 Our next caller is John from California. Hey, what's up John? How can we help you? Hey guys, how are you? Thanks for having me on. I work in the music industry. I'm an audio engineer. I'm basically the guy who records and mixes songs. So they're ready for the radio. And I love my job, but I travel a lot. I'm on the road more than half of the year. And for the most part, while I'm in one city or another for a month or two at a time, I can relatively manage my fitness. The problem is come tomorrow, I'm leaving for tour. And as you might know, I'll be in one city and the next practically every night. And therein lies the problem. I find it hard to maintain my working out with the limited availability for space like green rooms and whatnot, just trying to maintain a healthy eating habit is really hard. And I find by the second or third week of every tour without fail, all of my attempts crumble. And the stress of it all, the increased work demand obviously puts pressures on me. And I guess my question is in the midst of all of that craziness and little control over my schedule, how would you suggest somebody like me stay fit, stay sane and also try and lose some pounds? Oh yeah, great question. And I think I have the best answer for you. So I want you to look at your exercise routine and don't look at it as a way to lose weight. Don't look at it as a way to build muscle. And I know it does all that, but rather I want you to look at exercise as a way to improve your mental health, reduce your stress and improve your quality of life. It is excellent for those things. In fact, studies show consistent exercise to be as good or superior to pharmaceutical drugs for the treatment of anxiety and most mild to moderate forms of depression, for example. Now here's why I'm saying focus on exercise for that. Your life is so hectic and there's a lot of stress in it. And if your workouts become a stress relief for you and that's the way you view it, your odds of being consistent are much, much higher. So what does this look like workout-wise? Well, you don't have access to equipment and it sounds like your schedule can be kind of crazy. So I would say 15 to 30 minutes every day. That's it. 15 to 30 minutes every single day, I would stick to bands or suspension trainers or body weight. And when you're doing the workout, I want you to think to yourself stress relief. So sometimes that means mobility. Other times that's gonna mean I'm gonna do 15, 30 minutes of harder stuff. Other times it may mean I'm gonna practice this one exercise I'm trying to get better at. Go for a walk. Yeah, just do that. It'll make a huge difference in your, cause the issue here is consistency. That's gonna be the big challenge. So if you look at it that way, it'll make the biggest difference. We do have two programs that are very convenient for people who travel, right? So we have maps anywhere in maps, suspension. If you don't have those, I can send those to you. And you can pick and pull from there. Workouts you could do pretty much anywhere. So I've trained a lot of clients, a lot of clients with a similar situation, maybe not the exact same profession as you, but they're home with me. We're training, we're training hard. We're consistent. Their stress level is kind of lower because they're not on the go and they're building muscle and they're feeling great. And then boom, here comes a one month, two month, maybe three to six month even trip where the stress level is gonna go up, their sleep is gonna go down and they're not gonna have access. And the biggest mistake that my clients would make like this, and I'd always have to remind them is listen, you gotta be okay with the fact that you're not going to maintain what we've been doing right now. You gotta just be okay with, we're not gonna be lifting four or five days a week for an hour and you eating perfect every day. And so we've gotta kind of modify and be okay with that. So the things I would have to get them to do is, okay, if we've been training and eating this way, if we reduce your training and your movement significantly now that we're on the road, you also gotta manipulate the food a little bit. So I would have them. And the easiest thing for my clients is, I like, this is where I like to meal skip. So we were training consistently, we're eating consistently, now they're on the road or they're sedentary for a large person a day or they're not getting very much sleep. So I'd say, listen, let's take the meal that you normally have at two o'clock or maybe your first meal or your last meal and we're gonna eliminate that when you're on the road and you don't get a lot of movement. And then I would give them a program like maps anywhere or the suspension trainer and say, here, all you don't need anything but bands or the suspension trainer, the days that you have a good hotel room, you got a great night's rest, get after the workout, follow it. The days that you wake up and you didn't have a good night's rest or you had a lot of stress, don't just chalk it up and go eat tacos or some bullshit, go for a walk, go for a walk or do some working inward. So I want you focused on feeling good and taking care of yourself, not so focused on your muscle goals or fat loss goals are here. It's like what Sal said, what all the things you're doing when you're on the road is to optimize your job and your performance and your mental health and what you do for a living and don't worry, when you get back with me and you're back home and we got the gym and we have some time, then we'll go after it hard again. Yeah, very similarly. I had clients in your situation too and that's why we created those programs but to view them in terms of being restorative and being somewhere where you can go to kind of de-stress but also I had my clients like first thing in the morning that was like basically their cup of coffee was that 10 minute supercharger workout where it was just a very basic workout that you could do consistently, it didn't take up a lot of time, it made you feel really good, really energized and got you out and started your day on the right foot. So honestly, I think like if you can really just dedicate that first instance in the morning to getting your body sort of charged up through physical activity, it's gonna set the tone for the rest of the day. Yeah, John, if you did 15 to 30 minutes every day and it could be something different every day, just again, listen to your body, that's probably gonna average out to two to three hours of structured exercise a week. That's not bad, that's like going to the gym two or three days a week, right? Except you're doing 15, 30 minutes every single morning, I'm sure some mornings you're gonna feel better and you can do more. So what you do is you just set your alarm and you wake up a little earlier and you go into this routine, sometimes it's gonna be stretching and mobility, other times it'll be suspension trainer, strength training or resistance bands, other times