 Twas the night before Doug released the podcast the long-awaited first interview with Lane Hopefully not the last the pump heads were nestled all snug in their beds while visions of squats and deadlifts danced in their heads Sal Justin and Adam were sitting in their chucks relaxing a bit giving no fucks when from in the studio There arose such a clatter they jumped up and yell god damn it Doug What's the matter he calmly spun around and up from his chair He stood smiled and said not to worry boys all is good the sound you hear are the cheers from the faithful The Lane episode has dropped. Everyone is grateful. The boys just smirked and then they exclaimed Happy mine pump to all and to all a good day as they turned back around Sal said hold on Just one more thing if you like mine pump give us a five-star rating the end Wow That's really who did that? Justin Alcorn do you know from the forum amazing fucking yeah, I had to read that because it was so epic. That's brilliant Yeah, absolutely brilliant. I love I'm fucking love our feeling I feel like we're we're slowly collecting all the intelligent fitness people out there Yeah, you know what and we're creative ones and yet right and stuffing them into our forum It's true because stupid people don't enroll in the forum Well, I'm just saying you know if you've been rolled in the forum You're smart if you haven't you might be smart, but you might be stupid. Hmm. You know I'm saying think about that Way to insult 90% of our that's isn't that's our promo this month, right? That's our promo the probably the best thing that we offer any all of our listeners is our private forum because you have a collection of Fitness professional scientists doctors lots of physique competitors bodybuilders Bikini competitors and of course me Adam and Justin are on their daily We could just get into more specific detail. Let's be honest that way it's it's just this this amazing mini universe of Awesome information support people posting videos of their their forum on squats with critique and Nutrition questions and funny memes, and it's just a great little community and this month We are actually giving away that access for free All you need to do is enroll in either the RGB bundle or the maths super bundle So here's what they are the RGB bundle includes maps anabolic maps performance and maps aesthetic The you follow them in order. It's nine months of exercise programming with different Target adaptations as you go through. It's one of the most comprehensive Programs that you'll ever find anywhere and the maps super bundle includes that but it also includes maps anywhere, which is the equipment-free maps program and our most breakthrough products Of all maps prime. This is the only program I know of an existence that actually has a self-assessment tool called the compass that you go through and it helps identify How you should prime your body for your workouts regardless of what your workout is or whatever Competition you're doing. We've got people who prime their bodies before their runs or their baseball games or football games I actually had somebody send me a message They prime their body before a business meeting and they find that they're much more effective of what they do Of course, we know the whole brain body connection So enroll in either one of those bundles and you get access to our forum For free and by the way next month the price of the forum goes up anyway But once you're in you're in for life You can find out all of this and more about our programs more detailed information at mind pump media comm Only one place to go Might pop might pop with your hosts Salda Stefano Adam Schaefer and Justin Andrews Dude that conversation with Lane whoo four hours four Hours of inebriated it fun like a marathon. I don't want to drink alcohol for another year You know what? I hope you can't I mean, I don't can you hear us get progressively More more I think like the vibe was there started to get escalated Yeah, I you I'm excited to listen because I actually haven't listened to the whole thing You know, so it's gonna be an intro. I know it was amazing going through it So it was well, it's funny because there was a lot of hype surrounding this interview because of some of the different positions that we have Versus Lane and both sides are very passionate and outspoken And not afraid to talk about our positions like Lane is one of those guys that if he disagrees with you He has no problem saying it and he doesn't shy away from debate or discussion Just one of the reasons why we like him so much well, I mean the guy agreed to come on our show and Talked to the three of us in our house. So much respect to the guy We respect them anyway because a lot of the positions we do agree upon and he does come across as having lots of integrity So and I think I do think a lot of people anticipated that we'd have like arguments and fireworks and fights, but there was a lot of mutual respect With with with our interview. We found a lot of things that we found like we have a lot in common And I think that you know the more we talk to him the more like of this, you know The differences might come out a bit more. Yeah And I mean there were some points where we had some some disagreements and we talked about them It was a lot of respect a lot of good Debate I'm going back and forth and discussion lots of discussion on I mean I'll tell you what if you listen to Lane Norton's podcast or you or you're subscribed to his YouTube his podcast is Physique science radio or his YouTube channel You are going to see and hear or excuse me You're gonna hear a very different Lane Norton on this upcoming episode. Well, he actually gets interviewed You know, we were interviewing him or most that most of the time he's the one and we talked about I mean, I believe I brought this up with him While we were talking is that, you know, I'm excited for his audience to actually get to hear this episode because I'm a I'm a fan of the show I found Physique science radio. She had a couple of me a year and a half two ago and I've been listening I've listened to almost every episode because I dig all the the doctors and scientists and stuff that he has on the show I love that the nerdy stuff that he gets into But you don't really get a chance to dive into Lane as much, you know Most time he's listening is he's interviewing somebody else So to hear him talk most of time was it will probably be pretty awesome for most his fans You get you get kind of a better feel of the man, you know, who is laying Norton the person the what's good What's behind what drives him? He also goes into Some of the crazy online struggles and that one guy what's his name blah or whatever that whole feud that they had He talks about that in detail And reveals some interesting information that you may not have heard of so you're into if you're into like the You know the controversy of all that you get some dirt that you might not have heard before yeah Once we got him drunk he started name-dropping a bit too It was a we had a great time helps we had a great time and We think we would like to have him back on or maybe you know have him have us be on his show But have to continue this conversation because I think there's a lot of stuff that even though we talked for four We haven't scratched the surface and there's a lot more that we can get into with the guy He talked about his his avatar nutrition Program, which is pretty awesome. You can find it at avatar nutrition calm. Of course, you can find him on Instagram at biolane Dr. Lane Norton. So here we are here's mine pump Talking with Dr. Lane Norton for four awesome hours. Enjoy go get a snack You start a podcast what made you even get into that? I mean you were doing it How long ago would you when you first dropped your first episode? Because you did one before physique science, right? Yeah muscle college radio, and I think that started back in 2011 I want to say 2012 that's when podcasting was man. That's way back then because podcasting a lot of people have it Don't realize it's really only recently become popular. Yeah after smartphones kind of took off, right? Yeah, we were doing really well We're on Rx muscle and we were pulling I think like 50,000 downloads or something like that which back Then there's a lot. That's a lot huge. We guys were you guys monetizing it back then? Yeah I mean we were well we had sponsors. Oh, okay. We were the biggest bodybuilding podcast There was oh, wow. We were at least that's what I was told so what happened to it just didn't really Ethical differences between oh look at this. We already got into some good shit already. We just yeah Started already sounds very general. Yeah, that's Start to sing with an epic song, you know what I got we got the opportunity to watch Lane work out lane one of the one of it He's very well known for competing at a very high level in powerlifting and he got to work out in our facility And there's one thing that I noticed about your workout that Was pretty awesome actually pretty amazing. I learned something today And I've been doing this for a long time been training out for God been training professionally for 20 years I've been working out myself for even longer You play the most epic music I've ever heard It's like you're saving the universe My god, yeah, it's like you're saving the earth. It is your universe your hero universe my bad. I love it It gets you strong. It's hard not to get fucking hyped to it So you stopped that other podcast and then when did you start the one that yeah? there's probably about a six to twelve month lag time and then we started physique science myself and so he Lee and We do pretty well like I think we're our downloads are like anywhere from like like around 20 something like that Okay, good, so we don't have a big website like our ex was supporting us We just do all our own put it up on SoundCloud and iTunes, but it does pretty well and you know, we have like great guests on there And you know, we've had tons of doctors all the top minds in my opinion and nutrition I mean we've even have like Dr. Stu Phillips on there who's like a god of protein metabolism, you know Like he's he's basically surpassed. Well now that layman my old advisor is retired this guy's like carrying the torch He's a beast for research So we've and you know one of the cool things is I know most these people so I don't bring somebody on my podcast I feel like it's gonna be Awkward and you know gonna not be able you know, there's plenty of people who are smart We can't convey that you know, they can't actually put it into practical recommendations It's actually a lot of people like that. Yeah, I don't like that like I want somebody who can actually Give our audience something, you know and not just tell us about these molecular markers and whatnot the other thing I like is I know there's a lot of young Potential scientists who listen to the show who are you know, I always ask you You know, how did you get into this because almost all of them have a somewhat of a similar background to me They had some background in sport Physique competition whatever it was and they got interested in weightlifting from that and the molecular mechanism is behind it so we always try to talk about like how did you get into it and those sorts of things because There were people who kind of did what I did in terms of competing and also doing a science degree But I was kind of the first person who really talked about it while I was going through it if that makes sense So I put it out there. I put it out on social media. I put it out on the forums I talked about you know my graduate, you know Not not the details of the research because you can't do that but talked about kind of what I wanted to do what we found when we found it and You know the struggles I went through and I think You know, I don't want to sound too presumptuous, but there was a lot of people who went and did Doctorates and masters after that who were involved in the competition scene I think before that it was kind of like well, you're either a science geek or your meathead, right? You don't you don't cross the two. There's no cross pollination, you know And now you see a lot of people doing it. So and I think you know, it's one of those things that Sometimes all somebody needs to break their perception is just one person to do it Yeah, right. I mean they talk about our and I'm not trying to compare on scale on any stretch the imagination But Roger Bannister the first the guy who broke the four-minute mile sure before before he broke it in the 30s They thought it was physically impossible You know, a lot of people thought it was just physically impossible to run a four-minute mile Once he did it. I think the next year there was like like 20 people who did yeah And since then there's been tens of thousands including high school kids. So What was the difference the only difference was you know, our genetics didn't change and and it's our belief we could do it Right. Yeah, when they got on the track, they knew it had been done before so, you know, and that's I Don't again we talked about this last night I don't want to say I don't want to take credit for some of the movements out there But I was I would say I was kind of very vocal about some of the stuff I was doing in terms of You know natural bodybuilding people told me when I got into it. Why are you wasting your time with this? You're not gonna be able to make a living as a drug-free guy in fitness and I didn't worry about that I just knew I was passionate about it. I figured we'll figure it out. Let's chase the passion and we'll figure it out and then You know going from bodybuilding to powerlifting. That's very popular now flexible dieting reverse dieting You know all these sorts of things online coaching, you know And so a lot of time now like look at online coaching when I first started people were like There's no way you can do this online. You can't console somebody online and now it's like it is an entire industry. Oh, yeah You know, it's it's crazy. Well, I would argue it's not necessarily a good thing But well, that's what happens some it tends to do that, right? Some of you have somebody started off with good intentions and then you know a bunch of people catch wind of it and find out There's a huge market money there. Yeah, now you have everybody and their their sister You also got social media exploding since then at the same time And that's gonna feel quite a bit of it, you know, you see all the a lot of these Instagrams, you know celebrities I quote, you know quote-unquote And that's how they that's how they they monetize is they do online coaching and they look good, right? I did my first show here by my skinny t-wrap I think that's the most the most common thing I saw going through all the circuits was Meeting these course that's our popular again No, I want to that was one of the first One of our first episodes we came after talking about Can I tell you guys a really funny story? Yeah, of course, it's gonna probably offend a lot of people That's one person in particular the right show to do that. So, um, what I forget his last name, but Sadiq the guy He won. Yes, he won. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I don't know him. I'm sure he's perfectly nice guy, you know But I put up a Kind of a funny post I said what girls if your guy wears a squeam congratulations. You have a girlfriend And somebody tagged him on Twitter And he was and he was like well look at his waist and look at mine where dude, you're born with a 28 inch waist Yes, I'd have to shave two inches off my hips, you know, like but okay, right? So yeah, the squeam is why your waist is that small but anyways and my friend Diana Dahlgren Do you guys know Diana Dahlgren? No, I don't know that. Okay, so Diana She was very successful in the competition circuit and she was Monster Energy's main girl for a few years And now she she's married has a kid awesome awesome girl, but a savage, right? Mm-hmm. She comes on she tweets with her sponsor and she says I'm sorry if I slept with a guy with a waist that small I kicked my own ass Well, we noticed one of the things When I went through competing, I'm sorry to think about you were men's physique But like so you got a beard you know like I said like I'm sorry like ladies Do you really want to do it that looks prettier than you like I mean well that was the stuff that I Was really tough for me was I used it as a platform to get known Like I knew that I didn't I wasn't in some movie. It wasn't famous. I haven't wrote a book I didn't do anything that was gonna get all this attention. So I think except for the movie. We don't talk That's my other So, you know, I saw I saw all these men's physique pros and bodybuilding guys and bikini girls You know getting getting all these contracts with companies covers of magazines giving out all this information I thought oh my god, like and then I got to meet them And I realized how little most of them knew and I thought wow There's a huge opportunity here and then when I was going through it I thought man the hardest part about this for me is now I'm getting lumped into this category of people So when people meet me, they're like, oh, you're a men's physique. I knew men's bikini Oh, they want to talk about that shit I'm like man, let me tell you that I the part that I hated the most was the part that these guys the stage Present part and the I spent no time practicing I'm so lucky that I made it to the level I did and I purely did it off of my conditioning and symmetry because I was the Worst on the state worst ever at I never practiced because I just I couldn't take myself seriously in my fucking home You know practicing turns and putting my hand on my hip and I'm like just just feel right in the video You know like I just spent a few days. I was Steve cook. He's a client of mine. I've known him for years He's good good guy really good guy. Yeah, he is and you know, it's funny is you know You can argue he's the most successful men's physique competitor in history just and based on his following Mm-hmm, dude's got 1.4 million followers on Instagram. So I don't care what show you won. He's bigger That's way more way more powerful way more powerful. So But we were talking about you know, he was like yeah, he's like I don't dig the hole Like he doesn't you know, there's guys out there like it's like moving their hands and stuff and shuffling and they're trying to make it It's like dude. It's a side pose. What do you like? What you try to turn it into you know, like a break dance or what? Yeah, you know, I don't mind I don't mind a lot of that stuff what I would bothers me is when they start to do the and it's never been healthy But when they go the route of like a squeam like a squeam does it shrink your waist? Yeah, because it atrophies the muscles around your waist. You're not even building muscle anymore. At least when you take anabolic And that's And you're potentially causing yourself If you're somebody who wears a squeam like you like cuz some of these fucking girls wear it like they like you would put Five squeams like yeah, like and they wear it non-stop and then of course you just like a cast it And that's why I explain to people if you put a cast on your forearm for fucking six months and then cut up What does it look like that? That's exactly all you've done, right? So I actually had a client Won't say her name. She was with a big team who will show remains stainless So she she she wore a squeam two screams and like 24 hours a day like like slept in it and she actually got organ prolapse from it So that's where your bladder basically sits don't google prolapse by the way, you don't look that up So Like she had to have a surgery done for it And I'm just thinking how these fuckers not been sued for this kind of stuff I know like it's just crazy to me like I am so petrified of You know Somebody like deciding oh, let's just you know people are so so happy these days You know, I'm so I'm like how some of these back then I feel like well Maybe it's not gonna happen because look at all these idiots out here who given terrible advice who have Legitimately fucked people up. I mean I had a 16-year-old girl come to me Who's coach who there's a big-name coach had her on Clint Beterall and T3 her thyroid completely shut down She'll show me 16 years. I'll need thyroid hormone for the rest of her life And it's like you piece of shit and that's the other thing too that drives me nuts is these guys get her get a Reputation for like knowing about nutrition. They they would not know nutrition research if it came up and smacked them in the face like They know about drugs. Yeah, right like oh even even even even then it's Here here more more that was the part that I that blew me away was I thought at least that part I was going to see like okay at least most these guys especially if you're at the professional level would get that down And I'm like when I started hearing the stacks of steroids that like the men's physique. It's just more. I was like whore What are you doing taking gram and a half of shit? What are you of what? You don't need that much for what you're trying to do. It's men's physique You know and then then it's like the bikini comparison on drugs and they have them lift like no way It's and it's like here's a novel fucking idea Why don't we not put them on steroids not turn them into a male jawline and have them just lift some fucking weight Right squat and deadlift right stop with the rubber band. I mean I got the rubber band kickbacks I mean, I've got a client aria demi who she was with a big team And we kind of had to rehab her metabolism and whatnot and now she's killing it She's placed top five at like all of her pro shows, you know, she's she's got she's making points for the Olympian what not? She's she does squat bench press deadlift, you know now obviously like we're not I'm not trying to make her a power lifter Right like it has to be specific for what she wants to do. So obviously more glute work There's more overhead pressing work compared to a bench. Yeah, but don't you notice okay being it being someone who coaches Trains also on top of being the scientist guy Don't you notice that that's like one of the easiest ways to help these girls like it's so easy for me to take someone else That's been coached by one of these knuckleheads All I got to do is introduce the deadlift and squat and like my god And all they just bodies morph and change well no drugs no supplements nothing else like literally Let's stop with all these bullshit glued exercises that someone fucking told you are awesome or your favorite YouTube stars Got and let's do some fucking good compound movements and watch how your body changes one just programming too You know, I have so many girls that come in and and guys too. Well, I'm not getting sore like I'm not getting sore That's good. If you're getting sore all the time you're programming a shit Now if you're never getting sore you're probably also doing it wrong, but it should be sporadic okay, it should be something sporadic and Let me tell you something Sornus is not associated with growth. Okay If you want to get sore go out and run a marathon. I promise you you will be sore the next day Do you think you grew muscle? Well, we could argue we could actually argue That soreness is closer to a sign of overtraining than it is under training There's you the idea is to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change I'm sure and for for most people when they when they get started on these competitions Or even just getting to go on their journey to get in shape They get they get so much to this like intensity driven marketing Which that's one of the things that we speak so much about is like man If you guys only knew like all this work that you're it doesn't have to be this daunting But I feel like there's this people want to be a martyr. Yeah, they want to be a martyr It's like it's like who suffered the most Look at me. I didn't eat. I didn't do this. Oh, I was dying months. Yeah It's a competition now on who who could put themselves through the most shit. Yeah, listen. I'm I Am all for sacrificing for a goal, okay What I'm not for is suffering for the sake of suffering so you can brag about having suffered the most, you know Why not just like put a chastity bell on yourself and then whip yourself because then you suffered even more, you know, like well Sometimes that feels good You know, we we're talking a lot about some of the issues with the competing world But you obviously you got into it you competed in yourself. What initially attracted you to or brought you to? Working out. I mean, you know, why'd you start lifting weights in the first place? I last night you had made a comment about growing up as a kid and you know how you got bullied and you're probably a smart kid And I know when we were kids anytime you read a book. It wasn't cool It's a little more cool now, but we were kids. It wasn't really is that what motivated you initially You start lifting weights because you're like, hey, I want to Feel stronger feel better about myself. Yeah, I was totally Shallow and not not heroic at all. I wanted to get attention from girls and and Stop getting bullied neither of which happened by the way But you know, it did teach me a lot, you know, it taught me goal-setting it taught me perseverance It taught me hard work, you know, like I really I learned a lot from lifting weights and I always tell people, you know It the lessons that weightlifting teaches you if all you get from that is a good physique you fucking failed You know, because if you can't take that and apply that to other areas of your life Man, you missed the entire point, you know, like my friend Paul. He had a quote that I really liked he said My entire life I was gripping a barbell and it turns out it was the other way around You know, that's a great quote. And that's you know Like I've gotten to the point now, you know, people we discussed this like I've gone through several injuries neck injuries hip injury back injuries So I want to just quit like it's your body's fighting you like stop. It's it's over. I'm like, well first off That's because you're a pussy and you would quit. Okay. I'm nothing like you If I it's a great way to start a sentence. I just tell him I just tell him is Hey, man Here's a tampon. Let me finish you want to feel better about you You would like to feel better about the fact that in the same situation that you would quit so But I love to train, you know, I was I was putting this earth for a few things Drop science and train heavy. That's what I that's what I feel like my purpose was, you know, and yeah You know, and I want to find a way within that realm to change the world Yeah, that's my big goal is to Convey so much information that I can literally change the world And that's When was that first one was your first major injury because you talked about your neck your pack your hip Which one happened exactly? So just like this First injury I ever really incurred was 20 years old. I was playing rugby in college And now I have the the one Which is I can only do one thing per unit time that can cause me bodily harm, right? Back then it was like rugby and wait, you know, so what positions you play? I was a flanker nice. So basically like linebacker equivalent. Yeah, and I really enjoyed playing rugby I mean for those of you who've done it, you know, it's like a whole different community, you know Like it's not it's not just the game. It's the drinking afterwards. Yeah, they're running around Naked, you know, like the whole whole deal shooting the boot. Thank God They didn't have iPhones back when I was going to school. Yeah, there might be images or a video Dr. Lane Norton Streaking through the college campus, you know But yeah, you know like I was in a game and I was my sophomore year And I went to tackle a guide and didn't get my head far enough to the side His elbow nailed me right in top of the head and it caused me to lose like I had a stinger Which is a bulging disc that presses on a nerve And I lost like 40% of my strength on my left side. I couldn't even like like like that chair over there I wouldn't even be able to pick it up, you know, and I went so far as amazing how incompetent some of the doctors were and I'm not trying to hate on doctors Like there's really good doctors out there, but The first orthopedic I went to is like, oh, you have shoulder strain. You have a shoulder strain And I'm like reading I'm like you're sure because it sounds like a stinger based on what I'm reading online He was like, no, it's shoulder strain and then we did an MRI. He's like it looks like you have arthritis in your neck And I'm just like This is a bulging disc. I'm pretty sure like based on what I'm reading So I finally took it to a A neurosurgeon in my hometown because I went to school and I'm from indiana. I went to school in florida And he was like, no, it's a bulging disc. He's like your neck does have some arthritic changes just from You know rugby's tough Like like I don't have the natural curvature in my neck anymore Like it's just and I'll catch myself like I'll be like this just by default like I'll get the forward head thing Yes, yeah, it's really bad. So I have to you know, kind of put myself in that position um So, yeah, I lost quite a bit of strength and the the surgeon, you know, he said he's like, listen You may never get back your full strength. And I mean that was like a dagger to the heart, you know And uh, but I just you know, I went to um, actually my first bodybuilding coach dr. Joe glumsetski He was also had a phd in physical therapy. He's like five phds and shit Um So I went to him and he put me through some he showed me some rehab exercises this you know And in six months I was back in prs again, you know, and it kind of gave me that Initial confidence that it's like you can get injured and you can still come back from you can fix it Like, you know, yeah, there's like, uh, you know, if you lose your leg, you're not, you know