Barbell Shrugged - Eating for Strength & Performance: How Alex Got His Ab Grooves Back - 230

Episode Date: October 12, 2016

http://www.EatingForStrength.com This week on Barbell Shrugged we discuss how Alex Got His Groove Back.   Unlucky-in-love grad student Alex (Alex Maclin) jets to Jamaica with his gal pal Delilah (Whoopi Goldberg) for some fun in the sun. There, the 26-year-old working man has an island fling with a new diet experiment involving measuring and weighing his food (180g Carbs, 30g Fat, 150g Protein per day). When it's time to return to Memphis, Maclin realizes that he's unleashed a new metabolism and his physique is a spitting image of it’s efficacy. But, just like any long term diet that involves weighing and measuring, does this chase for six pack abs stand a chance against everyday temptations? Or even worse, will he lose his gainz as a result?   In this show we talk about Alex's journey in the kitchen and discuss what he's learned that's worked for him in the past when it comes to eating to gain strength and keep the pounds off. Stories are shared, failures are admitted, secrets are unraveled in this epic tale of one man's journey to find his groove (in his abs).   Enjoy! McG

This week on Barbell Shrug, we have a threesome. Yeah, we do. In McG's kitchen. Actually, we don't think about Buster. With coffee. This week on Barbell Shrug, there's... Just say it. I don't know what to say.

This week on Barbell Shrug, we talk about eating for performance and strength. What's wrong with that? This week on Barbell Shrug, we talk about eating for performance and strength. And how Alex found his six-pack. Bam! This week on Barbell Shrug, we talk talk about eating for performance and strength and how Alex found his six-pack. Bam! This week on Barbell Shrugged, we talk about how to eat for performance and strength and how Alex finally got his six-pack. Hey, this is Rich Froning.

You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Yo, what's up, everybody? Alex Macklin here. Thanks for tuning in this week. After the episode, make sure you head on over to eatingforstrength.com and download my free video called Eating for Strength. Get the video and learn how to structure your nutrition to get stronger and perform at your best. You're going

to learn the basics about how much to eat, macros, what to eat, and when to eat so you can get stronger. Quit trying to wait around and figure this thing out all by yourself about how to dial in your nutrition. Get started right now. Head on over to eatingforstrength.com and go watch my free video right now. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. One, two. One, two.

You know what to do. Hook it up. Hook it up. Can you make this the Snoop Dogg's? Plunge it. Gin and juice. Plunge it, bro. Plunge it. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, girl.

Got your plunge technique down and everything. I don't be tickling or nothing. What? What did you just say? It was a Pulp Fiction reference. Oh. It's like the foot massage. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Got my plunge technique down and everything. Pour me a cup, right, John? All right. Oh, yeah. So my plunge technique down and everything. Pour me a cup, right, John? All right. Oh, yeah. So I'm learning more about the pressing. You know who got me fired up about learning to press correctly? Chris Moore. Chris Moore?

Chris Moore yelled at me once. I bet he did. He was like, don't fucking pour the hot coffee in there like some kind of dumbass savage. He's like, you don't let the water cool down. You don't want to scorch it. I was like, not in my own house. Oh, yeah, that don't let the water cool down. You don't want to scorch it. I was like, not in my own house. Oh, yeah.

That's a big cup. I love it. He has a video for y'all out there. Just go look up Barbaro Buddha YouTube channel and he has how he does his French press. Oh, cool. I've learned a little bit.

Like, I don't know the exact temperature you're supposed to let it cool to, but pour the beans in the press, fill it up halfway with water, let it sit for about 30 seconds and stir. And then you finish it off. And then you let it sit for four or five minutes halfway with water, let it sit for about 30 seconds and stir, and then you finish it off.

And then you let it sit for four or five minutes. The longer you let it sit, obviously the more potent it might be before you press it. Is that true, Alex? You know, I wouldn't really know, man. You know, I learned that from a really credible source, from my wife, from someone else, from online, from somewhere else. It's like everything, right? The coffee, yeah.

I need to step my coffee game up. Yeah, but this coffee's good. I didn't finish my cup earlier. What is it? Where'd you get it from? Who makes it? Arabia. No, I don't know.

