2731: The Ultimate Muscle Building Diet (Without Getting Fat)

In short

Mind Pump Podcast Episode 2731 Notes: The Ultimate Muscle Building Diet (Without Getting Fat)

Episode Overview In this episode, hosts Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews provide insights on dieting for muscle gain without fat accumulation. They answer questions from listeners, share personal anecdotes, and discuss various health-related topics. The episode underscores the importance of programming, nutrition, and understanding the body’s responses to diet and exercise.

Key Highlights

Ultimate Muscle Building Diet (3:15)
Objective: Gain muscle while minimizing fat gain.
Common Mistakes:
Many people assume they need to eat excessively to gain muscle, leading to unwanted fat gain.
Emphasizes the need for proper workout programming alongside diet.
Principles of Diet:
Maintain a slight caloric surplus (estimated 500-1000 calories above maintenance).
Focus on high protein intake (1-1.5 grams per pound of body weight).
Incorporate carbohydrates to fuel performance and recovery.

Manuka Honey Benefits (23:25)
Discusses the antimicrobial properties of Manuka honey.
Benefits include improved gut health, anti-inflammatory effects, and enhanced recovery post-workout.

Kratom Withdrawal Experience (30:54)
Adam shares his struggles with Kratom withdrawal, emphasizing the challenges faced, including insomnia and physical discomfort.
Highlights the psychological aspects of addiction and the need for accountability and support.

Listener Coaching Calls
Call #1: Strategies for managing back tightness while trying to lean out.
Call #2: Overcoming weight loss plateaus; emphasizes adjusting caloric intake and dietary composition.
Call #3: Guidelines on increasing weights and addressing body composition concerns, specifically targeting mid-section fat.
Call #4: Comparing using AI tools like Chat GPT against live personal training; emphasizes the value of human interaction in coaching for motivation and accountability.

Key Takeaways

Nutrition & Diet

Caloric Surplus: For muscle gain, a small surplus is effective. Too much can lead to fat gain.
High Protein: Essential for muscle repair and growth.
Carbohydrates: Important for performance; low-carb diets can hinder muscle building.
Focus on Whole Foods: Prioritize nutrient-dense foods over processed options.

Exercise Programming

Workout Variety: Emphasize a balanced routine that integrates resistance training with mobility work.
Monitoring Progress: Track not just weight but also strength and body composition (e.g., measurements rather than just scale weight).
Rest and Recovery: Incorporate rest days and active recovery to allow the body to adapt and grow.

Mental Health & Support

Addiction Awareness: Acknowledge the psychological aspects of dietary habits and substance use.
Community Support: Utilize resources and communities for accountability and encouragement.
Coaching Benefits: Recognizes the importance of in-person coaching for personalized guidance and support.

Conclusion This episode of Mind Pump emphasizes a balanced approach to muscle building through effective nutrition, scientifically-driven workout programming, and a focus on mental health. It encourages listeners to cultivate a sustainable and enjoyable fitness journey while being mindful of their body's responses to diet and exercise.

For listeners interested in more personalized coaching or workout programs, the hosts direct them to their official website for further resources.

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Transcript

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0:00If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, Mind Pump with your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, callers called in and we coached them. It's our favorite thing to do on air. But this was after the intro. Today's intro was 59 minutes long. That's where we talk about fitness and muscle gain and fat loss, current events, personal stuff. It's always a great time. By the way, if you want to be on an episode like this one, send us your questions.

0:36Send it to mplifecaller.com. Now, this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Manucora. This is Manuka honey, the highest concentration of the compounds that are antimicrobial. Okay, so take this, and it's anti-inflammatory. It's good for your gut microbiome. It's a great post-workout carbohydrate. This is a superfood if there ever was one. Go check them out. Go to manucora.com. That's M-A-N-U-K-O-R-A.com forward slash mind pump. By the way, they're having their biggest sale of the year. You can get$150 off their Black Friday starter kit. This episode is also brought to you by Z-Biotics, the pre-alcohol drink that makes drinking way different.

1:18So if you drink it, it's a probiotic, by the way, that has been genetically modified to break down some of the negative byproducts of alcohol. So you take it, drink alcohol with your friends like you normally do. Guess what? You feel way better. It really works. Go to zbiotics.com forward slash mindpump25. That's Z-B-I-O-T-I-C-S.com forward slash MindPump25. Use the code MindPump25. Get yourself a discount. Also, everything is on sale. It's a Black Friday sale. It's 60 % off. 60 % off every MAPS workout program, every program bundle, every guide, every mod. Site-wide, 60 % off. Happening right now.

1:56Go to MAPSFitnessProducts.com. Use the code Black Friday. By the way, every purchase enters you into a contest. two people are going to get a one week free vacation at the mind pump park city house, plus a thousand dollar travel voucher. 15 people are going to get personal training for three months by our trainers. And by the way, an additional 10 people, we're adding a new prize, are going to get the chance to hang out here at mind pump for the whole day. And you get to hang out with the fitness director, Kyle. You're going to want to do that as a handsome guy. Again, go to maps, fitness products.com black Fridays, the code 60 % off.

2:32everything. Here comes the show. T-shirt time! And it's t-shirt time. Ah, shit, Doug. You know it's my favorite time of the week. Two winners this week. One for Apple Podcasts, one for Facebook. The Apple Podcasts winner is CMNN Hot. And for Facebook we have Jennifer Dixon. Both of you are winners. Send the name I just read to iTunes at mindpumpmedia.com. Include your shirt size and your shipping address. We'll get that shirt right out to you. Alright, real quick, If you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com.

3:09I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Let's talk about diet, the ultimate muscle-building diet. Notice I said muscle and not fat. A lot of times people mess up. They try to build muscle, and they either gain body fat or nothing at all. So we're going to break it down for you. We're going to keep it simple. This is how you gain when you're training hard and you want to eat in a way to get results. I love this conversation because I think it's more difficult than most people think. There's this tendency when you're trying to build muscle or gain weight that you're never eating enough.

3:47Yeah. And you'd rather overindulge than under because you are constantly paying attention to the scale and it's like it's not moving. I mean, I know you and I relate a lot to this. It's like I used to weigh myself three times a day right after I ate. And I had a target number. I was looking at the scale. I was like, oh, God, just another sandwich or another shake I got to do. And what that ends up leading to after three, six months of bulking is you might have gained some weight, especially if you were disciplined and aggressive with it. But a lot of times what's discouraging is you go take the body fat test.

4:20You're like, cool, I went up 10 pounds. Eight of it was fat. Two of it was muscle. And then you're like, and then you justify it and you go, well, I did gain two pounds of muscle. Let me carve off that eight pounds of fat. It's gone. So you go on a cut. You cut out the eight pounds of fat and the muscle went right with it. So now notice again, I said not fat, right? That's what we're talking about here. And it's harder, but it's not complicated. So what we're going to talk about is actually not very complicated, but it's got to start with good workout programming. So I know we're not going to talk about or the title or the topic isn't about workouts, but I want to be clear.

4:53good exercise programming is crucial for this because you can eat the ultimate muscle building diet but if you're doing circuit training zumba or you're over training or whatever it's not going to build you're not if you're not sending the right signal with the appropriate amount of volume and intensity right so you're not overdoing it you're not underdoing it just like just right if you're not doing that then the diet's not going to make that huge of a difference but if you are doing that then what we're about to say makes a huge difference and then back to what you said Adam. The first time I really experienced the pain of what you're talking about was years ago.

5:27This is when I was a general manager at Santa Teresa. This is back club 497. So years ago, it was a long time ago. And I had a contest with DJ, you know, DJ and my buddy Ryan on who could gain the most muscle. And I think we gave ourselves two months or something like that. Now, of course, all or nothing, you know, being my middle name, I'm like, I went hard. And I mean, by heart. I mean, I ate everything. I was eating a bucket of chicken for lunch. Like I was just going nuts with food and I got my body weight up to 240 pounds, which is a lot for me. Like right now I weigh 215, 216. So I got really, really big.

6:04And I was like, this is great. I packed on so much muscle until I got a body fat test done. Uh, and then I realized that I gained a very small amount of muscle and most of it was body fat. And a lot of it had to do with my programming, but most of it had to do with just a crappy diet. So junk calories. That's right. So, so number one, you do have to eat in a surplus, meaning you have to eat more calories and you're burning because you need extra, those extra, you need those extra calories for building muscle, but you don't need as much extra as you think. Uh, gaining a pound of muscle a week, which would be profound, right?

6:38If you gained a pound of muscle a week, you are gaining at a very, I mean, lean body mass, you are gaining at a ridiculous rate. So most people don't even expect that, but let's say you did that, that pound of muscle wouldn't require that many extra calories. If your body's efficient, now this is perfect efficiency. It doesn't really work this way, but if you ate enough to build that one pound of muscle per week, it would be a lot less than you think on top of what your body's normally burning. Do you agree with the estimates? I know this is a bit debunked a bit, and I know it's tailored to each person and individualized, but how do you feel about 3 ,500 calories equals a pound of fat or muscle?

7:19Is it relatively close to that? If you took a pound of body fat and you were to look at the calories in that, yes. But through the metabolic process, you're talking about perfect efficiency, meaning there isn't a calorie loss to mitochondrial uncoupling or, you know, all these complex processes in the metabolism. Yes, but it's more complex than that. So you can take a pound of muscle and I can measure it and say, there's so many grams of protein is in that. There's how many calories it took, but there's a lot of processes that lead to that. But in my experience, and I'd love your input, in my experience for somebody to gain good lean body mass, that's not, you know, that's not body fat with good programming, you're looking at about 500 to a thousand calories above maintenance, right in that range yeah right is that is that where you know well even if you figure that figure that so a thousand times seven is seven thousand that'd be two two pounds yes yes so if it was a perfect transfer right if it was a perfect transfer right so that's why i'm the reason why i brought that up because i know there's a lot of people on the internet that have like shit on that number broke down the science for all the reasons that you're talking about oh that's not true and the there's the difference between each person and the metabolic rate and okay but why i've always liked that number is because it helps simplify to the average person why we want to stay in that range.

8:37It's like, if the goal is I want one or two pounds of muscle in a week, I want to land somewhere between 3 ,500 and 7 ,000 calorie surplus in a total week. So divide that by seven days, what does that look like? Well, that looks like somewhere between 500 and 1 ,000 calories. Now there's two ends of the spectrum with this. On one end, you have people who are so afraid of gaining any body fat that they add 100 calories or 50 calories above maintenance. That's, that's not going to work. Then on the other end of the spectrum, you have people who aren't seeing the scale move up quick enough. And so they're like, well, I'm going to go 2000, 3000 calories above maintenance because I'm so obsessed with seeing the scale move up.

9:12This was me. And in that case, they gain body fat. So 500 to 1000 over maintenance, meaning you figure out how many calories you're consuming on a regular basis, you could track, and then you just add 500 or 1000 to that 500 for most people, 1000 for people with a quote unquote, fast metabolism, or who can gain body fat. Some people are like so lean that they should gain some body fat through this process. Then you're more towards a thousand. Add that in there. And then muscle building is a slow process. We're talking about a pound of muscle in a week. That's fast. Like if somebody gained four pounds of muscle a month, that's like crazy.

9:48That's the biggest misunderstanding is that it's actually a longer drawn out process than people anticipate. And so they think that just cramming in more calories is going to accelerate the process. That's right. Yeah, you rarely even see that kind of number unless it's a relatively new lifter. Yep, good point. Like novelty, right? So somebody who's in their first three years of lifting, I might be able to see a pound to two pounds in a week of muscle consistently. They're in the Goldilocks zone. But rarely. I mean, most veteran pro bodybuilders will tell you they are pumped if they put 10 pounds on in a year.

