 All right, it's a new year, new you, and today's episode, we're going to talk about all the different ways that you can improve your health and fitness for this new upcoming year. Here we go. All right, let's talk about what people can do in 2024. I'm excited about this one because I think we chose to give tips that are less obvious. Yes. Right, I think that everybody knows that they need to make better food choices. Like eat better, exercise. Yeah, I think that's the obvious stuff, but I really like this list because I think they're relatively easy things that people can tackle on a day-to-day basis, and they really do start to add up and will send you in the right direction. Yeah, there's small steps that have big effects, and I like that, right? As trainers, that's one of the things we learn is like, okay, what are the small steps people can take that'll have big returns because those are the ones that people will be able to do, and then we're going to start to see them be able to move the needle versus big steps that give you very little return, that tends to discourage people. Got to hack into that human psychology to make those little behavioral changes, little sticks. It also, like having a list like this helps because there's going to be days where maybe you miss one or two things on there, but then as long as you did some of the other ones in there, you're always moving in the right direction of being a healthier version of yourself, right? I think that's important to teach clients this is that, oh, we can have a day where we didn't eat the best, or a vacation when you didn't get to the gym and work out, but there still are a lot of other things that we can do to move the needle in towards a healthier version of yourself, and we need to celebrate those ones and continue to compile those up, and so I like that instead of it just being black or white. I mean, on my diet and I'm training and it's either I'm off or on, it's like, well, no, there's a lot of other things that we can do to improve your health. Yes. All right, today's giveaway is the RGB bundle. Nine months of exercise program. We're going to give to one of you for free here so you can win it. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comments section. Now this episode, we talk about the things you could do in 2024 to get in the best shape of your life. One of them is to train what they plan. The same RGB bundle that I'm giving one of you listeners is going to be 50% off because of this episode. So if you don't win, you can get it for half off. And it's nine months of exercise programming. You can go get it now by clicking on the link at the top of the description below. All right, here comes the show. So the first one is to manage the algorithms on the media that you consume. So this one, we've never really talked about before. I mean, we do episodes like this almost every year where we kind of give people tips. I don't think we've ever mentioned this before. This is a big one. And the data now, we didn't have data really on how social media impacts people's behaviors. We all speculated and a lot of concern, but it was like, yeah, it wasn't like super obvious with data. Yeah. So, but now we have data and a lot of speculations were correct. What you watch and consume most changes and shifts your perception of yourself and your perception of the world, the most obvious one being if you're on social media scrolling and the people that you're looking at have unattainable bodies, or let's say that their bodies are the result of unhealthy habits. Lots of people in the fitness space are like this, right? Body obsessed, overtrained, over-dieted, lighting and photoshop. And nowadays we have AI. And if that's what you're seeing in your media feed, subconsciously, this is very powerful now and the data shows this, subconsciously, we compare ourselves to our environment. That becomes the world you live in. So it's not the world that you see outside where you, I mean, walk around outside. Does anybody look like the people in many people's social media feeds? No, it's super rare. In fact, we managed gyms for a living. This is already a self-selection bias of fit people. How often in the gyms that we manage, did you see people with like ripped six-pack abs, right? They used to be specific gyms. Yeah, and it's still rare. That used to be part of my presentation. I used to actually, in the Santa Teresa, we had that little sales pit with the glass window and you could see into the workout floor. And I'd get people that were intimidated to come in, in the gym and stuff like that. I used to stand them up. And I used to have them look and say, show me what you would consider five perfect or great fit bodies. And you couldn't get, you couldn't even find five. You're in the gym and you couldn't find five super ripped people that you see on Instagram all day long through your feed, right? Like every other picture is for people that are into health and fitness tend to have that many people popping up. It's like, that's such a rare percentage of people. It's super rare. In fact, the statistics show that it's more common to see or meet somebody who's got a million dollars worth of wealth than to find someone with a six-pack. That's how rare it is. But what happens when you look through your social media algorithm is that becomes the world that your brain perceives you to live in. You compare yourself to that and now you think you're terrible or that that's impossible to attain or I feel really bad about myself. I'm unattractive. Look at all these incredible people. And that can shift your behaviors in the negative. It can make you train in ways that are inappropriate, either training too hard or too often or to punish yourself. It could also make you eat in ways that are inappropriate. And all of this leads to you eventually stopping because at some point you're like, I don't want to do this anymore. This sucks. This is terrible. And I never looked like that. And what I'm doing right now isn't even working that great and I'm doing a lot and this sucks. And I'm going to go back to what I was doing before. Another thing that you can do with your algorithm because the brain seeks