There's a place right down the street from where I live right now, and it's like this little edgy, like, grocery. They have, like – Edgygroceries.com. They sell sell like they sell like clothes and like coffee and shirts you know you live in an urban environment when when a store like literally sells everything you walk in this place and it's like they sell like art shirts and coffee and like grass-fed butter like just just random stuff and uh we tried the coffee bean it was really good did they have the new mumford and son c CDs? I was going to say.

This sounds like something out of Portlandia or something. So welcome, everyone. I'm your host, Mike McGoldrick, here with Alex Macklin. Hey, what's up? CTV behind the camera. What it do? We got Buster on the mic today. He loves to fart.

That looks like glow, like your dog. It is. It's like a baby glow. We are McG's bomb ass. Where are we at right now? We're in McG's kitchen right now. Welcome to McG's kitchen. I love it.

McG moved into a new place, man. This place is awesome. Yep. Super dope. Lots of natural life. Yeah. We put Jimmy on pause for a little bit, came downtown to hang out with friends. Well, you got to tell the fans who Jimmy is if they don't follow your Instagram.

Jimmy's my old gym that I built, my garage gym. And if you want to go look at some of the cool stuff we used to do in it, look up the hashtag Jimmy, G-Y-M-M-Y. And pretty soon we'll be building Jimmy 2.0. Jimmy 2.0? Nice. Super Jimmy. Nice.

So why are we in the kitchen this morning? Well, earlier we came to film a nutrition video on how to eat to gain strength. Yeah. And you went on for like 45 minutes. And we usually have to chop. It doesn't even feel like 45 minutes. And we usually have to chop. It doesn't even feel like it. I know. We had to chop so many takes and do things.

We did two takes, I think. Well, it's because you ran out of battery. Yeah. It just stopped recording. So I was blown away about how comfortable you were talking about and how much good information was in this video. I was like, man, we just need to do an interview with you and talk about it and share the experiences and how you learned.

Well, what was the video about? Did you say that? Well, the video was about eating for strength. We called it Eating for Strength. And I basically went over a lot of principles about nutrition, particularly in terms of eating for strength and performance. So, you know, we did some podcasts earlier this year where we talked about nutrition for aesthetics and performance and health. We didn't really go into deep dive about, like, eating specifically for strength and how to tweak and build a diet or a nutrition plan to do that. When you say eat for strength, what do you mean specifically?

Do you mean, like, to just get stronger numbers? Do you mean, like, performance in general? So, yeah, I mean, eating for strength is eating for performance essentially. But what I mean particularly about eating for strength is either getting stronger or maintaining your strength while changing your body composition. So, so that's a big thing. Like now a lot of, you see a lot of people on social media, they see a lot of people before and after like i lost this much weight and i still stayed strong well you have to be very meticulous and careful with your nutrition if you are going to do that and a lot of people nowadays are looking to alter their body composition either by losing

body fat yeah um or gaining muscle so especially with losing body fat, they want to keep their strength because who wants to lose a whole bunch of weight and then not be able to perform or lift the same weights that you were able to do prior or close to at least. I don't think we have that excuse anymore. I think the science is good enough now, and there's enough good information out there that you no longer have to assume that if you're going to lose a lot of weight,

you're going to get weaker. You can definitely maintain your strength. Technically, if you're going to lose a lot of weight, you're going to get weaker. Well, I mean. You can definitely maintain your strength. Technically, if you're losing weight and maintaining your strength, you're getting stronger. If you're talking about relative strength. Relative body. Right. Relative strength. Yeah.

But people are also very concerned about keeping their absolute strength. So, like, you know, we have a lot of people in our community that are getting into weightlifting and they want to drop a weight class or they're just or they just want to look better and but they don't want to sacrifice their gains that they've spent you know two three maybe four years in the gym trying to get so it becomes a very very important that you start to pay a lot of attention to your nutrition and people always say like nutrition is the foundation of of uh training well it because it is Like if you have poor nutrition, you cannot expect to see the amount of progress or the consistent progress or recovery that is needed for you to increase your strength

or even maintain it. Yeah, that's also why we're in the kitchen because they say in the kitchen is where the abs are made. I actually moved my bed down here and I sleep in here at night and everything. Yeah, so like for years, and we've been talking about for years, I, I have, you know, played around with my nutrition. Um, but I always struggled with, like I was weightlifting and, uh, I weightlifted at 77 kilos, 85 kilos. And what I would do is I would, you know, bulk up and try to get,