10:19Yeah. So that's less than a pound a month. That's right. And these are pros. Yeah, yeah. You're talking about nobody's training higher. Nobody's dieting harder. you've been lifting for a long time and because as you get closer and closer to that max potential and you're also you're including these guys are on a lot of gear and stuff like that so sometimes it is it's just an unreasonable expectation that people have that like oh you think i could put on 15 pounds of muscle or 20 pounds of muscle well yeah you can but what's our time frame like oh two months well probably not but you can make i think people also underestimate though what a difference that just a few pounds of muscle built and a couple pounds of fat off Like, now that's what I think is really cool is that, that, you know, chasing a number, some arbitrary number of 10 pounds of muscle is like, okay, it's one thing.

11:02But understanding that you could literally add just a couple pounds of muscle and lose a few pounds of fat and radically look different. Well, five pounds of lean body mass typically looks like almost a half an inch on your arms for a guy, typically. So it's a lot of muscle. Lean body mass, it's a decent amount. Yeah. 10 pounds is even. And I would argue, back to my point about losing body fat, that you add an inch of muscle to your arm and you cut out body fat. Like we know the difference of, I mean, yeah, exactly. The most compliments about the size of my arms I got was when I was the leanest, not when I was the biggest.

11:32That's right. That's right. So there's a lot more going on than just these numbers that we chase. And for someone who just wants to get lean, by the way, this is a great way to get you the place where you get lean because we talk about building muscle to fuel their metabolic rate. If your goal is to lose a lot of body fat, you've heard us say on another podcast, you want to start by building because that sets you up for nice fat loss. So even if your goal isn't to gain muscle and you just want to lose body fat, start with this and then later end with the cut. So the second thing that you want to focus on is protein intake, duh, but it's got to be pretty high, about one gram to one and a half grams per pound of target body weight.

12:11So if you want to gain 10 pounds on the scale, that's what you're aiming for. Okay, so if you're a 190-pound guy, you want to gain 10 pounds of lean body mass, you want to get to 200 pounds, 200 grams of protein a day minimum, or more, or as high as 300 grams of protein, which is very high. I'm giving that high target, by the way, because in my experience, now this is trainer me talking right now, when I give people a high target, they typically miss and fall where I want them. Yeah, they're not going to hit it every time. Yeah, so I like people to aim above because the odds are you're going to miss more often than not.

12:44Because it's hard. It's hard to hit this much protein. This is paramount, and this is where most people go wrong. That's right. It's not hard to get an extra 500 ,000 calories through mint chip ice cream at night. You know what I'm saying? Or a bag of Sour Patch Kids every day after your workout. That's right. Getting the extra calories isn't the hardest part of this process. It's getting good nutrient-dense calories and hitting your protein intake consistently. At least this is where every client that I ever trained that struggled with putting on muscle, including myself, this is where the rubber meets the road.

13:19Can you hit that 500 to 1 ,000 consistently through whole foods and hit that one and a half, maybe two grams of protein pretty consistent? Now, I understand what the science says. You don't necessarily need the two grams. But to your exact point, more often than not, you're going to have a bad day. You're going to have a day when you oversleep or you miss a protein meal or you're traveling and so you can't get your eight ounces of steak like you normally would. And so that's okay because you've been consistently hitting two and so you hit one, one and a half that day. And I'll say this, like the same calorie diet, one high protein, like we're saying, one, let's say low protein, let's say half of that, the high protein version, same calories will build more muscle.

13:58This is also true for fat loss. When you see a calorie deficit, the high protein version results in more fat loss than the one that's the low protein version. Again, in the context of what we're saying here. So aim for really high protein within this caloric surplus. That's where the magic is. Next up, eat carbs. Watching people try to build muscle on a low carb diet is futile. It's very difficult. Can you do it? Yes. It's hard. It's just hard, you guys. It's harder to do it. Carbohydrates are protein sparing. they contribute to the pump fluid in the muscle they give you better performance a high fat high protein diet produces a lot of satiety which in some cases is good in the case of trying to eat in a surplus may be difficult this is coming from someone who ate like this for a long time trying to gain without eating carbohydrates was it was just a couple notches harder that's all not impossible but it's difficult almost impossible we ain't really trying to do that I would add to that, choose easily digestible carbs.

15:02Yes. Because I think that makes a huge difference too. So I think no carbs makes it almost impossible. Yes, there's always exception to the rule, but to try and bulk on the keto or low carb diet is just so, so difficult. But it's also difficult if you eat a lot of things that pastas and breads sometimes. And you think that's – now, if you're okay with – They bloat you. you and your body digests it great and it's fine, then it's okay. But I have found that to have way more success with things like white potato, sweet potato, rice, quinoa, that type of carbohydrate, your body tends to process it really well.

15:45And then you're ready for the next meal versus when I would do things like eat a big Subway sandwich with lots of meat on it, which would be fine to be a 50 gram protein, you know, double meat sandwich. But then all that bread would just, it would, it would, it would blow up me. It would slow down the digestive process. And then when I need to be eating again, three hours later, I was like, nah, I'm cool. You know, what's interesting about this, this conversation is there's definitely a range of people who can tolerate things that contain gluten. Like that's what you're talking about is like, by the way, high sugar carbohydrates, processed carbohydrates that are gluten-free can also cause this.

16:19So I'm not just saying just gluten. You could eat like processed carbohydrate snacks that are gluten-free and they can also cause bloat and digestive distress. But generally speaking, it's the gluten-containing ones that I would notice. And there's a spectrum, right? You've got celiacs way over here and then you've got varying degrees of intolerance. But when I would work with my clients and I would ask them to pay attention and we would swap things out to see if we notice a difference, 7 out of 10, maybe 8 out of 10 of them, did better avoiding gluten-containing carbohydrates. I'm glad you brought that up because there tends to be like these camps of well if you don't have celiacs then it doesn't really matter but i've experienced it i don't i can eat i eat bread i can have those things but if i'm on a mission to to bulk and i know i'm going to need to increase calories um consistently and consistently eat a high protein diet like i'm on a mission i just have to cut out bread doesn't mean i like if i'm in a if i'm in a maintenance phase where i'm like dieting like i am right now it's not a high priority bread makes its way into my i'm not it's okay so what i've slowed down the digestive process so what i'm bloated a little bit So what?

17:21I don't hit my protein intake for a day. I'm not worried about it all the time. But if you're on a mission, I'm on a mission again. I've had the same exact experience with my clients that are like, oh, I don't feel like the bread's a bad thing. It's just like, well, let's see if we sub that out. Let's swap it out with some rice and see if you notice the difference. All of them. That's right. In fact, people listening right now, you know who you are when you eat a lot of bread or a lot of pasta where you kind of feel bogged down, kind of feel a little lethargic. Like that's what we're talking about.

17:49and it makes the whole diet much more difficult. Now, speaking of foods, I made a list of the muscle-building superfoods, okay? Now, it's not limited to this list, but I'm going to give you the ones that make the biggest difference. Meat, and this is all meats, including chicken. We'll put fish in there. So all animal proteins. Bologna. Cooked, bologna, yeah. Whenever people talk about processed meats, I always picture like a bologna animal. Yeah. Running across. I just gotta throw that in there every now and then. No, no, no, processed meats don't count, but you know, just like whole natural meats.

18:19Well-cooked vegetables. Berries are the superfood of fruits because they're fiber content, easy to digest. Eggs, of course, super anabolic. Rice and then different versions of potatoes. These are your muscle-building superfoods. Now, it's not just these foods, but this should make up a big portion of your diet. And then shakes, protein shakes. You know what you use these, by the way, when you need to make up protein? save your protein shake for the end of the day when you didn't hit your target and then throw it in there here's why i don't think it's a good idea to throw them in throughout the throughout the day you can do that and there's a lot of people that do it so it's not like this is a you know this is going to kill you but what tends to happen when people throw them in in the during the day uh is they tend to make their way into the diet all the time yeah uh and there's nothing wrong with a protein shake but whole foods are just better and and look okay i know people love to point to the science and what's the difference?

19:16It's a gram of protein. In fact, this is high quality protein. I know personally, I know what the clients I've worked with, people do better with whole foods. They just feel better. They do better. Take it for what it's worth. If you've ever, if you talk to anybody who's experimented with both, especially somebody who's competed and who knows what it feels like to do one or the other, they'll tell you the whole foods just, they just seem to be better. Natural limiters for the digestive process. It's like you slowly digest it like you should. Yeah. It always, too, it goes back to like, I mean, so how arrogant we are sometimes when we think like we still don't know everything about the metabolism.

19:54And yet you have people that having done these experiments, I've done this experiment. I've talked about it before when I competed where I did an entire run getting ready for stage where I allowed all the bars, all those eggs, everything I want. And I got ripped. I did fine on stage. But when I did it all through Whole Foods, I felt different and looked just a little bit better. It's just, you know, so yes, you could totally do that and still look great. It's not, it wasn't enough to be like, oh, wow, huge difference, but you feel different. And I did look different. And it was enough for me to be like, okay, going forward, my goal is I'm always going to try and do it through Whole Foods, knowing that there's going to be days in my, that I don't make that.

20:32And so that's why I love the strategy of use a shake at nighttime. Use a shake when you just finished dinner at five or six o 'clock, you're calculating up your grams of protein, you're like, oh shit, I'm still 40, 50 grams short. I'm going to have that shake before I go to bed. Like that's how I like to use it. That's right. And then here's the other big point with it is that I'm always, you know, as again, as a trainer, my interest is less about the person's immediate goals and more about, can I help them do this and develop a relationship with this where they want to do it forever. Okay. And protein is protein powders are processed.

21:07And it's real food is real food. And I'd like for people to develop a relationship with real food where this is what they rely on and not on processed foods. Now, if you had to pick the best processed foods, typically the high protein ones and protein shakes are up there and I think they're valuable, but whole natural foods is what we're always pointing to. Keep that protein powder as your insurance policy at the end of the day. And then lastly, manage your time, manage your time and meal prep. If you get behind the eight ball with a muscle building diet, it's not going to work. If you wake up and you, oh, it's 11 o 'clock.

21:40I haven't eaten breakfast yet, but I got to get 220 grams of protein. It's going to be rough trying to get all that in throughout the whole day. So start your day off, right out the gates, high protein, manage your time. This is one of the reasons why bodybuilders eat on such a schedule. Now I know that's a very extreme example, and we're not talking to bodybuilders here, but I like to use this extreme example because when you look at people who are managing a 5 ,000 calorie diet with 350 grams of protein, they're very structured because if they get behind the eight ball, then it's not going to happen.

22:12And I find this to be true with my clients as well. If Mrs. Johnson's aiming for 150 grams of protein a day, which is for 150 pound female, and it's noon and she hasn't eaten yet, it's it's not going to happen well the difficult the truth is most people that get into working out are trying to do is to change body composition and those are the best people at changing body competition composition in the world and if you were to talk to any bodybuilder i think i've met a couple maybe that don't prep i mean very very few and the ones that do i'm surprised that you even met a couple well those are the ones that like do it like they don't they're not trying to win it's like uh i'm gonna get in shape and you know plan this day if i get if i get in the top 20 i get in the top 20 ain't nobody who's trying to win who's trying to present the best physique they've ever they've ever done or compete with anybody else everybody preps so and they would all are they would all say that's probably the number one thing that you have to do now i don't think that everybody in here wants to have that physique but the point is that those people are the best in the world at body composition change so you can learn a few things and there's things to learn and they would say if you were to give them a list of what are all the most important things in changing your body composition i guarantee all of them would say that's you're right the top of their list 100 so there's something to be learned there all right i want to talk about um our partner manucora but i want to talk about what their product which is manuka honey so i looked up some data on manuka honey and some of its values so i didn't know that well I did know this, but I think this is fascinating.