out a few different things. One of them is like extreme beauty, sex appeal. It's also being alarmed and afraid. Our brains are wired to tune into scary news because we evolved in tribes and for the most part. And you want to hear about the lion that ate George, right? Or you want to hear about your problem. I'm in a hyper focus. Yeah, and you want to hear about the snake. You know, going to that cave, there's a snake in that bit. You know, that bit someone's like, you need to, your brains are wired to do that. But now in social media, so many things are alarming and we're drawn to them. We click on them and read them. Oh my God, did you see this thing? Look what's happening. And you have no control or no influence over these things. You have no, almost no influence over what's happening across the world or other things. And so what ends up happening is it creates this stress and anxiety and hopelessness and helplessness within yourself and that drives your behavior as well. So managing your algorithms to be more specific isn't just avoiding the things that I'm talking about. It's more like this, consciously make the algorithm feed you in ways that are positive or that will move you in the right direction. So things that are encouraging, positive and strengthening information, connecting with other people in real ways, things that you can apply to yourself that you can learn from and be very conscious because when you scroll through social media, the apps track not just what you click on and what you comment on and what you like, but also how long you pause on a picture. We'll just add to that because you mentioned all these stressful things that seem pretty normal in terms of I'm just consuming this regularly because it's on my phone and it's just like I'm feeling like I'm getting inundated with information that's useful or like I don't really see a negative side to that as much until you start kind of really seeing how that's affecting your recovery, how it's affecting like your overall bucket of stress and like you're just carrying that with you and it rolls over into the next day and like you're never like really fully in that parasympathetic state when you're constantly inundating yourself with like this scroll of news or you know I'm not good enough or whatever it is that you're looking at. I think this is a little challenging for health and fitness conscious people because our space and by the way this is a lot to do with why we choose not to do this, but our space has created this like bubble of fitness people that feel the need that they have to advertise through showing their body off. So even some of your favorite health and fitness people that are giving good health and fitness advice potentially their feed is still 80% of them half naked or in fitness clothes or hitting PRs in the workout floor and this is something that we chose not to do because we know that this idea of other people comparing to you is not an ideal way for you to pursue your fitness journey. And so I think for people that are getting to health and fitness that this is going to be a little bit of a challenge for them is to be aware of that that whether you believe it or not subconsciously you are if you constantly are seeing that person or them those people that you follow say 40 of your favorite fitness people and those 40 people all put pictures of them flexing and ripped and stuff like that even if they're good people and they have good information you can't help it but subconsciously your brain starts to go oh this is normal and I'm not normal because I don't look this way and so be mindful of that and maybe choose to follow less of that. The other thing that I would add to this category with the algorithm is just total time is the iPhone now has the ability to track for you your app time and usage and be honest with yourself and do I really need to be on Instagram for four hours of my day? Even if you have a business on Instagram is it necessary to be on there for four hours and how often is that time if you just waste mindlessly scrolling through stuff like that? How often is it intentional? Right and so I think part of not only setting the algorithm is also being intentional about your usage your total usage of it and cutting back there I think both will serve you if you start to pay attention. Now you have to do this consciously because they're so they're smarter than you are the people that make these apps and these social media platforms that's why they're so popular they're smarter than you are so you have to be intentional so when you go on there say I want to find information like this click on it like it hover over it click on it like it hover over it keep doing this until the algorithm by the way models itself very quickly within a day or two of doing this your whole algorithm will change and the reason why it has to be intentional is because if it's instinctual you're going to get caught up in and you'll see this I've seen this myself my algorithm will start to shift back to the alarming stuff I'm like oh I'm not really paying attention by the way I did this experiment recently just on this topic where and my wife encouraged this where you literally turn your phone off for one hour a day that's it and here's what's wild a little bit of panic sets in and then now I've noticed the freedom from it I turn it off and oh my god this kind of feels really good try that out just test that out on yourself and see how you feel you might be surprised that the emotional you know kind of roller coaster puts you on and that's a that's a sign right there that this is very powerful so manage your algorithms to feed you in a way that's going to help you move in the right direction when it comes to your your health and fitness the second thing is this with diet and of course diet's going to be a part of this but you want to eat foods that encourage you to eat less okay so here's why that's so important when you look at the data on sugar on inflammatory fats on certain components of food that have been shown to have negative effects a lot of that gets erased when the calories are low okay in fact and I know I'm oversimplifying okay so that's a fact but