increase my, increase my strength that way by increasing my size, my muscle mass. Um, and I would do that, be fine. But then when I time, when it was time to cut back down to my weight class where I've competed, I found it very, very difficult to maintain the strength that I had put on while I was getting bigger. Yeah. And I would lose like a lot of it, like so much that it almost wouldn't even be worth getting up and weight. And the main reason why I was struggling with that is because I wasn't paying attention to some of the finer details of nutrition.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll share a similar experience as well. This summer doing training for my weightlifting meet, I'll share a similar experience as well. This summer doing training for my weightlifting meet, I wanted to get as strong as I could in a, in a kind of a smaller amount of time. I'd say like four months, four or five months of that training cycle. However, I didn't want to gain any weight because with it being my first meet, I wanted less things to worry about, meaning I didn't want to have to do a massive weight cut.

Right. So I hired someone. I hate cutting weight. Yeah. I don't know much about it, and I'd never done a weightlifting meet before, so I didn't want to also add more things to the plate. So my goal was to basically maintain my size while getting stronger. Not gain any weight, basically, over that month. And just by putting the time into the nutrition and hiring someone to help with that made it very easy. And the key to doing that would be so that you can recover for the next day's workout. So you can have productive training. Right. Yeah. So if you, if you don't have, if you're not fueling your body properly, you're not going to be able to recover for the next day. And you're probably

not going to be able to do your current training for sure. That's what people, that's what people don't kind of get is that that's where nutrition goes into play with that so uh with me it wasn't until i started to really pay attention to weighing and measuring and counting and keeping track of my macronutrient intake because before i had always you know everybody came from this i had started off you know, everybody came from this. I had started off, you know, with like a paleo style like diet, right? Paleo style lifestyle. We eat meat and vegetables, arguably very low carb. A shitload of fat. A shitload of fat.

When you end up measuring it. Oh, my God. Like bacon, eggs, you know, lots of vegetables and fruits and nuts and seeds. But what I had noticed when I would try to cut that way, I would lose a lot of strength and I would lose a lot of ability to perform in my training. And like I said, it wouldn't almost be worth bulking. It wouldn't be worth bulking up if I was going to lose it all. And so it wasn't until I, I started to pay attention to the macros and then specifically

getting more carbohydrates in my diet from, you know, the things that we weren't supposed to eat from a paleo diet, so like starchy carbs like pasta, whole grain pasta, breads, things like that. It wasn't until I started doing that was when I started to see increases in performance and ability to keep my strength on. Now, we're making a turn on that as a community, but that's pretty counterintuitive, Did you feel like at the time, like, like you'd been avoiding that,

avoiding that. And then now you're like adding it back in. Well, yeah, because avoiding what? Starchy carbs. Well, okay.

But here's, here's my, a little bit of like where I came from. I came from, I was overweight when I came into the fitness CrossFit. Uh, I was overweight, probably like maybe 30 pounds overweight,

like a 200 pounds and a and not a good 200 pounds. And so I went on paleo and I lost all this weight. So I was like, this is the way, this is how I'm going to stay in shape and fit. But then I started to get into more strength training and my focus geared not towards health, but more so performance. And to eat for performance, it's a little bit different and so this is where this is where now like the macro macronutrients kind of came into play can i throw in something we keep saying eat for performance but i want the people to understand

too that goes for the person who's just doing general fitness is i think too i don't want to get performance um twisted with like like a games athlete or someone. Right, right, right. Just someone who's going into the gym and doing more than just like your typical Zumba class. Yeah, I mean they have a number that they're trying to increase. It doesn't have to be a world-class number. They're just trying to improve a number, you know, some kind of a strength metric. Yeah, I mean performance is just in general if you want to increase your work capacity capacity your strength or whatever it's it's whatever it's it's all relative the degree of uh where you want to go with it but if you want to make consistent progress then your nutrition has to be in line with that um so i tried a lot of

different things and uh you know at first i was doing doing when this whole macro spin, I did zone for a little bit. And that kind of taught me about quantity. I didn't take it to the extent to where I take it now. It was more like, okay, well, I have a handful of this and, you know, count out your almonds, you know, like the 14 almonds or whatever. Yeah. So I counted grapes and almonds when I was doing the zone. Yeah, exactly. And then went towards doing more flexible dieting. And I had doing the zone. Yeah, exactly. And then I went towards doing more flexible dieting.