You can get a prosthetic or whatever, but you know, but the most the human body is pretty amazing in its recovery ability And that's why like, you know, I tore my pec when I was 26 years old now How did you tell you because you hurt your neck obviously acutely right you hit someone boom Was your pec uh tear were you lifting a like super heavy amount of weight or was it just a routine? Okay So again, you pushed it. I was just starting to get into powerlifting and I was doing a reverse Band bench press. So, you know bands hang down from from the rack And they were actually slightly behind me. And so when I started to press the bar moved on me, you know Up and kind of and I was doing stupid bodybuilding style with my arms flared out, you know and You know, I just I felt like, uh You know, like if you pull saran wrap and it finally gives way that's what it felt like you can you can feel it Oh, I felt I knew exactly what I did as soon as it happened, you know Um, it didn't have the auditory pop like some guys described, but I So I got up. Uh, we went to the er, uh, my wife me and my wife, um We were engaged at the time and uh We get the r and either messing with me and everything and it's like, oh, I think you strained it and I'm like, I'm thinking But it was so swollen. Oh, you had every you had the swelling and discoloration or just no discoloration whatsoever No, like I woke up the next day and it wasn't it wasn't you know, everybody tears their pecs. You know, there's discoloration So when I got up and I saw no discoloration I was thinking oh, shit. Maybe I just did strain it, you know And in two weeks went by the swelling started to go down and I could you know, there was definitely a deformity there You know, absolutely. So I went in got in my eye all this kind of stuff and it showed that there was a it was torn at the mussel tendon junction And I went in to uh, see a guy named dr. Michael Corcoran in Kakeke, Illinois and thank goodness. I got referred to this guy in particular. Um He was awesome and he said listen, you know, surgery. This is gonna be tricky This is like trying to sew hamburger back together, you know, this is very difficult because you're you're he's like It says muscle tendon junction, but you're mostly in the muscle, you know And that normally was shit like that. They just leave it alone. Yeah, normally they don't mess well That can be harder because with at least with the tendon you can staple it to the bone And it comes back stronger very high success rate very high success rate with that kind of tear Like bicep tears are almost almost always popped at the tendon bicep tear sucks, but they have a Extremely high success rate. It's over 90 with those surgeries. He told me this was 50 50 You know, he's like this. He's like we could do it and You know, you could sneeze and let's go in through your mind when that he's telling you some shit I mean, obviously I was pretty gutted. Yeah, you know, and how old are you at that time? 26 It's about nine years ago Yeah, would have been would have been actually right around this time. Actually. I think it was like march 14th or something No, no, no No, like literally right around this time. It was in february It oh man. I'm trying it. It's like the anniversary. Holy shit. It was mid. It was today was that day It was mid february. I'm gonna have a hamburger today It was mid february I remember that because when I went to the Arnold I hadn't had surgery on it yet I think it was right around like march No, it's late late late late february late february So might have been today. Who knows? Um, so I decided to go through with the surgery for it because I thought you know what If it doesn't work that I'm I've got to do rehab, which I'm gonna have to do anyway right now, right? I might as well give it a shot You know like worse it can happen is it doesn't work and I'm no better off than I am I'm no worse off than I am now, right? And at least I know I tried, you know, and it was successful It was successful and um, you know went in and Um, I was telling you guys a story like I came out of anesthesia and my wife's there and the nurse is there and uh The nurse looks at me and I just like I almost like grabbed her. I'm like, how'd it go? You know, which come to find out I I could form the words in my mind I remember clearly what I was thinking, but when it came out, I was like Because of the because the morphine, you know So So, um, you know, and she was I just remember hearing it went really well and I didn't hear anything after that I just remember thinking my mind. It's on I'll be back Now now fast forward the next major. I guess hiccup would be your hip Next major. Well, I mean I kind of battled through some back injuries In in 2000 and 50. So Okay, so I won usa pl nationals in 2014 And qualified for the Arnold and qualified for the world team. What were your numbers when you did that? So at nationals, I hit a 650 squat a 391 bench and a 683 deadlift So, uh, it's easy So then and and my training for the honor was going really well. I mean, I was crushing weights I hit 600 for five on squat. I hit 635 for eight on deadlift like I was crushing shit and I was I was On pace to squat like 677 683 something like that the world record at the time was 681 now explain that Do you or 660 because I have a lot of respect for how you program? I watch how you get ready for these competitions and the way you progressively overload Can you can you kind of tell when you're going into a going into a comp? Like the weights that you're hitting two three weeks out like oh, I'm coming Just just just the way it feels you can tell just the way it feels. Yeah, I mean I was I was like 565 for fives was just a joke. Like it felt it felt easy, you know and usually like Usually that will even though it's well under my five rep max. It will still feel like a grind still, right? I'm a relatively slow squatter if you've ever seen me squat You're a grinder that yeah. Oh, I I've had reps that were like eight seconds concentric. Wow. I mean, wow, I don't give a so Things are going really well for the Arnold Just absolutely crushing weights. I was thinking I might even total up in the high 1700s or you know low 1800s. Wow and One week out I was I was I was doing conservative maxing on squats Basically you go in you hit a single at a weight You know you can do and I was conservative maxing like 630 640 on squats. Like I was just smoking them. Wow and uh I I got I got done with my squats went over to do bench and I could tell my lower back was a little bit tight And I just thought well, that's weird. Like I didn't feel anything when I was squatting So I benched and I went and dead lifted. So this was you were handling the weight. No problem It wasn't like you were no, I was fine. I was fine. Um And uh, you know, I was I was tight went to go deadlift and was kind of think well Maybe I shouldn't deadlift. I'm like, you know what I'm weak out. I need to get this workout in And the case again where the default to push too hard was the wrong move But you know what I might have already I might have had the same thing happen. Anyway, who knows anyway, so I I've did 610 for like sets of four on deadlifts and it was like my last hard workout before the Arnold And I woke up the next morning couldn't even hardly get up the couch. Oh, this is like a week out from the Hit you afterwards. Yeah. Yeah, and I was like, oh fuck, you know, and I'm like I'm a week out I'm like, I'm not gonna be able to compete, you know, and um, so I really I rested, you know Did a bunch of you know mobility stuff and And massage therapy and who knows what actually worked or not But um, I said, you know, the meet was on Friday Um, Friday at the Arnold And I think I went on on Tuesday And I was like, I'm gonna go on on Tuesday. I'm gonna try and hit my openers if I can't hit my openers I'm gonna pull out When in and they felt okay And I was just like, all right, I guess we're gonna give it a go, you know And um, like I said, my goal was to break the squat record, uh, because you can in the ipf you can It's not like these other fucking backyard powerlifting federations If you want to set a world record, you have to do it a world level meet with world judges You cannot do it at a local or national meet has to be a world meet And so the Arnold was a world level meet and um, it's in my backyard worlds That year was going to be in Finland and everybody told me like listen If you're gonna go after the squat record go after it at the Arnold because there's no world title on the line You know at worlds, it's a team game Like you're wanting to win the overall team gold medal And so the coaches are going to usually pick pretty conservatively for you because they don't want you to finish the lift Right, of course, they want you to get the highest total, right? I don't care about what your prs are. I mean, they do it a little bit But they don't care as much about this as the team, right? so Uh, I we got on there, you know, literally the morning of I'm like, okay I don't feel pretty good, you know and uh We had a snafu So I got my second squat was like 639 felt good. I looked at ben and since it's kilo jumps, you know I looked at my said 666, which was the next jump up from two and a half kilo jump up from 661 which was the current world record Ben must have done the back calculation. I don't know if he just got excited or whatever And I'm not hating on ben because ben I wouldn't have squatted nearly what I did I wouldn't have done a much stuff this idea for one for ben He went and he put in 661 Which ties the record and when you tie it the original guy keeps it, of course so Um, and he comes back. He's like, okay. We're going 661 and I looked at him like you mean 666, right? He's like, no, I'm like the record 661 I just saw like the color drain out of his face like he immediately knew and once you set a third squat attempt You can't change it. Oh, shit. Nope. I don't know that You can change your third deadlift, but you can't change your third squat. Oh, shit I wonder why so I was like really like mentally it was like I had to get myself like I had to pull a gut check You know what I mean because it was like this is what I done all this stuff Of course, you want the you're at that point too. That's your height But no, I kind of I kind of like I find ways to refocus myself. I'm like, all right Most people will go out here and miss this lift just because they're pissed off because it's not a world record I'm like show me that still means something for me and go out and fucking win this thing You know what I mean? So I went out and I hit that 300 kilo squat 661 And when I actually unfortunately That's where I messed my backup worse because I got kind of sideways on it And it was a grind but I would have had 662 if because you can take a half kilo jump For a world record. Maybe it was a blessing. You know what I mean? So So I I think that's where I actually herniated my first disc in my back was on that lift because I woke up the next day and like It was actually really weird It was like because I haven't herniated this between l2 l3 which is really high up for a squatter It's usually l4 l5 is where you herniate this And um, hold on. Where did you herniate l2 l3? Oh, yeah So that I got kind of sideways on my squad coming up in the next morning I felt like right around the l2 l3 area like quite a bit of pain um, and so then worlds was about 14 or 15 weeks after that And and I kind of struggled on and off like I had to stop squatting for like three weeks somewhere in there And I remember four weeks out and this is something I've always tried to do is like be real with people Like most people talk about the struggle and talk about the grind But they don't actually show you it while they're going through it They talk about after they've accomplished something, right? And I'm like that's that's a safe way to go That's such bullshit, right? I remember the first time I posted a video that were like I failed and I couldn't get the weight like everybody went bananas Like oh my god. I've never seen anybody do some shit like that. Everybody posts their best exactly what I did Yeah, you post I like to show people like yeah some days I come in I think I'm going to be able to do this and it don't work out. This is what it looks like So after three weeks of not squatting like obviously squats didn't feel real great, you know And I was just trying to get back in the groove. Well, I was presenting in Denmark. This is one month out from worlds I'm presenting in Denmark fly over there. I slept fine on the flight over But unfortunately I woke up at like 1 p.m. Denmark time And I had needed to go to bed like 10 p.m. Because I had to be up at like 5 a.m I didn't sleep that entire night, you know, and then I got up and gave a speech for eight hours on my feet And then I went and had to squat. Oh my god so I had um I was supposed to do 565 for doubles And I was going okay like the felt okay, you know, and then by the last set I just I ran out of gas. I was supposed to do an amrap and I failed on the first rep And I had video of it Now I went back and ended up getting a double like I didn't do any extra amrap or whatever. I was fucking crying um And I really debated about like put because I called Ben. I'm like, dude, it's not gonna happen Like this is 100 pounds less than I'm supposed to squat worlds and I fucking failed it You know what I mean? I'm like this thing just ain't gonna happen. He's like listen just You flew over you had a bad day. You had a bit of work out. Just we don't need to make that decision now, you know And he was real supportive is about was real supportive, you know, they they they got my back. They got me refocused I was like, all right, we don't have to make the decision now, right? So let's just let's just worry about the next workout, right? Just kind of refocus myself But I posted that video up when it happened because I'm like, here's where I'm at You know, I knew my competition would see it. I knew all these people would see it And I'm like, you know what though? I get fucking sick and tired of these people talking about the grind talking about failure And they don't know what it looks like. You know, I'm gonna show it to you. I bet you got a lot of love for that though I did a lot of people really appreciated that of course because when people see somebody that they they think is super human You know actually become human, right? You get a lot of respect. That's why I show these like me squatting 135 pounds and getting excited about that's what I that's why I made that comment because See what it allows someone like me too is to to uh respect your programming because I can see what you're doing I watch you. I know that you can squat 600 pounds But then you show you putting the work in at 275, you know, like nobody shows no one's showing because it's not it's not impressive But it's like sexy. Yeah, when I do these posts and I got 135 pounds in my back But I'm working on my mobility and I'm working on things like that connectivity in my body And I think like, you know, I don't get a lot of views on it because it's not cool. It's not a pr It's not nothing impressive. It's like, yeah, but people need to understand the important I would argue insist. I would argue it builds your brand even better. It's just not gonna be as exciting right off the bat Right and and I like squats didn't start feeling good before worlds until a week out, you know, and I remember so a week out from worlds Ben said I'm gonna come to the gym with you because he was living in tamp at the time He's like, let's work up to a conservative max I had no idea what it was going to be. So my my first attempt I did 605 and he's like, okay, let's go to Uh 640 I'm like, oh shit. That's pretty pretty heavy weight for a gym for a gym lift, you know Because on competition day, I mean I One of the best One of the best compliments I forgot was from matt gary and mike zordo's and they were like These guys are well involved in us appeal and like Like you have a lot of mental Edge on a lot of guys because they know if you're showing up on meet day They're not gonna get b plus lane norton. They're gonna get a plus lane norton And you're gonna come out and hit your lifts and they're gonna have to deal with it and um So 640 took it for a second attempt and hit it and I remember standing up and being like Game on motherfuckers, you know, so went to worlds Um in finland, you know got there and I'm warming up and usually like, um It's funny because I'm like four inches taller than everybody else in my weight class You know like I got the longest legs the skinniest legs everybody in my weight class So I'm thinking man, if I was a hustler, I'd be like going around taking bets Hey, I'm a squat more than anybody here. You know what I mean? So You know worlds they give medals for the overall and they give medals for individual lifts So I knew I had a good chance to to gold medal in squat. Um and First attempt 606 felt great second attempt 634 felt good so For our final attempt with the world record at the time 661 and you can chip it which is 662, right And I go back and I look and ben's put up 668 and I'm like Dude, you realize if I if I miss not again if I miss this I won't even get a bronze medal for the squat And he looks at me and he goes you're not going to miss this today And uh ben ben is the kind of guy He will I know he will not put away at the bar. I can't do So I was just like, all right, let's do it went out squatted it was best feeling ever Talk about the adrenaline I was I actually remember my fishing buddy will grozio and he's a he's another coach It's great guy good friend of mine and we were going out one day to fish and I you know I'd been deal with back injuries and everything. This is like six weeks out from worlds And I'm tell we're talking about everything and he just he said something to me that really stuck with me goes He goes man, you come this far finished the mission So I'm like run. I'm like walking the bar. I'm like finish the mission You know like I yell goofy shit at myself, you know because I'm just fired up But yeah, you want to talk about like it's it's cool because at worlds It's very I want to say a sanitized process So there's actually a tunnel Where you're when you're When the person in front of shoes lifting you're sitting back in this tunnel And you got your coach back there And uh, there's a there's a handler. Okay, so this handler is going to tell you when the bar is loaded When he says bar is loaded the clock starts you got 60 seconds. Okay And within 60 seconds you have to get the squat command So I I always as soon as I get bars loaded I'm going because you don't you know if you get out there and it's misloaded or you know You want to give all your time and I just remember thinking when he says bars loaded That's going to be like my my my the gun going off at the starting line Like that's my release like I'm just going to fucking run out there like a savage You know what I mean and I got my music playing You know and I'm I'm I told Ben I'm like when when as soon as he says that rip my headphones off Put the ammonia in front of me and smack me as hard as you can, you know Hit me, you know and yeah, it was just it was like being shot out of a cannon, you know It was awesome. I was the last squat in my group And uh hit it. I just remember actually I came out and I always look for something to look at when I'm squatting just to focus my attention I come out. I look straight and pull on this ball right there And I'm just looking and I can hear a pull like as I'm coming. I was like, yeah, yeah You got that shit. You got that, you know and like turned around and waiting for those lights Being like the longest second and a half of my life and getting three white lights and fucking was awesome You know it's been broken since then but man to do it at that kind of meet at that like The ioc the olympic committee was there at the meet because they're considering powerlifting for you know, the olympics It's provisionally in the world games. Yeah, it's crazy And um, I still remember 12 weeks out from the meet matt gary. Who's the the head of the u.s. Uh coaching committee He sent me an email and he's like breaking down everybody in my weight class and you know This is their strengths and this is their weaknesses and this is their best lift and this and that And at the end he said to me is like Lane you got the opportunity to medal but you've got to be perfect if you miss a lift you're out If you miss a lift you're out And he's and then it said train like your life depends on I was like, oh shit. Don't tell me that Don't tell me that like yeah, no like I love I love pressure Well, you're you're thriving it. You're a very intense individual. Uh, you I mean You've been talking you last night. Well, even talking you last night you you're pretty calm You seem to revel in in those types of challenges, uh, where people say to you. Well, you embrace it Yeah, you know, it looks like you embrace it and excites you Let me ask you this question because I guarantee you some people listening right now are thinking themselves good They're thinking themselves right now Do you think that that attitude contributed maybe to type to training types of training that may have Push you to injuries. Oh sure Now let me ask you this. Have you changed anything or looking back? Have you changed your approach? Uh, because you're also very analytical obviously, right? What has changed since then or what what do you think you could have done differently? Maybe so the first thing I'll tell people is Because people will say well, look you got injured this and that I'll say Show me one high level athlete in any sport who has not incurred some kind of major injury Tiger Woods plays golf. Yeah, he's fucked up. You know what I mean like So I'm not saying there aren't things I could do better Absolutely But if you're going to compete on that if you if you don't ever get injured Lifting weights, you're probably lifting like a pussy. Well, you guys you get your priorities are different And I tell us that every last when your priorities are to Another pound another pound and you're trying to set records or you're pushing yourself You're always going to walk that borderline Of course because your goal isn't to be the most mobile person in the world right now And if that was your goal, you probably wouldn't be setting prs and people just got to understand that that it's It's where your priorities are But I think the idea for us as we continue to go through because It's learning from that and then trying to meld the two of them together. I think that's where Sal's going, right? It's like, you know looking back, you know, how have you grown from that and like what are things that you've implemented? Yeah, because you're not done competing you still want to you still want to be in that world So your your approach has changed Right. So like I've put a lot more emphasis on mobility rehab work core work Planking all those sorts of things to to try to glute work, you know Now these are areas that you're because you you spoke very highly of your physical therapist These are these are areas that your physical therapist has identified. Yes. And so your core you said core Has uh, I notice you and like most power lifters and heavy lifters do you use the belt quite a bit when you lift Have you done lifting without it or do you experiment without it? Uh, I I do my a lot, you know I do some beltless work And it's you know, there's there's theories behind If you use a belt you tend to get more core activation of the rectus abdominis like the actual front of your abs You get less of the the obliques inside of your abs if you do beltless work. You tend to get more uniform activation So, um, that's why we've been putting in a lot of side planking exercises and that sort of thing But for me when you start to get heavy I tend to be Air on the side of specificity Sure, if I you know because squatting without a belt it's just squatting them with it's different than squatting with a belt So it is and this is and here's the thing to consider too is when you're it's not because I've heard people argue and say Oh, you get lots of core activation when you wear a belt Which is true if you look at a um, if you if you're looking at activation of muscles That's absolutely correct But the difference is in recruitment patterning and how the muscles are recruited And with a belt you're your core pushes out against the belt and the belt creates More stability because you'll notice when you're you know, when you're doing a heavy lift you breathe in deep You push out that belt gives you that artificial extra Process, right? So then when you take off the belt and you go to do a heavy lift Your core now is trained because this is what happens your body Whatever you do all the time becomes your default recruitment pattern It wants to push out But there's nothing there to support it and you and you can create problems And so you'll see now, you know, I've worked with lifters where I'll have them do both because It's important that your core can do both because if you emphasize just one all the time Which look here's the bottom line when you're competing in power lifting you use a belt right in competition So it's important you get good with it Yes And in fact if you give a beginner lifter A belt who's never used one before they don't even know how to use them, right? Their body doesn't know how to use one properly, but it's really about that recruitment pattern That makes the biggest difference in You know in in that type of stability One of the things I've tried to do now is when I when I breathe and I have all solva I try to think about filling up my entire belt and not just the front, right? So And my my physical therapist always yelling at me ribs down ribs down, you know and not just Being here but being here at tight, you know tighten the core And um, yeah, you know, hopefully it's going to make the difference. I mean Um Well, I think if you weren't competing you probably do you think if you weren't competing that you wouldn't train with it as much Or do you think you still would what do you think you would do like if let's say, you know, you've already you're over competing Your training now. Is it still something that you find yourself using a lot or I'd probably train with it last But I probably still train with it, you know um Because it's a hard transition. I'll tell I'll say I was a big belt Well, I go back and forth. I go I go all the way up until I start getting a while without it. Yeah, no I did I didn't it's a weird transition. I play in and out because I'm not competing, right? Well, and I have such He's by belt I have you know, I have more forward lean than most people and you know people look at me and never say you're doing it Wrong, you're doing it wrong and I try to explain by mechanics to them. That's like I'm Speaking a third language But it's one of those things where I I have such an amount of forward lean It really does take a lot off my squat If I don't use a belt and and I can admit that that's fine Because everybody uses a belt in power lifting. So it's you know, it's it's all level playing field to fucking support Well, that's what I like about you. You don't you're you're uh, you're not afraid to say that Do you know that you're there's a lot of ego and it's still it's still a skill Of course to get it out of that. That's right. And you're competing with one just like the next guy I'm not gonna sit here and be like, oh, yeah, then these things give me nothing and the belt gives me nothing It's all well if it didn't you gave me nothing. I wouldn't fucking use them You know, like I'm sorry Like stop these guys like oh the knee sleeves don't do anything. They just a mental thing shut up the knee sleeves probably SPDs, you know strong knee sleeves iron tanks ones that I've got they'll probably give you know Somebody anywhere from 10 to 30 pounds is my guess, you know, hey every percent counts when you're competing There's nothing wrong with that as long as it's standardized I mean I competed raw in a in a raw division that had wraps right knee wraps I actually prefer sleeves because I don't really get that much out of knee wraps because I'm not a I'm not a upright olympic style Bounce out of the whole squad. You're a lot of you're a lot more hip traction than you are in this lecture Exactly. So I just don't I don't squat fast enough in order to get a lot of the rebound out of that so But um, yeah, what a cool topic and a good point Yeah, I because of your because of your stance and because of how much because I actually squad were similar to you I have a very tall lanky guy So I tend to lean forward more than the average person I prefer a lower bar than I do a high bar squat. So You know that there's definitely advantages and disadvantages to both. It's a great little topic Well, people people look at me like why don't you just high bar squat because you can stay more upright If theoretically yes, but the problem is I still have to lean forward even with a high bar squat And what happens when I get heavy? I just completely fold over because the torque is so great on my lower back You've only lengthened the lever if you got you've got this upper body lever and your body likes to fold forward And if you move the weight up, you've only made your maybe heavier. That's that's stupid. Yeah, that's dumb Unless you're really that's a troll who's coming through trying to say some Unless you're really good at sitting as super erect with your you know with your squat I mean, I guess you could say I could get you know I could make a really wide stance and do high bar and push my knees forward really far But now I'm creating other problems. You know what I mean? Now you're tearing your balls out of your balls Yeah, exactly So, you know, I'm Instead of you know, I actually hurt my back more when I was trying to fight what my body naturally wanted to do You know now listen. Yeah, I hurt my back, but okay. How long have I been