23:42So did you guys know that Manuka honey, if you put it on superficial partial thickness burns or wounds or diabetic ulcers, surgical sites, if you put it on there, it's more effective than conventional dressings for healing and scarring. What? Did you guys know that? It's so funny that we make like comparing it to like Neosporin then. Yeah, dude. Why even using Neosporin then? So there's something in there called MGO, which Manukora has very, very high rates of this. It's one of the highest quality, which has this really powerful natural antibacterial effect. I just got to hope you're not around ants.

24:23You want to know an ant fact? It's just random. Sorry to take you off. Hit me with the ant fact. So I'm going to do it with my son. I just told him about it. I have this science page that I follow. If you put an ant on a white piece of paper and you draw a circle, it'll never leave that circle. Did you know that? I've heard that. Yeah. I can't wait to do it with him. Never tried it. I saw it the other day. I told Max, I said, we've got to trap an ant with a pencil. We have an ant farm now, too. By the way, I have a fear that the ant farm gets tipped over and there's ants everywhere. And they're big.

24:54They're like big. What kind of ants are they? Oh, those big blaster ants. Probably like the red ones, right? Bro, these things sting. Oh, you have the sting ones there? Yeah. I'm like, why do they send these? It's not like fire ants. No. But these will bite you. Yeah, they'll bite you. Yeah, that's not good. So anyway, it has very powerful. So trip off this. It's good for respiratory tract infections. It's good for reducing plaque, gingivitis, periodontal pathogens. And of course, it's good for the microbiome of the gut. And it's got these anti-inflammatory products. It's literally medicine. Is that the main thing?

25:23Anti-inflammatory? Antimicrobial. And it tastes good. Anti-inflammatory. And it's honey. Yeah, it's another one of those things in our studio that doesn't last very long. It's gone. Yeah, I know. I'll have Katrina talk to them. The only other product that's gone, probably the fastest, is our Z-Biotics. I don't even see them. I had to buy it out of my own pocket. You know the most frustrating thing? You bought it? They sent it to us for free? Yeah. When I had to buy something that we were supposed to. Just so the audience knows. Obviously, all of our partners send copious amounts of everything to us.

25:57But there are certain things, like you're talking about, that I go through. And for my birthday, by the way, are you coming? I know you're coming and you're coming. Yeah, I'll come. Are you coming? I'm trying to. It's okay. We didn't want you there. I'm actually your friend. So, I mean, I just got the list. Like, it's like over the top wine. So, we have like a really fancy wine. So, you ordered a bunch of Zibati. Yeah. So, that's why. Because I'm like, we have all this like fancy wine. Dude, drinking without it sucks. It does. It reminds me of how terrible it feels to drink alcohol when I don't have Zibati.

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26:27I know. We had just one night we were going out with our friends to some like Jimmy Buffett concert, which, by the way, horrible. He has one song that I know. I was like, what is all this? It was a bunch of old people just, you know, in wine shirts. Anyways. Hold on. Not what I expected. Was it your age group? Sometimes I'm in my age group. Yeah. I don't realize. Probably, but like I didn't. The lights were dark and. Where did you go to a Jimmy Buffett concert? It was like down as I felt musicals like down the road. It wasn't Jimmy Buffett, though. I think he passed away. No, no, no. It was like a cover band.

26:59It was like even worse. It was like some people that were like carrying on the torch of, you know, like mildly entertaining jams. Is that his jam? Yeah. Oh, okay. But anyways, like we had two left and like I was going to, oh yeah, hey guys, I have this product and I'm like mentioning it to our friends and all this. And then I was like, there's two. And I was like, actually, nevermind. Dude, I'm hella stingy with ours. Like I keep them. So at my bar, I keep them in a drawer in the back hidden because Katrina's family comes over. And of course, they're family. So they can help themselves to the bar.

27:31But then they all know about the Z-biotics. So I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm out. I'm hella lying. Because I'm like, I need them. You know what I'm saying? Like alcohol runs in their family. That's company stuff over there. Yeah. Although, do you know that? Do you know when we had that big scare with Katrina? It's been a year now. You know that forever changed her relationship with alcohol. What do you mean? she after that happened she's never really been able to drink like she used to drink oh really yeah and she and she notices only this is weird that uh which is funny i think really expensive champagne or wine is the only thing that settles okay with it no bro this is my wife is the one it was used to be tolerate crystal no it used to be to take Take my wife to a restaurant is embarrassing to watch her order drinks because she's - Which one's the most expensive?

28:21No, she's a Jack and Coke girl. Oh, yeah. She's a Jack and Coke girl. So I used to always be like, you know, we're at some nice restaurant. And my wife's like, oh, I'll have a Jack and Coke. I was like, what are you, 22? I'll have a Red Bull wine. Yeah, exactly. It's like, what are you, a club? Come on, Jack and Coke. I'll have a Long Island iced tea. Have some sort of sophistication. So now I went to the other extreme. It's like only like really expensive bubbly or really good wine. Even middle of the road type one. Classy Katrina. I don't know what it is. Isn't that weird? After that whole incident, it's never.

28:52That's interesting. And she's had multiple times. So here's why it doesn't make sense. While you were talking, I'm trying to think, okay, what are the pathways of alcohol detox that could have potentially been affected by what happened to her? But then you said other alcohol is fine as long as it's expensive. So I don't understand. I'm trying to think of. Well, I know with like. Additives. Exactly. I know with wine, there's a lot of additives and sugars and things like that. And if it's not refined enough, there's people that get headaches. Have you tried tricking her and getting cheap wine? You know what I mean?

29:25Just to see if she's full. How do you feel? I'm not sure I want that night just to prove a point. I can pick up on that, especially with well alcohol. I know. And I'll call him out on that. I'm like, you just poured well vodka in here. This is disgusting. I mean, Justin is the one that got me. I couldn't Justin got me on nice whiskey I was never like a whiskey guy because partly how it made me feel I get a headache from it didn't feel good I feel awful now when I drink Angel's Envy it's why I like it so much because I'm like oh man I actually can it tastes good it doesn't give me a headache so there's definitely a difference on how alcohol is processed I only have one rule when I drink is does it taste like a Jolly Rancher if it does then I'll have some otherwise I can't you're still at the college girl stage you're at the college girl stage still it's like can you add a bunch of little umbrellas for some It's either a sugary, sugary drink, or I'm going to drink a shot because the goal is to get buzzed.

30:16Otherwise, it's like forget about it. Thank God you're as jacked as you are. No one's going to say shit to you when you ask. Thank you. That's a nice compliment. No one's going to mouth off to you when you order your purple drink. What a horrible way to mouth off. Oh, this is your drink? We should fight you. Hey, man. Here you go. I'm an user. No, but I'm sure there's plenty of guys that serve that to you that would want to tease you. No, they don't. They bring it to Jessica. So every time we get drinks, they give her mine, and they give me her whiskey, and then we switch. And the guy looks at me like, what's going on here?

30:46And it's like... Yeah, I just own it. Sometimes I'll order one. It has like a hibiscus flower on it, and I just put it right in my ear. I'm like, what's up, bro? Oh, yeah. That's when you're flirting. So anyway, I want to talk about... I want to ask you about your weekend, Adam, if that's all right. Oh, God, really? Yeah. So let me open. I'm going to set you up. Okay. Really nice. You are my hero. Oh. Okay, because... What's happening right now? you went through something. You're going through something very... He set me up, Justin. Very. Oh, okay. I know where this is going. Very, very challenging.

31:17I was curious. And for all, you could totally keep this private, but you're not going to. I asked you before we turned on the mics, and it's a very challenging thing, and I think, yeah, I think it would be good if you shared a little bit of what's going on because I know there's other people listening that probably could benefit. Yeah, well, the hardest part about sharing it right now is that I'm still in the fire. So I'm definitely, I'm not all the way through it. I'm on day five right now. So I would say that I'm through the worst part of it, but it's still not good at all. I've had in five days, I've had a total of about six hours of complete rest.

32:00Sitting here right now. Total, total. Total, total. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the first two nights were absolutely zero at all. And I'm going through opiate withdrawals and through Kratom. So I've used Kratom for almost three years now. And the way it was introduced to me, which is really interesting, I'll tell that story first so I can tell people how it crept in. If you've listened to the podcast long enough, you've heard me tell stories way back when I first had my knee surgery and I got hooked on Vicodin. And that was my first experience of ever being addicted to something and going through withdrawals.

32:36And I didn't know what that was. So I'll save that story. If you want it, you can go back and find that or listen to that. But I slowly crept up on those one time when I had knee surgery. And the doctor told me, because I told him I was still in pain, oh, take it before the four hours and before you knew it. Stay ahead of the pain. Stay ahead of the pain was what the advice was. And I remember pain was done. And I said, I'm good. Just stop taking it. I still had some left in the bottle and it had already been, I don't know, a month or two or whatever after the surgery and everything. And I had like these terrible flu symptoms, runny nose, headaches, the chills, you're getting nauseous.

33:13And I was like, and that whole first night I didn't sleep at all. And then the second night it was like, again, I was like, man, what an awful time to get the flu. And I remember getting ready for bed when I had this flu going, I just want to sleep. I'm gonna go take one of those, those Vicodins helped me sleep. So I'm I'm going to take one of those. And I remember taking it like 6 o 'clock or 7 o 'clock at night, and all the symptoms disappeared. And I felt good. And I went, what the fuck? And I instantly got on the internet, and it was like – at that point, I'm oblivious. I'm totally naive at this point of opiates and the addiction and withdrawals or anything.

33:50I've never experienced anything like that in my life. And I was like, holy shit, I'm addicted. And so I went down reading, researching, kind of how I do it. And I tailored myself off and I was fine. So that's kind of my backstory and my relationship with opiates. Fast forward years later, I have a relative of mine that is battling a viking addiction. I share him my story and my process. And he's pretty hard on it. And he's having a hard time. And at that time, I had just recently seen a documentary on Kratom. And I said, hey, I've never. Was this the Mark Bell one? This is before Mark. Before his doctor.

34:28Even before, yeah, even before him. So I tell him about it. And I've never experienced it or anything like that. I just said, hey, I watched this really great documentary. It talks about this natural plant that's in Asia or somewhere over there. And it acts on the opiate receptors. It's done miraculous things for people that are addicted to opiates, getting them off. You should try it. So I tell him that. And I don't see him for like six months. Six months go by and he's at my house and I see he's got this Kratom with him. And I'm like, oh my God, you have the Kratom. I was like, how's it working?

35:06He's like, oh, it's amazing. And I'm like, what? I'm like, how much does it feel like the Vicodin? He goes, just like it. I'm like, what do you mean just like it? It can't feel like a Vicodin. He's like, oh yeah. He's like, here, try six of them. Hands me six of them. I take it and I go, oh. An hour later, I'm sitting on the couch. I'm like, I felt like I just took my, like a Vicodin again. And that was like the first time. And so now at this point, I already, I am very aware that I like that feeling. And so recreationally that would get, it make its way into my life, you know, periodically here and there on a weekend or this or that.

35:44And so for me, it felt like, oh, it's no different than having a glass of wine or things like that. And then over a year or two later, it became something that I noticed that, I start to allow myself to have more consistently throughout the week. And so it just kind of slowly crept. And then the justification that I played with myself or told myself is it's a plant. It's natural. It's an herb. It's not a pharmaceutical. I'm not addicted to it like that. I can handle. And now we're getting closer to the last three years of my life as I've allowed it to kind of creep up the amount. Now, within those three years, I've had multiple times where I've progressed the dosages up.