And I had help with that. Tell me what flexible dieting is. Flexible dieting is more, so it's like IFYM. What does that stand for for people who don't know yet? If it fits your macros. So the whole premise behind that concept, if it fits your macros, that so to make to change your body composition it matters how much calories that is the basis that's the fundamental basis of changing your

body composition or keeping it the same if you eat too much too much food too much calories you are going to gain weight over time okay laws ofodynamics, we have not figured out a way to get around that. If you eat less food than your body needs, then you will lose weight. Based on your activity level. Based on your activity level, what you do on average. And no one really knows this. But it's just all based on observation and measurement. You will lose weight over time if you eat less than your body needs. If you eat enough to balance the energy that your body requires and your activity level,

you will stay the same weight over time. All right. So with macros, now macros are protein, carbs, and fat. They provide the calories that come from food. So by essentially setting your macros and figuring those out, then you're setting your calorie intake. And so if you eat the amount of macros that you need per day, then technically you should be able to go in the direction that you want to go.

So it doesn't necessarily matter where that food comes from as long as you hit those numbers. And people set macros based on what is optimal for performance. So like if you're an athlete, typically the numbers gets thrown around as a gram per pound of body weight and then carbs, they'll set and then fats they'll set so as long as you're eating those numbers you're getting the amount of calories that you need per day and then you can see okay what happens okay yeah take me back to what you saw where you saw the biggest results from so you came in you were 30 pounds overweight you went paleo you dropped all that weight yeah then you started strength training and putting on some weight again and you were doing this because

you wanted to gain a lot of mass and increase your strength numbers. Yeah. And now I think we stopped there. What came after that? Well, so now, so it was trying to figure out, what I was trying to do is I was trying to figure out how can I keep my strength that I've put on but drop some weight. Because muscle mass is not the only indicator of strength. Like you have, you know, you have CNS adaptations. Right. So yeah, you may lose a little bit of strength if you drop some weight, but for the most part you should be able to, unless, unless

you drop like a hundred pounds, for the most part, if you're dropping like 10, 15 pounds, you should be able to keep on a good portion of your strength. Maybe like a few kilos lost on your squat, but that's it. Okay. So that was my struggle was figuring out how to keep that strength that I put on. And so I did macros, basically IFYM. And I was able to keep a lot of the strength because now my carbohydrates are a lot higher. My intake was more optimized for my strength training. And so I was able to keep on a lot of that strength. I lost weight. I got down, but I didn't look the way I wanted to look.

Yeah, I remember when you did that. You had a lot of progress there, and you did lose weight, but you were kind of always still missing the abs coming out. Yeah, like I didn't look the way I wanted to. We're going to change the title, How Alex Found His Abs. Well, I mean, that's important to a lot of people, I feel. One of those things is like – Alex got his groove back.

Yeah, I know. The lines. I think that's important to a lot of people because, one, just talking to athletes and people in general is that I hear a lot like, well, I want to look like I train. Sure. And a lot of your psychology and your motivation, if you're not happy with the body that you're in, that's all that matters. You need to be happy with the body that you're in. And even though I was performing well and I was getting – I was strong, I wasn't happy necessarily with the way I looked even though I had lost the weight.

So that was kind of my second – that was kind of the second struggle. Okay. So I figured out how to get strong – keep my strength, but I wanted to also have the body that came along with it. Like what about you? Like have you – like what's kind of your thoughts on this? You got this. Oh, man. Well, it's funny. The pattern that we see now, to me, it seems like training

and nutrition kind of follow the same pattern in terms of how you learn it with a hierarchy. Everyone comes in and they go from not having trained before to doing anything and you see results. that's kind of like how zone or paleo was for me i went from just eating to all of a sudden doing something when it came to counting or measuring whatever and i saw results right and then after that things stop stop working after a while you need to make tweaks and you get more dialed in training kind of goes the same way in my opinion so um i'll tell tell you, like, how I got into it. It started with Zone. And that was, like, basically the first time I'd ever, like, learned about classifying foods, period.