lifting weights? Almost 20 years I've had one major lower back injury I don't think I've had more incidents of lower back injury than any normal person who lifts weights No, and the hard thing too, especially when you've been working out as long as you have or we have We've all been training that long as well is that you create these These patterns for so long and you get so strong with these patterns That you eventually something sometimes this is not for everybody, but sometimes a weakest link in the you know There's always a week of slink, right? And it sometimes you'll pay the price and then to revert to go back and to regress and to have to figure that out It can be a very long process like people don't realize like, you know, when I stopped lifting with uh with a with a bell I mean, you know my top deadlift nowhere near yours But I've I've pulled 600 pounds off the floor when I took my belt off I had to go way back And I had and it took me a year before even getting anywhere near what my old deadlift was because I had to relearn Had had a deadlift. It's like a new exercise And that's just one silly example I mean if you look at your you know the complexity of a squad or a deadlift or even a bench press And if you get an injury and all the you know, you reexamine what's causing that injury Why did that particular part of my muscle tear? You know, why did my why did I not control the movement at that part of the rep? You got to go back and you have to relearn the exercise people and realize now That shit can take a long time. You're only using that on your big compound movements, too You're not like a you know cable pushdown guy with you don't you don't wear a belt when you do curls No I don't use a little fucking, uh, you know vileo belt with a little thin thing in front Where you know that says I have bb pro on the back, you know Yeah, we actually we actually had this guy that worked out one of our gyms and he wore a belt that said beast on the back Fucking hate people talking about you He'd walk in we get on the intercom and we just go beast Be so so powerlifting the thing about powerlifting is it is a I mean, I I'm gonna say pure sport and some people are gonna are gonna debate that because of course you have all the The different, you know rules and regulations, but what I mean by pure is you either lift the weight or you don't Right, uh, but you also compete in bodybuilding, which is not Sure, this is a completely judge great question. Yeah, compare the two like how different is that Yeah, I mean I like both for different reasons, you know I would say that in a way bodybuilding is a little bit more rewarding and that it's just more of a constant grind In that, you know, you never You know after my training sessions done for powerlifting I can kind of stop thinking about powerlifting, you know, I go I go home Eat some food You know hang out with my family whatever or some bodybuilding It's like you never when you're prepping for a show You get everybody gets prepped brain at some point Even if you do it, right? Even if you give yourself enough time if you do flexible dieting whatever at some point It basically dominates your life. It does happen. It's a very selfish obsessive sport It is in any sport is but it's just one of those things that you know I think I have like ptsd from competing and that like Not to minimize ptsd. I'm making a joke, but like six months after i'm done competing if you said the word diet to me I'm like, oh God, you know, I didn't I didn't like I liked it in that, you know, if it's hard That's what makes it worth doing. You feel proud of yourself afterwards But I didn't like what I don't like is the way that It tends to just completely take over my entire life because you just become so fixated on food, you know, it just It sucks. I what I loved about powerlifting was Going into the arena on contest day Like that's what it felt like, you know, like it was you know, I it feels like it feels more like a competition I have I have all these nerves on competition day, right and bodybuilding what the what the fuck am I gonna do with them? Pose harder, you know, like Or as powerful as today I can use that shit, you know, like I that's why I love like you're talking about pressure I love pressure. I love nerves like one of the best lines I ever saw. Do you guys ever watch the ultimate fighter? Come on now. Yeah, okay. I think it was season five remember sarah versus uh hues. Okay Do you guys remember that years ago, right? Do you guys remember the guy war machine? Yeah, okay, so he's in jail now, right? Yes, I do actually one of my he killed didn't he beat his porn star girlfriend? Yeah, one of my one of my good friends is actually childhood friends with him. Oh, wow Yeah, he my friend. What was his girlfriend's name? Kristi Mack Somebody pull up his internet browser history Hey, she's not a delete delete delete. She's not a bad one to watch, but yeah, he beat the shit out of her She's not ugly But there's there is a great line. This is so uh, this guy, uh, he was john copenhayver is what he was known of at the time And he's just like sitting over a bucket before his fight like physically getting sick You know like because he's so nervous And he's sit there and he matt sarah as his coach. He's still going. I hate this. I can't do this anymore I can't I hate feeling like this hate feeling like this and sarah looks at him It's the greatest line. I think I might have already says what are you talking about? That's the feeling of being alive You care about something so much. It's causing you to feel physically ill. He's like most people Never get that. They don't care about anything that much. That's the man in the arena, right? Man in the my favorite one of my favorite quotes of course What are your thoughts on what we're finding out about the brain and the stomach being connected together? What do you think about all that? That's crazy to me And we've always said things in the past like you've heard people say oh, I feel it in my gut You know and now we're starting to see that there's a major connection going out. They just didn't was it like two years ago They just discovered the the the god with a lymphatic system connects directly to the brain everything connects Which is which is hilarious because if you went anatomy books before that it ended You know and up at the neck. I think look at adipose tissue. We used to think adipose tissue was just Literally like a sponge like a storage unit and now we know it sends out adipokines It talks to other tissues it fits every definition of an organ so the skeletal muscle by the way You know we used to just think these were kind of inert things that was like the liver and the gut the heart We're driving everything and the brain, you know and they were driving everything They all talk to each other the peripheral tissues all talk to each you know the peripheral tissues talk to each other you know adipose tissue Very very communicative To other tissues, you know, especially like look at things like leptin and adiponectin. They're fine. They're finding now kids Young girls now are going through puberty at younger ages just because they're fatter People don't realize that the extra adipose tissue is is pushing them into puberty yet earlier Well leptin interacts with the hypothalamus and the hypothalamus is really involved with sex hormones and those sorts of things So i'm not saying there's a direct connection, but there is that kind of interloop between the two It's very interesting and i wasn't that long ago where i found out I don't know how long they knew this for but Majority of serotonin produced in your body is produced in by the bacteria in your gut there's a tremendous amount of serotonin produced by The bacteria that is in your gut which is crazy because Obviously, we've known forever intuitively you fall in love you get nervous you get depressed. Where do you feel it? You feel it in your stomach You know what i mean? You feel it all in your stomach and had you and the funny thing is had you said this to a doctor A scientist 10 years ago, they would have laughed you they would have laughed at you They would have said you were absolutely crazy and now we're discovering that that's i mean there's uh I think there's i think the serotonin receptor density in the gut is second only to the brain. Yeah, you know, so i mean and definitely like uh it's We know so little about the gut You know there's more species of bacteria in the gut i believe that i believe that i could be wrong But i believe that the status statistic is there's more species of bacteria in your gut Than there are animal species on the entire planet there you have you are actually more Bacteria cells walking around right now than you are human cells That's a fact and there's debate as to what the ratio is some people say three to one Some people say 10 to one, but you literally are more bacteria than human. That's pretty well It's pretty pretty pretty fucking pretty we don't you know there's We know that it makes a difference, but we don't you know people say well, should i take a probiotic? Should i take this thing things we don't know What really if how it affects it or if it makes it better or worse I've seen people who take probiotic anecdotally and they actually get worse gi issues. Yeah Yeah, what you need to consider is the overgrowth of bacteria regardless of what the bacteria is can be a problem And so what people will do with probiotics is they'll take them Oh, it's like it's like everything. Why don't we always have to go to the extreme? We learn a little bit of science like hey, this might help a little bit Then everyone's gotta go oh, but take this as much as I possibly can We got what you like we did our we did our homework We took care of our boy. He's got amstel light. We got his monster drink After you're done, you can have a little bit of the vape off the volcano there You said you've never had marijuana in your entire life never my entire you know marijuana fight Did you know that the cannabinoids fight cancer? I I haven't actually looked into it. Uh, but yes, there's some anti-cancer properties. Right, right? So it'll go good with your uh monster So I'm a libertarian so I think the people should be able to you know smoke weed do whatever we connected very strongly Oh, that's why we all like each other as soon as that came out. We're like, oh god, okay How could we not like each other? We like people being able to do whatever the fuck they want what do you think of the of the current state of The bodybuilding fitness World In the last 10 years has changed so much because of social media how much time you got We got all day, bro No, I'm gonna tell you something because the the reason why I even know who you are I stopped I was really into bodybuilding as a kid, you know lifting weights and I completely just disconnected from it But I knew who you were because you You were like somebody that kind of was being smart about it You were you were talking about science and why one of the first things I think I heard you say was how You don't need to eat the insane amounts of protein that some of these bodybuilders were talking about You know the two grams per pound a boat about stupid And I remember reading that and then you you know, obviously you backed it up with uh with science and studies And then I did my own research and I was like holy fuck. This guy's right and he's pretty muscular and he works out And he's pretty strong. I think I'm gonna listen to this guy and he's hot. Yeah Um, uh, I have a poster of you about my man So, uh, but you know, you're listening to all that or you know, seeing all that like you must be I'm gonna drive you crazy because it's I don't know man. It feels like it's going backwards in some in some ways Well, you know, we do have you know an evidence-based movement, which is nice, you know back when I was first starting on this There was no evidence-based movement, you know, it was just who the one of the bro in the gym said who was big dude, you know um Yeah, it's just it's I think Neil degrasse tyson said this and I really think it sums up nicely and it's The fundamental job of any scientist is to question Even the most basic beliefs that we hold true, right? So not just accept something because guess what like people when I when I bring up something they say, well, this is the way it's always you know what Thousand years ago people were like, yeah, the world's fucking flat because it is because we said so and by the way The earth is the center of the universe, you know And it took some we all know what's adam And it took it took, you know, Galileo and literally standing in front of uh I think the church and then making them in house arrest, didn't they making him recant his findings And then I think I think the story is like he recanted to save his life literally because they were gonna kill him Because you know heaven forbid we advance um And he under his breath said and still it turns. Well, you know, it's I hate to say this. This is so cliche, right? But history repeats itself the the uh, especially this earth movement right now. Yes, there is Oh, wait, wait, wait. What the fuck? Wait, wait, wait. So there's the flat earth movement posted this literally posted this Okay, and this just so are they real or do the yeah, it's real I've got the great This is the greatest line in the history of the internet fucking internet remembers it's The flat earth society posted and if you don't get this within 10 seconds of me saying it go back to school The flat earth society has members all around the globe. Oh my god Drop fucking It's like I don't even need to say anything. Why isn't the moon flat? Damn it. It's a it's a it's a flat disc You know what I what I was saying about history repeating itself is the the holders of information People don't realize how much power is in information information truly is power for all of human history If you look at the people who who had the information and conveyed it They were the ones in power it was the church and then it was you know, aristocrats and government and You know media and now that we have uh the internet and the ability to share information I mean in the past look I tell you what we're we're recording a podcast right now We do youtube videos wait 15 years ago. That didn't exist if I wanted to spread my message I would need a half a million dollars worth of production equipment I would need somebody to sign me. I need a major, you know production to be able to do this I have to be on a major network now I could make a youtube video and it might reach 20 million people and it's a girl And it scares the shit out of the holders of information and and I ask you this because you are a scientist Who are the hold holders of information now and who's getting scared now? That's a loaded question. Yeah, it's a very loaded question because we talked yesterday And you don't have to go into detail obviously we talked off the mic yesterday But you've seen some unethical shit happen in the field of science and these are the these are the holders of information today Yes, you know, um, how much of that would you say, you know in your experience? Okay, I know this is I gotta pee really bad. I'll be in your experience. How much like percentage wise. Do you think is is fucking bad and corrupt? you know I probably had a better experience than most people because I went to the University of Illinois ILL I and I Which is a really highly regarded research institute and I worked under a great Advisor not good not okay fucking great dr. Don layman I didn't realize how great he was until I had left and had some time out my own and seen what some other people went through I didn't really see any of it there. It was very rigorous like we had so many So much oversight so it's like he taught you the right way and then you went out in the real world Yeah, so how it went down, you know, there was a statistic out there that that something like 30 to 40 percent of Of are not fabricated, but the data is doctored with in some way Bias, how about we just say that right? No, no, no, no, no by 100 percent of research is biased 100 percent. Well, everybody has their bias I have my own bias. You have to get funding. Yeah, well not even that like we all have our own thoughts Like I have my own thoughts about stuff fair enough But what I always say is I I care more about getting the right answer than I do about being right Okay, like I love being right. Don't get me wrong. Do you really feel like that though? Do you think there's been a time we're like because that hurts bro? And we talk about this on the show about being that type of person where You're okay with being told. Fuck. I was wrong and I got to come out and say it happened my first study I ever did really I used to eat eight meals a day, you know and and I got this study back and I was looking at the data and I'm like Fuck I can't validate this. Oh good for you I I so I tried starting to eat four to five meals a day and it worked It was better like it was a little bit better, you know in terms of in terms of it fit my lifestyle better I didn't feel like I needed to leave the house with a fucking cooler. You know, yeah, and Seem to get a little bit leaner but still retain the same amount of muscle mass and uh, yeah, like I just It seemed to work a little bit better. Did you come out and talk about this ever? Oh, yeah Absolutely, you just missed a really good one. So you talk about eating eight meals a day We talked about he was all right mentioned in you know about Wanting to do research for the greater good and being okay with being wrong, you know And I said, you know, that's a really tough thing to do is to admit when you're wrong And we talk a lot about that on the show where, you know, there's not enough fitness people that come Just like you guys will do with IAF. I am You know what oh I know that's that that's the main event. We're undercard actually before we get to that Before we get to that the reason why I had to ask you the question Before I went to go use the bathroom was no one of the ones that get me drunk. Yeah, just give me a little Lower the bar a little bit. Yeah, no, what we know actually what you don't know it raises the bar for us We're fueled by it. We're actually gonna try and have some performance enhancement. Yeah, we're trying to we're trying to loosen Yep, so we can get laid. Yeah, the reason what? Yeah Whoa, he says he's a for sure thing already. Oh, no shit the reason why I asked you that question was because uh, you You were one of the first people to introduce the concept of metabolic damage and reverse dieting and We had a great conversation about this yesterday because It's still is yet to be a recognized Phenomena or term and we we know what adaptive thermogenesis is sure But they don't they only give a they give a little bit of credit to it, right? They'll say it's it's what 10 or 15 percent of the number, but you've seen firsthand Well, we all have because we've all been doing this for fucking 10 plus year 15 plus year Yeah, like how do you how do you deal with that because you're on both sides of that? Right, like you're also the scientist who You know you want to see the evidence But you're also on the other side of it saying wait a minute. I'm seeing some shit going on right now That is just doesn't make any fucking sense. You know you were telling us about some of the competitors you've trained where they You know they they come see you and they're eating a thousand calories a day doing two hours of cardio every single day Yeah, and doesn't make any sense. It makes no sense. You know, I mean What do you do with how do you deal with that? Well, I thought it was interesting that When I talked about reverse dieting metabolic adaptation, I never tried to oversell it It was never this is the magic solution to all your problems. It was you were careful It was this is what I've observed Here's some science that that seems to you know seems to and a sailor and um antecedently God, that's the wrong word. I don't even think that's a word. Yeah, it's okay. I make him up You know why you just got to say it faster. You're sitting in Adams chair It's what That's the big joke on this show is I talk so fast and just make a word. I'm searching for but anyway If you say confidently, it doesn't matter. There was there was data kind of surrounding it, but no direct data Right. So I talked about that and um You know, I I never I try to never oversell it You know, I said this is a tool that I think some people can use and if you want to use it great If not, whatever, you know And uh, you know, it's it's weird. I'm like, you know, here I am I've worked with I've been doing coaching for 12 years now. I worked with over 1500 people Um, did a phd nutritional science, you know, I feel like if anybody has Right to take some a little bit of leeway and make maybe a little bit of a leap It would be me, you know, but people came out, you know, pub med is great I love pub med. It's great. Fantastic resource information can be you can find it But we have these pub med warriors who if the If you can't give them a pub med study for it, it must not exist, right? And it's like, you know what? Guess what? When Isaac Newton saw the apple fall from the tree There wasn't a fucking pub med study to back it up. You know what I mean? You're 100 right because observation and anecdote Many times is what drives inspiration is what drives the science and and you know, I'll tell you what, uh When I was a kid when I had a cough my mom would give me honey. Okay, because honey Helped the cough now the way my mom explained it was it coats your throat and it helps prevent you coughing Of course, uh, I grew up. I got a little older. I'm a teenager go to the doctor I tell the doctor about the doctor laughs at me. That's ridiculous. Honey doesn't do that That's an old wives tale. We now know that there's something in honey that actually suppresses Uh, some of the uh, the the the something in the brain that actually causes the cough reflex So it actually does help with coughing But they laughed at it before and and here's what bothers me about that And this is why I think Uh, you have different theories and philosophies that have merit and many times They don't blend together because there's some truth in a little bit of everything a lot of times And the problem with this is people get dogmatic and the scientific community Can also become quite dogmatic and they're not infallible and you were talking about this yesterday We're talking about some of the some of the shit that you've seen with studies where you're like that is not That is not a study. That's that is can be trusted. Uh, but yeah, it'll get published. Yeah Well, I mean, you know, we do have Fortunately science is usually pretty good in that Other researchers are going to see that study get published and go. What the fuck. Yeah, and they gotta see if it's duplicatable Exactly and one of the proudest moments of my entire phd research was seeing it get You know mine was done in rats, which of course all the fucking Bodybuilding I was in rats. It doesn't matter Unless you show a building. That's what motherfucker. We can't do it on there's a there's a reason we do it in rats You know what because humans suck as test subject and in particular bodybuilders suck as test subject Let me tell you what because all the drugs and why did you why did you do it knife bb pros? Why did you because we don't know what's working with them? I will I will tell you exactly why we don't do it in bodybuilders Because bodybuilders are idiots as a whole And assholes and impossible to work with as research subjects and let me tell you why They already think they know more than the fucking researchers Okay, if we're gonna do a study on high protein versus low protein And we tell you you're in the low protein or we you're gonna know you're in the low protein group of your bodybuilder Even if we don't tell you even if you're blinded You can't really be blinded. They're gonna drop out of the fucking study. I'm not even no fucking low protein So, you know what rats are gonna do what the fuck I told them to do Okay, so now obviously we would love to have it validated in humans Absolutely, but rats are a good model for protein metabolism Well, one of the proudest moments was seeing a lot of my research get validated by stu philips lab They they kind of did similar research in humans and found very similar things That is the beauty of science is that if you can't reproduce it Then it wasn't legit. You know, here's here's the thing. I've only met you yesterday I've only known you for a couple days, but you the impression I get is that you have Unshakable ethics you seem to be very morally driven Which I for me personally, that's the kind of scientists that I want looking at things because We've seen far too many You know situations where we find out that the research was flawed because this company funded it this way and these things were changed Or you know, they cut the study short. So instead of going nine months, I went six months because at seven months That's when they saw side effects that they made it only six months We see what the tobacco industry did what the The petroleum industry did with lead when we were trying to get lead out of gasoline You know all these different things that happen. It's it sucks because it muddies up What is supposed to be a very pure black and white objective, you know science, but In the end science got it right You know what I mean because the research on tobacco came out And all this other stuff eventually eventually eventually the truth But man, let me tell you no, it's it's it sucks that it didn't happen faster But the truth is a freight train the truth is freight train Okay, the truth is freight train parallel 100 miles an hour down a track You can try it slow it down You can try and stop it you can try and divert it, but it's fucking coming And if you're if you're somebody who did your shit Unethically it will come out eventually. Well, I'll tell you what if you're better off just Doing it the right way from the start. I'll tell you what though if I debated a scientist 20 years ago On whether or not we'll talk about marijuana since that's a subject. We like to talk about Whether or not marijuana caused lung cancer I for sure for sure you wouldn't find a single scientist that would have debated that it didn't Because liability reasons well Not just that but if you look at the carcinogens that are produced or that are in the smoke It's got more carcinogens than tobacco smoke But for all intents and purposes it should cause cancer But it didn't the studies show it doesn't cause and we know it's because cannabinoids have anti-cancer property So it's some kind of a cancelling out process But to discuss to even entertain the idea It's kind of protein bone loss, right, right? It would have been almost impossible And so we talked for a second We you know, I joked around about the monster drink that you're drinking About the aspartame and I know I saw you did a recent post on artificial sweeteners and you defended their safety And you know, you're also libertarian and libertarians we are As a whole that's a big it's a big arm there. Yeah, there's a big arm as a whole. We are quite um, oh shit We don't we don't work. We're untrusting of you know, monolithic Monopoly type entities like government would be one of those or even the intertwining of government and business And which is fucking everything every and here's the thing. Here's the thing that I want to tell you about aspartame Here's the problem. I have with aspartame in particular When you look fuck this thing in particular Yeah, no when you look at aspartame and you look at how aspartame got approved Uh, and this these are all facts are historical facts when you look at the process that it went through When gd-serial just makes you raise an eyebrow. Well, I'll I'll give you a little synopsis Look this up if you want to I'm not going to have the exact dates, but when gd-serial first Tried to get approval from the fda the fda asked for Studies, uh, and gd-serial provided them they they gave them a hundred studies that they funded They did them themselves and they gave it to them The fda came back and said we want more and they gave them more There was an investigation into these studies and uh, they found that and if there were two scientists in particular I don't remember the names of the scientists. One was a neuro Neurobiologist who was the gentleman who was responsible for removing Uh, msg's from baby food. He was the guy that said hey msg's may not be good for You know for for baby food. Let's take that out So he would look at aspartame. He said let's look a little deeper Examine the studies found a lot of problems were done with the studies and the fda Actually did a criminal investigation Into aspartame and it did not get approved. They actually had a criminal investigation. This is true now the attorney attorney general at the time got Paid the gd-serial took the attorney general Hired him so he quit his job as attorney general worked for them Case got dropped still wasn't approved Who gets elected to uh, who or at least who gets appointed to the committee that now is going to look at uh Aspartame again, or at least he's in control Who's in control of gd-serial at the time? rumsfield, of course, of our favorite, uh, you know politician responsible for Going into iraq with mr. Bush anyhow, he was in charge of this He declared we will get it passed. This is a true story now They had a committee of five scientists, uh looking over the science behind aspartame Three out of the two said no He appointed a third or a sixth. Excuse me. Now it was a three to three tie These the scientists in charge of it was appointed by rumsfield Then uh, mate broke the tie and got aspartame approved moving along Up until 1992 aspartame was responsible for something like 80 almost 80 of the complaints to the fda for all food additives like a majority of complaints going the fda But that is very easy to explain as a confirmation bias that people believe aspartame is bad for them and so they complain But go ahead. It could be but here's the here's the thing now And you're a smart guy and I I say the same thing that could be a confirmation basis By excuse me. However after 1992 the fda stopped they started looking at the complaints like hey I had a seizure and they stopped saying was it aspartame or we're not going to blame it on aspartame We're just going to say you had a seizure In fact, you can't find statistics now for for complaints after 1992 And so for me when I look at this cloud of bullshit I go hold on This doesn't look fucking right now and this is the problem. They could very well be right aspartame could be completely safe But this is the shit that makes me shake my head Well, and and you can think not to get too libertarian, but you can thank government for for crony capitalism for fucking that up absolutely And what I'll say is all that is why we're also goddamn skeptical right all that all that may be very true it probably is true, but When you look at the research and even the research that's outside of funding from Nutri-Suite and aspartame and those sorts of things Now, let me ask you this when you look at all the research done on aspartame What percentage would you say is funded by the industry? It's probably over 70% Okay, so good majority a good majority and I want to make that clear to the audience now I'm not saying that that necessarily means it's bullshit But it's something you should consider if this was a court of law. This is something that they would make a point about They would say Hey, there may be a conflict of interest. We'd also call it a circumstantial evidence But the the other thing too is to keep this in mind. All right I was funded by the the dairy council and the egg nutrition center I never once had one of them come into my lab I never once heard from any of them. I sent a report to them every six months I realized every every industry is different But, you know, it's easy You know anybody can be made to seem like a villain if we put it together correctly, of course, you know what I mean So we got to be careful. We got to be very careful And so what I what I default back to is when I look at the actual research and even the stuff that wasn't funded by Nutri-Suite It seems to be safe now. There are some studies that show Uh christenogenic effects uh on in rats, but when you look at the dosages used They're usually a very very high dose. They are they're actually the equivalent So the equivalent you would drown you'd have to use about I think so I looked it up actually Because I knew the subject will come up I want to make sure I had the numbers correct because I don't want to misrepresent Any position or side and I have a very deep respect for For science and the scientific process and I respect you as well And I looked it up and it it's equivalent to 16 or 19 cans of soda every single day It's it's uh would you would need to consume on a regular basis When I did the calculation, maybe there's another study. I didn't see it was like 50 liters Like you would actually die of electrolyte depletion before you would actually get side effects from the from the artificial sweeters Because people the other thing to keep in mind is people don't realize it's not like a one-to-one substitution of sugar Ask no, it's like a was it a thousand times? 