it's you even have people who purport that calories are everything which they are not but they're very important and they'll do something like I'm going to eat in all McDonald's diet and I'm going to show you improvements in my blood numbers my blood lipids and my markers I'm going to show you I'm going to lose weight and they do now it's because they're carefully controlling their intake all right you don't want to live that way right and obviously if you try to just eat McDonald's or process foods talk about their cravings that they create yeah you're going to eat you're going to overeat so try to eat foods that you know will make you want to eat less because that's the state you want to be in long term or most of the time because it's going to not feel like you're white knuckling this entire process all right so what are those foods whole natural foods high protein foods period end of story yeah those fiber produce the most satiety and fiber thank you very much so high protein fiber whole natural foods those have been shown to hit that satiety button on you very quickly meaning it's hard to overeat in comparison to other ways of eating when you're eating a diet that's high in fiber protein and only whole natural foods take those things out and then you're stuck with this I got to count calories I got to watch what I'm eating oh my god I overeat oh I have all these cravings and you're just you're fighting this constant feeling which uh that's torture and that's like a last very long you're gonna lose that battle this uh this Thanksgiving my my nephew who's a senior in high school is really getting into weightlifting and training now and and he was asking me lots of diet questions right and I asked that one of the things I asked him was you know have you ever tracked your protein intake and hit it every day for 30 days before and he's like oh 30 didn't know and I'm like how often do you miss days oh yeah you know I said this I don't want you to do anything else that's literally all I want you to do is hit your body weight in protein your goal body weight where you want to be at right and just focus on that I didn't even tell him to avoid processed foods I said as long as you hit your protein intake then I'll even just start there yeah just start there because what I know is going to end up happening in order to hit your your protein intake through you through whole natural foods you're going to get full you're going to allocate everything in that direction yeah and I even said to him I'm going to tell you can't enjoy that ice cream every once in a while or eat out with your buddies with that just make it a goal that you first hit your protein intake okay and then you can do those other things and so that's our first thing like nutritionally and he's like and he's asking me all these other questions about carbs and pre-workout and the anabolic window and all of a sudden I said don't even worry about no that yet just just do this watch what we're watch the change between that and your lifting weights because I know he's already training he's following the programs I'm like watch what I'm going to show you in the change in your body composition and your strength just from that and then we'll add to that other stuff later now Adam's talking about is hitting your target body weight and we say target body weight because if you're overweight and you want to lose weight you don't want to use the current body weight you want to use where you want to be hit your target body weight in grams of protein that's hard I want everybody to understand this right now it is not easy I challenge you to do this for more than three days in a row watch what happens if you're a 130 pound female or you want to weigh 130 pounds eat 130 grams of protein day in and day out and I promise you what you're going to end up feeling is full you're going to say I can't eat this much food now here's what's funny about that you'll end up eating less calories also yep the pro on a gram per gram calorie per calorie basis protein produces the satiety of something like 20 or 30 percent more calories so when people hit their their targets and I mean I see this with clients this side it took me too long to figure I wish I knew this I figured this out early on but when I would tell clients to do this the struggle was not and early on in my career with clients the struggle was how to get them to eat less ah you ate over eight oh you got too many cravings oh I know it's really tough you got to just have the discipline you got to really you know you got to be strong you can do this later the argument or the the discussion was you missed your protein you missed you got to eat protein you got to miss and they would always tell me I can't sell I'm eating too I can't do it I just I just don't want to eat anymore and they would all get leaner as a result because it crushes it completely crushes your appetite the other thing that I love about that is and because we've learned over all these years of training people the psychology around not telling them they can't have something of course and that's what I was doing with him was like listen I'm not going to tell you you can't have your mom's favorite apple cobbler pie or whatever I'm not going to tell you and we were especially around these holidays but what I'm going to tell you is just do this first and then then I'll allow you to have those things but what I know ends up happening is the point you're making you don't want it yeah and the people that fail at this what they do is they hear that advice you go oh wow he's saying I can't I can do it and then they end up inserting that food they want in the middle of the day before they hit the before they hit their protein intake then they get full and then they come back and say I've been doing what you told me because you're not listening all the way here you have to first hit the protein intake so if you have this food or this thing that you feel that you want so bad wait till you hit your target yeah just make that deal with yourself I'm not gonna I'm gonna eat it later today after I hit my protein intake then I'll allow myself to have that and just watch what happens psychologically