Right, right, right. Like, I didn't really know that there were macro differences and things like that. Or what each macro, like, what your body uses. Yeah, yeah. So I thought it was fantastic because it does a really good job of teaching you, like, the basics on how to count, timing, that kind of thing. After that, and it was fueling my performance for the most part. But again, mainly because I had just started training and I was just eating cleaner food. So one of those things, anything probably would have worked based on what I was doing before.

So that worked for a while. And then I started really focusing on food quality because with the Zone, I didn't really care about food quality. I was just eating what I thought was healthy, and then I started looking more into what I think good, clean, healthy foods are and focusing more on getting more vegetables in. What did you think that was healthy that turns out it wasn't? I always like hearing those. I mean, what I think is healthy now changes every year, man.

Like I just told you earlier, like, man, I love sourdough bread now. Like it's full of gluten. And I used to be on this site. Well, what is clean eating? Like it's hard to define that. I just purely base it off how I feel at the moment. Maybe it's terrible down in the long run. But for the most part, like if it's messing with me, if I notice like something like pretty quick,

like if I got to run to the bathroom or I get sleepy or like there's like signs. It's a disaster, man. I'm like, I just don't eat that. And that's stuff you learn over time though. Yeah, for know, like, like there's just no way to know right off the bat. Like, you know, people are going to try and tell you, you can get food sensitivity, food sensitivity test on. But like, I don't always trust those either because sometimes you still feel fine while you eat them. So this is one of those things that over experience is the only way to really know. Um,, yeah, paleo was the next step.

And that was when I was like became like anti-carb for a while. Was that when you were training to go to the games too around that time? So before the training volume really kicked in to go to the games, I was pretty strict paleo. And, you know, I felt really healthy, but I also didn't feel like I was recovering very well between workouts. I was getting beat up and probably a little over-trained, and I was still programming for myself back then too, so it could have been both. It could have been that I wasn't eating enough and I wasn't managing my training volume well.

Yeah. But then after that, when I started kicking in the higher volume to try and go to the next level and make the games, it just came down to shit i need to eat whatever i can get into my body right and of course it was clean too you know i had like i had my structured cheat meals you know like i only cheated on the day before i would rest right basically because i didn't want bad food in me before a training session you know and back then it's really strange now back then i could really tell a difference when i ate something not so clean and went and trained like i could totally tell a difference now no like i don't know if it's because i don't make that decision anymore that kind of dumb mistake or if my body is just used to it now it's really strange like like i'll eat pizza now before i have a tough

workout in the morning and it doesn't bother me back in the day it used to it's like my pizza in the morning no no sorry like pizza at night i was about to give you the biggest high five yeah yeah no so i used to be able to eat like uh like if i ate pizza at night and then went into the gym the next morning either it was psychological or it really did affect me but man it would wreck me i felt like shit during that training session uh i don't know if that just changed psychologically or if my body is just kind of like resilient to it now, and it doesn't bother me as much anymore. I don't know. But anyways, going back to those rules I would follow, that's what I did. And then now I'm just more relaxed with it because I just kind of know like what major foods to definitely avoid. Yeah. And, uh, you know what, I'm truthfully,

I'm just happier now this summer. I did go through some, uh, macro tweaks and followed, you know, specific, uh, numbers because I had numbers because I had weight weight goals that I needed for that meat I was doing. Right. And it was very effective, but for sure not sustainable. You know, like I don't want to do that forever. Yeah. But but I even I learned even more, you know, specifically about how much fat I was eating. If you're someone who follows a paleo diet and you just started it, they tell you, eat all the bacon and eggs you want in the morning. And as long as you have some fruit with it and some greens here and there, you're someone who follows a paleo diet and you just started it, they tell you eat all the bacon and eggs you want in the morning, and as long as you have some fruit with it and some greens here and there, you're good. But it's like you measure that out, you're eating like 200 grams of fat a day. Like you're eating way too much fat usually.