200 times sweeter than sugar. So I'm thinking you're literally getting milligrams Yeah, sucralose is 600 times sugar. Now. The one thing about sucralose is it does seem to change your gut flora Now we don't know if that's a good or a bad or a neutral change, right? Like we just know it changes it So we don't know about that. Well, there was so there was a study on aspartame It was a 22 year old your your long study the longest study done on artificial sweeteners and it connected Aspartame to blood cancers in particular with women and some with men now. Here's what happens And by the way, this is not the first time this has happened and again For me personally when I'm ingesting something on a regular basis When there's this this cloud of doubt over it. I got it. I kind of look at it and I I got to make a decision based on this Every time a study seems to come out to show that there's a connection between uh aspartame or glyphosates or some other chemical that we consume a lot of in in our processed foods That shows that there's a connection to cancer some kind of disease almost inevitably Six months or seven or eight months later they have to retract their statement And there's all this conspiracy around. Why did they have to retract their statement? Was their pressure From these massive organizations and it's it's kind of Worrisome it's a little worrisome to me like I look at this and go what the fuck is going on here Like it was a huge study that showed this this connection between aspartame and blood cancers And then they had to come back and say well It was a correlation. We're not quite sure And I'm like well, there's another one. I don't fuck with correlations. Yeah, be honest with you There's so much conflicting. There's so much confounding variables. Let me you know what has an extremely tight correlation Margarine sales and the door force rates of people in Maine. Yeah Like a 99 like a 99% correlation. Oh, that's true. That's true. I'm looking up. Where did you get that? Where did you get that who gave that to you? That's various correlations. There's also there is also A 97% correlation between incidents of drowning in pools and nicholas cage movies Yeah, I believe there's an 87 correlation with the giants winning whenever it rains too No, there's there's some so now I'm not using that as proof of concept But the point being is I think correlations are nice for trying to say, you know what? We should look more into that. Yeah, but we got to be careful about how much unfortunately what the paper reports is For example, I mean if you're looking at correlations people eat meat or are gonna die, you know, they're more likely to by the way You're gonna die or something anyway. Sure. But yeah, you get a look at the controls though, right, right? So I mean they said for a long time that coffee caused cancer, too Right. Well, we didn't realize that but here's the thing is people people people who drink coffee tend to be more addictive type personalities. They tend to not exercise. They tend to be higher stress They tend to smoke. They don't look at a lot of alcohol There's there's there's all kinds of confounding variables, you know, and then so when we talk about artificial sweeteners I think it's it's pretty 100 percent It could be the person who goes and buys two big macs and then gets a diet coke It could be but also what I want to say is it's not it's not toxic. It's not an acute poison. No, definitely We do have maybe there is some evidence some small evidence that there might be some carcinogenic properties at certain doses But here's the problem. Here's the deal. This is the problem that I have is when you're a fitness enthusiast and you take You know protein powder after your workout pre-workout before your workout Maybe a post, you know before bed supplement When you eat a protein bar when you're the average american there you go posing with your When you're the average, uh, you know, uh, you know person who drinks two sodas a day When that happens over the course of 20, you know 20 years 20 30 years How do we account for and you get cancer and now you're 60 and they're like well It could be this that and you know, it's a very difficult thing to you have to you have to look at When you're talking about long term like that not short term Do things accumulate in tissues? There are there are mechanisms to break down Aspartame because at the end of the day, it's just a chlorinated dipeptide There are mechanisms to break those down if you're talking about things like lead Mercury things you just can't break down. That's something where even low doses over time accumulate So I don't Again, I could be wrong and I'll never tell somebody a a you should drink monster or you should do But based on the data we have currently It does not seem to cause these problems now if you tell me you don't raise an eyebrow or worry I mean Yeah, let me I was of all the things that we have out there right now I raise and I'm so skeptical. I raise an eyebrow Well, that's walking down the street that he's not gonna fucking rob me. You know what I mean But at the end of the day like I kind of have to go. Okay, what we talk about the what is it the order of importance, right? The hierarchy of what's important, of course, uh, you know, if you're Like we we've talked about earlier. I got to debate with this big fucking juice head Uh, and again, if you want to take steroids, that's your that's your that's what I don't want to sound like I'm speaking negatively that's your decision. That's fine. Okay, but if you're on three grams of test a week and you're sitting there fretting over artificial sweeteners and chemicals by the way fucking everything's a chemical you dope Um chemicals and food and you're on three grams of test a week You're a fucking idiot. You've got your priorities. You got your priorities mixed up, you know That's a very very very valid point. You're talking about like you're talking about driving an army tank And I've got a BB gun and I'm gonna shoot the army tank with a BB gun Now physics dictates because the BB hits it. It's gonna slow it down some But it's you're not gonna fucking notice it when it runs over to kill you, right? It is. Okay. So literally it's the same thing as uh, humans used to die from bacterial infection all the time Humans used to die from now we have antibiotics that kill the bacteria But now we get a look at the long game, you know, you take a shit ton of bacteria you create bacteria that are You know, uh resistant to it or you create gut, you know floor, you know microbiome issues That's the long game But the immediate game is this like if I walk into the doctor and I have sepsis or I have an infection I have strep throat like give me the antibiotic like that's right now And I think what you're talking about is, you know order importance like are you are you eating too much? Are you, uh, You know, are you are you, you know, moving right? Are you Doing the right type of exercise. Do you have a good relationships? You know with your friends and family are getting enough sleep and way down the list Then we start to look at those those other types of things. Of course But let me ask you this. Okay, because you're obviously in in the business. Here's my problem Like some guys like Uh I feel like you've gotten a lot of clients from that area. Yes. I really should thank thank somebody I was gonna say we're talking shit, but I'm like, come on. I I know you're like this because I've gotten a lot of clients Might that way too. Yeah, totally, but it just makes you angry. We can see what they've done Of course, of course, but um, you know, we'll say don't get piercings because the because the toxins, you know And all this shit don't get tattoos and all this and you're on a grandma test a week, bro Like come on, you know what I mean? So it just I guess the um, the fear mongering is what really upsets me about stuff that but you know what it's It's easy to sell because you said, oh, you're not lose. I had This guy had done a tour over in australia and I felt like my whole 2013 tour of australia was Unfucking everybody from everything that a certain individual had come through and said and they said did you say unfucking? Yes, because they were australia was fucked. I went to the land down under and unfucked it, you know, so He's your guy right like he doesn't say much but every once in a while he just drops these are one liner, bro You're picking up on that now. Oh, yeah Cheers to you so uh, but this girl she was like, you know, um They told me that the reason I wasn't losing fat off the back of my thighs was because my makeup wasn't organic And I was just like I had to go no wonder you're so passionate about that. She wrote I had to go Five breaths You know, it's it's it's it's you know, do you know what I don't what we saw the other day organic candy No, no, no, no organic candy or organic doritos. Oh organic doritos. Yeah, I want to ask you about this because you are Do you see this eye twitch? Yeah So it might be the might be the aspartame Neurotransmitters, oh, it's happening real time. Yeah, I don't talk to him. I uh, so All right, Dave aspirin. I know all the keywords Yes brain I heard you love Dave aspirin. Yeah, so I uh, we'll talk about that in a second. We'll get that great So you're you're considered somewhat of a leader in the in the fitness muscle building industry And a big the probably the main muscle build, uh, excuse me money maker in the muscle building industry supplements How do you see in terms of the trend of that? Do you see it moving towards more organic? non artificially flavored or non artificially flavor, you know Colored type supplements or you don't see that at all. Yeah, so you shake that now people people People say they want certain things that they don't people don't know what the fuck they want until you show it to them They really don't like you remember Pepsi came out with Pepsi clear. Yeah, remember that was not no artificial People hated it. Yeah, it tasted the exact fucking same People hated it. They wanted the caramel color and their cola, you know That's like ketchup came out with what it was like green and like uh black I don't remember that you don't remember that they came with a green color That is a terrible idea Yeah, that did not that guy needs to get fired. Yeah, well see because what I see when I look at the industries I see uh like look sheep When I see when I went to like a like a safeway 10 years ago. They didn't have an organic section You're good at that. Don't go in Taliban territory. Oh my god. Here we go But now you see these big organic sections in safeway you see, you know organic doritos or It makes me think that the market's growing. It might be oh it is people talk about like Big gmo this fucking big organic like oh, yeah, it's it's well. That's a set the sad part Well, we call the big erba. Yeah big erba and big pharma. I mean they're both they both got their teams Yeah, like you said organic doritos like I love it when people like I'm eating paleo paleo And they're eating these fucking like brownies like oh, yeah I'm pretty sure they had fucking brownies back in the caveman days asshole, you know I can't stand all the boxes that that everybody everybody wants to be like you said sheep Everybody wants to be fit in a category fit in a box have a dog mother People feel like they need to belong to something. I don't want to belong to anything except the fucking truth Right like that's that's hell. Yeah. Amen to that Listen if I thought organic food would would work better than regular food I would be sitting here saying eat organic. I would because At the end of the day, I'm a competitor. I want to do the best thing for me You know like I don't want to die early. I don't want to perform suboptimally But but if there's just no data for it, I'm not going to sit there and bullshit people Well, let me ask what do you think about when the was it last year or two years ago where the the world health organization put glyphosates as And for the listeners, uh, glyphosates are the herbicides that GMO plants are designed to withstand right and that's why you blast the shitload of glyphosates on them kill weeds What do you how did you feel about the world health organization labeling glyphosates as a probable carcinogen? Well, uh, I'll be honest and this is going to shock shock some of your listeners I don't know enough about glyphosate to to comment on it However, well, I will comment generally and that is there's a lot of shit that's carcinogenic Most things are carcinogenic if you get them high enough What I'd have to know is what kind of dosage ends up in what you eat, right? Fair enough question because because and I don't know, right? Yeah, because I don't I don't necessarily remember we're talking about fucking Illuminati shit like like you want to talk about world health organization Like they're also the ones that said don't eat protein, you know that animal meat's gonna kill you and all this kind of Shit, they completely fucking misinterpreted the results of those studies, you know Um, yeah, I mean it was just like there was even a paper that came out in cell biology that drove My advisor nuts along with a lot of uh, did you guys when they came out and said that oh protein is the same risk factor for Long cancer as cigarettes, right? Yep That was in a subsection of a subsection of data Do you know what the overall result of that study was nobody nobody reported? Yeah, it was it was a it was the overall ridiculous percentage the overall Results of that study was that all-cause mortality went down with higher protein intakes Isn't that the real fucking story? Yeah, okay, you know if you my my advisor My advisor used to say if you torture the data enough you can find what you want What was the cancer risk increase with that? It was very small So they listed it as an 18 percent relative risk increase in cancer people go. Oh my god If I eat meat that means I'm 18 percent more likely to get cancer. No, no What it means is if your absolute risk of cancer is 5.5 percent, it went to 6.5 percent It was a 1 percent relative and you and you this is what we talk about a lot Well, and here's the thing but if you take 6.5 minus 5.5, it's one and divide that by 5.5. That's 18 percent That's true. And here's a and here's a thing a lot of people don't realize like science, bitch A lot of that a lot of that and here's a speculation could be that increased protein intake, you know boost IGF from production It could boost and you know m-tor people who people who eat a lot of meat eat more calories And they tend to exercise less. Yeah, but what do you they tend to eat less fruits and vegetables? That's it's that's true. So many confounding that's true. But what do you say to You know the studies that show that increases Sorry activation, you know m-tor activation. Ah, you're in my fucking wheel. I know I am That's why I'm asking about to blow your mind. Yeah, I'm so inside So I've read that m-tor will also can also or as has been associated with an increase in cancer And I wanted to ask you to say no, this is my hands together. Yeah I'm excited. Yeah. So so let us know what's going on with that. So so this is the problem some scientists Don't even fucking understand science. All right. So there is a different level when you get just just You belong on my ready. You belong on my lane. I think you need to cancel your broken. Are you listening? You need to be you need to be shots kicking in you need to be on mine pump more. No, I'm pretty much just angry all the time That's what I mean. So Here's the deal. There's a lot of scientists Who don't even understand science? There is a big difference between an acute truncated response And a long-term response. Let me give you an example. I'm gonna set this up and it'll make sense to you guys I'm going somewhere with us. Okay Exercise if I if you were an alien and I brought you down to earth and you but you knew about what was healthy And what was not but you didn't know about exercise. Okay, and I told you how I'll make you do this thing that increases inflammation blood pressure heart rate Every active oxygen species you'd be like, oh, hell. No. Yeah, that's right. We all know we've actually made that We made that exactly we use this analogy. Oh, but what what is exercise? It's like a short. It's like a vaccine short-term stress gives you a short-term stresser Your body learns how to handle it better. Okay. So when you look at what? So the reason we bring up mtar mtor is the way it was discovered was it was it's it's literally called the mammalian target of repamycin Repamycin is an anti-cancer drug. Okay. So repamycin inhibits mtor. Okay Mtor is the way that leucine in particular stimulates muscle protein synthesis. This is what you wrote your thesis on Isn't our leucine is all very tightly. That's why I wanted to ask him this question. So The problem and if you look at inflammation the problem with inflammation Is not short-term increases in inflammation from like things like exercise The problem is low level the chronic chronic inflammation The same thing applies to mtor Dis and also tissue specific Like a short-term truncated increase in mtor activity is not the same thing as a long-term low level chronic elevation and mtor activity that is usually driven by Increased insulin. Yeah, great. Okay. That's usually driven by increased signaling from irs one leucine activates mtor downstream of irs one big friggin difference And leucine actually if you when we found this in our studies one of the reasons we saw the refractory phenomenon of protein synthesis When and inflammation is the same way when did you know that when inflammation starts in response to exercise? As soon as you start increasing inflammation There's also factors that up regulate that are there to shut inflammation down So to prevent it from getting run away. Okay. The body is amazing in that so much. Shit is redundant It's not people think about like for example Fat loss like you think about insulin right like if you release insulin It inhibits fat loss so people think oh when you inhibit release insulin you would stop all fat burning everywhere No fat burning and fat burning and fat storage are always going on simultaneously It's the relative rate of each that's going to determine whether or not you lose fat gain fat or maintain Right at the end of the day same thing for muscle protein synthesis when muscle protein synthesis goes up Muscle protein breakdown actually goes up too The absolute increase But it's just that muscle protein synthesis is greater than muscle protein now I want you to stop right there because that's a very very important point that you just made because there's so many studies That will show supplement x increases protein synthesis by this much and but at the end of the day They don't show that it built more muscle Right and they just show that increased protein synthesis And that was one of the big things of my thesis we want to actually look at muscle mass and not just Muscle protein synthesis because it's just a short term marker But my my point my point i'm going back to is that You know, yes, we should always be concerned about certain things But if you let's we have to go back and look at okay Do high protein diets increase the rate of cancer In an actual intervention study and the answer is no It doesn't right so we can do all the stuff with IGF one and mTOR Doesn't fucking matter All right, just like muscle protein synthesis doesn't fucking matter if it doesn't actually increase muscle mass Right and now at the end of the day now. Here's what I want to ask you with that So like let me give you one more example. Okay, go fast to cardio If you do fast to cardio you burn a greater percentage of body fat from from adipose tissue But you don't burn more absolute body fat. You don't lose. You don't lose more body fat Then you do if you have fed cardio the reason being that the thermogenic response is lower Okay So we can look at this short term measure and say oh, we get we get an increase in fat oxidation, right But if it doesn't actually produce more body fat loss Who gives a flying fuck? Okay That's why we like when we did my experiments in for for my graduate research The last experiment was actually looking at body composition and muscle mass and these sorts of like Because we had to find doesn't actually make a difference. I remember I went insane and so experimental biology is like the the Superbowl for nerds, right? It's like the Arnold classic for nerds, right according to cell happens multiple times a year The super bowl. Yes So what's a super bowl? So we we I gave a presentation and I remember I had like lines of people to debate me on this I feel like I defended myself pretty well But we showed differences in muscle mass with with isochloric isonitrogenous Diets that were just different protein sources, right? And it was related to the It was somewhat it was quite closely related to the leucine contents of those protein diets, okay The person after me Gets up And they give us and they give a study and I'm not going to say where they're from or what their name was and they said you know, we gave leucine after Fucking bike riding or something. We saw leucine increases muscle protein synthesis Big whoop. We know that I really hate despise Researchers who do Safe research that they know will get you already know. Shit. We already we fucking know Fire is hot. Yeah, we already know Running will help you burn fat Yeah, if we if we if we like we went out and did mobility work and gave leucine afterward Well, yeah, sure. It's I guess it's novel because nobody's done it before but we know leucine increases muscle protein synthesis so it gets up there and he's talking about leucine after taking something with leucine after a a Endurance bike session And he says we know leucine doesn't increase muscle mass and I want to stamp and say with him Why the fuck are you studying it? If all you want to show is that it increases muscle protein so that we know that bro We know it, you know And it was it was just mind-blowing to me that people get so and I get it because I I did a bs in biochemistry You know So I get into that I get like super geeked out over pathways and shit and like well this kinase and that But at the end of the day if it doesn't actually produce a physiological difference, who cares that's true And this I want to ask you this because it's not every day I have someone like you sitting in that chair in in regards to never have somebody like me sitting Well, bro, you better back up a little bit only person with a large I don't know your ego matches ours So You fit right in so regarding mTOR. We do know that protein does seem to Activate it. Yes, but does it increase cancer? That's a completely different story, right? However, you already have cancer Let's say you already have cancer. Okay There are some studies that show that reducing or limiting protein intake may Make the cancer more sensitive to chemotherapy or make Reduce its proliferation or its ability to grow Which is completely different and I want to state that because people will bring those studies up and say When I have cancer, you know, when these studies that show people have cancer when when they drop their protein intake that they're The way they respond to chemo or their survivability goes up, which is very very different Um, I don't know if you're familiar with some of those some of those studies So I'm looking at a study right out of our lab A high protein moderate carbohydrate diet Uh fed at discrete meals reduces early progression of breast tumor genesis Okay, so this was a versus a high carb diet. Okay. Now. I think where a low protein diet I don't want to say low protein not high protein, right For example ketogenic diet seems to be beneficial for treating uh cancer. Yes, right. Yes, so Um intermittent fasting and there's lots of the few things I think a fast The application of fasting to start a ketogenic Like if like again, if I like if I found out I had cancer tomorrow What I would do is I'd go on a 24 hour fast and then I would start a ketogenic diet. Okay By the way, all you fucking fitness people out there Doing what you think are ketogenic diets. They're like 300 grams of protein. That's not ketogenic. It's not fucking ketogenic That's actions. Do you guys like how much I drop f-bombs on here? Have you ever listened to our show? I'm very very passionate about what I do. Do you ever practice? Do you ever practice? By the way, did you know that protein's the magical fucking macronutrients? So so so so association. Did you know that they've actually shown that? You're more likely to be intelligent if you curse more Get the fuck out of here. Fuck you man Or do you practice? Do you practice fasting by the way? Do you ever I don't I don't really no, I don't um, come on How do you come on? Everybody's doing it. How do you not fuck around with that? Uh, you've got to I mean that sounds like something you gotta be interested in just try it Oh Hey, I tell you what a lot of bad shit happened by people starting with that If we don't get you to smoke weed before this day is that we're gonna get you to fast If you look at the data on fasting and and what people are trying to do with it Let's not go where people are fucking turning it around into this way to burn Hey, you're the motherfuckers that brought it up. Well, yeah, it doesn't intrigue you at all to to to play around with Just looking at the science. Yeah, just looking at what what is out there for the health benefits Very similar benefits from just a higher protein reduced carbohydrate diet. So what I would say is Is you could do lower even if you were somebody who was already on on that type of a diet Uh, well, it just well if you're if you're calorically restricted an entire protein You're gonna get most of those insulin sensitizing benefits I mean we saw in our lab just putting people on a 30 40 30 diet In three weeks, they're blood markers. They were no longer metabolic syndrome But see but see here's the thing because we're in fitness We tend to put everything in the sphere of burn fat build muscle Uh, you know insulin hormone fasting wasn't anabolic. Yeah. Well, there here's that's stupid And that's true. There's some there's people going around right now going around with the nobody's trying to mark it Fuck no, there is. Oh, there is. I'm just saying I was stupid. I was like, no That the people that think that are stupid that there's people right now that are marketing I've only had three beers not for once I get to four. I'll be stupid. No, there's people that are marketing that right