36:23and then I've noticed it get kind of high and then I creep it back down. And you guys have heard me on the podcast. I've talked about my relationship with all drugs. I've always been able to, caffeine included, marijuana, you name it. I tend to pay attention to my intake, my behavior. I always wanna know that I'm in control and I taper down and I do that. And so I've been able to do that with Kratom for the first part of my relationship with it. And so again, justifying like, I'm cool. I can always taper back down and come back down. And I just got into a place in, I'd say, the last two years where it was for sure daily.

37:01And not only was it daily, was I was consistently doing it. And then what would happen is the thing that, and it started a dosage like six total in a day, like nothing. And for the people that understand, that's three grams of Kratom. and so like so three grams and then uh that you can't feel it anymore and so you bump another gram yeah and then you bump another gram right and then you start to notice that uh i'm not getting as good as sleep and so you bump another gram and so i kept doing this and then it got to a point where you know i remember the first time i was like you know i'm feeling tired of the weather not really the best feeling i want to feel nice in the morning time before i podcast i'll have them in the morning now.

37:41So fast forward over the last couple of years and, you know, I reached a level of, so I was doing 16, three times a day. And I think at this point, um, I'm fully aware of how, uh, how much it's got a hold of me. And I don't like that. Like it's, it's, it's bothering me. And yet I'm still playing the game in my head that I know that, oh, I can taper down. I can, I can do this. And so, and, but I had this point and this was probably, I want to say six months ago. I go, okay, no more. I'm going to stay right at this level until I plan a week or two when I, or that I can really start to taper down.

38:21And what happened was I maintained that for actually quite some time. It was almost six months. And then all of a sudden my body adapted so much to it that like now it almost felt like I was not getting it, that I had to take more to sleep. and then I was like starting to play around with okay well I'll hold back a little bit in the morning so I'll have more in the night it was all just so I could get a good night's sleep and I went holy shit this thing has got a hold of me so bad and then I mentioned you guys last week I said you know I I've got to get off and I and I think that it's got a hold of me so bad that I might have to check in because I don't know if I can because I had already tried to taper a few times and was not having success I was tapering and then I'd have some sort of something come up work family whatever and i'd be like ah man i don't want to feel like shit with family without prayed a lot about it um and and i was like you know what like do i really want to check myself in i'm like i know i need i know i need at least three to five days because i know what i've i've experienced opiate withdrawals before and anybody who's listening knows um and for the audience who doesn't know there ain't nothing like it you nicotine alcohol heroin is an opiate so the anything close to it is heroin.

39:33Heroin is an opiate. The addiction withdrawals on that is like nothing. Yeah. I was talking to you over the weekend. You were telling me it feels like your bones want to come out of your body, like your skeleton's trying to get out of your body is what you're telling me. Consistently, like every second. Like it doesn't let off. It doesn't let off at all, at all. And I had all the resources and tools. So I had sauna, red light, cold plunge, steam, sweating it out, all the vitamins. I mean, I had I had everything to help me through this process. And again, back to I was praying about it. And when I was praying about it, the thing that came to me was I need to suffer.

40:15I can't justify tapering it down real slow. And a taper from that high of a dose would probably take six months of just peeling off. That's like if you read all the recommendations, they'll tell you to pull a gram off a day. And the amount of grams, if you did the math on where I was at. I was like over 30 grams a day. It would take a very long time to get it tapered down. And then if I did, I told myself, you know what, if I tapered and actually it wasn't so bad, maybe I would justify probably doing it again. And so I think the answer I got was, no, you need to suffer. And so I just, I told you guys on Wednesday, like, I'm going to do it.

40:55and you asked me then if I would talk about it and I'm like let me see first because I thought I knew that it was going to be so bad that I might have to go into a rehab center and so um well the way that that kratom is sold and communicated is it's like it's this um it's not a big deal you know you said it's natural you got people in the fitness space that kind of promote it um and it could be really, I was nowhere near what you did, but when I came off, I felt extreme lethargy and some depression that lasted for roughly a week, which sucks by itself, so I didn't get what you felt, but it's really easy to try to avoid that because it sucks and you can't work and you can't function.

41:48And even till this day, like i haven't touched it since then but there's always a little bit of that pull because then it comes and then what you think is like well just a little bit you know what's the big deal you know i won't do it again or whatever um but um i know a lot of people struggle because i talked about coming off on my series and the comments underneath were people who were like thank you for talking about this i struggle with this oh my god i came out it was terrible you told me this is the worst thing you've ever experienced with kratom this is uh this is the hardest thing i've done in my life.

42:19I've done a lot of hard things in my life for sure. And I, I pride myself on my discipline to be able to do almost anything. Um, it's why I was successful at bodybuilding. Like I can put, when I put my mind to something and say, I'm going to do something, uh, like I'm, I'm disciplined, but I mean, and if you didn't pick up on that, that was like, well, I didn't even want to talk about it on Wednesday. Cause I knew what I was heading into and day one, I was prepared for hell and I got it, you know, and, and it was worse than I could have ever imagined. But I also have that grit where it's like, all right, I can, I'm going to get through this day to almost broke me day to brought me to tears.

42:59And the hardest part about it is when I've got a bottle of it, five feet. I mean, I had it next to my nightstand because I was like, if I can't do this, I've got to, I'll just take that's hard. And so knowing that I had to get out of the house knowing knowing that it's right there and this all this goes away and then i'll figure it out later i kept it right right in front of me and i'm crying and rolling around on the bed and and you know three in the morning i'm taking cold plunges just so i can have some relief because after a cold plunge that that how tingly and numb you become gave me about a two to three minute relief so you can imagine me at you know 45 50 degrees outside pitch black jumping into my pool naked just so i can just freaking torture myself did you have any moments of laughter during this suffering where you're like man this is crazy um i actually couldn't get there until probably day three or four with katrina and what that looked like was katrina would be like hey how are you doing and i'm like i would i would laugh i'm like i feel fucking terrible but i feel so much better than what I did two days ago.

44:06Like, at this point, I've got diarrhea. I've got stomach aches. I've got headaches. I've got hot, cold flashes. But I'm like, it doesn't feel like a demon is leaving my body right now. I'm like, so like, I'm joyful. It's like this, it was this weird, you know, day, and that was like day three, day four. Day one and two, though, day two especially, because day two, one, mentally prepared for a no night of sleep, whatever. But like, we've talked about this before. the absolute worst torture is no sleep and try getting no sleep and feeling and and not and being rested not being able to sit still so i can't even so what happens is like i haven't been in my room with my wife because i i constantly pace the house i go downstairs i shove my head into the couch shivering shaking flopping around like a fish get up walk upstairs the other room and i'm like i'm so exhausted i'm afraid i'm gonna fall down the stairs but i know i have to keep moving because movement is the only thing that gives me a little bit of relief from the tremors and the, the, trying to feel like your skeleton's jumping out.

45:09And so, uh, and the second day of no sleep, all I could think about is I can't do another night of, of, of this, like this, this bad. Um, and it's been still, I've, I've still had pretty much no sleep and it's been bad every night, but not as torturous as it was the first two. But yeah, let me tell you something else about what's going on with Kratom right now, too. California just banned it. I don't know that. Yeah, yeah. So California is pulling it out of smoke shops right now. But here's the stupid part, and this is where this is going to get dangerous, is the product 7-0-H, which is the concentrated version.

45:45Stronger version. Way stronger. It comes in a little package of five pills, and it's equivalent to what a whole bag of Kratom is. Dang. okay so that is still because the fda hasn't caught up yet that's able to be sold playing that game well here's the worst part about this though you just there's for sure there's thousands if not millions of addicts just like me right now they're gonna go for that now that's their only option if you live in california and that got pulled off your shelves it's gonna happen when they when they pull that because people are gonna go to the streets well to for fentanyl yes and part of one of the things that helped me through this i told you this uh you know i'm not sleeping for five days so obviously i'm listening to audiobooks and youtube and i'm like i just i have to stay busy i watched probably a hundred withdrawal videos of people and stories and everything like that something about that uh helped me just hearing other people go through it and talk about making it through and stuff like that.

46:45I watched a lot of that. And the only ones that sounded remotely, first of all, nobody had as much Kratom as I was. So that was also - So you're first place. Yeah. That was enlightening. Like talk about feeling like you won the loser award. That's how you roll, dude. There's nothing like watching a bunch of losers talk about coming off of an addiction and being like, wow, I'm the biggest loser of all these. I was like, oh God, man. I was like searching. someone's gotta be worse than me and the only people that were worse than me were the 70H people the people that started on Kratom got introduced to 70H and then they progressed a little bit thank god you didn't do that so part of the thing that tipped me that was complete transparency this is how bad this was so I told you guys I said I'm doing this I'm taping this I was already setting the goals in my head how I was going to do it they already i found out they removed the shelves i'm like oh shit there's so you're gonna be forced anyway so i'm like what am i gonna do so i i ordered 3 000 from nevada wow so i've got 3 000 of them already ordered because i was already doing the math i'm like if i taper this oh i see it's like and i ain't going to 708 so i better get myself stocked up and so i stocked it up and that was kind of the tipping point for me like i've got i'm like what am i doing what am i doing like i'm like and i'm like f this yeah i need i need to just throw them away i need to suffer dude i need to suffer and i need to feel it the spiritual side the spiritual part of this i said this is what i said to you because this is the experience i had not with kratom but with other stuff and just you know it's a myth and this is you know now we're going to get a little on the faith side but it's a myth it's a terrible lie that the world sells us that we got it we can do it we can do anything you can you can make anything happen this was my mantra.

48:35And the reason, and this was my mantra and it was reinforced by what I had accomplished in the world. It worked. I got the things that the world promised when you do that, but that's all I got. I didn't get anything else. And so it left me empty and lost. And it took me getting broken, which takes a lot for some of us. It takes more than others to get broken. You're a really strong, you're incredibly resilient, Adam. You're probably the most resilient person I know. and so uh you know the side the spiritual side of me says that this was to get you to that place to where you're relying on him and saying okay i can't do this because i can't think of anything else that would get you there yeah i have a different i have a different opinion on that what do you think well you know you got to remember that i've been with him for a long time right i've had a relationship with him for a long time i sent you and jessica a quote yeah i Love it.

49:27And he whispers to me all the time when I'm not listening, right? Or when I'm ignoring or when I think I'm going to do it my way. And he has gentle whispers for a long time. And then eventually it becomes this loud thing, right? So for me, it's like I'm never like, I mean, I know that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And I know that faith without work is dead. And so nothing that we've built here or done do I believe is on my deeds. So I'm not that man. I don't think that way. I don't believe that way. But I do know that I'm human. And even with years with a relationship with him like that, I can have these patterns where I play games and justify and ignore the whispers and continue down my path.

50:19And eventually it gets louder. and you know it got loud enough to me to go like okay which and also i think part of the message was you need to suffer like you so you remember yeah so you remember and and so that was like to me like i don't think that i um i don't think i needed to be brought to my knees to realize that you know all things are through him and like i already know that like i've i've been walking in that faith for a very long time in my life it was more like hey i've been gently whispering to you for a long time and you know you know and you know here's here's me getting louder and then it was like okay i hear you it's time it's time for me to do it i know well that's good good that's giving that gives some great purpose i bet some good like let's do this yeah yeah and i think that it's uh in looking being on this side of it now where i just feel like crap instead of uh yeah that's what you said you said man i would love a bad night of sleep yeah yeah yeah no it's uh it's it's hard to describe man i tell you i know there's some i mean we have so many listeners i know there's somebody list lots of people probably listening that have experienced opiate withdrawal it's uh it's nothing like anything else it's nothing like the other a lot of the other stuff i've uh you know named the thing i've messed with it i've done it whatever that is psychological like where you just had the mental discipline it's different to have mental discipline and it's different to have physical torture physical chemistry pulling towards something and it's well you're not producing any feel-good chemicals that's what happened is that when you when you do these things your body stops you just don't have the receptors for them so you have nothing that feels good which feels terrible yeah yeah i wonder what would be interesting is how much uh the things that i have because it feels like nothing's helped me because i feel so miserable but i can only imagine a lot of that stuff did and i could only imagine like oh what it would be like yeah oh remember remember how we talked about i wanted to share this this is like nothing to do with anybody else or sponsorship stuff or nothing.

