this. Cut your caffeine down by a quarter and then start taking some rhodiola to kind of offset the red juice. The net. Yeah. So organifies red juice has rhodiola in it. And I love that. It tastes good. So I would go a quarter for a week. You're going to feel shitty for about two, three days. And then the following week cut it down a quarter again. Then stay there for a few weeks and then bring it up a little bit. And I bet you're going to notice a tremendous difference in your energy stability because that for sure, for sure, my energy does all kinds of weird shit when my caffeine gets high. It goes up and down and I'm irritable and it makes a huge impact. Right. And I've been on it for so long. I worked third shift for years. So it's yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. You use the red juice. This is actually my favorite way to use the red juice is like as a replacement for like as a replacement. So I actually, however many of those energy drinks or coffees you're having, I actually still stay on the exact same habit. So like, so my routine is morning, I have my cup of coffee on my way to work. I get here. I have either another cup of coffee or an energy drink. And then I have a third one that's kind of like my habits. And so when I'm tailoring, when I'm tailoring off, I carve off the last one and it's red juice. Then I do that for awhile like Sal said a week or two and then I carve off the second one with red juice. So I'm having red juice one day then two like, and it really mitigates the pulling it out and doesn't feel like I'm crashing so hard. Yeah. Get resensitized again. It'll make you enjoy actually having caffeine again too. So I do the same thing like because if I notice too, it'll start pushing its way into noon and then sometimes one o'clock and then it starts affecting my sleep. And then it's this compounding effect after that where like, you know, the tired feeling increases substantially. So that's just something I notice and then too, like if I do have like a carbohydrate heavy meal, it really bonks me out. Yeah. That's it right there, man. It's I think the caffeine is where I'd start to be quite honest with you. You can eat the carbs late at night too or before bed, I should say. You know, an hour or two before bed. But I think I'm so glad you asked that. That's the that's the silver bullet right there. Well, this is like, yeah, very familiar to what's good luck, man. Caffeine's a hell of a drug. I'll tell you that. No, man. Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate it guys. The positive side those, you know, it doesn't take that long to kind of clear it out. And then you get the amazing then it's a good time. Yeah. Then it's fun again. So I mean, for that reason alone, you should. Yep. Sounds good. Thanks for calling in Steve. Appreciate it. Thanks guys. You got it, man. That was a little nod to the Rick James on the was a Chappelle show. Cocaine's a hell of a drug. Yeah. Caffeine's a hell of a drug. What a cute couch. Yeah. Bro, I am so glad I can't that if we didn't ask that question, he would have never figured out his problem. That was a major factor there. Because when my caffeine gets past a certain point, for me, it's 400 milligrams. Everybody's a little different. Yeah. 100%. I get a roller coaster of energy throughout the day. And when I bring it back down and resets it, I feel like I'm great all day. It's funny too. I actually, what he's experiencing, I actually noticed this. I actually, and I start to think it's like the food stuff. Yeah, like the food makes me feel all sleepy, but it is it's and I have figured it out. It's 700 or so. Like as soon as I get above 700, it's all downhill after that. I mean, or it's all bad after that. Like I have to go back the other direction or else the last one, like it makes me sleepy. It's wild. Yeah. It's funny too. When I resensitize myself to caffeine, if I do a good job and really stick to it, 100 milligrams is amazing. It goes far. I mean, I can't even, I couldn't tell 100. You could throw 100 milligrams right now. I wouldn't even notice. But when I'm sensitized, it's like a green tea. Like just a regular green tea. And I feel like, oh my God. Yeah. I'm always so mad at myself. Yeah. I'm going through that process right now of like starting to kind of taper off that last one especially. But like, because what naturally replaces it for me is water. And then I feel more hydrating. The energy sustains longer too as well. And it's like, dude, that's that's such a good point too, Justin. Like that's another problem with the energy drinks and stuff is that it does. It replaces my water intake. And I already, I noticed a difference just from that. Like I also get tend to get headaches. And I think that has to do with the hydration also. Like there's so many things that most abused drug in the world is caffeine by far. Yeah. Our next caller is Ryan from California. Ryan, what's happening, man? Hey, how's it going? Good. Hey, before I get started, just I want to say thanks. I probably started listening like a year or two before COVID. And you guys have such a positive message around fitness, nutrition, and just like family in general and how you go about business and just kind of like seeing different things in the world from different angles. So I think that's like really needed in 2022. So thank you so