now I mean that and that's what we don't like That's why I was interested if you've played around with it because You know, I'm curious to some of the benefits that it's shown in The uptaking growth hormone growth hormone production the neurogenesis. Yeah, there's things like well They look you know for every one don't do it for growth hormone growth hormone means fuck all Well, here's here's the stuff that really see he's trying to make me stupid. There comes beer number four Here's the thing that really fascinates me with fasting is the how it increases the rate of apoptosis of Older cells and then when you refeed yourself You get these newer cells. There's some preliminary preliminary evidence showing that fasting is a Could be a viable treatment for autoimmune disease Which to me blows me the fuck away. We are in the midst of an autoimmune disease explosion I don't know. I don't know shit about that. So I'm gonna have to pass on that one. Well, you can't do that And you know what? Come on. Hold on a second. That is a sign. That is speculate. No, that's a sign of good character That's good. That's a sign of good character that he doesn't want to talk about it. Yeah, but we can all speculate I could sit around in bullshit That's what I tell you Yeah, here's a thing though The sign of a true expert is somebody who is willing to tell you when they don't know what the fuck they're talking Yes, no, I I'm totally 100% agree. I totally suspect that but doesn't mean that your opinion doesn't matter either Exactly because I think you're you're an intelligent if you think your way around if you want to hear that Yeah, you presented yourself. Well, I'm not you don't have UK. That's fine. That's good. Now. What's your opinion though? Yeah I based on what I've seen With fasting versus you activate a lot of those same pathways just from a reduced calorie higher protein diet A lot of those pathways are diet tied into Shit, I can't remember the kinase fuck But it's it's it's in the gluconeogenic pathway just activating gluconeogenesis Is a strong signal for your body? I mean because calorie restriction your body views that as nothing more than controlled starvation In terms of the reaction that your body gives So you may not get the same strength of reaction of a short term fast But over the duration of a caloric restriction, you're getting it now people will ask me Like again, this is one of those same people missing the cart before the horse thing, you know I don't recommend Well, if you want to do it fine, but I tell people you don't need like super fast Fucking highly branched cyclic dextrin after your workout or whatever like you you just eat just eat some carbs, you know um And people go well, I'm worried about getting insulin resistant. Mm-hmm Dude, there's a big difference between somebody who's training for two hours a day Having a carbohydrate post workout to replenish muscle glycogen As opposed to some fat ass sitting on this couch watching tv eating chips, right like this big 7000 calories later So, I mean people like I would you notice like i'm always trying to put stuff in context You know that's that's a sign of an expert as well Like when you hear very rarely have I heard use the words best worst always never You guys haven't heard me say that right like that that's that's that's a great bullshit detector right there If somebody's up there and they're saying always do this never do this Um, this is the best. This is the worst. Yeah, you can be pretty sure that person's full of shit. Okay, because um I think birch and rustle said the whole problem with this world Is that full fools and zealots are quite sure of themselves and wise people are filled with doubts very true, you know Graduate like what you do when you they call it the dunning kruger kruger effect, right? So when you first start in a subject, whatever it is You have this feeling that you know nothing because you know nothing And then immediately within months you get a very high confidence that you know, you know so much And then as you transition over years into learning more Your confidence starts to fall. You realize you don't know much This is this is the end of undergraduate school beginning of graduate school basically And then as you start to go and as you start to in graduate school it starts to kind of come back up, right And what you hear is like people who I I tell people to follow like jeremy linneke dan newmeyer Mike sortos here We think that this might make a difference, but under these circumstances and we're not quite sure, you know, like nobody's saying Blood flow restriction will lead to 200 more muscle gains and you know, shit like that That's only when you're trying to sell something But that's the problem, you know, like my my carbon line with bible.com We aren't exactly blowing the doors off sales, you know, because i'm not going to get up there and tell people It's going to increase muscle mass by 200. What a great point. What I what I what I tell people is like, listen I designed it around helping you to train harder recover a little bit better All right, so it's going to help you have a little bit more fatigue resistance Um, it's going to help you recover a little bit better and be able to train a little bit harder. Okay But i'm not saying Go not pay your health insurance bill so you can buy carbon prep and recover and carbon build, you know, like i'm not And i'm not saying, you know, if you're not taking care of all the other shit the order of importance This isn't going to matter, you know, and so You know full credit to bodybuilding.com. They have never tried to make me force me to market it in a way that's not Genuine and actually to their to their credit that's smart because that's not your brand Well, your brand if you did that right now if you came out, I lose my core of course You'd sound like a I'd probably sell more in the short term. Yeah, but in the long term you'd fuck But you know what at the end of the day the best sleep aid is a clear conscience. Yeah That's very true. Absolutely. I want to change direction for a second, uh, because I want to ask you something Why don't you know steroids? Why don't you take steroids? Why haven't you? Oh, I thought it was if I was if I was, uh A cross-dresser. Yeah. No, we know about that No I want to ask you why why make the decision to you're in an industry where everybody does most people do Why don't you why did you decide not to? I just never felt compelled to That's the simple that's a simple answer. Okay, so let me give you an example Like I loved natural bodybuilding. Okay. I loved competing natural bodybuilding I mean the evidence says that if you take a moderate or low dose of steroids It's really not bad for you. In fact, it might be okay for you. Maybe even a little bit good for you. Okay But you're not going to be competitive on a world's world level stage taking a low dose of steroids Right, like once you cross that threshold If you're going to be competitive, you better be willing to take a shitload of steroids. It's a very good point Yeah, and so I just never felt compelled. I never woke up and was like, man I want to be mr. Olympia one day I wanted to make a living in the fitness industry. I wanted to be a person of influence And I I just wanted to do my thing and you know what? One thing I've always been good at is I don't fuck with peer pressure You're not gonna you're not gonna. I don't give a fuck what anybody else is doing I mean look at the stuff I like I started talking about flexible dieting when people Mocked me for it like everybody mocked me for it. People mocked me for reverse dieting all this I don't care Now you say that but a lot of you had to be driven from childhood Like you talked about I remember last night you mentioned like being a young kid being picked on So that has to stem some of that motivation has to stem from that Proving people wrong is my most favorite hobby in the world. You know That's my most favorite thing in the world, you know, but It probably gets you in trouble sometimes to you all the time Yeah Is it something do you find do you find this is an area that you have to kind of work on and think about or actively be aware of I gotta be careful not to go over. I tend to be a little bit abrasive you know Because I speak my mind, but you know, I'll tell people, you know, my buddy Paul I've talked about Paul Revelle shout out to him my good friend He said he's like, man, why can't you just be like more positive all the time and like just just be Like really nice to everybody and I'm like you know I spent 18 years of my life trying to be something I wasn't to make other people happy I am not going to pretend like something doesn't fucking bother me if it bothers me I'm just not going to do it. I might not say anything But if I say something I'm going to say how you I'm going to tell you how I really feel, you know And you have the right to be upset about it. Just like, you know, people say I have the right to my opinion Absolutely Everyone absolutely has a right for opinion. You also have the right to get fucking reamed when that opinion is wrong and stupid Okay, and so that's what I'm here for, you know, like science is a is a that's why I'm alive I mean, I came here to unfuck the fitness industry. That's what I came here for You know, like that's why we made avatar nutrition. It's got it It's gotta piss you off then for someone like yourself your your the integrity that you come in with you've very driven You introduce a concept like flexible dieting now People use the acronym if I am How do you feel seeing because you're the first you're really you didn't introduce counting macros, obviously But you came out and talked about flexible dieting, which now a lot of people called if I am And it's you see hashtags and people putting in their freaking in their profiles on instagram if I am and How do you make a t-shirt companies now with the fuck you're not making no money off that I think that was no money. No, how do you feel about the hey the king tribute? How do you how do you feel about the way some of these people are representing if we am and uh, you know what it I guess its impression now has changed quite a bit because if I hashtag if I go on instagram We should do this we should actually test this out if I go on instagram and I I'm sure lane And I and I hashtag if I am What ends up coming up is A shit ton of pictures of donuts and ice cream and shit like that And when I look at some of these people's profiles, actually, that's all it is actually It's a lot of shredded people to be honest with you. Yeah Do it real quick. Let me sit here. Hold on a second. There's some pretty lean people. I f1m I f1m let's look at it. Hold on a second. I got it Yeah, uh, but there's uh, there's kind of this impression that it you know, that's what it represents now Yes, I mean, how do you how do you feel about that because I've heard you explain What it means, you know, how you define it and it sounds different Well, you know actually you maybe you should explain it first. What is flexible dieting? So The idea of flexible dieting is you just you're not There's no foods off the table. Okay Your your nutrition intake is a budget Actually, it's a lot of somewhat quite a few attractive females on that You see. Yeah, you see hot chicks. Well, then click on her page and see if 80 80% of her posters. Yeah, and you see a lot of So just call me honey He did you as well. Um, that's not a bad one right there. Anyway, continue. He's got he's got beautiful skin. So So the the the idea is that your daily intake of calories is a budget, right? and If I like let's let's take that example of a budget, right? So if I make a million dollars a year If I want to go out and buy a hundred thousand dollar sports car Is that all right as long as I can still pay my mortgage I can still pay put money away from retirement. I can still, you know, put money in my kids' college. Take care of my responsibilities Right. Is that all right? Yeah, I think everybody agree. That's but some people would say The reason why I don't like that I don't like using that is because a a dollar bill in that representation is not the same as a dollar bill And nutrition because not every one dollar bill of nutrition is exactly the same That's like saying a calorie a calorie Well, some of my disagreeing be like it's like a hundred calories a calorie Well, it's like making a million dollars and taking a hundred grand and spending it on I don't know hookers and crack fun Could be fun Anyway, I'm sorry to interrupt continuing. I think we're getting a little bit outside the scope of way outside So I'm gonna be speaking for personal experience here because you know, I've never spent a hundred thousand dollars on that Maybe maybe 80 So You know, I mean we're libertarians. So I mean if somebody wants to do that, that's their business, right? So, um My point would be that For that person As long as they can By their budget, I mean by their their responsibilities You know hitting their protein carb fat intake, you know, making sure it's it's a it's a Because the thing is if you're eating junk food all the time, it's going to be very hard to hit a macronutrient Compositional diet that's friendly towards body composite positive body composition, right? Because you're not if all you eat is pop tart You're not getting enough protein. You're not getting enough fiber, right? You're getting too many carbohydrate for most people So have you seen so have you heard of soilent green here in the bay? Is it soilent green? Is that what they call it? Have you heard of soilent here the guys that are trying to basically like make it so you just drink your just one shake All it's all perfect macros proteins fats carbs Watch out for that mic there. We got him angry Uh, here comes the producer What the hell is he done to my mic? It's all proteins fats carbs fix that robot calories and you know vitamins and minerals and they don't eat they don't eat food And uh, this was a movement here in in the bay area, uh, because people wanted to just work It's gamers, right? Yeah gamers and engineers So that's an extreme that's an extreme case, of course, but yeah, you can you can't hit your macros If I ever get to the point where I I just don't want to eat anymore. I think it's take me out to pasture and shoot me It's pretty sad, right? That's a that's a great point So you're saying if you eat junk food all the time, you're not gonna hit your macros You're not gonna hit your macros and the other the other thing is that um, I think that The other thing is and I always put constraints on if it fits your macros with fiber You have to get enough fiber because fiber is thermogenic and you know, there's a lot of foods out there We talk about calories. I wrote an article about is a calorie calorie. Okay, so there is the thing called thermic effective food And we know that protein and fiber have a greater effect Quite a bit greater effect thermic effective food than carbohydrate and fat carbohydrate and fat are about the same fat Seems to be like two three four percent carbohydrate like five ish Proteins like 30 fibers like 30, right? So you get a big but thermic effective food only counts about 10% of your daily caloric burn But that being said it's still it's still a difference. It adds up I mean, if you look at if you look at comparing diets that are higher in protein versus lower in protein isochloric People higher in protein tend to lose more body fat than people who are lower in protein But again, we talk about order of importance. Okay, so order of importance is at the end of the day You can't just eat however many however much protein and fiber you want And not gain weight or or stop yourself from losing weight, you know people people ask me Can you store protein as body fat? Yes, but it doesn't it's it's less likely that'll that'll happen What's more likely is the protein if you're excessively eating it Creates a caloric cushion for carbohydrate and fat to be stored as body fat Now if you got protein like let's say you're eating theoretically no carbohydrate. No fat in all protein, right? Pounds of meat a day first off your digestive system would feel like shit and you'll die but Um, you you you could store it because you can you can that carbon skeleton is is some proteins are ketogenic Which can then be made into fats or uh, they are gluconeogenic Which can be made into carbohydrates which then can be converted through denoval epigenesis to fat Now is it a look is it more difficult? Is it more difficult to overeat on protein and fiber and vegetables? Absolutely, absolutely, but it doesn't mean it can't be done, right? So what I what I try to get away from people is You know like like let's take paleo, right? Is the overall message of paleo a bad message Eat more protein eat more whole foods eat more fiber Eat more vegetables. It's not a bad message The problem is when people become fucking dogmatic about it like you can't have dairy and you can't have beans because you know It just becomes retarded. You know what I mean? We have to look at It's the same thing with people and I'm I'm getting a little bit off topic, but you're not actually it's not exactly We know direction. We know, you know, I think all foods everybody is affected differently in all foods We know that I'm very fascinated. I think our audience is going to be Is a little is going to be a little surprised to find that we actually agree on most of this because you sound You sound a lot like like we do and that's why I asked you what how you felt about the current Climate around, you know, flexible dying. I feel like it could turn into a dogmatic process I mean anything to be dogmatic anything to be dogmatic Absolutely, I mean you get people who are too far on one side of the fence on if I am right They're trying to force junk food in as much as we dealt with so we see a lot of And I mean, you know like people have said Lane are you saying that I could just have all dextrose protein shakes and a fiber supplement And and and hit my macros and it would an oil in my and I would be you know the same I don't know. I think when you take anything to an extreme, it's probably not a great thing You know, like I think that you can take anything to extreme goddamn. You're not nearly you're not even Here's the thing. You're not dogmatic at all about it. And I knew this would happen I knew we would talk about this and I you would make sense I hate zealots on any side. See here's the thing and here's why we made the t-shirts that said things like There's a lot of people on social media a t-shirt. Yeah, I like your shirt, by the way That's a great shirt. My shirt, by the way says make america science again. Yep nipples can show you can find that at Lane or not Shop by lane.com That's not included There's a lot of people who on instagram will misrepresent it and we'll say things like it doesn't matter eat these things It fits your macros. Well, even if it's not misrepresenting Here's the problem that I have is as somebody who's trained thousands of people is These people a lot of these people have an addiction to these type of foods just like careful now Yeah, well You see in your experience have you dealt with people that have addictions to to foods like this like sugar Like sugar. I have dealt with people who have certain trigger foods Okay, and if you have a certain trigger food what I would say is what's more. What's more common though Well, I see one of the most common trigger foods I've found is like nuts and peanut butter like those are very common trigger foods But sugar is up there too. There's some sugar foods that do that. Well, you do what I will tell people is At first to kind of get them started in a positive direction Obviously, okay, let's get those out of the house But eventually I would like people to be able to moderate things because it's not a Usually not a reasonable idea to think that people are just going to cut whole foods out of their diet now that being said Sometimes this requires counseling like a lot of people people don't The thing that bothers me too is we want to separate physiology Physiology from psychology and you can't do it. No, okay. See this sucks. I can't even debate you There's you know, like if we go in a room Like we're going up if we go in a house if I take you guys into a house And it has like like six doors and from the main room And I say you guys can go anywhere you want but for the love of god Do not do go behind door number six if you go behind don't like god help you if you go behind door number six What do you want to go door number six? Whoa, what the fuck is in there, right? Like so there was actually a study where they took people And I can't remember the name of the researcher and I can't remember the reference. I just know I read it They took people who had no hit real history of dieting and they said we want you to avoid cookies And what they found was they got increased bench incidents uncook uncorky binging On people and they when they interviewed and they said I I wasn't even a big cookie person But once you told me I couldn't have it it was like, you know, so I think like I think it depends on where you're at, right? So if you're somebody who you know, you have these trigger foods I think initially to kind of get yourself under control getting them out is is is is a reasonable thing to do But it's probably not reasonable to expect that you'll never be exposed to that food again You know, you know, it's funny. You're you're you're actually going step by step on the playbook of what Some of the cutting-edge drug addiction researchers are saying believe or not They will literally say if you're an alcoholic or your addicted cocaine or whatever We go through a period of abstinence Because we want to reset your tolerance, right? And then we want to teach you how to moderate People are like this is the thing but you're afraid to use the word addiction But you're literally following the playbook And here's the thing is like, you know, I've thought about this for a while. Of course, I'll call like I think complete abstinence Might not be the best way to do it. They're finding it isn't because what happens Somebody has one beer and they feel like they failed and they just go into fucking mode. They go all in, right? That's 100 what they're finding with the current researchers. They're finding that people go either on the wagon or Dr. Andrew Hill have you have you know who that is? I don't oh you look into dr. Andrew hill We had him on the show one time was great the research and stuff that he's doing in this area What he's got what four or five facilities across the united states right now. He did You'll you'll enjoy the research. Yeah, very fascinating stuff But you know some of the some of the and what you're saying makes complete sense And here's the thing there are people a lot of people misrepresenting What flexible die, you know, I hate labels, right because it can become dogmatic anytime you have a leo label something It can become something you identify with right, right? But there are people misrepresenting what you May have brought into the fitness industry because let's be honest when you came into bodybuilding when you came into the fitness industry The way people who are fit eight was they eat the same fucking food six times a day And they didn't have anything else and that's really what motivates you wasn't it that was a big part of what you're motivated That's how I found you was the counterculture to that. Yeah. Well, you know the the Flexible dining didn't start out about being about the pop tarts it started out being about well I think I would like to have turkey instead of chicken Like can we just stop for a second? Yeah, that is I want people to understand that like that's so reasonable that is how it started The some of the shit that we see now those stuff that we rail against they should call it something different But you're 100 right. Well, I mean, I think that Some people went to extremes to prove the point Right, like I had ice cream sandwich every single day of my prep in 2010 and got shredded to prove a point That okay, like I took care of my fiber. I took care of my protein. I took care of my carbohydrates Yeah, but doesn't a part of you think of that? Don't you feel kind of like the guy who's standing at like an AA meeting and having a beer and telling everybody that That you don't feel that way You got to feel that way a little bit because a majority of people struggle with these triggers and addictions and I mean obesity is an epidemic. We know that right? We have an issue with that. We have what the percentage is ridiculous amount of people that are overweight and over and obese It's like we're as as fitness leaders. I feel like we're looking at this community of people the world And a majority of them are grossly overweight And as and what we've what we've told them over the years is eliminate this Eliminate that you're right. You're well you're and this is where this is where we're very much So this is where we're very much so alike because I'm not a fan of demonizing things either You know, I'm not a fan of like I'm not a fan I mean we and we know this too of I mean my trainer's god I look back and I feel so guilty You know the the the first probably five to ten years of my fitness career demonizing fat You know telling people stay away from fat say what but that's what we were being taught That's the studies that we're being thrown in our face like we didn't know any better So that type of stuff is what scares me and what scares me in my experience is seeing All these people that I see that struggle With this this binge eating and these cravings and whatever And and and I don't know enough to argue with you about the the science that supports whether it's Truly a craving or a psychological thing at the end of the day I know there's an issue and I know that I have an opportunity to impact all these people And I I know because I was one of those trainers Ten years ago that used to be like look I could eat all this I could do this and I could still look this way But what I didn't realize was I'm I'm kind of flaunting around Something that these people are psychologically battling with at home as a major struggle Well, that's why I think education is important because You know you you can I think you can make any movement bad if you take the subculture of it And use that as a representation of what everybody does excellent, right? So great point You know like you could be like Well Fucking MMA sucks because look at these assholes walking around in fliction shirts. You know what I mean? No, that's a very good point. You can do that. But you know, I think the the idea Uh Because I mean look what we go out and we have a Mexican food last night, right? Like not clean not clean so the the It was filthy as hell Filt so Is it better to just to just just just go into fucking mode? No, okay Well, let's go get ice cream and this and that or is it better to say, you know, like like I have You know, not necessarily track, but you go, okay, that seems like a reasonable portion size you know and have some sort of Cognitive restraint, which is what I really try to teach people because at the end of the day Otherwise, no awareness. You're never going to be able to cut out Quote-a-quote bad foods. I don't care who you are You're you're going to have them at some point You're going to have foods that are more calorically dense a little bit lower in your vitamin mineral and fiber content And so you're better off understanding how to incorporate them now again If I have somebody who has bad habits Right and they tend to overeat on these things Am I going to suggest that they try to fill their diet with more vegetables and fruits and whatnot to make them more full? Absolutely, but what I don't want to do is tell them. Hey, you can never have this again because When you do that and there's studies to show this that if you if there's actually a study done by a guy named weston hofer and I may butcher it. I can't I think it was cookies. I could be wrong They took people who were either restrictive dieters or who were flexible dieters who would allow themselves other foods and they brought them in And again, I may butcher this study, but the jig the the the gist of it was this They told the two groups everybody you have to eat at least one cookie You don't have to eat any more than that but if they eat at least one And what they found was a much higher incidence of binge eating They called it disinhibition and the people who were restrictive dieters because they did not understand how to moderate that Of course, right? It was it was just an on off switch. Of course now. Now here's Now that's a hundred percent my experience working with Chad. Give me my beer I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. We love Chad. That's a hundred percent. Why uh, that's a hundred percent accurate I've experienced that with clients as well. And now here's the other side of that that I've also experienced I've had people come to me Who follow, uh, you know, where they look at their macros. They have a macro target and they're so stuck to it. They're so They identify so strongly with it. They're going off of it at all causes them to stress causes Yes, you can trade one disorder for another Absolutely. And so what this is why I tell people if listen The consistency is so much more important than being exact. Those macro targets aren't magic. Okay Just if you're within five to ten grams of each one, you're a hundred percent compliant Okay, there's more error in food labels than than you are with accuracy there. Okay So focus on the consistency. That's the biggest part, right? And I try to get them to to get off that but yeah, absolutely You can trade one disorder for another for sure Now, where would you say like since it appeals to The bodybuilding community. It appeals to the the people that are more prone to that addictive type of personality like No more so than any other kind of fitness thing. You think so Look