52:11But remember when we had that NAD IV come in and none of us were really impressed with it? Yeah, yeah. I have a feeling that had a lot to do with that we're all relatively healthy guys. And so just didn't know that this time when I did it, I felt it. So I think I would - So they hooked you up to the IV. So I did a full, I did a 500 milligrams NAD IV. I did glutathione. I did all B vitamins. I did, it was like a full wellness drip. And 45 minutes dripped it all in me. And I remember when we did it that time, I felt uncomfortable. I didn't really like how I felt afterwards. This, I made it like, that was, I felt, that was two days ago.

52:55That's good for people to know. Yeah. So I think that stuff, when you're really depleted or you're really bad, and part of what led me to do that was, of course, I'm doing all kinds of research on like anything that's will help and there's a lot of positive stuff about nad with withdrawals and i looked up found a place that did the did the drip and i'm like oh i'm gonna go do that and see see how that feels and so i was a little nervous about being able to having to sit still for that long it's hard for me to sit still for that long a time um and i didn't know and i don't do good with needles in my arm already so it's like uh we'll see how that goes and then lady jabs me three times which is which was ironic about all that i could imagine i got all this I got it with what you said about suffering.

53:37It's like, oh, this needle's not even going to work. Bro, like, it's the perfect arm for IV. Bro, this stuff has been comical, right? So it's like, here I am in my head. I'm going, like, I can't. Katrina's like, can you sit still for 45 minutes, Trip? I was like, I don't know. I'm like, because I haven't been able to sit still for that long yet. And so I'm like, I don't know. Let's just hope that this makes me feel so good. And then I'm talking to the nurse. And, like, you know, I've got crazy veins. Most nurses go crazy when they see my arms. and I don't do good when they're doing it so I have to look away so I'm looking away at Katrina and this BZ is fucking jabbing me three times we'll show the audience if you're watching Justin took a picture I'll have them give it to you but my arm is bruised up so nasty she said that the veins roll when they're big I think she's full of crap I've never had a problem with her I was like this is comical it's on top of it yeah it's like the hardest part for me is that it's like why didn't she's like over here yeah i'm like no you're gonna it's gonna be hard i'm recording it telling me all kinds of stories where she had to actually come in and do an iv on top of like a little kid's head oh and there's just like yeah you know the thing is you either got it or you don't like if you're a good nurse and you you that's your thing i feel like that too i feel like you because i've had so i mean we do our blood work every six months and we're all used to that stuff yeah very fast yeah Some people are just amazing.

55:02Real efficient. Yeah. And then others are like, they're okay. There's a, there's definitely a spectrum here. That was, and that was, that's a comedy of errors for sure. Oh, totally. I mean, all the, the I'm, I've had blood drawn or taken and stuff like that probably a hundred times. And that was the worst. Yeah. Like, could it not be like the middle of the pack or something like the worst? Like, come on, man. Seriously. More suffering, please. Well, Hey man, I'm, I'm, thank you for sharing that, bro. Yeah. We love you, dude. You guys asked me on Wednesday. I wasn't ready because I didn't know.

55:37I did. I almost broke, dude. So I just. Well, you didn't. Good. No. Good. We're here. We're coming through it. We're here. What do you expect? Like a week longer of just garbage? You know, bro. What do people say? So, I mean, a lot of videos I watch, people are talking months later. They're still not normal. So I expect a week probably of still miserable sleep. Yeah, like miserable sleep and stuff like that. So I'm hoping by next week I can get at least a night. I'll take five hours of sleep, four or five hours of sleep. I'll take that straight. I've had broken half hours. That's the most I've had.

56:13So I would love for a four-hour block would just be the most amazing thing ever. So if I can get that by end of week, that'll make me feel good. Because now at this point, that's the most torturous thing right now. But at least the daytime is like, I mean, I feel. I'm surprised you have coherent thought right now. I was actually nervous about today. You operate really well in little sleep. Better than anybody I know. I don't know how you do it. I'm terrible. Well, you say all the smart stuff on the podcast.

56:48It's a little bar. I don't want to contribute anything we really expect. Just don't ask me a hard question right now. so um you know what my scientific hey you know adam lane smith interviewed me yeah i'd say oh yeah yeah great great conversation with him but like i actually he asked me i mean obviously i'm not i wasn't going through that quite yet or anything like that although i was on the front end of it um and uh i was i thought we were just i thought he was going to kind of dive more in my relationship but he wanted me to talk about like developing other uh other men and he like he started asking me like stuff about like how to, you know, if, if a woman is treating a man like this, can you develop that?

57:29Like stuff that's like, bro, this is your field, not mine. I like, I had to defer, but I'm like, you know,

57:40but you're just thinking about like, like hard questions. I was like, I didn't think that was, I thought we were going to be like, he's going to do like a full like analysis on me. And I was going to be open about it. But he started asking me like therapy questions. You bust out your test drive relationship thing, Terry. No, no, no, no. No, no, dude. That's the best. That's old school. No, we had a great – it's going to be a really cool – I mean, I loved the one we had. He was so good. It was so – I can't wait until we air that. Yeah, I can't wait to air that for the audience, too. Can't wait, yeah.

58:08And then him and I had a really good conversation. Katrina will like it because she got to – I got to pump her tires for a full podcast. Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah. I had Father Steve on my series. Oh, how was that? Bro, he's, well, of course, I love him. He's such a great guy. Such a nice guy. What's his background again? Because, I mean, I know you're going to get into a little bit of, he lifts and he's huge, but he competed. First of all, he didn't become a priest until he was in his later 20s. He took a while before. That's considered later 20s? Yeah, like he got into the seminary. I know, but I mean, is priesthood normally that early?

58:41They start earlier, usually. Oh, wow. I did not know that. So he had a normal job, corporate job. He raised money for companies, which is now what he does for Word on Fire. Do you guys want to know First off He's almost 60 Which he looks amazing Wow Do you guys want to know The last time he competed When? In bodybuilding, 2019. he was on stage in 2019 in his speedo posing and he won he got first and over that would be hilarious how do you judge him bad God's watching 10 10 10 but he connected bodybuilding with the spiritual walk and he did such a great because I'm like bodybuilding you have an issue with strength let me hear i'm so curious well he said a lot that i can't even put he actually okay let me ask you guys this you could be you don't have to be gentle how often am i speechless yeah never okay i was speechless like 10 times just right there because he was saying small pause he was saying things and and i would he was just blowing my mind but one of the things i remember that he said was he goes you know competing and bodybuilding for me he goes uh there are parallels to the spiritual walk.

59:53I'm like, what? I mean, I could see the discipline and sacrifice right away. That's easy. He was talking about going on stage. He goes, you're on stage. Interesting. He goes, you're on stage. Being judged by others. You're almost naked. You can't hide anything. And they're pointing at you. And you're vulnerable and you're presenting your flaws. And I'm like, wow, Father Steve, you just made bodybuilding sound spiritual. But there's so much that he connected. Weak delts. So much that he connected. And he's a real meathead, by the way. He's a legit meathead. Did you get to ask him a little bit about, because we talk about how we typically do not, the callers that we get, we tend to discourage them from bodybuilding.

1:00:31Did you talk a little bit about where you have to be with your body dysmorphia? He's just such a, I mean, he's, no, he talked about the gym he goes to, how the church can learn a lot from gym culture. Like if you're in a gym, if you go to a hardcore, we've said this before, you go to a hardcore gym and you're struggling with your weight, okay, you're welcomed. You're not just welcomed, you're encouraged. And in fact, if there's ever a moron that decides to discourage you openly in a gym like that, that person will get kicked out by everybody else, because that's not the culture. He's like, you know, the church could use, could do better at that, you know, where somebody walks in and they're just starting to pursue their faith.

1:01:15They don't know much, but they know they want to go in this direction, but they're bringing along with them like everybody by the way i don't care how mature you are spiritually we all have sin with us but he's like you walk in and some people feel like they're looked down upon yeah and he said so he talked a lot about all these incredible things it was just so great we had a great workout well i i had a good workout because of what we talked about but he you could tell you want to do more he wanted to get after it which is pretty funny he really wanted to get after he's a total meathead it's so great then i had him over for dinner and then he did you deadlift with him, what'd you do?

1:01:48No, no, no, no. We did bodybuilding stuff. Straight bro workout stuff. He's been lifting weights since he was 14. Wow. Since he was 14. That's so cool. I know, isn't it? Anyway, that episode will come out at some point and then you guys will be able to see it. That's cool. Yeah, I'll check it out. Element is an electrolyte powder you add to your water. No artificial sweeteners, no sugar. It's got the right amount of sodium. Most electrolyte powders don't have enough sodium to make a difference. That's not Element. Element makes a difference. Get better pumps, better performance go try them out go to drinklmnt.com forward slash mind pump and on that link you'll get a free sample pack of their most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase back to the show our first caller is arielle from florida arielle hello how are you hey how are you guys good love the show been listening for a few years now and i'm so appreciative of all the knowledge i gained from this podcast so thanks for that and thanks for having me on thank you How can I help you?

1:02:44Yeah, so some background on me. I'm 27 and have lived a very active lifestyle for the past 14 years. I work out five days a week, three strength days, and two cardio days. The gym I go to was originally a CrossFit gym, but has shifted away from that to more of a strength and conditioning focus. The coaches and programming are amazing. They all listen to you guys, so I trust them. Outside the gym, I'm an avid surfer and tennis player. I typically play tennis a couple times a week and surf whenever I can. Some days I'll work out, surf, and play tennis. Less common, but it definitely happens sometimes.

1:03:21For the past five years, I've been working at a desk, and this year I've really been feeling it. My back is tight and sore pretty consistently, no matter how much I stretch. I consider myself a very flexible person, but now I can barely foam roll my back without it feeling like it's going to break. I know I sound dramatic, but in addition to my mid-back tightness, I've been feeling a little bit thicker and not as lean as I'd like. My peers say I look great, but inside I feel bloated and puffy. I eat around 120 grams of protein a day, stick to whole foods, and try to buy organic meat and produce whenever I can.

1:04:02Since noticing the bloating and feeling thicker, I started adding more walks during the week to increase my steps. On days when I'm not playing tennis or serving, I'll walk a mile. And four weeks in, I started to feel a lot better about myself. I try not to look at the scale since it can mess with me mentally. But back in February, I took an in-body scan and it came out to be like 132 pounds with 21 % body fat and 58 pounds of muscle mass. My energy feels good. I'm pretty strong for my size and I perform well in all my workouts. But I can't help feeling like I should be doing more since I don't feel lean.

1:04:36my coach thinks I should chill out of it trade a cardio day for rest day and just walk more to work hours I think that's solid advice but it's definitely hard for me to skip a gym day so my question to you guys would be how can I achieve leaning out with everything that I'm doing and what steps would you suggest for me in reducing or managing my back tightness and a small update I've been seeing a chiropractor which has been helping a ton And I have been skipping one of my cardio days for a hot yoga class instead. But everything else is pretty much the same. How many days of lifting did you say you're doing?