much for that. Thank you, Red. Yes. My main question is just around map split. I'm running out right now. And currently I'm riding my bike into work to try to save some money on gas. So it's about three and a half miles in the office, three and a half miles back, obviously. And I was wondering like map split and two weeks into it. And I was wondering, do I reduce the step count? Phase one is like 10,000 steps. So do I reduce it? And if so, like how much? Or do I just keep that step count consistent on top of riding that bike? We got this question before and the way I answer it to somebody who's like already like stepping that much or more is to look at each phase and the percentage that we increase over phase and then just consider where you're at now is phase one, your baseline and then your goal should be as you transition to each phase to increase by whatever that percentage is. Yeah. Does that make sense? Ryan, what's your goal? Yeah, totally. What's your goal with split? What's your goal with the program? Yeah, I mean long story short. I used to be 330 pounds. Now I'm around 220 and I've kind of gone up and down. And I'm kind of like struggling or like trying to find that metabolism. So like I've done like many bolts and like many cuts so like with split with the increased step counter and being like more active throughout the day by just walking around trying to like reduce body fat. And like I always like to do it around the holidays because it's more like harder challenge with like eggnog and like peppermint bark and all that stuff. So I like to challenge myself a little bit harder from like Thanksgiving or Christmas. So I hopefully to reduce body fat during that program. Okay, so don't use activity is a terrible way to try and lose weight. Now I'm not saying activity is not important or just moving is not important. It's good for health. But don't use that as the fat loss tool because if you do you'll lose and I don't mean lose body fat. You'll lose the battle because the body adapts very quickly to extra activity and it ends up spiraling into this like crazy like I'm doing all kinds of exercise more and more and more because my body adapted. So the diet is where you'll get the body fat loss. Because you're riding your bike three and a half miles to and from work. That's a decent amount of activity. There's nothing wrong with even not walking if you don't want to. Now I'm not saying you shouldn't. I'm just saying if your goal is body fat then I wouldn't worry so much about like how much more I need to move in order to burn body fat. That comes from your diet and honestly if you push the activity too hard I'm not you're not doing this now but you could get into a place where you're doing so much extra activity to continue to you know it adapts your body adapts and you add more and it adapts and you add more that you actually take away from the muscle building process that you're getting from the strength training program and that'll kill your fat loss gains in the long term. Gotcha. That makes sense. Yeah. So did you what are you following after split by the way? I think I was going to do probably strength and then probably going to like hit split again right after strength. You mean strong, map strong? Strong. Sorry. Yeah. Do you have that program? I do yeah. Okay good. I like symmetry. I think that's a good program that everybody should run at least once and then because you're doing so much biking it's a good because it's such a repetitive movement. I do like maps prime pro for correctional work so that'd be something else that I think would be a value for you but I'll send you symmetry. Do you have symmetry? If you don't I'll send it to you. I don't yeah I really appreciate it to you because like I tore my rotator cast in college so like now I'm all like lopsided so I definitely know I could feel it sometimes so I try to really do you know like Bulgarian split squats and my single arm like bench and things like that with the dumbbells to try to like even it out but I haven't done a dedicated program to that kind of thing. Okay good. So I'll send you symmetry and then you know I do think prime pro would be valuable too. Cool. Awesome. Thank you guys. I really appreciate it. No problem man. Thanks for calling in. All right. Let's look. Have a good one. Yeah. Yeah we put the steps in there really just to increase somebody's movement but you do got to be careful at using movement as a way to lose body fat. It's a losing strategy. It doesn't work very long and then you're stuck in this position where you're doing a hella movement. Your metabolism tends to adapt and then you're like oh now what happens when I stop and you're getting this like downward spiral. Always good to to bring that up because I really do feel like that's still the common thought process and what's being marketed the most is to to be able to increase activity increase cardiovascular output. That's going to be your best way to to shave down the body fat when in fact you know focusing more on you know your nutrition and just you know utilizing resistance training for what it's best at strength and muscle building is where to go. Well are the real thought process behind the step goals for people was really to model it similar after like how I would coach a competitive client. Yeah because it's a bodybuilding program. Yeah and