failing because you couldn't restrict yourself feels a lot worse than failing because you couldn't feed yourself more when you're trying to lose weight that is a very very there's a very big difference psychologically one of them feels like punishment restriction the other one feels like oh my god I gotta I gotta put throw more food in my my mouth yeah this is really tough and it's it's just a much better strategy so eat in a way that'll make you naturally want to eat less protein fiber whole natural foods avoid heavily processed foods because those definitely will make you want to overeat all right the next one lift weights with a plan so here's the thing if you've listened to our show for longer than than 15 minutes you know that we strongly advocate for strength training it's the most effective way in a time for time basis to change the way your body looks improve your health speed up your metabolism and lose pure body fat okay it encourages a faster metabolism you lose more body fat with it than other forms of exercise and you don't need to spend as much time doing it to get those results most people two three days a week and they'll get exception results with proper strength training now here's the the the downside or maybe the perceived downside of strength training if somebody says they're gonna go run they just go run someone says they're gonna cycle they're just gonna go cycle someone says I'm gonna lift weights what do I do there's a thousand exercises a thousand different ways there's a thousand different ways to do each one not only that what do the exercises do how do I do them right how do I put them together how do I put the days together what are the reps what about sets how do I organize this this this micro cycle and then this meso cycle and then this macro cycle like what is this all this this is all very complex so you can't just go to the gym necessarily just lift heavy things without a plan have a plan that you can follow the difference between just lifting and lifting with a plan is massive it's literally it's like the difference between walking and walking with a map like yeah you're walking but you ain't you don't know if you're going the right way the wrong way going up down left or right if you have a plan it makes a huge difference and make sure you follow a plan that is well written and well programmed by people who actually do this for a living not a plan that looks like it's just flashy or designed to make you sweat or it's got some weird title on it like the one I always use urban cowboy hip hop workout whatever follow a very well structured strength training plan and just stick to it that's all people who write these things and create these things no more than you do and then follow it follow it you have your plan I'm ready 2024 this is the one I'm going to follow of course we have great programs and do that that's the way you should lift weights when you follow that particular stuff I saw a great meme that just describes everything you just said but it's like these guys that were like building a wall out of bricks and it said me and my bro like just you know doing our own programming versus like and they had another wall that was like you know all pristine in terms of like the spacing and everything with the brick wall and it's like holds up and the other one's just like all wonky and everywhere but it's just you can get what you want in terms of like you going in and showing up and like putting in work is going to do something but why not have like a deliberate thoughtful plan going in so you're actually getting that much closer to your desired outcome well I know for our audience that we're we've got you know I think seven unique good tips for people but literally two and three was all I gave my nephew I literally said you just show me first of all the first step 30 days of hitting your protein and take consistently right string it together and just focus on that I said I'm going to set you up for the next nine months with the training as far as programming right like I'm going to lay out the programs for you would you do the RGB yeah that's it just our our our core three programs that I would run 90% of my clientele through right regarding they have a specific goal right other than just getting stronger fitter right body composition change I would run I'll run you through that you just hit your protein intake and then we'll just and I guarantee you you'll be stronger than you've ever been you'll be leaner than you've ever been you'll be more muscular than you've ever been in your entire life just from those two things and then then we can get into all the other granular stuff and really start to turn the gnomes but if we haven't done that if we haven't followed solid program and by the way he was already training like five days a week and I'm like you don't even need to do that much I really want you to lift weights three days a week and hit the protein intake this is what it's going to look like and just trust that part and then I guarantee you're going to be happy and 100% it's going to work all right the next one is really just about the the health benefits of daily activity or really what it's really about are the health detriments of not being active every single day and that is to walk a little bit three times a day so no structured cardio I'm not getting on a treadmill and sweating my butt off I'm not trying to ride a bike for five miles literally three times a day go on a a seven to ten minute walk that's it seven to ten minutes three times a day all right what's that going to do all right it's not going to make you shredded do all that stuff but what it will do is improve your health markers it will improve your blood insulin and glucose levels which helps with your behaviors it's also a moment to be reflective do this without any distraction and it has a profound effect on lots of other behaviors when you divide your day up with a like I said literally a seven to ten minute walk when you divide your day up that way morning afternoon and evening here's what ends up happening here's what I end up finding with clients when they do this every time you do that walk your behaviors a little