1:05:13Three days. Three days. When you say bloat and puffiness, are you talking about like digestive bloat, like gut bloat? I guess like in my midsection, yeah, some bloat there for sure. I just feel like I was once like a skinny, lean person. And now that I'm like a woman, I'm just gaining weight in areas. I'm like, huh, this is like not normal for me or it wasn't normal before. And now I'm like, I don't know. I just feel like I'm like blossoming into an adult and it's just like different. You're still, you're still real young. But okay. So inflammation and bloat, uh, can, can come from digestive issues or inflammation from the gut.

1:05:58So if you've noticed any changes in your digestion, like regularity, constipation, actual gas, bloating, that kind of stuff, then working on gut health, which is quite common, by the way. Gut issues are quite common, especially in young women. They tend to be more common in young women because women tend to have issues with regularity more often than men do, although it's also common in men. So that's one thing you can look at. by the way, you're lean 21 % is a good body fat percentage. Uh, it's a really good, healthy fit. Hormones aren't going to get affected negatively. Uh, for, for some women can go below 20 and stay in the 18, 17.

1:06:40But in my experience, a significant percentage of women, when they start to dip below like 19 consistently, we start to see hormone issues. So we start to see issues with like, you know, things that would affect fertility. Um, you'd also, um, if you have any changes in your period, uh, then sometimes that's indicative of overtraining. I think your coaches, I think your coach is probably right that you probably maybe take a little bit of time off. Uh, you know, hot yoga for a cardio days. Is it okay? Trade yin yoga would have been better. Hot yoga is kind of an intense version of yoga. Um, and, uh, and the other thing is this is how many, so you have a desk job.

1:07:21So you're sitting at a desk for eight hours. Yeah. I mean, I work from home, so I have a standing desk. So I like, I try and stand, but I find myself sitting most of the time. Um, yeah. Here's the thing with sitting that sucks is strength training will protect you a lot. Being active protects you a lot, but nothing protects you a hundred percent from sitting so much. The best thing that I found in the clients that I've, I've worked with a lot of clients that sit at a desk for long periods of time. The best thing that I've ever had them do was every 45 or 60 minutes, I would have them do three to five minutes of mobility.

1:07:56So literally they would have like, you know, you could use an Apple watch or a timer thing goes off. They would stand up and they do like a trigger session or some mobility for five minutes and sit back down. That was the best, like that solved the whole thing was to do, but it's, it's, you gotta be real consistent with it. So you're going to get up six or seven times a day and do like three to five minutes of mobility. Um, and like I said, they see a huge difference. Have you done any food insensitivity tests or any kind of like gut testing to see? Yeah. You know, I haven't done like a actual, I've done a couple tests, but it was kind of like one of those cheaper ones that, you know, aren't through like legit labs.

1:08:38Um, but that was kind of like my next thing to figure out because I do feel better when I'm not eating like a ton of like grains and gluten but I don't want to be like so restrictive with like my diet because I can be pretty like hardcore about what I eat and I kind of just want to be like a little more chill and laid back because I already eat super healthy um so that's kind of like where I'm at and like since the embody like I have gained like i'm 140 now and like i feel good but i yeah i still feel like puffy it could be you could be a slight intolerance to something you could have with the grains or gluten or something that's just it's not enough to really hit you hard but enough to just kind of have this low level inflammation and water retention happening mindful of it i'll tell you this in uh in my experience if I have people eliminate gluten for just gluten for 30 days, almost always they notice a positive.

1:09:40And I'm talking, we're pretty controlled with the macro. So it's not like the macro's changed. Especially bloat. It just makes it for inflammation. And in that category, so every time I've had people remove gluten, not every time, most of the time they're like, man, I notice a big difference. Like they say they notice a difference. So it's not subtle. It's like, whoa, I noticed a big difference. within that category uh my female clients notice the biggest difference and if you look at the data on on gluten intolerance uh it tends to be skew a little bit worse for women it doesn't hurt to cut it out just to go gluten free for a month uh to see if you notice a difference um yeah and yeah and if you want to go further you could do like gut testing but i would just try that out and start there, a little bit of mobility throughout the day and maybe reducing the intensity.

1:10:32Cause here's, here's what it looks like for someone who's really consistent with fitness like you. Okay. Is we, we, we tend to, you know, if over here is the most I can tolerate and over here is the least amount to cause positive effects. We tend to push it towards the most we could tolerate because we like it. We enjoy it. There's other benefits. Mental gets the day started, breaks up the day. or there's a component of being around your friends or whatever. And so we tend to always kind of bump up against what we can tolerate. And then maybe if you're smart, which it sounds like you are, if you pass that, then you know because, okay, I need to take a little break.

1:11:11But it's only really when you step past that. But what it probably should look like is you're more over here in the middle and then sometimes you bump up against. And so it might be good to go through a little season, like a three month period of cutting gluten out and just kind of reducing the intensity isolate it i mean this data points the end of the day like i know that cheese you know i have a slight intolerance to cheese i'm not going to eliminate from my diet but knowing that it affects me at a certain level uh i can kind of navigate and know like what to kind of tweak you know just so you know that you that's a tool that you have at your disposal how's your sleep by the way it's it's good it's very consistent oh that's good seven eight hours every night do you supplement uh i take creatine you don't take uh vitamin d uh magnesium multi oh yeah oh yeah you should yeah i yeah i think it's a good idea you can go get a nutrient test if you want to get real crazy i mean i'd also if you're open to it i'd love to see you try something like a maps 15 protocol for a little while i think that that could be it too you don't just stop uh your sport activity and stuff that you do on the weekends i think continue doing that but if you are open to modifying the training during the week running something like a maps 15 protocol while also playing with some of the foods that we're talking about i think uh would be really beneficial here's the thing too like um you know you're you're active you've been active for a long time um you don't supplement with a multivitamin your calories probably aren't very high uh do you know how many calories you I eat around like 1 ,700 to 2 ,000.

1:12:49Yeah. That's pretty low for all that activity. Yeah. So you might even benefit from bumping it. But my point is, which you could play with, right? You could play with a little reverse diet and see how you feel. But my point is you're getting, if you're not taking a high quality multivitamin, like B vitamins, iron, magnesium, D, you know, relatively common where you're close to deficiency. You probably don't have a deficiency because you would know. You'd have like cracked lips or you'd have pale skin or whatever. But there's optimal and then there's kind of like, okay, I'm just kind of like. You're taking in 1 ,700 to 1 ,800 calories worth of micronutrients.

1:13:29And so that's not a lot of micronutrients. Also consider the context. You're an athlete. You play sports. You lift weights. Like you're not just a regular person who's not doing anything too. So you're probably under eating for a regular person. And then on top of that, you have all that activity. It's just, it's not serving. Yeah. I would go like multivitamin, vitamin D, uh, cut gluten. And then kind of just honestly, Ariel, if you just cut the intensity down, you don't even have to cut the workouts out. Just like go easier in the workouts and then see how you feel after like a couple of weeks.

1:14:02And I would be surprised if all those things that it make you feel a difference. Yeah. Would, would you guys worry like for me, like how much fat I'm eating every day? like is that a concern only if it's too low only if it's too low you're not getting too much fat at yeah no not 1700 calories you're not getting too i'd be more worried about you too low you better be eating more than like 60 grams of fat a day do you know i'm i'm eating like 80 to 100 oh you're fine okay okay yeah you're fine um and then do you think like how much like i know steps are important like i hear you guys talk about it over and over again like is that for me like is that something i'm so active like on my days where i'm doing stuff is that really important for someone like me to go outside no so so it's always important to be active but ariel steps are an easy proxy for activity yeah so when we're measuring steps what we're really trying to do is look at activity that's why we use steps it's easy but you're if you're active all the time yeah like if you were let me put it this way it becomes irrelevant when you're active all the time yeah Like if you swam all day long, but you saw no steps because you can't register that a step.

1:15:09Like, does that mean I got to go walk on top? No, you're active. So if you're really active, you don't need to throw a bunch of steps on top of it. The only thing I would do is break up your sitting with not workouts, movement. And so it literally looks up. It looks like you stand up. You do a little bit of back mobility, and then you sit back. I was going to say, because of your low back tightness, I bet 90-90s would be so good for you to do just throughout the day. Maybe some cat cow, you know, on the ground, which you probably are familiar with through yoga. Cause you said what your mid back, is that where you feel it?

1:15:40Your mid back? Yeah. Yeah. It's all in my mid back. It's kind of gnarly. Oh yeah. Cat cow. Get on the ground, do three, three minutes of cat cow, uh, with the corresponding breaths. Uh, and that'll help with that. Cause you're probably also, so mid back tightness oftentimes is connected to or causes what we would label as what's called dysfunctional breathing. So especially if you're the kind of person that tends to tighten up when you're focused and concentrated or stressed, then you're not taking these full diaphragmatic breaths. And so what happens is the thoracic spine doesn't expand and it kind of just tightens while you're breathing in and out and then that tightness is what makes you feel like it needs to pop or crack so when you get on the ground and you do cat cow you know the big full breath in breath out move through the belly and then the chest and then out which you've probably practiced in yoga uh would probably help yeah that definitely hits home because this mid-bag tightness started whenever i stopped doing like my Wim Hof exercises.

1:16:51I do like a full thing, like 15 minutes of breath work every week. And I stopped doing that because I was like tired of doing it. And then that's when like my back started to get super tight after that. Oh yeah. Yeah. The fact that you know how to do that breathing though, like just doing that with cat cow, like literally every hour, two minutes, like don't even overdo it. Just get down, break up the day. If I, I mean, I'd set like, since you work at home on a desk, I'd have like a little thing that just literally alarm goes off. And every time it hits, I get down, do three to four sets of that while I'm breathing, get back.

1:17:24Are you feeling any back tightness right now? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I bet you right now, if I had you do a real full breath in and breath out, I bet you'd feel a little bit of relief. Yeah, no, whenever you said that, I took a, like a deeper breath than I was. And I was like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Expansive again. That'll help a lot. That'll help a lot. Well, good. I think we found the root cause of that. Okay. But yeah, gluten and multivitamin. For someone like, if you were my client, those are the two things I would be like, let's try this. Yeah. Would you, like, is multivitamin powder form, like, good, or would you prefer a pill?

1:18:00It depends on the brand. I mean, Legion. That's a great one. We work with Legion. I know Mike very well. I know he tests everything. It's good. I would add an additional vitamin D on top of that. He's got a vitamin D that's great, too. Yeah, so like 2 ,000 IU is inexpensive, inexpensive supplement. You just take it every day. Yeah, go through Legion. They've got both. Both of those are great. They're multivitamin and they're vitamin D with K is great. Okay. All right. Great. Thanks for calling in. Check back in with us after a month or so. I'd like to hear how things are going once you kind of take some of that stuff, what you took from that.

1:18:34Yeah. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, guys. You got it. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. A lot of people, like the rib cage is in between the ribs. There's all these different muscles. The rib cage itself expands and can shrink. Compresses. And breathing deep. We know this. You're breathing deep. Your chest comes out, right? Your belly comes out. And you'll stretch some of the muscles, or the muscles, should I say, relax to allow that expansion in the rib cage. And if you're taking shallow breaths, which we don't realize, especially when I'm focused it's deceptive but it happens all the time when I'm really focused like my breathing is I have to like oh I gotta breathe especially if you're sitting a lot too and it's just this and so what happens is all those muscles just start to like just tighten and stabilize and tighten well that stiffness and tightness will cause this kind of low level inflammation if she's eating something that she doesn't it doesn't have to be bad just doesn't fully agree with her and training as much as she's doing especially if it's intense because she's doing strength and quote unquote conditioning training and like CrossFit vibes like that the combination of all that is enough to just have this kind of low level systemic inflammation that causes just water because she looks like she's holding water when I look at her like she looks like a healthy fit girl but she looks like she's just kind of holding water everywhere and so that could be related more to the food or it could be just this kind of low level stress and overtraining a little bit and the combination yeah yeah I think if she just scaled back a bit on the intensity and maybe paid attention a little bit to some of the things in the diet, I think, and then takes the multivitamin, takes the cat cow.