it might be a walk or it might be 15 to 30 minutes of meditation or mindfulness, but if you do it every single day for a little bit of time, it's easier to be consistent with your schedule than it is to carve out an hour and a half at a gym. I also don't know if you've, I don't know if you've connected these dots yet or not John, but there's something that is really common with someone like you. We've all gone through this too, is you got a night of work where you like, say you grind all the way till like a midnight or one in the morning and it was just a long day, stressful day and then you gotta be back up early next day and you didn't sleep good whatsoever and we've talked about what happens with cortisol levels and then all of a sudden that next day you have these weird cravings. You hadn't thought about jacking the ball since you were a kid or also you want this fried, greasy food. That's very normal for that to happen and if you know that ahead of time that, oh, shit, this was a bad night, you put on kind of like your defense mode that day, like, you know what, I know my body's gonna be wanting this food or doing that. So getting fed with something good and healthy and balanced early and then just kind of making that a day where you're walking and just staying active, you don't need to get after it, but just being mentally prepared that you knew that you got a bad sleep day, you better be prepared for that craving that's gonna kick around 10, 11 or noon of wanting shit that you normally wouldn't even want and that's where this spiral effect happens is I get shitty sleep, I don't feel, I didn't move very much, I was stressed out and then on top of that, now my body's craving this greasy food and I'm just hungry because I haven't slept much and I'm tired and then you just do it and then that's where the spiral happens. So being aware of that is huge just to know it's coming. Yeah, it happens all the time and if I might add, we're on a tour bus and we're lugging equipment back and forth, I'm curious, does any of that constitute as physical exertion or activity towards workout goals? Absolutely. Yeah, totally, man. I mean, you're moving, you know, it's, of course, absolutely. It's not always symmetrical, that's the fear, it's not, you know, planned, it's, you know. That's okay, those are the days that you allow yourself to eat a little more calories and then the days when you find yourself sitting at the desk or working all day and not moving, those are the ones you gotta be mindful of pulling back a little bit. That's where this, I think that's one of the hardest things is like, when you get on like a plan where when you're home and you're consistent, I mean, you're training, you're moving. It's predictable. Yeah, it's predictable where when you're, when you're doing something like this, you've gotta be kind of mentally aware of like, oh, shit, this is a day when I didn't move at all. I need to, I need to, and that's how I would tell clients to keep it easy for them. I just say, on those days, drop a meal. You know, whatever you would normally do, you know you didn't move very much, drop a meal on those. And then the days when you are, you're moving hell of equipment, sweating while you're just doing your normal job, well, shit, that's the day you feed that body. Make sure it's taken care of. Okay, no, it makes perfect sense. Thank you guys. No problem, John. We'll send you maps anywhere and map suspension, okay? Thank you very much. Have a good one, guys. Thanks. Thank you, man. Yeah, that. This is hard. It is. This is really hard. I'll tell you what, you know, obviously all of us have been training a long time. I've been doing it myself for a long time. And I'm always, I'm typically pretty consistent because I figured that out for myself a long time ago. It's not about going to the gym and building muscle and looking good when I got really stressful stuff happening in my life. I literally go to the gym and it's mental and psychological. That's it, 100%. And it keeps you consistent that way. So what's the end result? Well, the end result is you're much more consistent and you get the mental benefit from it. So exercise is not just developing an aesthetic physique and looking great. It's so much more than that. And if people realize that, then they, oh my gosh, I'm so stressed out. You know what I should do? 15 minutes of, you know, exercise or activity. The truth is though not, and this is where we're different, right? Like I totally identify with this as a challenge for myself. Like you've been able to build that for yourself. I mean, of the three of us, I think Justin would agree too. Like, you know, you were the one who rain or shine, stress or no stress, like you don't miss your workout. You've connected those dots. You've found a way to always do that where I was more of the person who was very on or off. When I'm on, I'm dialed, when I'm training consistent. All or nothing. Yeah, all or nothing. And so as I got older and would see these patterns and realize like I'm not always gonna be all the way on, how do I adjust my life? So, and it's amazing. You don't have to, and I'm in a situation right now. Just coming off of COVID, I didn't train for almost three weeks. What I've learned to do over all these years and mistakes that I've made in the past is, okay, when I'm not moving that much and I'm off the wagon a little bit, I've got to adjust my eating. I've got to be aware, I've got to scale way back on that because I'm not putting the work in. And then I don't have to do a lot. You do a solid one workout or two workouts in a week, especially if you're doing the good movements that'll ascending and you keep the diet in check. You'd be surprised how fit you'll maintain, especially for somebody who's actually been exercising for many years of their life. The body is unbelievably resilient. It remembers all that muscle you've had before. So as long as I get in there and touch some weights, do some exercises, and I keep my calories in check, you can make it through a rough two or three months of a weird schedule where you're off, but it's the, and I know it hit home with them when I told them that about the stress and the sleep and then craving about food. It's the trying to keep up with your schedule of training before. It's the inevitable, oh shit, long day of work, stress, didn't get no sleep, and then craving some bullshit. And then the spiral happens and then you fall off the wagon completely and then you ride it off and you just say, ah, fuck it, I'm already eating bad. I'm not sleeping good. I'm not getting my four days a week. We don't have another donut. Right, where you've just got to learn to recognize that stuff and scale back on the food and just getting that gym a couple of times, that's one approach. Or what both of you suggested, which is just make 15 minutes, you know? Which sometimes I think that's harder for an on-wagon off-the-wagon type of person, that just adjust them calories, man.