bit better afterwards and then it starts to kind of trend downwards almost like it wears off it's almost like you take a pill that gives you better behaviors but the half-life is very short a few hours right then you get the next walk oh here we go I'm doing it again nice self-reflective walk no distractions or maybe listen to a good book that's good too but I like no distractions and now it gets you up again and then kind of veers off a little and then do one more in the evening to finish off the day increases activity that's true but really what it does is it improves your behaviors and it helps with your overall health and again it's less to do about the walking and more to do with the fact that we lead such sedentary lifestyles that the little bit of activity is profoundly beneficial because of how unhealthy the fact is that we don't move at all and I love pairing them after meals which we've talked about and mainly the digestion in terms of like the improved digestion for myself and my clients I just feel like the majority of people have gut issues and that's just something I've noticed over the years is like so many people whether they know it or not have a lot of digestive issues that they could actually work on and improve through obviously better nutritional choices but then too allowing their body this proper time to digest and and to create that movement and get all the systems working effectively and this is a great way to do that while also getting sun and getting fresh air and a lot of other benefits all kind of combined at once well I think one of the worst habits that we ever created was the you know eat a big meal and then pop your feet up on the couch and and watch a movie or in TV and stuff and I think that that's pretty common and not only in my own household but in most households I've been in is like that's kind of what happens like everybody sits around the dinner table or eats lunch and then afterwards they put their feet up and they watch a movie or relax and it's like man you're you will see just and then this I love just taking somebody who's hate and and done that for most of their life and just getting to walk to him and it's how much better they instantly feel is because it's just your digestive system was not meant to lay down flat like that after getting a big meal like that gravity works in your favor when you're standing up when you're actually when you're walking obviously the muscles of your lower body are contracting and then relaxing we just act like a sponge moves it along and they soak up they soak up the blood sugar that you have in your blood so now you have better blood sugar levels partition everything you're insulin now you don't have insulin sensitivity issues because you're you're like like it's like a sponge think of a sponge you put in water you squeeze it and then you open it and it sucks things up that's what happens the second thing you talk about digestion hip flexor muscles and muscles that aid in locomotion right lower body movement some of these muscles go through the digestive system I mean almost like you look at a so-as muscle it's a hip flexor it goes through the body and attaches at the lumbar spine every time that shortens and contracts it actually aids in the digestive process it actually helps with with food moving through and gravity and standing up just pulling it down that period and it's so I like this one because it's so easy yes a seven to ten minute walk is like for most people it's down the street and back so oh you finish eating down the street and for I mean I've been talking about this for quite some time now I think and we one of the best benefits is just the connection with your partner so I'm a big fan of this is another time when you decide to put the phone away and any sort of distraction and it's an opportunity for you to connect with a you know a partner spouse a child whatever like this is just we live in a time now where we always have our phones in our hands or in our hip like we're constantly attached to it rarely ever do you have two or three people in the same room and then one of them not always grabbing on their phone so here's an opportunity for you to connect with the people that you love by putting those away walking for 10 minutes improving digestion moving a little bit burning a little bit extra calories and then also connecting with people because I think that's an important part of health totally all right this next one is I really like this one because this is one of those like like many of these where if you follow it there's all these like kind of domino effects on other behaviors and that's really what makes it so beneficial and that is to set a water goal and hit it so for most people most of the clients I trained I would have them aim for a half a gallon to a gallon of water every single day now the bigger the person the more that they sweat the more protein that they consume the more water I'd have them you know target but half a gallon to a gallon I like a gallon for most people because most people end up going just short of it because that's tough right and make sure it's spring water you don't want anything distilled or without any minerals or anything like that in it but only because a lot of water without those minerals can cause actual muscle cramping and stuff like that but set a target so what this looks like is get yourself a bottle that you could fill up with water and realize or notice how many of those bottles are required to be let's say your target is a gallon so maybe it's four of those so four of these thermos bottles equals a gallon and then track them throughout the day and try to hit those targets every single day here's what you'll find you'll drink less of other calorie containing beverages that's the big one two you'll have more energy less pain less pain less inflammation yeah less tightness less tightness your appetite actually is positively affected in the sense that brain fog less brain fog this is especially if you're busy stressed out person I mean how many times have people how many times have you watching this right now have you said this to yourself oh I forgot to drink today oh my god I haven't