1:20:11I mean, that right there, she should feel a million times better. Our next caller is Austin from Indiana. What's up, man? How you doing, Austin? Pretty good. How are you guys doing? Good. We're good. I'm going to pull up my notes here, just what I wrote real quick. Thank you guys for taking this. You driving, bro? Don't crash on us, dog. What are you doing? You going to read your notes while you're driving? Maybe pull over. So I'm at work right now. I'm about to pull into our brush dump. Okay. But so what I got here, I'm 26. I'm a dad of two little girls. I started this whole weight loss journey in January where I weighed 330 pounds.

1:20:50Yes, awful habits. Didn't work out. Didn't care to do any of that. In high school and in college, I did football. I wrestled in high school. So I come from that athletic background. I began cutting my calories at first when I had almost zero idea of what to do to 1 ,500 a day, which left me obviously pretty hungry. But I was able to get down to about 265 pounds, which is where I'm at now. And that's now five days a week in the gym. I do chest, back, arm, legs, everything individual. So it's four days, but I'm in the gym five days a week. I did a TDEE calculator, and that said that for me, maintenance would be about 3 ,200 calories.

1:21:46And I felt like that. I just didn't trust it. I felt it was too high. So that's why I went down to that low number. but then I just kind of stopped making progress there. I'm really trying to hit my 200 grams of protein a day. I've been just plateaued and I don't know how to really overcome that. You got to reverse out. First off, good job with your weight loss. Thank you. But your calories now are so low and your activity is so high. Like, where are you going to go from here? Are you going to exercise more, cut your calories more? So you're going to put yourself in a bad position. So now what you're going to do is you're going to increase your calories and focus on getting stronger.

1:22:28You'll build some muscle. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You're actually in a very solvable, easy place for us. I mean, I'd make an adjustment on the program. I'd increase the calories. And I think you're going to see a big difference. Like I'd get you out of a chest, back, arm, legs type of a split and put you on something like a MAPS anabolic routine and increase your calories by about 300, 400 calories and just focus on getting strong. Right. So you did a good job. You knocked some body fat off, which is cool. But now it's time to build muscle. You didn't build a lot of muscle in that process. If you're eating 2 ,000 calories, you just drop body fat.

1:23:03You can drop some weight, which is cool. That's fine. But now it's time to reverse, come the other way, and focus on building muscle. Even though you may go, I got a lot more weight I still want to lose, the path to there is actually building muscle and building your metabolism. That's what will get the rest of that body fat off. 2 ,400 calories, MAPS anabolic. Okay. and get stronger. And then maybe after, I don't know, a month, go up to 2 ,700 calories, 2 ,600 calories. Keep building some muscle. Keep working your way up slowly until you get close to 3 ,000, which you should be able to do about your size with that much activity.

1:23:40And by the way, what's going to happen throughout that period is you're going to gain some muscle and strength. And you're going to lean out. And you'll probably lean out a little bit. Your scale might not move a lot because we're increasing calories, which that's okay right now. but I bet you feel a difference in fact here's a good time to just do circumference just literally your waist watch your waist watch your waist add the calories go get strong and monitor that I don't really care about your weight right now and once you're sitting at like 3200 3300 calories and you've been there for a while and you feel good and you're strong then you want to cut you could cut from there and watch the fat come off your body so that number I gave you guys that 3200 100 td ee it's it's it's actually a good number but you don't want to jump there from where you're at right you're not right your body's now adapted to 2 000 calories so if you do that huge jump you're going to put on body fat but the where it's correct is a guy your size should be eating about that many calories and so but we need we need to work our way up there so you want to you want to start with like the 350 to 400 calories more just like sal said build some muscle get strong once you start seeing like some you know bench press squat some of those lifts go up in strength like good strength gains and you feel good and you're not gaining any weight then you bump the calories again and then you kind of stay there for a little bit until you feel strength go up again and you're not seeing the scale go again then bump the calories again and so you're going to stair step your way up to over 3 000 calories that is the path but not jumping right now here's how you'll mess it up if you go oh cool i gotta eat more calories and then you just eat a bunch of garbage yeah right and you don't track it in in control it that's that's how people tend to mess this up so but but otherwise bro this you're gonna love this because now you're gonna eat more and you're just gonna get strong you'll feel better you'll feel good you'll feel so much better okay because i mean there's that mental struggle for me and i know a lot of other people where i am probably stepping on the scale too much like i like to check in and see how much i weigh and since June that number has just been hovering right at the same spot.

1:25:44So I'm going to try and leave the scale alone, I guess, for a little bit. Measure your waist. Wow. Measure your waist, but don't use even waist. This is just kind of a check-in. Strength, get strong. Austin, we don't talk a lot about it on the show, but we have what's called a concierge program where you check in with a trainer once a month. That's all you do. And they're the ones monitoring your calories, monitoring all your dimensions, and will constantly be kind of keeping you on the right path. If that's something you're interested in, I can have one of the trainers call you. So it's not like full-blown training, seeing a trainer all the time.

1:26:19It's not like something super expensive like that, but it's something where we're overseeing the programming and the diet part of your training throughout it. Just a guy like you that kind of knows what he's doing, ex-athlete. It's not like you need all the hand-holding, but having someone kind of guide you and check in with you once a month is super valuable. If it's something you're interested in, I can have someone call you. Definitely. Okay, cool. And then split-wise, so I do three sets of 12 of, I'll do like three or four different movements each day for whatever body part I'm hitting. We're going to send you a program.

1:26:51We're going to send you a program. They're going to take care of your programming too. Oh, perfect. Yeah, yeah. You just got to show up to the gym, eat what they tell you to eat, stay on your path. You're going to see great results, dude. It's time to get, you're starting to build some muscle. Yeah, it's a whole new level for you, bro. way more fun than what you were doing yeah awesome all right well thank you guys very much you got it man all right brother thanks all right just i love that we had this right now because i just want people to realize the power of metabolic adaptation you have a guy that's almost six foot tall 265 working out a lot it looks like he has a physical job if i had to guess yeah he has a physical job just by the call and the driving and stuff so you got a big dude moving that much and he can't lose any more weight on 2 ,000 calories.

1:27:37That's a metabolic adaptation. And here's what would happen if he cut down to 1 ,500 calories. He'd lose a couple more pounds. He'd lose muscle. And he'd feel like garbage. And his testosterone would be in the floor. And then here's what would happen from there. He'd be like, this sucks. And then he'd gain all the weight. Go right back. That's right. Our next caller is Stacy from Kentucky. Hi, Stacy. How you doing, Stacy? What's happening? Hi. Thank you all for taking my questions. I really appreciate it. How can we help you? Well, so I just started recently listening to your podcast. The very first podcast I heard was when you all had Dr.

1:28:11Mary Claire Haver with you all. And then here recently, I listened to a podcast back in August and you all gave a quick two to three day workout information that you could do for 30 minutes at home. Yep. So that's the one. That's the program that I've been following. I started in September. So I have two questions based off that program. The first one is, so right now I've been kind of using 15 pounds for the exercises. How do I know when to switch up to a higher weight? It gets easy. Yeah. Yeah. You want to challenge yourself. Right. You don't want your form. Excuse me. You don't want to compromise your form, but you want the challenge to be there because that's what gets the body stronger and more fit is the challenge so if you've been using 15s and at first it was hard and now you're like i could do this really easy then you probably want to go heavier or do more reps okay especially in form okay so the next so when i start in november i'll do the eight reps so that would probably be a good time to go ahead and switch to the higher weight yep yep also keep in mind stacy too like it was my client said i'm trying to really push strength right and we're trying to focus on this if uh if our goal we're doing let's say 10 reps on this set and i'm and i'm encouraging you come on let's let's lift more weight and you're like i don't know that 25 seems like a lot out of them i'm like let's just do it and if you stopped at eight it's not the end of the world in fact i would rather see you try and challenge yourself with a heavy weight realize oh wow i couldn't even get 10 out then to always choose a weight that you you definitely could get 10 with.

1:29:52It's totally okay if we fall short one or two reps when we're trying to focus on building strength. That's a better sign than picking a weight that you can always get 10. That's totally okay. Yep. Okay, perfect. And then the second kind of question I have is, I am a post-menopausal woman, so I know that's kind of your all's area too, and I'm trying to get rid of the menopausal belly. Um, and I've heard conflicting reports, um, prior to when I emailed you all about, um, and adding intense aerobic exercise. So should I, or should I just keep with working out, um, the two to three days a week, go with the 8 ,000 steps and just increase my activity.

1:30:39Yeah. Yes. Yeah. You're doing great. Listen, you just started in September. Correct. And what do you, what'd you do before that? Did you do any exercise, anything like that? I was mostly just walking. You're doing great. Yeah. I'm looking at your email. You have three kids, you're a teacher, so you work, you work and you got kids. How old are your kids? 22, 20 and 14. Okay. So you got a teenager at home. That's really stressful. yes oh yes their dogs are too yeah they can you're kicking butt you're doing really well you are you don't quite don't you don't here's the deal when you're doing the strength training uh the goal is to get stronger so think like that so let me challenge and see if i can get stronger 8 000 steps a day is beautiful if you want to bump it to 10 000 at some point that's great above 15 000 not necessary typically that's a lot i think eight to ten thousand you're doing good it says here you're tracking protein and fiber awesome yes are you sticking to whole natural foods for the most part yes yeah you're you're doing great you are and i'm gonna guess right now because it's been a short period of time you probably already feel a lot better oh yes yeah energy's better you're probably sleeping better better libido you're probably already your husband's probably commenting on your body changing already?

1:31:55Yes. Yeah, you're doing great. Don't question it. Yeah. Yeah, stick with the - You don't need to add anything. Just keep going, keep moving. You're doing great. I can send you a program that I think would be - Now, you work out at home. You have dumbbells. Is that what you got? Yes, I do. Yes. Do you have a physio ball at home? I do not, no. Okay, they're super inexpensive. Let me send you a map starter. Okay. With that, you just need dumbbells and a physio ball, and now you've got a much better program program. So it's got phases, it's got exercise, it's got demos in there. So you could click on it, watch the video.

1:32:30That's the program I want you to follow. Get yourself a physio ball and you're set. Stacey, are you on Facebook? Do you have a Facebook account? I do, yes. Okay, I'm gonna have Doug put you in our private forum also because we got all of our trainers are in there. So if you got a question as you're going, just like you asked us today, you got a question or you're questioning anything that you're doing, post it in there. and one of those trainers will get back to you and make sure you stay, but you're doing great right now. Let me just encourage you some more. By the way, what grade do you teach?

1:32:58Actually, I teach gifted education, so I do K through 12. Oh, good for you. So, you know, you're teaching kids. If you can get a kid to write, that's good. But if you can get a kid to love writing, that's better. Okay. Right. The most important thing, Stacey, for you, because you're new on this journey, the most important thing of all the things that we're talking about is that you you develop a relationship with this where you like it you enjoy it and you want to keep doing it yeah okay i do and that's why i love your all's two to three day program because it fits perfectly in my schedule yeah and the reason why i'm saying this is what happens sometimes is you start seeing some stuff happen and oh my god and then maybe you start to question it and then it's like no i want to push it and i want to i just want to get better and results and you start doing things you don't that you don't like as much or things you can't maintain consistently.