at you have zealots and paleo and Oh, I see you're just saying Intermittent fasting, ketogenic diet and all that No, I think what Adam's referring to is people who are Really into how they look and their bodies and you get orthorexia and you get you know people so You know so stuck to following a particular macro profile At the end of the day they were they were going to do that regardless of what they were in You know, I mean that's that's something that somebody needs a therapist. That's true to a coach That's true. But at the end of the day, what would the ultimate goal be? Would the ultimate destination be uh for the rest of your life, you know counting your macros counting your calories Or would it be more or would it be that the counting of the macros and calories is a is a Transition point like being having to wear know what's in your food. You got to learn what's in food But at the end of the day, then you move to this other Kind of area where it's more intuitive or you understand things you guys been around me for about two days now Day now. Have you seen me carry a scale anywhere? No food scale So you're probably more on the intuitive side So I look at stuff chat. Have I had a scale here the entire time? No, Chad's shaking his head Chad's been around me for a week poor guy Um, so I feel bad for you Chad. I would too. Um, it's okay. I was the big spoon last night We know you're into blondes. I got a lol how to dave over there. So I I The idea so the thing is It's hard to be an intuitive eater without having gone through the process of learning what's actually 100 you can't get there without knowing so I think it is useful For a month or two months or whatever time it takes you to learn that To take a food scale. You don't even need to change the way you eat But just take a food scale and figure out what the hell is in food Yeah, I have a phd nutrition the most I ever learned about nutrition was weighing my food Reading food labels understanding what was in food. What a high protein food I can remember to this day the first time that I actually put a yam And weighed it and what my thoughts of what I was probably consuming versus what the reality was Yeah, what the reality was and because it's a healthy food. I just assume that oh, yeah, it's probably about 50 grams of sweet potato real fucking fast Oh, it was like five times more calories than what I actually had thought it was so I mean I I am 100 agree with and that's the problem is people go. Well, I eat healthy Well, what the fuck does that mean like what what do you actually mean by why eat healthy foods? Okay. Well any food can be bad for you for over-consuming. Okay Even fiber even vegetables can be bad for you if you over consume them. So there is no such thing It's just it's all context, right? Like I'm not saying cheesecake is good for you But you can fit it into a part of a healthy diet now It might be a little bit more difficult and you might have to practice extreme portion control, right? And if your contest prep on 1300 calories a near the end of a contest prep You're probably not fitting in cheesecake, right But Can you do it on sometimes? Sure and still be a healthy person. Absolutely. And I think when we create these negative associations with people Is where we get a lot of these problems like look at what we've done over the past 30 years We demonized fats we demonize carbs and we demonize protein And people are still fatter and more unhealthy So maybe we should look at a different fucking approach than just telling people these foods are bad. These foods are bad Maybe we should look at telling people Hey We need to teach you How to practice portion control and understand what actually is in food, right at the end of the day You can either give a man a fish or you can teach a man to fish Yeah, I want to teach a man to fish you're talking about another level of awareness And I mean people go through these four stages of learning. We've talked about this before but Most people are just unconsciously incompetent. They don't know that they don't know And they get to the next level right babe Yeah, they get to the next level where now they know that they don't know they don't know So they're consciously incompetent and and I think counting macros understanding what's in food Is a third stage which is being consciously competent sure moving past that is and it takes a while Is more of your intuitive eating and that's where you become more competent You know unconsciously competent and then and the goal is and I thought about this is that you don't take a food scale out to a restaurant You don't take it to family gatherings this and that but you may have to do that at first in order just to Understand what's in food to know what's right? But eventually you get to like where I am where I've been doing this for for 15 years I just mostly know what's in food Me and Steve cook have played this game. Let's play a game uh We played a game we went to a restaurant And he ordered and I ordered and we guessed what each other's macros were and then we guessed what our own macros were We were within five grams of everything On our stuff, you know because we would have won On nobody what we did don't lie, you know, you know, you look this out. We're both actually we're both pretty close we're both pretty close um and so It's one of those things where You know now if I was prepping for a contest would I be bringing a food scale to a restaurant? If I was close, yeah, probably that's a totally different. That's totally I don't and honestly It's if I was two weeks out from a show. I'm probably not going to a restaurant to be honest with you Well, yeah, right you're not even doing that. I mean, it's really just levels of awareness Right. So that's all if you want to if you want to go to another level when you're you know prepping for a show That's a whole different level of commitment. You're it's going to require more extreme sacrifice But if you just want to look good and maintain your body fat and what you have or get a little bit leaner You can do that not taking a food scale everywhere, right? But it's going to require A little bit more effort on the front end and so I think that's That is what you know when I get you know with avatar our our our custom flexible dieting service shameless plug I mean you guys saw it last night. We'll have the chili coat at the end anyway. That's right. That's right Pretty impressed by you know everything that went into that But the the main complaint is well I want something to tell me how to eat. Okay We can give you a meal plan, but What does that actually teach you right? Well, what happens when you don't have those foods available? You have no idea how to moderate that you have no idea what and you just end up kind of Well and corey corey probes my friend. She's a phd in psychology. She calls it the what the hell effect I like to call it the fuck it mode And everybody's experienced this We just go fuck it Yeah, right because you can't you can't you don't know enough to I'm gonna eat this right exactly You know where you go and I did this one. I remember a sophomore in college I was in the off season booking mode bro and I would I would try to quote-unquote eat clean and then my friends would order pizza or whatever and I'd be like But come on. They'd have a slice of pizza. Whatever. I was like, okay. I have a slice of pizza Well, I was never just one slice of pizza It was like half the pizza or the whole pizza, right Well, was it the pizza that hurt me was the fact that I ate the whole fucking thing Right, like I had at that moment when you when looking back now. Do you feel that was more psychological? Or do you think there's absolutely? Yeah, absolutely And and and I had a gal a client of mine She was she swore she was gluten intolerant Which by the way that the evidence suggests that's actually bullshit if you don't have celiac We can talk about that So the the uh, it's more of the FOD maps associated with gluten that they would be causing any problems But anyways that she swore she was gluten intolerant. So I decided, okay Let's let's go down the rabbit hole and I was talking to her Well, it's up the only time she was consuming gluten was when she was binge eating Right because she would have it and feel bad feel bad because it's a bad food And she would just binge on it because she was like, well, fuck it. I've already screwed up, right? I said, okay, do me a favor Tonight before you're going to bed have two slices of bread Let me know if you if you have side effects in the when you wake up Next morning I emailed. Oh my god. I'm not gluten tolerance. Like well, no shit Did you think it was the gluten or the 2000 calories you were having at the bench? You know what I mean? So I mean that's that's again where people draw incorrect associations, right? And You know, if you don't and the thing about tracking If you don't track You will believe that there are magic foods. Everybody remembers the full fill heath. Well tilapia thins the skin, right? Well, when you were used to eating, you know, steak six meals a day and you switched to tilapia for six meals a day That's gonna lean you out a bit more and you cut, you know Six seven hundred calories out of your diet because you switched from a Fatty or meat to a very almost no fat meat Well, no fucking shit you got leaner, you know, it didn't thin the skin It's not like tilapia swims under the subcutaneous layer and gobbles up all the water, you know I'm not hating on Phil Heath. Like he's very hard worker. That was a terrible terrible statement But but that's traded on but that's not that's not his fault because when you It's just trainers fault. Who's this trainer, honey? Oh, yeah So when you when you when you believe that there when you don't if you don't have a method of Accounting for this you will believe that there are magic foods Just like if you don't track, for example, like volume in your training You'll believe that there's magic training programs. It's magic sets and reps, right? So you guys know small of right small squat program people go on the the base mesocycle and then three weeks they put 20 30 40 pounds on their squat And they go, oh my god that that was some kind of magic Well, no, you went you went from squatting once or twice a week to four times a week and you tripled your volume Of course you got stronger, you know, like So there's no you know magic program And and and that's you know, people just don't want to hear that No, I think there's there's general rules, but the individual variances could be so dramatic But I do want to go back to gluten I have to talk about gluten with you because you brought that up You brought that up. Here's something That I want to I want to discuss that with you But earlier we had talked about flexible dieting and uh, no before that excuse me reverse dieting And metabolic damage and how there isn't much science to support it However, there's lots of anecdote When it comes to gluten, um, and I don't know My personal opinion is I don't think they know exactly where to look But when you look at especially people with autoimmune type symptoms From the high end things like Crohn's to people with irritable bowel syndrome Which seems to be actually is statistically On the rise gluten For the vast majority of them seems to be a trigger. There's lots of anecdote connecting it to it Now there's some science that that kind of points in that direction But nothing really conclusive yet. However, you've got all these people lots of people Look, I have a I have a godson who's got Crohn's disease And he built his mom who's just uh, she's just a warrior for her son like any parent You have a parent that you have a child that has a disease or disorder You are going to many parents are going to dive into research and reading and luckily today we have the internet So you have all this information at your hand at your fingertips And there's all these forums and so she went on these forums With all these other Crohn sufferers and they were talking about something called a carbohydrate specific diet And there's lots of foods that they eliminate one of them is gluten And when he eliminated gluten his symptoms reduced dramatically and whenever he reintroduced gluten even the smallest amount Even if it's like a small amount an ingredient within a food He gets a flare up and there's lots and lots and lots I mean you go online and there's a huge amount of people that talk about how gluten Triggers them you have to wonder Maybe it's triggered hashtag triggered exactly. Maybe it's not the gluten You're triggering me right now. Maybe it's something else within the glue or maybe it's their hyper hyper inflammatory state But uh, what do you say to that? I mean, there's a lot. I know that there was a study that came out said Oh, gluten intolerance is not is not, you know, that it's not a real thing But there's so much anecdote that comes out. So the thing is that gluten intake is associated with other highly allergenic components of food Fod maps, right? So I think what's more likely is that The other components of the food somebody who's highly kind of has that allergic What do I want to say? Oh, we can call it hyper immune. I'm on beer. I'm on beer number four. So you guys know what the fuck I'm saying so, um That that kind of makeup That there there probably is something in there, but I don't think it's gluten based on the research But it may be other things that you just inherently get with gluten, right? confounding variables So it may be that reducing gluten intake for these individuals is important just because of the other things that are associated with it Okay, but I like I get as far as gluten actually having like an intolerance or We just don't have that data. So what do you think actually to be honest? Like the the researcher who who did that was actually kind of a badass because did you know He was the one that actually proposed the idea of a gluten intolerance He thought he saw it one of his studies and then he went back and corrected himself every tested it And he came back out and was like no is actually wrong. No, that's a fucking bad motherfucker right there No, that's that's uh, that's true. I'm actually familiar with that particular with this particular study that that said that However, I mean that community and belong to it. I you know, I personally have an intolerance To gluten or maybe it's the gluten associated with other foods Exactly how about it could be Nonetheless, uh, it's distinct. I can see it. It's clear. It's with my own. It's my own anecdote So, you know, I do find it interesting, but let me ask you this now that you're 35 now that you've been training as long as you have You're such a driven intense individual. No Is do you find your? Motivation start to turn more towards longevity and health or are you still performance muscle building driven? By the way, this thing does really make you sound sexy doesn't it? I told you I told you bro. You're gonna start wearing headphones at home now. Seriously all the time I probably still sound like shit when the audio comes out. So no, you'll sound great A little bit more barotone in this thing. It might have something to do with the badass cube. It might have something to do with that Yeah, you sound totally sober So, uh, listen, I can I could explain the most complex science even when I'm drunk I love it. I'll watch it drop. So so so I even forgot my question. God damn it Son of a bitch Called deflection. Yeah deflection. Very smart. No, you were asking if I was leaning more towards Yeah, do you lean more towards? Oh, mr. Drunk guy remembers all that shit I'm drinking. I'm drinking tequila. We all are bro. It's on a even playing field here. We're good So man a drink. Yeah, so the I think honestly what Works best for body composition in in a lot of ways can be best for what's long for what's best for longevity Beautiful statement. So I think that you know, you're gonna be intermittently calorically restricting Because if you want to maintain that lean body mass, you're gonna have to do that You're going to be exercising. You're gonna be doing a lot of the stuff that the big major stuff, right? Um, you know longevity wise, I mean, if you're exercising and actually watching what you eat, you're 95% of the way there, you know You know, we can talk about these little things that maybe make a difference. Maybe don't But what we find is, you know, even with the like like I mean, I may Screw this up, but I remember being in grad school looking at some Some papers about like sulforaphane or lecopene, you know, these things like tomatoes and broccoli sulforaphane is a huge right now It's a huge subject. I know run to patrick's talking quite a bit about it. But you know what you find is that sometimes it's Nature's cookbook So you get these individual chemical compounds they seem to have an effect but What you usually find is the the whole food is usually better whole foods The actual that it seems like There is some kind of milu Of antioxidants minerals, whatever have they call it the entourage effect that that seems to work better than just the individual compound and so I think if you're emphasizing the importance of self-control restriction Training you know being consistent And let's be honest like there's something to be said with just being happy like okay You can eat every fucking clean food. There is you can be neurotic about everything But if you're fucking miserable because you never feel like you can go out with your friends like is that really healthy You know, is it really healthy to to be like to have anxiety when somebody brings a piece of cake in the room You know, so I think there's something to be said for just mental clarity Of of understanding what's in food. That's all part of it's all part of health and I got to be honest with you I think your message gets I think my ego can't I think your message gets misconstrued and miscommunicated quite a bit quite a bit Well, because I feel like he I'll give you an example. He had he had to take a I think a strong Opposition to the especially the bodybuilding community because you talk Yes, the bros that are out there that are spreading the science So I and I feel like we can relate to that because that's a lot of what we did And we just took a different approach instead of going the nutrition angle We kind of stayed away from that because we know how dogmatic and religion it could be So we went more like programming because we saw the major flaw in that everywhere Speaking of that like and not to make a total left turn on us with the nutrition What what's your what's your thoughts on on programming right now that you see out there in the fitness world and the All these different online websites that can subscribe to you for $9 and get my workouts and all these Glad you elaborated because you know what one of my least favorite things in the world when people say is What are your thoughts on x Not ecstasy, but like actual like something insert something. Yeah, so I'm glad you're You know, I think that um I think there's a lot of ways to skin a cat, you know, um, you can get results from a lot of stuff I tend to think that That the the nuance of trying to find a program that is effective But minimizes the risk for injury and is Fun for the individual is is the difficult thing right because people say oh, I don't care. Well, it's fun Well, yes, you should you should it should be fun Your workout program should be fun because if it's not fun You're not going to work hard at it You know, it should be fun One of the reasons I got into powerlifting in the offseason with bodybuilding was because I found bodybuilding training Fucking tedious in the offseason I loved the idea of like looking and seeing myself get stronger, you know, it actually made me train harder So for me that was better because I was more intense and train harder and was more adherent to it You know, you know, I tend to not be dogmatic about anything You say my message gets construed misconstrued and I had this discussion with mark bell about ketogenic diet I said the other day On twitter there was a study that came out that showed that a Ketogenic diet was not superior to a non ketogenic diet when calories and protein were equated in terms of fat loss So I posted this Nowhere did I say the ketogenic diet didn't work or it sucked or it didn't have merit or whatever The first tweet I get is an individual was like That's not true. I lost 50 pounds on the ketogenic diet I said, okay Tell me where I said the ketogenic diet didn't work And literally went back and forth with this person for about 20 messages Who could not fucking grasp? The simple idea that me saying the ketogenic diet wasn't the best freaking thing in the world I don't know why I said freaking right there the best fucking thing in the world Was not the same thing as me saying it didn't work Right So the same thing like you guys know intermittent fasting, you know, martin burcom Um, he calls himself the high priest of intermittent fasting I don't think that's good. Yes. I thought we were the high priest so so I got interviewed By actually so he lee who's now my co-host of physics science radio. This is actually how we met She was doing an article on intermittent fasting And she asked what I thought of it. I said, well, you know in terms of fat loss That doesn't seem to be any difference between if you want to eat one meal a day or 10 meals a day There doesn't seem to be a difference that the research are really clear on that Um, so in terms of that like kind of do what you want but in terms of animalism It looks like That there is something to be said for Multiple protein doses per day of high quality protein. We saw this in our studies I said, so if you asked me about it for muscle mass, I would say it's probably a little bit suboptimal That's exactly how I worded it And the high priest Apparently this was blasphemy to him and he went out on twitter and went crazy on me, you know and Was calling me doctor, but in a very like sarcastic understanding, you know somehow I guess my phd is a bad thing to this person, you know, like I'm like, I'm not sure how you're using that as an insult But okay, good good job for that, you know, if it's so fucking easy, why don't you go fucking do it? So just saying I like if you guys watch big bang theory No, no, okay. Well, there's there's a great part where there's one guy who has a master's out of all the friends I'll watch the bang theory, but that's different Well, wallowitz is his name and His his his wife has a phd And he's like he's lamenting the fact that all his friends make fun of him that he just has a master's and she says Well, why don't you just do a phd? I have one. It's great So all you out there that like, you know, you want to you want to make it, you know Like try to like like make it like a bad thing. Well or or or say, well, it's not that well If it's not that hard then why don't you fucking do it? You know, like it's I have one It's great. You get to put the yard in front of your name. Like it's fabulous. So You know, anyways, it was just but it was a classic example of just somebody like hearing what they wanted to hear I didn't say anything bad about it. I mean fasting. I even said some good stuff about it But they focused on the fact that I said maybe it wasn't optimal for muscle mass But what else did I say? I said, hey, if it fits your lifestyle, it could be a great tool If it helps you it helps you stay, you know in a caloric deficit if you're trying to lose fat if it helps you You know fit in and better By all means I I'm not mad at you. You know, people get this idea that I had I had this the other day. So I said, I heard you hate fasted cardio I said, well, no, I don't hate fasted cardio fasted cardio and come in my house and kick my dog and punch my wife You know, like I don't I don't hate it I think the application is a little bit limited in terms of it's not better than fed cardio But if you tell me you do fasted cardio, I'll just say, okay. Why are you doing it? Well, because I I have to be up for work early and this is the only time I can get it in and I I get upset stomach If I eat before I go before I do cardio Great then go do fasted cardio But if you're if you're trying to tell me you're doing it because it's better for fat loss, then I'm sorry That's bullshit, right? So I'm not anti ketogenic diet. I'm not anti fasted cardio. I'm not anti intermittent fasting I'm not anti any of this stuff. I'm just anti fucking bullshit. It's the dogmatic part Yeah, I just I hate dogma, man. It drives me absolutely and you guys were talking about um something earlier made me think of something Knowledge In a way is a burden Because once you have knowledge and you're not ignorant anymore ignorance is bliss It really is once you have knowledge and you have enough of it You have to look at something and go That's bullshit You know, like it's it's like like my you know, I'll get friends every once in a while You know how fucking hard it is to make money in the fitness industry when you when you feel that way Oh, it's so hard God, I mean if I listen if I came out with the five foods that worked or like listen when I wanted to do my phd I wanted to find magic foods if I had found magic foods We wouldn't be having this conversation here. We'd be having on my private jet. You know what I mean so it's it's When I come out and I say well this matters only in this situation And I'm giving context everything. I'm kind of hey, and I tell you don't I don't know about certain stuff like That doesn't help me sell you shit. It's because I'm just not willing to fucking lie to you about it But you know, but I think it gives you longevity in this industry because you haven't gone anywhere Since you've come and since you've been in the industry Uh till now continue to grow we've seen well Not only that we've seen the rise and fall of many many many bullshit people and supplement companies We talked about shreds and we first started we saw us, you know that that that whole what's up devon Yeah, so bro. So, uh, so we swallows Especially in the age of information. I think it's uh, it's great. What is in the future for you? Where are you going? What's next? Change the world So, uh, you know, I Irrigate lane can come out for a second We're I thought he was already He laughed like really lane really windy leave careful level two. Here we go My buddy ed always says it's not a hot air balloon or is that at biolanes head rising over west tampa, you know, so um But I really feel like that my My reach is only limited by how many people I can get in front of I feel like if I can get in front of people I can talk to still like that's why I want to get on Rogan because not because I hate Joe Rogan because I feel I actually feel like he's a very very smart guy Right. I feel like some people have given him some I feel bad for him Because I feel like some people come on a show and drop bad fucking information and sold bullshit What's the last one that you've seen him that he's had like that? I don't know. Gary tobs. Who's that? Do I don't know that is low carbohydrate zealot? Gary tobs was an epic journalist. He's a fucking journalist Gary tobs was an epic. I told you guys that story last time. I'll tell it again Gary tobs was an epic fitness summit in the uk and I think it was 2015 And I was there. It was a great lineup like there's Brett Contreras There's alan argon james creger like a lot of myself a really great lineup. Greg knuckles, you know And I I just was born the with the gene of one not giving a fuck and two being incapable of bullshit so I have a hard time like Acting friendly towards somebody who's I know is a charleton. So Alan and Gary are having a debate and I use debate in quotations. It's more like a fucking dismantling by alan, right? And Gary is the only person in the room who believes he's winning, you know I was actually like I don't like Gary tobs. I was fucking embarrassed for him. I really was I felt bad for him. I'm just like, wow You're not even cognizant of the fact that you're getting completely dismantled right now And as alan's going through all these studies This is basically like gary's belief that that sugar is evil and the cause of everything from global warming to I don't know trump getting an office so And alan's going through all these studies and and dismantling this argument, right? And talb's fallback is well that study was funded by this person was funded by that person. Oh, well, that couldn't be right this and that And then he has the audacity to say Not quoting any studies, but he has the audacity to say well, I'm funding studies that are going to prove this Just to just to show you're not a scientist. You never come at it from the angle. Well, this study is going to show this Hi, your bias is showing, you know Um, and I put my hand up because I couldn't I just couldn't fucking stand anymore And I said so you're saying that all of alan's studies that he used Is very convenient that all alan's studies are somehow biased But all the ones you're going to fund are beyond reproach By the way, his studies got done and showed the exact fucking opposite thing that he said Right, and then when they came out with that, he still came out and said I don't believe this And alan asked him he said if you had enough evidence presented to you, would you change your mind? And he said no How the hell can anybody take somebody like that? Seriously? You are talking about a religious zealot That has decided to make low carbohydrate their religion of choice We also have anti artificial sweetener zealots. We have Anything paleo zealots. We like intermittent fasting zealots. It's like they They're more concerned about belonging to a group. I feel like it's I think it's a group Everywhere in finnish we take a little bit of science or a little bit of something that we find out and we just Well, especially if it works for you individually, you know, and you're gonna go 100 in and so of course when fight that fact When when tabs went on rogan You know