drank any water today it's already three o'clock literally it's just set a goal have that water with you throughout the day hit that water target watch what happens how you feel this is one of my favorite ones to hear you give as a tip because people that have been listening to the show long enough might remember back in the days the guys used to tease me for carrying around a one gallon jug oh yeah and this was actually marking off uh-huh this was and I actually used to teach my clients to do the same thing so it was kind of funny I know what the guys were were teasing about they were making fun of the the gym bro with his his gallon of of water and his you know 50 supplements well it was it was a barbie jug that you had but this was cool now this was my argument that I made back then I said no I disagree with you guys I actually think that that it does have some validity to it in fact I used to tell my clients to do it for this exact reason because if you tell someone to drink eight glasses of water ain't none of them track you none of them count that's too many to keep track of yeah or they start counting and then they forget and then they just write off we're having that gallon with a line marked on it so let's say you're three quarters a gallon or a full gallon which is what I would give most my clients as a goal is they can visually see it and they know if there's no question is no question did I drink three of those yet or two of those I can't remember was it the fourth one I did no it's like there's your gallon you started this morning it's only that far down and like and then I'd have clients even mark because they started to learn oh after over time like where they needed to be by a certain time and they would put a noon they'd put a line where they need to be and then four o'clock in the afternoon where they need to yeah because you don't want to be caught at the end of the day with no you're just not gonna make it you're not gonna make it and or you're not gonna track it and so I've always been a fan of this and the things that I found ironically you get up and move and you have to pee more so you get up and you get those little five minute walks naturally because you have to go the rest of all the time burning calories a lot of times when the the signals that we have of cravings and hunger a lot of times is triggered by dehydration of ourness having and going over and just having some some liquid or fluid will help you it'll also help you from overeating so like if you have a good glass or you're drinking water between bites you'll see it you don't over over consume so there's there's a lot of benefits to doing that besides just the fact that we need to stay hydrated and that's a healthy thing for you so it's one of my favorite easy it's a simple one too yes very simple all right next is to train and eat to feel good not to look good all right so why is this such an important one well first off there's nothing wrong with working out and needing to change how you look but here's the problem with it okay it's not inherently bad or inherently wrong but when you're training and when what's directing your workouts and your diet is the reflection of the mirror you're far more likely to make decisions that are not good for you or not beneficial or appropriate versus when you're working out and eating to feel good so what do I mean by that well if it's all about what the scale says and the mirror says which of course is very subjective so it's feeling is very subjective but boy can the mirror be a quite evil subjective you know enemy when you're doing it that way and all of a sudden you look at the mirror oh I don't oh am I puffy today am I a little heavy or I don't see that bicep vein or whatever then you're more likely to ignore the signs of your body you feel bad I'm going to the gym anyway I'm supposed to have an easy workout today but I'm gonna beat myself up anyway or I'm going to force myself to eat this way because I hate the way I look type of deal and then you develop this kind of bad relationship with food which eventually you rebel from versus how do I feel well I feel energized I'm gonna have a hard workout or I feel tired you know what I'm gonna go easy to get my workout or I'm stiff you know what today's a mobility day I'm not gonna do the heavy lifting or diet hey I know I'm supposed to eat this particular way to lose weight or to whatever but my digestion's off so I really need to shift to these foods that help my digestion or these foods that help my energy or these foods that help my my mood because I notice when I eat this other way I get moody if you train and eat to feel good and I mean the truest sense to feel good not just the impulsive hedonistic feel good that will get temporarily but the actual true feeling good you're more likely to make the right decisions and those decisions are more likely to make you look good so the irony of what I'm saying is you'll look good more likely to look good if you do this to feel good versus the other way around yeah the more in tune you are with your body's natural signals the better you're gonna recover and then adapt and move forward in your progress and that's like a really hard concept for people because to Adam's point always it's like this like it doesn't make sense in any other thing in a pursuit that you do in terms of my work that I'm pursuing to be the best at or you know learning more than anybody else I put in like nothing but hard work and then it pays off and and this is just one of those things that you have to really listen to your body's ability to communicate with you as to whether I feel tight restricted whether I feel like I have zero energy whether I feel like I just you know maybe I can get after it and go a little more intense right now like you got to really pick pick up on those signals and peer into that because that's really where you know it's not going to lead you astray so to do that a lot of times you know if you're just looking at the mirror you're just looking at this visual a perception of yourself like it's not going to tell you the whole story a lot of times it's going to create this idea that I need to go harder and I'm going