the idea was I would encourage more frequent low you know intensity type of movement throughout the day before I would like say get on the treadmill and go for an hour and run or do the elliptical more lifestyle. Yeah it was more lifestyle based. Now if you already have a lifestyle where you're very active this is less important right because this person is riding a bike to and from work which is very very active in comparison to the average person and then if he's also walking quite a bit it doesn't mean he still can't use the formula of the percentage of steps like I recommended to him but it becomes less important to somebody who's starting off at 15-20,000 steps a day. It really is ideally to encourage the average person that wants to sculpt their body to utilize just walking and moving throughout the day before they start scheduling this you know hour routine of cardio which is less likely to be sustainable right. It's more likely that if you if I can encourage a client to walk after a meal or get up in early in the morning go for a nice little half hour walk or in their day with a half hour walk it's more likely that they will maintain something like that for the rest of life versus hey I want you to do an hour of the stair master after your workout every day like that's less likely for them to stick with consistently. Our next color is Christine from South Dakota. Hi Christine how can we help you? Hey thank you so much for having me on guys. You got it. Yeah. I would be remiss to not tell you how much it is just appreciated for what you do your wealth of information and just everything you share with people is truly awesome and how much you guys have your candor and your transparency through it all is really appreciated. I feel like that's kind of lost in society so thank you for having me. Thank you. Yeah. So I guess I need to just start with my basic question which was when I wrote in sorry I'm looking for it I'm wondering if there is ever a time a person has to realize that lifting isn't the best way to drop weight and one must actually add more cardio instead. I feel like I've listened enough to assume that the answer is lift however I'm continuing to gain weight while I still do lift two to three times a week. I am currently at my heaviest even after two pregnancies and I wouldn't care what the scale says if I didn't have such a high BMI which is currently 30% so I'm just wondering if I should be adding some kind of like running or rowing or something to the beginning or the end of my workout. Christine this is a great question and you remind me of the majority of clients that I used to train who would experience something very similar. So I'm going to be very very clear okay workouts are not great for weight loss lifting weights is great for building muscle now the side effect of which is a faster metabolism which lends itself better to weight loss. Cardio is a great way to get healthy not a great way to lose body fat it does burn calories however your body adapts very quickly to it. So build muscle improve your health and also improve your health with cardio. The reason why you're having trouble with weight has not to do or really very little to do with your workouts and has almost everything to do with your nutrition it's your diet. So if you want to lose body fat or lose weight don't try and work it off with more workouts now you can work out more if it improves your health and makes you feel better that's not only perfectly fine that's great but when it comes to weight loss look at your diet that's where you'll find the answer and that's where we get the results you're looking for. Now let's speculate a little bit here so and see if we can if we can maybe hit home on some of now this is a very common situation for clients like I think I've spoke to this morning else now what is most common when I get somebody in this situation especially when they get kind of freshly like man I feel like my diet's good Adam I make good food choices I don't go eat fast food I don't eat sweets I don't do all these things because obviously if those things were in there it would be very probably obvious to you like okay you probably need to cut some of that bullshit out but what tends to happen is my my female clients that that want would like to see weight go down the scale they believe in me they trust that strength training is the better way to go to spute their metabolism the area that I almost always see they are missing is the consistency around protein intake and that is why they're not seeing the benefits of the strength training like they would like to see because what they're doing is they're feeding their body low calorie they're eating good choices as far as like they're not eating bad foods they're eating healthier choices but then when I look at their macros their protein take is it is so low that they're not building very much muscle from the weight training the only benefits they're really getting from the weight training is the calorie burn which is hardly anything when you weight train so what's happening is they feel like they're eating good they feel like they're following my protocol of strength training and they're looking back at me going Adam I'm just not getting any leaner and I'm not feeling like the scale is moving but I feel like I'm making good choices I'm following your weight