because rogan likes the ketogenic diet does the ketogenic diet. That's no problem I've talked about the applications of a ketogenic diet But i'm just not gonna i'm just i'm sorry. I can't sit here and sell you that it's it's somehow this Well, this is what this is what happened with us. We had dom we had dom on the show dom digustino Yeah, love dom. Yeah, great guy. Yeah, he's actually gonna be coming in here. Yeah, we haven't come back again We love we love dom and give me kiss for me because because of that um And I was a 400 to 600 gram of carb guy and I was like, you know what I wouldn't uh I had no at that point I had no desire to even think about going ketogenic But I you know what I I should be open-minded enough to try it and see how I feel and then I could speak educated After at least going through the experience and seeing what I went through and I loved it. I loved how I felt I uh it opened my eyes uh with the amount of fat that I couldn't take because for so many years I demonized fat and I'd never seen what it was my body would feel like look like If I did 200 plus grams of carbohydrates or 200 grams plus of fat So to see myself eating that abundance of food. I felt satiated through the day I felt like I wasn't holding a ton of water There was a ton of things that I saw that I like but the problem I had with it was To follow in these perfect guidelines of ketogenic Man, I was I was only choosing from the small small Very limited list of food selection all list of foods and I thought I thought to myself Well, even if it has all these health benefits and it's got all these great things about it It can't be that great for me to only be cycling these amounts of foods And so and you get into sustainability like you can do that forever And exactly and this is where I came out on the show and I said listen You know, I know mind pump comes out and we talk about the benefits of the ketogenic diet But I want you guys to be very very careful not to attach ourselves to it to where it becomes like the official diet There's some health benefits that we've seen there's some things that anecdotal that we've gone through personally But I'll also tell you that I don't I hate Putting labels. I hate isms. I hate fucking anything that ends like that. I hate ism. It is it's all But fitness is known to do that. We take a little bit of information We take a little bit of science if a little bit something's good then a shit load must be best Yeah, so, you know Again and it's it's I think that You know the ketogenic diet has applications and again, I actually I just want to reach a lot of people, you know to be able to to kind of uncloud this thing because I'm tired of people demonizing food. I just really am like and to see gary taubs on there Spewing that bullshit with and listen to Joe's credit. He's had ronge patrick on there. I think ronge is legit very legit. I think that um she uh I love her by the way I disagree with her on certain things, but for most part we agree on most things, you know, I love her podcast She's got a great podcast. Yeah, she's great. Um and so I just feel like I would love to provide An opposing point of view and I think he's a smart man. Yeah, it's important to have that So I would love to do that to be able to reach a lot of people So so so you want to get you just want to get uh on mediums where you can reach? Yeah, whether it's rogan or it's the today's show or whatever like I'm like I said I tweeted the other day Like I saw something on I figure what's mainstream. I was like put me in the arena with one of these guys Oh, fucking annihilate them. I don't have to curse either. I can I can actually debate without cursing I just choose to on this because it emphasizes my fucking point So And for all of you sensitive snowflakes out there. I'm not sorry. You're a good company here. Yeah, so there's none left So, you know, it's it's one of those things that I just want to be able to help people like at the end of the day. I want to do that And that's why you know shameless plug incoming I created something like avatar nutrition. So for those who aren't familiar avatar nutrition is A custom flexible dieting service where you can go and we did it last night, right adam entered in his height his weight Body fat all these different Metrics like I mean you saw it there was like like probably like 10 to 15 metrics you have to enter in very detail adam We're talking about you entering in your information into avatar And at the end of it it's spit out a macronutrient intake for him for reverse dieting And I think you know, you were pretty impressed with how close it got it in terms of what you thought It should be Absolutely, and I thought I was pretty funny too because I think you thought that I was going to expect more protein right out the case Yeah, well, you know, you thought I was a bro there for a minute You're quasi bro, you know, so But it's you know, we we we've really you know, we really listen to our users We put a lot of features in there So for people who are used to a lot more protein and who enjoy that we even say listen this protein We have a protein boost option, right? And it says on the protein boost option You're not getting any more anabolic benefit But if you like more protein here, you can use this slider and you can take it up to a certain But even then you're not even pushing beyond 2.8 grams per kilo. Yeah, you're like 1.3 grams per pound We don't let you go to avatar will not let you get into retard territory Sorry, that that's very insensitive. That's that's wrong Stupid territory. How about that? You know, you're not you're not going you're not recommending like there's another Two grams per yeah, there's another phd in the fitness industry that recommends Is he currently involved in a lawsuit? Yeah Does he sell protein? Oh, hey, look laying Norton sells protein and he's sitting here saying you that 0.8 grams per pound is probably enough Oh my god, like, you know, god. I'm doing this business thing. You know what I mean Can we talk a little bit about a little bit about how you uh, I mean you said you structured that relationship When you did yourself. Hang on. Let me finish talking about avatar Oh, yeah So just real quick. So finish your seamless plug Well, no because I really I really do honestly feel like this is going to be the thing that changes the world for me because You think about this my, you know um My fitness pal celled over an hour for half a million dollar or half a billion dollars 500 million all it does is track your intake crowd sourced macronutrient intake tracker This will generate custom macronutrient recommendations Custom nutrition recommendations Based on your individual metabolism and then we'll adjust them based on how you progress every week Not only that But every time you check in every week with your weight and body fat those sorts of things and if you don't have a If you don't have calipers or weight weight measure body fat, we have a calculator on the site um Every it'll not only change your macros to optimize things But it will give you a pop-up that says hey, this is what happened and this is why we did it Right, so eventually we've had some people who have like used the service for so long they said, you know, I I canceled the service now because I wasn't happy but because I understood how to do things Like it taught me how to do things We're not looking to have people on for lifetime. We're looking to have them on and be able because we'll always be enough clients There's always enough clients out there But we want people to be able to have something they can do for a lifetime You know and we're we're having some pretty awesome results now that's been around from now as somebody who's uh Try to build an app before what are some of your fears right now? Like don't you worry about You say my fitness pal like I'd be worried that my fitness pal Catches wind of avatar And that's why we'd probably propose to license it, you know those sorts of things But we've already had people try to copy us. Oh, we have copied us. Oh really you copy this in terms of You know, obviously the back end data calculations and algorithm. They haven't copied because that's proprietary And when people say well, what about that we there was one guy who had an app that when we came out he tried to say we copied him which He doesn't have any credentials But he sent all of his little users over to talk shit about us And it was like I have a patent I said, okay, well, let me see it because we search for it because are we have a patent pending? He sent me a trademark Now like you realize this is a trademark, right? You realize the difference, right? So here's what I want you to do You stop sending your little shits over to to talk trash about us Because you don't have any background in nutrition and I won't I won't sue you I won't I won't try to shut you down. We get our patent because I'm not looking to shut anybody down If his app is better than ours then by god, he should make more money That's free market thinking it's the free market thing And you know what does it get annoying to have people copy me at every single step of the way of what I've done? Absolutely, you know, absolutely stop being so mean Concept But you know what? At the end of the day Good, I hope you copy me Bring it the fuck on because you're not gonna outpassion me. You're not gonna outwork me You're not gonna care about this like I did. You're not gonna go all in like I did Okay, so I hope you copy me try it because I'll fucking bury you. All right. Oh, sorry. That may be a little bit harsh But listen listen, I'm a competitor, right? People want to act like life is in the competition. Everything is a competition, right? And it's not that I want to put you out of business or anything like that I'm not saying that I think there's enough room in the fitness industry for several things like this But I want to win, you know what I mean like I want to win Not because of money or anything like that because I just want to win When was the last time and I believe I believe in our product When was the last time your your competitive personality? Uh kind of fucked you Was the last time that you're over like because I here's a belief that I have and and correct me if I'm wrong here Because I was playing basketball with my son You always lose I like to say that your your greatest strength is your greatest weakness probably, you know, I think that You know, I probably get a little bit too intense on social media sometimes because I'll just tell you what I think Yeah, what's a lot? What's the last thing that got you in trouble? Think about it if you're Self-reflecting right now on my last post on instagram here You tend to attract some of these fucking trolls. I mean like suit now. They're not they're not average trolls They're super super trolls. They make like a living off of being trolls. Yeah, so Yeah, let's talk about this controversy because that was a big fucking thing big big big thing. So yeah 2013 so I had just started kind of recording regular like uploads to youtube and um, you know Didn't really know about the youtube fitness community that there's a whole fucking community people out there You know and and for the most part like Damn it I'm good. I should be able to make it so You know for the most part I've met in the youtube community. It's actually been pretty cool. Um But unfortunately my introduction to youtube fitness community was not good So people started, um By tweeting me and facebooking me. They said hey, have you seen this this criticism of your research by jason blaha? Who people considered an expert who? Despite his claims um, it's fat Uh Never has been in good shape The the leanest picture we have of him. He doesn't have abs Um, and he's never he doesn't have a degree in anything. Uh now he he claims What's his background? A liar If you are is that can you sign that that's a title if you have no conscience You can say whatever the fuck you want about anything. Yeah, he's a mercenary. Yes. Yes claim divas a mercenary worked for the cia Uh trained at the farm and Langley, which by the way the farm is not fucking it Langley first clue, um so Anyways people sent me these videos of him supposedly criticizing my research I started watching the video now, which research was this that he was criticizing some of my phd research on uh on lucy And um, you know, I started watching I'm like I watched two minutes of it and first off there's like He needs to be high for this. Uh, so first off there's like stuffed animals in the background trying to sober out He's there's like stuffed animals in the background and shit And I'm just like who's going to take this guy seriously, you know And he's like hitting a bicep shot, but has no biceps, you know, I'm like is is this like a joke or something? and um I just after two minutes. It was very apparent that he had not read my research in any way shape or form And I just turned it off. I'm like nobody's gonna take this guy seriously And people took him fucking seriously So so did you get a lot of hate from that? Uh, yeah Basically what he said was that you couldn't trust my research because it was funded by supplement companies Uh, no, uh, how large how large of a falling did he have this time? Was he pretty big? It was probably between facebook and youtube around 100,000. Oh, okay. So um, yeah, is that many fucking followers? It's disturbing I'm actually, you know, I'm actually less mad at him And more upset that people would be willing to follow somebody like that. Well, come on We got the Kardashians If you have a sign on a fence and it says beware a rabid dog And you go inside and you get bit by the dog. Should you be mad at the dog or are you just a fucking idiot? No, you shouldn't be mad at the dog. The dog did what it's going to do He's got some kind of disorder. He's going to do what he's supposed to do You're just not supposed to follow him and take him fucking seriously, right? so In any case, um, I made a tweet So so this is what one of those examples where I should have just been like the guy's a lunatic He's weird. I should have just ignored him. Yeah, right But that's very self-aware for you to pick that up now. So yeah I've had a lot of likes experience so I uh, I I made a tweet something to the effect of you know Yes, some guy sitting on his couch recording to a camera is better qualified to discuss my research than me And this is one of those guys who is an escalator, right? He'll never de-escalate the situation and will never admit that he was wrong about anything Anything and I've got a story about that that I'll tell here in a second And so then it what he needed to take it to the next level, which was not only was my research fabricated But I was also on steroids And people just accepted this as fact, right? And it actually like it generated. I mean hundreds if not thousands of comments on my youtube emails and you know, I could have tolerated most of it until I remember, uh He put out a video the day my son was born Like to generate hate Don't tell me that was by accident. Wow. He did the same thing to Jerry which I'm not a big fan of jerry ward but The day jerry wards dad died blaha put it out a video talking shit about jerry ward Ted is filthy, huh? Oh, he's a piece of shit So and I have no problem saying that like he's a human piece of fucking shit There's no redeeming qualities about this individual And just I have so many so anyway some of his Fans, um One of the men in particular said that he would like to beat my wife And uh beat my son till he's a paraplegic And I don't care he will say oh, well you you you can't take that serious I don't give a fuck if you have kids anybody out there as kids if that doesn't raise the hairs in the back of your neck and make you want to go Fucking ape shit There's something wrong with you, you know what I mean? So I finally got to the point where I'm like, I'm I'm not gonna you know Some people need to realize that there's consequences to their actions You can't just say whatever the hell you want and have nothing happen So I lived in the uk He lived in the uk. Uh, he was married to a gal over there and um He uh, he was not a citizen of the uk. He's he's from the united states Ironically getting disability benefits from the united states by the way He's a great guy, but still oh he has a disability but can still lift still compete in fucking powerlifting, right? Um claimed he has mania's disease Maybe he does maybe he doesn't but his first wife has commented multiple times that They were never able to actually find anything wrong with him And that all he did was sit around and play world of warcraft for 10 hours a day Mr. Mercenary cia operative Fucking world of warcraft So and actually, uh, so I I decided okay I hired a firm over in the uk because I could sue him here But it would have no unless he came back to usa There's no recourse, right So hired a firm over there and I just wanted to send a cease and desist letter and you know, I figured All right, if I show this guy, I'm serious. He'll just chill the fuck out, you know And uh, what's that process like too? Does that cost a lot of money to do that? Just to send the cease and desist letter was like $6,000. Wow You know because then the exchange rates killer too, you know so I um I did that we sent a cease and desist letter And immediately he sent an email saying I'm you know, I think we've had some misunderstanding Fuck you can misunderstand He's like, I you know, I'd like to make a public apology to you I like to call you on the phone and apologize and I would like to make a reasonable Uh payment of damages And I thought okay, this thing's gonna come to an end, you know, I mean like I'm fine And I asked my attorneys. I'm like listen. What's what's a reasonable compensation? What's reasonable asked for they said definitely a public apology that you have to approve before it goes up So it can't be like some thinly veiled like sarcastic apology, right? And you should get all of your attorney fees, which that at that point was like 12 to 15 thousand dollars. I think And damages I said, okay, I said listen listen, I don't I just want this whole fucking thing to be over with And I think what I decided on was I I just want half of my attorney fees if I get half and I get an apology You know, it was more of it. It was more of a token thing Like he could have come back and said listen, I can all I can pay is a thousand bucks Fine just a token, right? Like I just wanted just admitting it. Just admit it. You know what I mean and He went full fucking crazy mode like send a letter back to my attorneys and said Because my attorney said, okay, this is his our client against our advice Has offered to take half of our fees and no damages and a public apology So I think it was asked for six thousand dollars basically or six thousand pounds because it was it was uk british and um He came back and said I'm not going to pay anything And I'm going to report you for fraud because you have obviously fraudulently inflated Your fees, you know accuse my attorneys of fraud. By the way, this this firm withers is very well known and very very prestigious firm over the uk And my attorneys came back to me. They're like This guy's nuts, you know, like they this guy's nuts so We had to sue him because not only that but he put it out in video Like what had happened and that we were fraudulent and he was reporting me to the irs for fraud and all this kind of stuff So we sued him. How old how old are you? Where are you at in your career? Uh, 31 years old, I think at that point. Um, 2013 So we sued him No, uh, 32 years old So so we sued him And because at that point it was more about a point of principle I didn't want to I didn't want to send a cease and desist and then not follow through on it You look like you look like a bitch if you do that, right? No, yeah, you'll embolden him if you don't exactly And you know, I'm the kind of person I'm the exact opposite of him In every single way If I tell you I'm gonna do something I will fucking do it Okay, I don't just talk I do it. All right. This guy all he is is a talker, right? So Um, we send the lawsuit which he promptly posts on his facebook, right posted online Just enormous amounts of hate. Well, actually at that point Um, the guy who used to own the gym he went to Uh emails me and said thank you so much. This guy is a piece of shit He said, um, I kicked him out of my gym because I found him he was sending messages to one of my trainers About how to take steroids and what happened was the guy who owned the gym didn't kick him out for that He just went up to him and said, hey listen, um, you know, I saw that you're giving advice to one of my trainers about taking steroids You know what you do with your own bodies that that's fine But I would just really appreciate it if you didn't do that and he goes well, I didn't do that and and he's like and I said well, I saw the emails and he's like It wasn't me He literally had to physically take the laptop and show it to blaha This is this is what he told me show it to blaha And even then blaha didn't admit that he did it. He just kind of grumbled and stopped He sounds a little delusional if you ask me Oh So He got kicked out of his gym because the guy was like at that point. I was like, well, you know, fuck you guy, you know So I was like, he's like, thank you for doing that because because then blaha made a video Saying he got kicked out of his gym because he talks about steroids on youtube That's not why he got kicked out of his gym. He got kicked out of the gym for being an asshole You know what I mean? But he made his gym owner look bad and his gym owner got a lot of hate mail from people, you know and people like raiding his gym down on google and shit because They they they believed blaha, you know So anyway, um, you know blaha made all these big statements about he like dressed up in spartan attire and said he was going to war and Like he said he was gonna rate me and there's the screenshots of all this He was gonna rate me in court that he was glad I sued him because now he's not physically there for a second So he didn't even fucking show up To court he didn't show up No, we and now now how much now how much money are you into this because you now you didn't cease to this now You had fucking course so I know fees are starting to pile up Over six figures. Whoa. Whoa. God damn it. Wow Nothing accomplished yet. No you're that you know what though you know what though end up in the way it was worth it Because now people see what a piece of shit he is and he has like there are tons of people And you know what? At the end of the day, he may he actually prades around like he thinks it's less than I actually thought he thought I spent Like 30,000 or whatever what I don't care It's just money. Mm-hmm. My reputation is way more important than me the amount of amount of money And I'll make that back. Yeah, I'll make that back doing something positive with my life You are nothing so this guy He didn't show up and he makes a video saying why they Neglected to tell me when the court when the time was and where it was so We posted an email of my attorneys emailing him the date the location Their phone number and case he had any questions as well as a fucking map with directions And where to park and all this kind of stuff, right? Of course, he's not going to show up because he can't admit he did anything wrong And the judge the judge literally put in the judgment That he has no one to blame but himself For for what's going on So he got a judgment It was like 23,000 pounds of an intermittent payment that he was supposed to pay me interim payment while they're waiting to assess damages How many how many how many how many pounds have you received? Yeah, big zero. Yeah, that's that's a shitty part about stuff like this, you know No, no and what you find is like I tell people now like avoid lawsuits at all costs if you can because Somebody can just not pay you. Like if they're a piece of shit, they just won't pay you, you know, so he He but you know what he had to move back to the states because you know what? Other countries when you're when you're not a resident, you're not a citizen They don't like it when you move over there and start a bunch of shit You know and found he found out that at least this is my my give best guess is he My best guess is his wife actually probably got sick of his shit Because he actually he made a threat against my my wife and son He I have I have it screen-shotted and it said, um, well Because if he was if if you have a if you're bankrupted because of a debt that you don't pay They can actually deport you if you're not a citizen Um, and he said well, if I'm if I am forced to be away from my wife Um, I will have to take his family out as revenge Literally said that and obviously again The father the husband and me I told my attorneys like listen, we're gonna call the police. This is some serious shit, you know So they called the police police went to him and his excuse was oh First it was oh somebody hacked my facebook and then when that didn't work It was oh, I let some other people log on to my facebook and then months later after him and his wife separated It was oh, my wife was trying to get back at me and she did it right Again complete and utter failure to take responsibility for anything right So and you know what if the guy like originally let's go back revert like reverse back to when the first thing happened If he would have just been well, you know what I can't afford to pay anything. I have no money Can I just do an apology? And I'm really sorry fine, dude fine But he's incapable of doing that, right? What does it feel like being a father and and and having a child like and knowing what you've had to deal with with like Social media as a grown-ass man To the to this level. That's why you don't see me post much stuff from my kids Be honest with you. It's got to scare the fuck out of you. It scares me man. I never put my kids on it ever scary so You know what but you know Oh by the way, so finally the last chapter this well kind of Was he had to go because he was saying he didn't have any assets He had actually go in and declare his assets now He claimed he had like rights to oil stuff overseas and all this kind of stuff He like acted like a big man on his facebook page. So I transferred money to overseas. Are you dumb? They had these things called forensic accountants who will find that the dude has nothing he has nothing He lives in absolute squalor I think right now he's living like in a in a in a trailer park With his girlfriend's grandmother or something like that for what I understand It's crazy to me how somebody somebody of such little importance and could gain a following can cause that much problem No, exactly. That's what I'm thinking could cause I mean just listening to you. I'm like jesus christ This must have been like a very stressful a year of your life that was just two years two years of your life I wish I could have let it you know looking back But you know what part of it It did bring awareness to him and it got so karma ended up working out in the end Does it ever make you though? Does it ever make you want because I know I know you take a lot of pride in being that guy That's not afraid to stand out and fucking put it out there Does it ever make you kind of want to be a little more reserved because of that because because that happened to you? Sure. I mean that's like could have gone to my son's college account Right, I mean like sure like I you know, but It's got to have conflicting you got to have conflicting feelings with that You got it. You know part of you wants to be like fuck you. I want to take everybody on but then there's gonna be part of you Right now that's just like You know shit, dude, maybe I'm bringing some of this onto myself because you know what though if you don't if you want to avoid criticism or people disliking you Say nothing do nothing be nothing You know don't do anything new Yeah, but don't you feel like some of your don't you feel like some of that's our ego talking to us feeling that we have to be right? Yeah, I'm listen. I'm not gonna sit here until you don't have an ego. Absolutely. Well, we all do we all do I think that's part That's part of accepting that is is a big part absolutely, but you know what at the end of the day Most people that go out and do stuff that actually like has a legit impact on the world They weren't people who stood in the shadows and were like, oh, I think I kind of want to do this You know in some way They were very big personalities now mine did not be like outspoken. Yeah, but they were very Big personalities in some way, you know what I mean? Oh, absolutely. So You know if this if this was the cost of doing business it was the cost of doing business, you know And uh, at least I learned something from it. Well, you know, I think you I think you learned to to direct it better Yeah, so I think I agree with you that You recognize it. Okay. This is either like a Sociopath or a psychopath or something, you know what I mean and you just go Okay, whatever they're gonna get theirs And so when he went to the the meeting where he had to declare his assets and basically declared he had nothing Other than a disability check Which you can't touch It's amazing by the way, how how much the system protects pieces of shit Like it's amazing how much it protects pieces of shit and not good people um He actually he looked straight at the judge And he said or he looked straight at my attorney apparently. I wasn't there. They had a transcript everything and says By the way, I have an insider in your firm That's so weird Like you gotta give him some credit for some funny shit though. I wouldn't even think to say it Like he had It's like it had to be something where he was a big man You know what I mean and oh you had an insider in the firm But you couldn't figure out where the fuck the court case was, you know Like you couldn't figure out how to get there the insider neglected to