Yeah, what people don't realize is that so like with fat, so protein and carbs is four calories per gram. Fat is nine, nine calories per gram. So it's almost, it's more than double. So fats really is your, uh, essentially like how you can get to like your caloric state where you can lose or gain or maintain. So I would say like, yeah, people tend to do people in our community tend to eat a lot of fat. and that's probably why if you've been following – I'm not hating on paleo, but if you have been following a more paleo diet and you're trying – you get to this point where I can't lose any more weight, you might have to look at your fat intake,

the fat that you have taking in so much fat. Eating a lot of fat is good, but not if it's putting you at 4,000 calories a day. Exactly. You still have to obey the laws of thermodynamics and the energy balance. If you eat too much calories. Is there a thermodynamic, law of thermodynamic diet? I don't know. The thermo diet. But you're not saying don't eat fats. You're just saying, yeah, for sure.

Watch out. Yeah, no, I'm not saying don't eat fats. I'm just saying it all boils down to being aware and cognizant of how much you're eating, right? Like this is, this is the pinnacle. This is the fundamental part of, of nutrition is being aware and quantifying how much you're eating, whether it's, and you could take that to the most highest level by like weighing and measuring out your food, like with a scale, or you can even be just very relaxed about it by uh you know taking a picture or using the palm of your hands to just say okay i'm gonna eat like a handful of nuts or

whatever with with these meals as long as it's consistent it's it's being able to quantify that and then so when you are able to quantify it then you can say okay well and you do it consistently then you can say okay well my body composition of you do it consistently, then you can say, okay, well, my body composition or my weight or my strength is not going the direction that I want it to go. I need to make a change. And that's how you are able to do that. You can rule that out if you do it consistently enough. I want something I want to add because there's a lot of advice you can get now on where to pick your calories and get your numbers from. And there's a lot of advice you can get now on where to pick your calories and get your numbers from and there's a lot of people um selling that now i i think that there are several ways you can do it i think that if you i think if you went to five different ways yeah if you went to five different

people that are all experts they would give you you're gonna get different numbers for all of them and if you're wanting a way this is kind of tangent but if you're wanting a way to decide which one to go with i think that it comes down to the same way you would try and get a coach that wants that you want to get uh want to get you stronger comes down to the assessment that they're going to put you through they're going to if they're good they're going to figure out more what's going on under the hood and behind the scenes and and what's led you up to that point instead of just taking the blind numbers and plugging it in so the more questions i ask that's a good one to go with in in my opinion. Yeah, I mean, totally agree. And like you were saying in that video we filmed,

a lot of that stuff is just a starting point. Yeah, that's one thing I really want to emphasize is that, look, nobody knows how much you are truly supposed to eat. I remember in undergrad we had a metabolic chamber, I think, at Vanderbilt. You could go in there and study. A metabolic chamber? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds like a metal band.

I know. You could go in there and people would sign up for it. There was a waiting list. Especially during finals time, you can go in there. It's quiet. They would sit there and basically put you in this chamber where they would measure your metabolism by how much oxygen you breathed out and your temperature. Oh, really?

Can you get us in there? We need to do an episode. I don't know if they still have it. The metabolic chamber of secrets. Basically, who takes the most energy to live. Well, they just wanted to see what that was. And so unless somebody hooked you up to one of those things or put you in that room,

nobody freaking knows how much food that you need. Nobody. It's all just a best estimate. like there are formulas out there but they have margins of error like calculators have margins of error the food that we eat so if i if i go and pull out a box of cereal and i look at the the label that says how many calories are in it expect that to be off by like maybe 10 or 20%. Like expect it. So nobody knows. The best thing that you can do is just get an estimate, which is all what these are, and the magic is in following the plan consistently and then making changes based on what you

are observing. Same thing with body composition. Yeah. It's absolutely the same thing. People want to know, man, I measured this and I don't know if my body fat percentage is accurate. And I'm like, it doesn't matter. You just want that starting point number and then the change.