training program and then I dive into the diet and I go well you know when was the last time you strung two weeks together of hitting your protein and take every single day and rarely ever can they say you know what Adam I am doing that and I go well what's happening is you're sending a signal to build muscle by lifting weights but the problem is you're not giving it the building blocks in order to build the muscle in order for it to speed up your metabolism and in order for it to help you lose body fat so that without knowing any more details or even asking you that is probably the most common thing that I see with somebody in your situation does that hit home at all oh yeah your spot on and I have been recently trying to track a little bit more it was always just calories and then the macros thing is new to me but I had listened enough to know that my body weight in grams of protein is what I need to aim for it just seems like a lot to eat so I'm aware of that and I'm trying so it's usually eggs and either ham or prosciutto or something for a meat in the morning and then almost always a salad with chicken or ham or turkey deli meat is kind of my go to so I may be missing it there with the kind of protein I'm grabbing well if you have how many eggs and how much prosciutto are you having in the morning for breakfast one or two eggs and two slices of prosciutto because that's a lot of sodium so let's say let's say I don't know what your body weight is but let's say the average female and you weigh let's say 140 pounds okay so 140 you're looking at you're gonna need to have a good I don't know 40 something grams of protein for breakfast lunch and dinner what you just told me is like 12 grams of protein so those are protein foods by the way this is the I'm helping right now my sister-in-law right now and this is her exact struggle as I'm looking at her diet and you know and and what the hardest part for her is she'll do it for a little bit she'll do it for like a week or two for me and then she'll you know holidays happen and then she reverts back to her eating habits and unfortunately muscle takes a while it's not like instantly it's not like you eat like your protein and take for one week and all of a sudden you slap on 10 pounds of muscle it's a very slow process and the most important thing I tell her is right now I need you to hit that protein and take consistently breakfast is where she struggles it's where most people struggle so what I tell her is like listen dinner is easy for her she loves ground turkey beef steak all the all those basic dinner meals but I'm like you need to leave some of the leftover from dinner and that needs to become breakfast mixed with eggs so I'm like take your one to two eggs and mix it with four to five ounces of beef chicken steak whatever your meat is that you have for dinner to make sure you start your morning with 40 50 grams of protein so you stay ahead of your goal otherwise you're playing ketchup all day and then you never hit your and this can be and a whole foods is the best way to go but this can be where protein shakes can be helpful because it is challenging for people for a lot of people to eat the right amount of protein but do you know what your calorie targets are and you are you started tracking what do you look what do you what are you tracking yeah I did an in body scan this is actually over a year old and that one said 1317 and then I now I'm on fitness pal if I grab up my phone is 1400 that's what you're eating or that's your goal what I'm eating because that's what I thought my goal was okay so you're aiming for 1400 calories a day are you hitting it yeah or under yep and in the weekends of course because I this is identical and the human being and it's the weekends and I will go out or else okay so so this is identical this is identical to my sister-in-law right now so Christine check this out okay let's say Monday through Friday you're hitting your target of 1400 calories which puts you at a 500 calorie deficit each day meaning you're eating 500 less calories and you're burning okay so so we're we're now going to start tapping into body fat so that's a Monday through Friday so you had a total of 2500 calorie deficit Monday through Friday but now Saturday and Sunday come along and instead of eating 1400 calories on Saturday very easy to eat 2500 calories on Saturday again very easy to eat 2500 calories on Sunday you've now taken your deficit of 2500 calories for the week and brought it down to 500 or less now that means it's going to take you something along the lines of seven weeks to lose a pound of body fat okay because the weekend you raced a lot of what happened during the week so if you do track you got to be consistent every single day stick to the strength training and if your strength is going up what's going to follow is your metabolic rate so and and hit those protein targets first so out of the 1400 calories figure out where your protein should be at and it doesn't necessarily have to be your body weight if your body fat percentage is high you can use a target for your target body weight so let's say you weighed 160 but you're like I want to weigh 130 make it 130 grams as your target and aim for that and then make up the rest with carbs and fats not only that Sal you know how hard it is to hit 130 to 140 grams of protein within only 