1:33:48And now you're going down a path of this is not something you're going to maintain. So just, just think relationship and be like, do I like this? Am I enjoying it? Am I having fun? Am I feeling good? You know, do I feel like I'm getting healthier? If that's all true, just keep going and you're, you're crushing. Keep hitting that protein and fiber and keep trying to get strong. That's going to serve you a lot. That's right. Yep. Perfect. Thank you all. We'll send that over to you. Okay. Perfect. Thanks. You got it. I'm so happy we captured her so early. Yeah, yeah. Good timing. Yes. Very good timing.

1:34:20She got on with us. She's moving in the right direction. The only way she would mess up is if she suddenly just went, tried to go crazy with everything. Yeah, getting busters. Yeah, and then that tends to just crushes consistency. It's like, I'm not going to be consistent because I hate this. So she's doing the right thing. Our next caller is Kevin from Alberta. What's up, Kevin? How you doing, Kevin? Hey guys, good to see you again. Yeah, man. What's happening? Not much. Just like last time, just finished training. So feeling good. All right, dude. How can we help you? So I have been over the last few years working with a couple different personal trainers, mostly remotely.

1:34:57And then through work, I started using ChatGPT quite heavily. And I kind of recognize the opportunity to switch from my remote training to use ChatGPT as my trainer. So I've been experimenting with that for about eight weeks now. I'm in the first block that chat designed for me. And I wanted to reach out and get your thoughts on what blind spots I might have. What am I, what am I potentially missing? And using chat as my trainer versus a, you know, an experienced live trainer. Yeah, dude. The prompt, the prompting is going to be everything. Yeah. How well you prompt it with whatever little nagging injuries you have, like your level of stress.

1:35:40I've seen people do this really well and then seen other people do it not so well. So that has a lot to do with probably how it's spitting off for you. Tell me what you got so far. Sal thinks you're working with Satan, but go ahead and tell me. You're a traitor to your species, dude. What the hell? What's going on here? So what I found that's really great about it is I can screenshot everything from my Garmin app. So my HRV, my training stats, my sleep score, all of that. And, you know, upload it, my training profile, lift volumes, this and that. And obviously I could do it 24-7. And if I do have an injury, I can just go, hey, chat, tweak my QL this week.

1:36:21Can you suggest a modified version of day three? So like literally 24-7. But it is super unreliable if your prompts suck. So I'll say, give me a weekly summary of my training to date, and it'll give me the wrong week, or it'll miscount my lifting sessions. So you really got to police it. That's what I've experienced. But I'm just curious what else you might be thinking. Well, Kevin, okay, so correct me if I'm wrong. You sound like an experienced, motivated fitness enthusiast. I'd say so, yeah. Yeah, and it says you're a BJJ athlete. How long have you been doing jiu-jitsu and competing? About eight years.

1:36:58Eight years. And have you always been active and working out? And this is like a lifelong thing? Earlier in my life, I was super active. Then I was like a 10-year period where I sat at a desk and got fat. And then in mid-40s, I got back into it. Okay. Chat GBT or information tools in general are great for people who are hyper-motivated. They enjoy looking at this kind of stuff. They break things down. And really what they need is just good information. or a way to take metrics and distill them down into advice that would potentially find holes or modify programming to small degrees to make changes.

1:37:40That's what it's good for. What it's not good for is for somebody who would benefit from working with a coach. And that's the relationship side of it. So you've been doing jujitsu for a while, eight years. I'm assuming you're what, purple, brown, black? Are you? Brown. Brown belt. Okay. So are you teaching anybody yet? Not really, no. But you've got some good coaches that have taught you. Definitely. Now, the difference between a great coach and a coach that just knows moves is the relationship. It's like having a good coach in sports or a good teacher in school or a good trainer. It's that relationship aspect, and that just does everything because humans are relationship beings.

1:38:20yeah it's not a good coach or a good trainer there's a lot of things that make up a good coach or trainer a part of it is the right information so you definitely got to know what you're doing but that's like the bar that's the bottom that's like the bar like you at least got to have good information you don't have that get out of the don't do this anymore but way above that is their ability to coach people and work with people so that's the big difference but if you're the kind of guy you love it you're motivated you like to break things down plug things in you analyze it you don't you know you don't need or believe there's value for you and having a coach then you're you're doing great i mean staying in in that vein right this is the way i would make this decision of you is based off what he just said it's like these coaches that you're hiring are they basically just spitting you off diets and workout plans and that's the extent of their coaching then what you're doing is probably better going to chat gbg but if you have got a coach who's given you more insight than that and you have some sort of a relationship with them where you're like oh shit because i mean i i mean when i look back at my training career very very small percentage of it i would say was the percent yeah well just small percentage of this was the actual my my knowledge around macros and programming the rest of it was really my ability to help these people through life you know in fact i felt more like a therapist than i really did a trainer right and so i think that's what made me good at my craft or my job was i had that ability to do that mold that conversation to every person i helped the getting the answer to the macros the science part of it i mean we're in a place now and with chat gbt that they can figure that out so if your coach isn't giving you another level of that that you feel that then i think what you're doing with your knowledge and background is fine yeah if they're gonna get into more personal level of like asking you more questions you wouldn't even have thought to ask i think that's you know where you can get the human element there where uh again to to the point of stress and relationships and outside uh effects and factors um i mean you can you can get all the data points and aggregate that uh and that's helpful but i think too to uh to troubleshoot with a human i think it's just so far like chat gpt's yeah i think like not quite there yet when it comes to programming uh humans are still going to outperform uh chat gpt i'm sure that'll change at some point but a human isn't always going to validate everything chat gpt as of right now tends to do that so it's not going to say to you hey kevin i'm not going to tell you you're wrong yeah it's not going to say to you hey man i think you're a little obsessive you need to take a little break or this doesn't seem mentally healthy like it's just going to be like yeah dude he just wants to solve things for you yeah so like give you hard right and as of right now the best programming still comes from humans so you're still olympic coaches are still human uh you know they're still the best and they know the questions to ask and they also understand psychology reading the client and what's going on so there's that but if you want information and you want something that aggregates data and spits it out.

1:41:27Like that's great. In fact, the best coaches are using AI in that capacity to supplement what they're doing. That, that makes perfect sense. In fact, thinking about this call today, I was actually thinking what would be ideal would be some sort of hybrid model where you had a coach for your strategic vision, but you use chat GPT like I am for your daily back and forth. Yeah, no, 100%. Yeah, that's right. But I mean, I think this great, the takeaway I would take from this conversation is to like really evaluate the people that you are coaching with and ask yourself, are they giving me that other level of coaching and training that ChatGPT just can't do?

1:42:06But it sounds like you're getting a lot of that right now. What's the goal, Kevin, for you? Is this for high level competition? Is that what you're doing? So yeah, I go to Worlds every couple of years. So that's there. But as I'm aging, it's honestly more about keeping up with the young guys at the gym. I'm starting to lose the desire to compete frequently. And I just want to be able to perform on a weekly basis. Yeah, yeah, yes. I mean, I think you're using it fine. I think if you really want to do well at your sport, nothing's going to be better than you working with an older, more experienced jiu-jitsu fighter who's competed and gone through all that.

1:42:47you're not going to get that at least not now from from ai also and i mean the other thing that like we're like if you and i were working together like i'm i'm also asking questions you're probably not even promising to talk about like i'm going to ask about your family i don't know if you have kids you're married what like that like there's gonna be times when the algorithm tells you you can do xyz and i'm going to tell you the opposite i'm gonna say you know what bro you need to go take a day off and go spend some time with your wife or you need to go do this even though you know based off of your rest all these things you could go hammer this but the relationship i've built with you i know you really well now and i know okay i know that you could go do this but i think this is going to serve you in life but you know i'm saying like that type of and just to add that's a cherry on top of that like you compete in world so you are high level okay the different you know this i don't need to tell you this but i'm gonna say it anyway just for people listening the different at that level when people are competing at that level the difference isn't uh who trains They all train.

1:43:43The difference is who takes it seriously. Everybody takes it seriously. Everybody's got decent genetics at that level. The difference is the psychology. The best of the best, their mindset is different. So when you look at the top level, they work with these sports psychologists who get better performance out of them. They didn't even change their training or diet necessarily. It was all the psychology of it all. So just to add to that, you know. I got to clarify. I go to world masters. So a little less than world. That's still legit, bro. It's still legit. You're still high level, dude. I did jujitsu.

1:44:14I know what that's still high level. Thanks. Well, I appreciate it. I think the one thing I'd add for anyone else, considering what I am, is ChatGPT also is a yes man. So you'll say, hey, I feel like I should be doing this or that. And it's like, you're absolutely right. Yes. No, it's just the validation machine. This is why it's in some states they're making it illegal to use for therapy because it's a terrible therapeutic advice. Did you hear the episode? I actually shared a story just recently where I kind of got into it with a, you know, family member of mine because they used it before coming to me.

1:44:49And it was like related to like nutrition, hormone advice. And the advice that it responded, it was just like, well, yeah, it's because you prompted it to kind of give you that answer. And so it gave you that. Like I could also flip it and tell me like tell me all the negative things of not taking testosterone. And you see a whole host of bad things. So it's like people don't I think people haven't figured this part out yet. It sounds like you are like you're playing with it enough to realize like, oh yeah, it'll, it'll validate whatever you want it to. So long as you prompt it in that manner of, you know, give me the three things best.

1:45:17Well, it's like, well, what if that's not best for you right now? What if taking it like it's not going to. So that's the part I think that people are going to have a hard realization when they start to depend on chat. GBT. Yeah. Awesome. Very cool. I agree. Yep. Awesome. Thanks guys. I really appreciate you taking the time and love the show. Keep going. Take care. I gotta say this imagine having a friend that you ask advice from and what the friend is most concerned with is if you like them you being happy you gotta like me so I'm gonna say what I think it is so that you like me that's a terrible friend I want a friend that's gonna say to me what's gonna make me maybe mad at them but it's the right thing to say and you need that if I know him I don't have no idea if he was married, kids, this or that.

1:46:09And all the markers, sleep, volume, nutrition, says he could go crush it in the gym tomorrow. And I know that he hasn't taken the time with his wife to go have dinner with her in the last 30 days. And I know how important his relationship and marriage is. And I know that he's communicated to me that he values that. I'm going to go, hey, bro, I know today's a great day to go kill it, but this is what you need to go do. And even though he doesn't maybe want to hear that, And it's like that's – you're not going to get that from prompting ChatGT. It's going to give you exactly how you prompted the workout that you're asking it.

1:46:42Look, you like the show? Come find us on Instagram. We'll see you. It's at MindPumpMedia. Thank you for listening to MindPump. 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 MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS 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.

1:47:27The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.

From the publisher

In this episode of Quah (Q & A), Sal, Adam & Justin coach four Pump Heads via Zoom.

Mind Pump Fit Tip: The Ultimate Muscle (NOT FAT) Building Diet. (3:15)
The hidden benefits of manuka honey. (23:25)
Drinking without Zbiotics sucks! (25:35)
Adam openly shares his struggles with a recent Kratom withdrawal. (30:54)
Previewing Adam's recent interview with Adam Lane Smith. (57:59)
Shout out to Father Steve! (58:16)
#ListenerCoaching call #1 – How to lean out while managing consistent back tightness despite high activity, and whole-food eating. (1:02:27)
#ListenerCoaching call #2 – I've hit a weight-loss plateau, and I don't know how to overcome that. (1:20:14)
#ListenerCoaching call #3 – How do I know when to increase my weights, and get rid of my mid-section pooch? (1:27:53)
#ListenerCoaching call #4 – Using Chat GPT as a trainer vs. an experienced live trainer. (1:34:36)

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