mention where the actual, you know judgment was located geez so fortunately Karma tends to work. I don't believe in karma in a spiritual sense. I believe in karma in a practical sense How long has it been since you've so so I kind of just at a certain point I just like We got to the point where all I could do is bankrupt him and it was going to cost me five more grand to bankrupt him By that time I'm like, I'm gonna I'm stopping throwing good money. So you're now 32 33 years old You've already been dealing with this for a year, right? And I'm just like, you know what? I'm just the best revenge is massive success And that's what I'm gonna do. So every time I'm out there killing it. Yeah Every time, you know, when avatar blows up when all this other stuff blows up when I have four companies that are successful and all this kind of stuff You're gonna have to sit there in your fucking trailer and think about What a cesspool your life is and what I did with mine. And you know what? In 10 years, I don't even remember your name. Where do you think that competitive nature came from? When did it start? Do you remember it as a child? Yeah, probably young, you know, just just people telling me I couldn't do stuff People tell me I never be stuff. I came from a lower middle class family I was the nerd in school, you know, I had goals and whatnot and people Oh, you you never I came from a small town in indiana where people were like, you know You're just gonna go to college here and you're just gonna stay here and this is your destiny and You know, I never believed that so I think that was the competitive nature was to prove people wrong But the ending of the story is basic. Well as of now People finally, you know, because of course this guy he cannot I guess he gets into shooting guns as a hobby But he can't just shoot guns. He has to be an ex mercenary Who did snatching gabs for the CIA as story topper, right? So It's the kind of guy like if you tell somebody I I took a karate class one time. Well, yeah Well, I'm a seventh black belt Shaolin monk. You know what I mean a train with Steven Seagal. Yeah, exactly So, I mean, there's videos out there all this if you if you wanted to find it You go to youtube look up shadow man or natty lifter Or exposed tv these guys have all done videos showing like so They've went and dug up forum posts of this guy from back in the day where he claimed to be abducted by aliens And then he was a male model. By the way, he Not a fucking male model That's quite the resume. I know male models. He's not a male model He was a novelist like he wrote science fiction novels, you know He was a part reptilian like believed in like All this kind of like crazy crazy shit Don't you feel as an entrepreneur at your age and our age as long as we've been doing this now So doesn't it just pain you that you even have to disc This is even I even had the fucking deal with somebody like this. That's what I'm saying again I'm not even like him He's just what he is But y'all following him You guys should have known better, you know So fortunately now there's there's a whole group of people who They hate this guy because they see all the lies. He's told I knew this guy was a liar from the The first second I saw all this stuff, you know It's a shame it took three years for people to figure it out But now I mean he has to hide his subscriptions on youtube He has to put out four videos a day With four ads in each single video. I mean he doesn't even try anymore like he like there's a video of him The shadow man posted where he like literally sneezes wipes it on his jeans and he doesn't even bother to edit it out So it gives him five more seconds so he can hit that 10 minute mark where he can put unlimited ads in his video Wow, you know like it's just and he he'll talk about anything just ramble on and on and on Do you feel do you feel like he's he's in he's impacted your life negatively like that so bad that you still Find yourself like looking back over there for a long time. Yeah for a long time. Yeah, unfortunately That that was the downside was I fixated on that right instead of it took me too long to say let's just focus on doing some positive shit You know what I mean? um But you know what I figured it out at a certain point I figured it out and now Now like what I did was uh people people my paul got pissed at me because he's like dude You're getting reinvested But it's just now it's just me having fun. Like I just poked the bear So I challenged him to a debate in an academic forum and I said you can you know You can pick the topic and you can pick the moderator as long as it can be anybody in academia, which with your Oh, this is this is recent. You've like a couple months ago. Oh, shit. I said with your with your extensive research background We're still fucking with this guy with your extensive research background should be easy, right? and uh So first off he ignores it and then when enough people come to his channel and realize he realizes he can't ignore it He says well basically literally Says that he doesn't want to come to the bait because he's certain That i'm gonna have somebody try and take him out Like actual assassins Bro Everybody just stand by at that point. Everybody knows what the guy's address is Okay Do you think if I was gonna take you out first off? I would have done it before I spent so much fucking money Right Second off you know when he's right in front of why would I do when you're in the same room as me, dude? You know So so fine. I was like, all right fine. I wanted to give him no ways to back out of this because This dude jump cuts. He's googling stuff like he just regurgitates everything online If I get him in a debate about something that's actual science He's gonna get eviscerated, you know So I said i'll pay for your trip You can pick whatever topic so he comes back and here's his terms. I said, well, let's do a skype debate, right? skype debate I can't crawl through the fiber optic table and get you you know and he says um He says okay. You have to pay me one month of my youtube income You have to uh It has to be either about competitive shooting I don't know how you fucking debate that so he picked a debate topic Yeah, or drug or drug testing which I know what he's trying to do with the drug testing If I come across this knowledgeable about drug testing, then he can say i'm not natty Yeah, you're not you know how to get around you're not fucking clever blah, ha, you know You think you're playing checkers when you're playing fucking tic-tac-toe, you know, so he And then he says, you know one month of youtube salary So I he's he's done this in every debate He's ever done like with low blunder low blunder wanted to debate him and he came out said I have to be able to carry In the expo and have a firearm army at all times and if anybody approaches me aggressively I need to have a signed release from the the convention saying that I have the right to shoot them Like literally fucking shit like this, right? And so of course like people can't meet those demands, right? So I was like fine Show me a proof of your income in terms of a tax statement Or bank or bank statement that was a mistake on my part because As for reasons I'll elaborate on or and The he's who wanted lyle mcdonald as the moderator. I said academia jason liles not in academia Okay, somebody who actually like is has done actual research Okay, sorry lyle not sorry um or Yeah, so somebody in academia And then I said, okay And so I waited months went by nothing happened nothing happened nothing happened and all of a sudden over this past month He puts out a statement of his earnings, right? And it's like $4,200 is what he claims he earned in a month, right? and um Fortunately there's a bunch of online detectives And they went all it shows is a bulk transfer into his account Right first off it shows his balance before the transfer was eight dollars and 37 cents winning so He transfers in this and they figured out that based on what he had said previously about what he got paid in a month Versus what his views were That what he had done was combined multiple months delayed payment and then transferred a bulk payment into his account So it looked bigger So you're not fucking clever, buddy. You're not clever So and but now you know what now is happening is he's been like Clamoring for this debate now even said I could pick the topic. I can pick the moderator dudes hard up for money So guess what bud? Does he have any I mean to you can just chill for a while. What does he do? I mean, I gotta think he's gotta I mean, I haven't watched any of his shit now You make me want to watch no no no Don't give him There's a mirror channel. I think that puts all of his videos back up So you don't actually have to watch his videos and give him clicks you give it to this person That's great. These people are savages. I never want to get them on my bad Well, I I heard he claims by the way that they're a a muslim cyber stalking ring Oh, wow this group of people. Well, I was just gonna say I've heard there's like rings of these These kids that this is literally what oh, they're definitely cyber stalking them. They're definitely are But he fucking deserves it. Wow Wow So, you know, it's I you know, the best part of it is I had nothing to do with it You know, like he'll say that I I uh, I paid for this stuff. It's like man, I seem to have a lot of money, you know um But oh actually what really got him in trouble was, you know, all of his claims about being a mercenary You don't get to be a mercenary without law enforcement or military experience It doesn't happen They don't take them They don't they don't take a random person. No, they don't be like, oh, well, you can Oh, I saw you shooting guns at that gun range Gee, you really look like you knew what you were doing. Let's take you out and have in afghanistan do snatch and grabs, you know, like so it So veterans obviously started getting pissed off about this And you know the the blog popular military very big blog Ran a story on him about him being a Stolen valor, you know, and when that story came out on facebook I was like, okay shared and boosted for a hundred dollars. You know what I mean So cuz fuck him and uh, so I I said that on a on a facebook live that I boosted it Well, he went and said lay norton paid for popular military to write this blog and you know all this kind of stuff and it's like Again delusions of persecution, you know, so it was just you know, it's been a very interesting learning experience about the the human You know human nature and what some people are capable of in terms of how far they will take a lie Yeah, like they will just continue doubling down on stuff like it really I even remember we talked about more stuff last night about him his friend like Trying to vouch for him that he was in the powder wars and all this kind of You know, I wanted to ask you is is can we talk about everything we talked about last night? Was there anything that was off limits? Did we say anything that was off limits? We know not really okay Because there's something that you said and you just gradually and I thought it was a pretty cool because I have a handful buddies Uh that that do this and I think that it's really cool And you can learn a lot and I think a lot of people are afraid to talk about a lot Is uh, you know, you said you have a you have a life coach. Yeah, how long have you had a life coach for about six months? Okay, so What have you talked about any of this stuff before I'd really I'd love to hear I mentioned the life coach thing. Uh, because 2016 was a tough year for me. Yeah, you know, uh, there's a lot of personal stuff I went through. Yeah, um And just you know, I need somebody who's not like emotionally invested right to like Tell me what I'm fucking up. Yeah, you know and say, hey, have you considered it? Like I made a lot of business mistakes too. Like fortunately, they haven't been Fatal, you know But um, you know what you find out is everything affects everything, you know If you're struggling in one area, it's going to start bleeding over another stuff, you know And having somebody to be like kind of on not Yeah on my side But know when to Tell me when I'm fucking up that I respect, you know, because a lot of what's happened is some of my friends like You know, it's been tough because I never want to give this impression But some of my friends that felt like they couldn't talk to me because they started out as Clients or looking up to me in a certain way And they felt like they couldn't talk to me and I would never want to give that impression But I can understand how they got there, you know And so having somebody to to to give me the devil's advocate to tell me this kind of stuff I think is really important. It even allows you to be vulnerable Yeah, that's a very difficult thing to do when you're when you're around people who maybe you were clients before or followed you and I you know I'm probably I'm guilty of at a certain point like Man, you know, when you when you when you read about stuff and about if you get popular if you get successful you're going to deal with Haters and sycophants and you're going to deal with people lying to you and people betraying you and stabbing you in the back And and all this kind of stuff and you go and people being fake and all this kind of stuff And I remember being a kid. I'm like, oh that would never that sounds really dramatic I don't think you know, fuck if it ain't the truth, you know what I mean? Like if it ain't the damn truth and You know, it it can be hard to keep your head sometimes You know, so having somebody in my corner To just you know, not not just tell me, you know, what I'm doing is the right thing to tell me. Hey, that wasn't the right thing You should have you should have done that different, you know, you know, someone big deal. Someone told us that a while ago. They said There's like gonna be a lot of people telling you you're doing awesome But what are you gonna do when you're doing shitty and the people that tell you that you're not doing good? That's what you're that's what you need to sometimes pay attention to Because you know, it's easy to be around people who Admire what you do and think everything you do is great and But what about those what about putting yourself around those people who are going to be honest with you? It takes a lot of self-awareness to be able to do that. Yeah, well one of the quotes I like out there is uh Greatness comes not when everything goes right for you, but when you're truly tested, you know And the one thing that's kind of kept me my head on straight Well, you can argue it has been on straight Kind of kept me going forward Is that whenever in my life? I've been like really frustrated and wanted to quit or felt just completely exasperated It almost seems like invariably right after that's where there was a breakthrough, you know, very I sort of got true It's like the universe Again, I don't want to sound spiritual, but it's like the universe is going to test you To your breaking point and then it's going to let you go, you know And it's starting to happen like like January of december was kind of the lowest months And just kind of grinded through it kept going And now things are starting to kick ass, you know, like things are starting to really kick ass again. Excellent. And uh, You know, like it would have been easy to just be like, oh fuck this whole, you know, just let's just go back to Let's just kind of retreat back to, you know Coaching and let's stop working with some of this stuff because we had a lot of setbacks with avatar You know avatar hit a huge milestone the other day. Like we're really kicking ass Um, but man, we had so much frustration with that thing So many failures with it. I mean every single one like we had a lot of infighting in our company at a certain point because we were just so frustrated And now it's just completely kicking ass, you know, because we took all that negativity That we had and all that hurt we had about Fuck you. So she's marketing and fuck you type two designs in Tampa, florida Both of you pieces of shit. We're not gonna say any names, but I don't care. They're they're not gonna we have all the evidence if they You know, you know The thing about people is oh, you worry about somebody's those who live in glass houses don't throw stones Yeah, you don't want to go to court. Yeah, because I've got all the dirt Right So and in the case of type two Possibly criminal charges due to fraud. So They they just You know, but we we sat around and at a certain point these were web developers We paid to to develop things for us and just completely literally screwed us, you know just didn't do the work and You know come to find out that Even if we sued some of these people the chance that we collect is is is highly unlikely So again, it's like and we had this discussion like do we do we spend this time this energy on vengeance? Or do we say let's double down. Let's make this thing crush it And then they're going to be bankrupt or or whatever it is and we're going to be kicking ass And floating on cloud nine. Let's do that. Let's stop. Let's stop throwing good money after bad And you know what I might not have had that perspective if I hadn't been through the whole jason blah-ha or deal, you know And so maybe it was a blessing in disguise, you know, maybe that Maybe that large amount of money I've spent saved me an even greater amount of money That we would have spent in this whole deal because you can get caught up in the whole vengeance thing Or maybe you find maybe you find people that you have Adversity with and you thrive off of that Maybe you attract it in a sense because you know you do better because it pushes you in those limits Thought like that. Well, listen like I said I said to mark and katie Mark is our CEO and katie is our Her title is editor-in-chief, but really she's more like a co-chief scientific officer with me. She's done Just as much or more on the on the data calculations and the algorithm that I have So she's she's completely integral part of this katie coals and um I said Why The chance we're going to collect is so small like The best of revenge is if we just kill it It's go out and change the world do what we came to do. Anyway, fuck them. Let's go do what we came to do You know, one of the things I had to kind of Tell them was like, yeah, this sucked. We lost a lot of money and we feel stupid, you know and used But this this would have actually crushed most companies most startups And we're doing we actually have enough members and we're doing well enough that our cash flow is still okay So, let's get them. Yeah, let's get them. That's a that's a common trait amongst Uh winners. Well, you know when you when you when you talk to anybody down? Yep. When you talk to anybody Who's really done anything big and you talk about when they've had to encounter a major challenge? They look back at it like It was a good thing. That was the pivotal moment every every every time every company that changed the world almost without exception apple Microsoft all the you read the stories huge in fighting and problems and Setbacks and all look at apple apple was dead in the water Yeah, and the like early 90s midnight. They were dead in the water And then the ipod came out and then the iphone Your it would have been so easy for them to quit To just say, you know what that's it steve jobs to quit and that's it. We're we're done. Well, they fired him Yeah, they fired him out of his own company Right well on that comeback the ipod was him when it comes to anybody If anybody had a right to say, you know what had a good run. Yeah, it would have been him But you an angela duckworth professor angela duckworth She's she's does a lot of research on what makes on the traits of successful people and the major thing she found was For lack of a better term grit That people that they just grind through it that it's not You know talent makes a difference all this stuff makes a difference and one of the things I really like that she said was It's easy to be intense about something for a short period of time Anybody can do that Right intense for a short period of time The people who make a huge difference and accomplish big goals are people Who have stamina? Not just intensity, but stamina When they say success is a marathon not a sprint. I mean that that is the damn truth you know In most people they go out and they say, you know, my favorite motivational speaker is les brown and he says, um You know, most people they they try something and it doesn't it doesn't work the first time and they go Oh, well, you know, I tried some things they didn't work out Show me somebody who tried consistently didn't quit for 20 years and it didn't have it work out in some way You know, even if it doesn't work out the way you thought it was going to work out By not quitting by putting the work in you develop such fortitude and character That some other opportunity usually presents itself Right, like I got into this. I wanted to make, you know, I wanted to be a natural bodybuilder to make money doing that I don't make money doing natural bodybuilding shows now But what I found was something better. I found something better, you know and But if I hadn't had that initial drive To do this stuff It would have not worked and it's been so easy. I mean, I there's so many so many things people told me would never work out Right, you can't be a natural bodybuilder and make money. You can't be an online coach and be successful You can't do a phd and also be competitive. You can't start You know, the flexible dieting is bullshit. It will never work and in high-level competitors and all this kind of stuff And I'm not going to sit here and say that people's words never have an effect on me. Of course they do But I trust this I trust my inner voice Way more than anything else And so at the end of the day, I'll listen to what you have to say. I'll listen to what you have to say And I'll take that in but if this in here tells me something I don't give a damn what you have to say about what I'm going to do What's the biggest thing that you've learned from your your life coach so far? I mean six months you've you've had a chance to Express everything you're going through and get get good feedback. What do you think has been the biggest growth thing that you've gone through? with that Facing my own shortcomings as a person. What do you mean? Like beating yourself up with you? Things that turn out the way you expected just That there's certain things that I wasn't the good guy in You know what I mean? Like things I fucked up, right and acknowledging those but also that That doesn't make you a bad person So and I actually asked her this I said her name is patty evans I said What do you what do you define as a bad person? She said somebody who derives pleasure from hurting other people I said well, that's definitely not me. I know that she's like no you're you're a good person. She goes most people Are good people trying to do the best they can But relationships are complex whether it comes to business friendships romantic And stuff gets fucked up sometimes, you know what I mean? But if you if you come from the perspective of most people are good people Trying to do the best they can and if you come from from that perspective Usually it gives you a lot more empathy And you can if you have disagreements with people you can work them out a little bit better when you say, okay, you know what? Maybe I did something That that triggered them a certain way, you know, maybe maybe I can present it in a better way And I think the other trait about successful people is And she told me this whenever I had things go wrong People who don't succeed Usually do a lot of this shit They're pointing fingers at everybody else windows and mirrors, right? If something went wrong, it was about somebody screwed them over It was you know life's not fair. They're unlucky at this and let me tell you something as an adult as an adult On the yes bad stuff can happen to you But on the whole if your life sucks over a long period of time the common denominator in your life is you Okay So guess who you need to be pointing the finger at to make a change, right? If the if the earth revolves around the sun enough times Maybe the earth revolves around the sun and the sun doesn't revolve around the earth, right? so if you're always having fucked up relationships or You know like I talked about that like when I was in high school all these, you know Easy definition is the girls say I really like a nice guy and they date assholes all the time It's like I wonder why I can't find a nice they end up dating adam Or they Or they're like, you know these instagram girls like I don't understand why I can't find a nice guy And all they're doing is putting up ass shots and talking about you know bdsm and shit and it's like so i'm 23 well, yeah Jesus hashtag blessed, you know like jesus loves my booty. Yeah, so I mean listen, you know and again like i'm a libertarian. So if that's how you want to present yourself I'm not mad at you But you have to understand how that's going to be perceived by a certain number of people, right? So so if you're if you've been doing things a certain way and getting a certain result Maybe the rest of the world isn't the problem Maybe you're the problem. I learned I learned a long time ago windows and mirrors when when shit goes wrong Look in the mirror when things are going right. Look out the window When things are going awesome. Look at look at the people around you when shit's going bad Look at yourself and see what you can do. So absolutely and Yeah, I mean I think that's hard to do You know, it's hard to put a mirror on ourselves because a lot of times like what we're gonna do when we put a mirror on ourselves We say our insecurities. Well, this is why I love comes with age, man This is why I'm glad you were okay with me going this route I wasn't sure if you were gonna talk about it or not because I think Not enough of this gets talked about And you know you talk about the behind the scenes the grinding the failing Well, not enough gets talked about when people get to a status like yourself Or you know are well known a lot of people look up to and they think our lives are perfect And we don't have struggles and we don't question our own our own thoughts and our own our own actions And so to hear someone like you share share that and go through that I think that's an important message that people should hear I tell you what man, uh Hearing you talk like this is has been awesome. I've had an absolute great time talking to you. Thank you Absolutely great time talking and I think I love this kind of stuff You know at the end of the day like when it comes to fitness business, whatever Like I said, if you the only lesson you learned from lifting weights Was to get a good physique or to get strong you fucked up You fucked up, you know, like you you can learn so much more about yourself from lifting weights Or running or anything anything that requires discipline tenacity and perseverance, you know in hard work You if you can't you should why aren't you applying that to other aspects of your life? You know and and one of the things I you know when things get tough And um, you know, do you guys know Marcus Luttrell? Loan survivor favorite one of my favorite books bro for sure awesome. So I actually Huge honor got invited to play at his celebrity softball game in 2015 And uh went out there met him and his wife and met a lot of cool people and and I got invited on the patriot tour afterwards Which is him David Goggins and some other people tie a Kyle actually And uh, that was awesome and one of the things he said that really resonated with me And I think a lot of people they get overwhelmed by standing at the bottom Of the mountain and looking up to the top of the mountain of where they want to go that big goal, right? And thinking there's there's no way I can't make that Whereas they should be focusing on what's the next notch in the mountain they need to grab next right and he said And you know if you read the book not don't watch I mean watch the movie But read the fucking book like everything he went through Oh, the lone survivor book is ten times better than the movie. There's broke his back in multiple places Bit his tongue off like had you know Shrapnel sticking I was like shot multiple times crawled, you know all these like several miles, you know and he said At the patriot tour something that really stuck with me. He said I break down hard times into our segments because there's nothing you can do to me inside an hour that's going to break me Excellent. That's a great. That's a great quote to end on and so I just I said, you know what? If things get shitty things get hard I'm just going to focus on this hour. I love it. I love it. Yeah, Lane. We got to have you come back on man We just recorded like a four hour Four hour marathon of podcasting. I believe that was a record. It's been a blast, brother Thank you, man. Have a good time. We appreciate you having you come on Thank you for listening to mine pump if your goal is to build and shape your body Dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance Check out our discounted rgb super bundle at minepumpmedia.com The rgb super bundle includes maths anabolic maths performance and maths aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by sal adam and justin to systematically Transform the way your body looks feels and performs with detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos The rgb super bundle is like having sal adam and justin as your own personal trainers But at a fraction of the price the rgb super bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee And you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mine pump media dot com If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on itunes And by introducing mine pump to your friends and family We thank you for your support and until next time this is mine pump