1300 calories they're very hard it's almost impossible it's all you'd have to be almost on the carnivore diet in order for that to even mathematically it makes so this is literally where my sister-in-law is at like you need to link you guys two ups so you guys can talk to each other she would like it because I'm much harder on her just so you know I'm like really tough on her about this because I'm like God you've known me for so long and you still struggle with this and you've heard me talk about it so many times but I get it I understand yeah it leaves like 800 calories for carbs and fats I just did the math yeah it's like almost impossible like you think about the meats you would have to be eating lean meat all day long with nothing else to almost hit that so she was in the same area and so I actually have I push her up to 1800 calories and I've told her to stay off the scale I don't give a shit about the scale right now our one and only goal is to eat when you're hungry hit your protein intake lift weights and let's be consistent with that and I'm like I'm asking for a month I'm like give me 30 days of you hitting your protein intake like I tell you every single day not missing one for 30 days and not missing your workouts three times a week and I promise to God I will show you something you will feel a difference your metabolism will speed up you will feel it you will see it but I just got to get you to be consistent for those 30 days that hitting that protein intake it's so important yeah Christine do you have my book The Resistance Training Revolution I don't okay it would be really helpful get a very easy read and in there I talk a little bit about this and it'll give you some guidance on on both diet and what to expect with good resistance training now I'm not opposed to cardio there's nothing wrong with it it's just not a great way to like it's not going to solve the weight loss issue but it will help with your health especially if you're sedentary ideally ideally it's just walking so you're going to do your two days a week or so strength training or three days a week a strength training and then on every other day I you know aim for eight to 12,000 steps just through walking you know after breakfast lunch and dinner and that kind of stuff and you'll be pretty good I want to give you access to our forum for free too I'd like you to be in there so I can check up on you and you can give me give me a heads up on your progress and stuff so if you how long have you been at this by the way Christine how long have you been trying well I've been I was trying to figure this out I think it's been about five years that I've just been intermittently working out so not saying I'm super consistent but I've had a let's just say I've had a gym membership for five years and some days some weeks some months are like spot on and then there's some that aren't so putting that out there but the thing that's bothering me is the last two years it's just been like my belly is just I can't I can't stay lean and fit so I just feel like it's kind of been this abrupt I mean in two years I've gained 13 pounds and that nothing in my life has changed dramatically not my diet not you know I haven't had a child nine years things like that so that's what really is bothering me where it's like why am I going up when I've been doing the same thing for so long something changed you just you might not be able to perceive what's going on but something changed I know the last two years a lot of people gain weight and there's and it doesn't take much you do 13 pounds over the course of two years it's like an extra 75 calories a day well especially when your metabolism is that low yeah when you're only allowed to eat 13 or 1400 calories it does not give you a lot of metabolic flexibility and the reason why you poor thing you have one one night with the girls or have a good night out the dinner and you have a little dessert or something and it probably feels like it sticks right to you because of how slow the metabolism and I'm not saying this to make you feel bad the reason why I'm saying this is because people can often it can feel terrible like what is going on I don't know what's happening there's something there it's not like a mystery in the sense of like there's like just your body just all of a sudden changed and now wants to gain a ton of body fat but just doesn't take much it doesn't take much of a change to to cause that accumulation over the course of two years how long have you been consistent with your two to three days a week of strength training recently like how long have you how many weeks have you strung together oh um I mean since the summer I mean it's been definitely this summer trying to cram in lots of workouts to look good this summer and then excellent no I didn't go well but and then moving forward are you following any of our programs my husband's got a few and I tried anesthetic and it was a lot and I just didn't have that kind of time or ability too much MAPS 15 is what I have my sister-in-law on I'm going to send you MAPS 15 that's what I have my sister and I'm going to also send you MAPS starter I think those are going to be I think those are the programs you should you should do right now but I'm going to send you MAPS 15 after that MAPS starter will be good MAPS anabolic pre-phase will be good after