See the change. Exactly. So the point A really doesn't matter where A is. It's A to B is what we're trying to figure out. Exactly. That's where you make the adjustments. Looking at the trend, if you want your body weight, your body fat to go down or body weight to go down, if you don't see that trend going down over time, and not talking about one day or two days,

I'm talking about spans of weeks, and maybe even spans of months. Months, yeah. If you don't see that trend going downwards, you're not on the right track, and you have to make a change. But if you don't know where to make that change, and usually the change is going to start with food,

if you don't have an idea of how much you're taking in or what you're eating, then you don't have anywhere to start. Yeah, we need to pull up some of those graphics. You track yours a lot on MyFitnessPal. I did as well this summer, and I only had to lose like over four months, I wanted to lose like seven pounds because I wanted like a very slow, gradual cut down to the weight I wanted to be at. Why did you want it slow? Because, again, I did not want to have to worry about cutting weight hounds because I wanted like a very slow gradual cut down to the weight I wanted to be why do you

want it slow because I did again I did not want to have to worry about cutting weight come game day all right for the meat um again because it was the first meet and it was just one of those like I feel like if I just clean up my food a little bit I can get there naturally and I got crazy stronger along the way well doing it didn't mess with my performance but exactly going back to the graphic I was talking about, I tracked it all, and it's over four months, it literally does this. Yeah.

It goes up and down, but you just start seeing it drop. Right, right, right. It's still all over the place. I didn't freak out. Some days I would wake up, and I was back to 215, and I was like,

well, shit. I just went backwards and gained weight. Yeah. You don't freak out. You just notice the common trend. It works both ways, too. If you notice you have a really good day, you don't get overly excited. Right. Exactly i mean i'm done i can call it here

no it didn't work like that hell i think my my body weight fluctuates probably one to two pounds per day yeah like if i wait you mean like when you wake up in the mornings no like per day like eat over each day it can fluctuate at least one to two pounds. But like I said, the variation, the trend is still downward. And especially, yeah, overnight. Like I can go to bed, I'll weigh 176, and in the morning I'll weigh 174 or something like that. Have you ever purposely measured yourself before a dump? Yes, actually.

Let's hear it. Oh, man. Come on, you ever gotten a full pound out of there? Oh, dude, more than a full pound. You see how much I eat, dude? Let's hear it. Oh, man. What was it? Come on. You ever gotten a full pound out of there? Oh, dude. More than a full pound. You see how much I eat, dude? Let's hear it. What did you get?

What's your shit PR? I think the PR was probably like, I want to say maybe like three pounds, dude. Oh, my gosh. If anyone can beat three pounds, take before and after photos of your scale. Tag, hashtag. And you got to show the log, too. Oh, yeah. No, it has to be legit. You got to show the log too. Oh, yeah. No, it has to be legit.

You've got to show the before and after. My dog is humping the other dog through the window right now. Yeah. Anyways. But, yeah, I mean, that's the thing. Part of performance-based eating is tracking your progress. You have to be willing to do that. And I know a lot of people, even I've struggled with it too. Tell me about how have to be willing to do that. And I know like a lot of people,

even I've struggled with it. Tell me about how you learned that this is so important because we're, we're saying that now, but like you had to have experienced this. Not even how you learn, but how you finally got into action doing it. Yeah. I'm sure you'd heard it and didn't do it.

Well, one, uh, with tracking, with tracking all that stuff, sometimes it's very hard to trust, right? It's very hard to trust the process. It's very hard, especially if you don't see results. Like a lot

of us expect, well, okay, this is going to, I'm going to see results like instantly. And that may not happen. So tracking allows you to really truly assess whether something is not working or is. And if you, if the number, the number's not gonna necessarily lie to you. So if you have that downward trend, you're on the right track. And even though you may not be seeing the changes, you may not be seeing the small changes day to day, the numbers are there.

And over time, you look back, it's gonna tell the story. So I think that's- Tell the what? Tell the story. Tell the story. So I think that's kind of where what tell the story. So I think, you know, that's, that's kind of where I found the importance of doing that. Um, just by making sure that it would keep me

on track for that. Yeah. Good points. I think, uh, good points. No, man, for real. Um, I was going to share how, how i think to figure out whether or not you want to make this as important as we're making it sound and i think it comes down to checks and balances in your daily stressors period like for some people like i don't that that is the the detail and change that they need but but with their current lifestyle and setup like it is just too much to do you know what do you think what just too much to do. What do you think? Too much to do what? If weighing and measuring and counting,

if you're not someone who's ever been that structured before, like, it's going to be tough. Yeah. So what do you say to that? Like, is there easier ways to do things? What tricks have you learned? Like, what are some things that you've done along the way that make it easier? Yeah, I mean, that's definitely – I like structure. So to me, that's – I'm the same way. Yeah, to me, that's definitely that's definitely uh i like structure so to me that's i'm the same way yeah to me that's freedom like a lot of people uh willing discipline equals freedom yeah a lot