to train hard which then you're going to interrupt your recovery which then puts you in this sort of hamster along those lines your body doesn't communicate to you through the mirror nor the scale your body communicates to you by the way you feel so if you want to listen to your body basing it off of how you look is not listening to you but in fact it's ignoring it's actually encouraging to ignore where your body's telling you well the reason why this is such a good tip is and we actually just recently talked about this you no matter what you eventually have to move this way right you don't have to tell anybody who's just getting started on their journey that how to motivate them to want to look better most people come in the gym that way almost all of us were motivated because I want to look better and that's why I'm here like that's easy most people feel that already but if you want this to be sustainable long-term and you want to continue this as a as a lifestyle you'll have to move away from just the way you look to learning all these other things which is why we always teach our clients to start looking at these things is like yes I know you want to lose 100 pound yes I know you want to look like a certain way that you used to look before whatever but I also want you to be connected to your sleep your mood your libido your hair your skin your energy level like all these other things you've got to learn to be connected to because those are the things that are after you get you obtain this look that you want like that's what's going to sustain you long term and you're better off learning to connect the foods and the way you eat to how those things make you feel better because it's going to be more sustainable also if you're going into 2024 and you I mean if you had everything identical two people identical identical identical situations one listen to how their body felt the other one just looked at the mirror and chased the look at the end of that year the person who chased the feeling good would look better yep so it's also the faster better way to get there so that's the kicker all right the last one has to do with sleep obviously sleep is important the data on sleep is I mean it's unequivocal it's very very important for health behaviors fat loss muscle gain hormones but there's a lot of things we can do to improve our sleep or there's a lot of knobs we can turn to try to improve our sleep but one of them or many of them have big effects others have much smaller effects right like smaller effect blue light blocking glasses before you go to bed everybody talks about that what's the effect that's you get an effect but it's not this big profound one well when you look at the data on sleep it's now becoming quite clear that there's something that almost everybody does that has profoundly negative effects on the quality of your sleep and that's the following they go to bed at the same time Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday night they go to bed late they try to sleep in Saturday they go to bed late Saturday they try to sleep in Sunday they go to bed Sunday now I gotta wake up early again on Monday and they're giving themselves jet lag every single week jet lag every single week every week people's circadian rhythms are forced to shift the data on changing your circadian rhythm on people that travel often on people that work swing shifts is clear it's terrible for health terrible for hormones terrible for muscle building terrible for fat loss it's not good for anything so one of the best most profound things you could do with the big impact when it comes to sleep is simply this this right here you don't have to do anything else but this and you'll have a big impact go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every day if you adjusted that most people would see incredible incredible improvements in their sleep quality and the benefits that come along with that this one hits home for me so much right now because more more than ever have I hopped around time zones right I think we were in four different time zones oh yeah over the last month right which I don't think that's ever happened to me where I've been in four different time zones in one month actually was in two and a half weeks and I've had the hardest time getting back to my sleep routine and my training routine because of that like I can't remember the last time that I struggled to like really get good night's rest consistently for two or three days and get my training back and so this to me it's just this is this microcosm of what happens to some people that are constantly traveling or stay up till two in the morning one time and then go to bed at eight o'clock another time and then like up early then up later like man I can only imagine doing that and then also trying to be consistent with my nutrition and training because I can feel what that feels like right now and I'm like God that would be so difficult so this is such a good tip because you don't realize how much how much more difficult you make it for yourself it's not like you can't get shredded and fit and be inconsistent about your bedtime just that you make it a lot harder for yourself by doing that a lot harder and this is why everybody hates Mondays is because they literally shifted their circadian rhythm over the weekend and then forced it to go back and their jet lag they feel like absolute case of the Monday and they feel like absolute garbage all right look here's the deal we talked about strength training with the plan that's the one thing we definitely can help you with so we have something called the RGB bundle this is three workout programs you follow in sequence maps anabolic maps performance maps aesthetic this is roughly nine months of planned out programming literally you just follow the programs as they're laid out and you now have exceptional strength training programming that you can follow and what we're doing because of this episode is we're making the RGB bundle 50% off so it's half off right now because of this episode so if you're interested go to maps fitness products sorry go to mapsdecember.com and then use the coupon code RGB50 for that 50% off discount