that but let's do MAPS 15 and you could do most you could do all the workouts at home you don't even have to go to the gym to do them and it's 15 minutes every single day which basically will equate to like 250 to 60 minute workouts a week so except it's 15 minutes a day and you may find many people find that they're way more consistent doing 15 minutes a day versus going to the gym twice a week for an hour so I'm going to send that to you and then let us know what happens in the forum I want to follow up with you stay on the forum and and I want you to worry more about protein than I actually do want you to worry about calories right now just really focus on and the questions that I'm looking for from you is the same ones that I like my sister is like out of my at this time of day I have a hard time getting this or this is the normal meal I have and then I would help her modify it so it would be a better protein meal kind of like what we just did with you where you're already having one to two eggs and a little bit of meat I like the idea of taking some eggs with some meat but I like the idea of carrying over from dinner the night before where you had probably a big more meat focused meal into your breakfast and to kick start your day I also love the protein oatmeal I just shared in the story today that I'm taking and using as our creatures of habit it's got 30 something grams of protein so that's normally what I have her doing if she's not doing the meat and egg things that's a good start for her day stuff like that so yeah get in the forum give us feedback on the stuff that you're having challenges with and then hopefully we can work together through it that's awesome thank you guys very much appreciate it no problem thanks for calling yeah have a good day you got it boy I tell you what how many people have no idea what high protein is you know like how many times that happened to you with the client we're like no no I eat I eat a lot of proteins like what would you have well I have a a turkey sandwich for lunch because there's turkey in it it's high protein and you're like or they don't even consider it like they just consider eating healthy that's for that which is the most common for me that is what's happening and that's it's like it's so I mean and I feel for her because this is such a frustrating place to be totally when you really feel like you're you're making a lot of sacrifice you're saying no to the drinks you're saying no to the dessert you're making good food choices whenever you can and then you're also exercising three days a week you know and and you're not seeing how frustrating that can be but nine times out of 10 it is the the that client of mine that is just not consistently hitting their protein intake and you have to understand how important that is in conjunction with the strength training if all you do is strength train but then you eat 20 to 40 grams of protein every day well that's gonna be tough it's gonna be really tough for the body to build muscle and it doesn't help that you go to the grocery store and you're like but I buy the high protein cereal and the products and but you know I know better I look at yeah I look at the back and it's like five grams of protein like this is called high protein yeah like that that's the high protein or Starbucks like they have like the protein meal and it's only like 10 grams or so well you hit you hit it even though you were actually still way under you said you know she needs to be 40 40 grams of protein breakfast lunch and dinner that doesn't even do it no that's 120 that's 120 yeah she needs breakfast lunch dinner and a snack at 40 to really hit that one 140 160 range and there's not a lot of people do that yeah no so that that is that's important and I know there's gonna be somebody who's listening like oh you don't have to hit that of course you don't the reason why I give that boy doesn't make it a lot easier though yeah and and and the reason why I give a target like that is because I know the inevitable is gonna happen she's gonna have days where she falls short at 120 140 but the problem is if she it works it's hard for her to get to 100 then she has a lot of days where she probably hits 20 to 40 grams in a day that ain't enough you ain't gonna build muscle that way you gotta make sure you're getting that that adequate protein while your strength training to speed that metabolism up check this out if you like mine pump head over to minepumpfree.com and check out our guides we have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal and they're all free minepumpfree.com you can also find us on social media so Justin is on Instagram at mine pump Justin Adam is also on Instagram at mine pump Adam and you can only find me on Twitter at mine pump Sal this one's really important and that is to phase your training if somebody trains for a full year doing a bench press and they're always aiming for five reps if you compared that person to a person who did bench press where they did three or four weeks of five reps but then they did three or four weeks of 12 reps and then three or four weeks of let's say 15 to 20 reps and then they'll throw on some supersets at the end of that year you're going to see more consistent progress from the person who's moving in and out and less injury that's another thing you'll see less injury as well