of people would say well what you're doing is is way too much for me to do and that that's fine um but that allows me to have they say that's too restrictive. To me, that's freedom. Like I can have a plan and I will track, I will weigh and measure, and I will have those things like, you know, I'll know my weight and I'll follow it consistently like 80%, 90% of the time. And I know I've followed it. And if I want to deviate from it, it's not a big deal to me. Yeah. Like if I want to have pizza on Friday because it's vice Friday, I can do that.

And I'm not even going to think twice about it. Yeah. I think the important thing is that you didn't walk in the gym in the beginning of this journey and start counting. Right. No years to kind of get to this point. So maybe start with the simple thing. Yeah.

Like if you, if you already, if you eat like shit okay if you eat a poor quality diet and i'm talking about 10 less shit yeah like eat 10 less shit like if you eat mcdonald's and taco bell all the time stop eating freaking taco bell mcdonald's okay um start with things that are things that are do you feel like that's a real big problem still now like yeah yeah i think people still i mean i eat out a lot i eat out that stuff a lot like even even because with flexible dieting you can eat that kind of stuff um i i would say like a lot of people like to have that flexibility and that freedom to eat that kind of stuff like often but to me in my opinion i don't think that's the best way you're saying you got away from all the donut crap yeah a lot of i've seen it a lot i mean you've seen it like the donuts pop tarts and

i'm gonna admit like i ate donuts pop tarts and cereal yeah because it fit my macros. But the way I performed and the way I looked when I cut those things out, when I started cleaning that up, that's when it started to turn around. How do you measure how you look? Taking pictures. Okay. So it's based off your own image and what you think is progress. There's a huge difference if you look at this dude from then. I have pictures.

I'm just curious your thoughts on it because we're talking about something that's a kind of touchy subject for a lot of people you know yeah it's very subjective like yeah numbers are one thing you look at it you know like my squat went up or it didn't you know aesthetics is one of those things that sure you can look at pictures and see changes in body composition but lighting whatever like anything could have a difference in that and like yeah like how do you how do you measure that and know like all right this is probably good now maybe i hit my goal right right i mean i think it just still boils down to like being happy in your is it facebook likes is it dms no how many more dm slides did you get once you got the i don't know

man you know i'm not i'm not, honestly, I'll be honest with you. I'm not even where I necessarily want to be right now. Like, I'm still not where I want to be in terms of, like, body composition and things like that. But it still goes back to, like, being comfortable in your own skin. So I think that's the main thing. And really that's going to depend on the person. I think as long as they're healthy, like I would say, like,

if you want to get as lean as possible, then do it as long as you can stay healthy. I want to jump in and make the distinction. We're talking about body image, and that can get very touchy. And you said before you got to even having abs, you weren't happy with your body. But did you do all that work out of self-love rather than self-loathing? For sure. Right. I want people to hear that.

Yeah, exactly. It wasn't because, oh, I hated myself. I actually wanted to be better for myself. So that's the difference between where it comes from. It's not like it wasn't something negative or destructive. Your body deserves better than a cheeseburger and donuts. Exactly. It wasn't some negative or destructive. Like your body deserves better than a cheeseburger and donuts. Exactly. It wasn't from that perspective.

So, yeah, I mean, I would say, again, like, yeah, it is subjective. But, I mean, you start getting compliments from other people. Dude, that is like fire, gasoline on the fire, man. You went to crack, I went to gasoline. What are you doing? It's crack on the fire. Well, okay, like, for instance, like you, CDP. Like, CD gasoline. What are you doing? It's crack on the fire. Well, okay. Like, for instance, like, you, CDP.

Like, CDP. What? People. You. Yeah. You. What? People don't know about you, but you've lost, like, a shit ton of weight, like, recently.

Yep. Yeah. And I know one of the things that you were struggling with was, like, you were struggling with kind of the excess body fat, and then you started dialinging in your nutrition and then what happened uh i could fit in my t-shirts again man it was getting to the point where i didn't even want to wear my fucking t-shirts but like what happened like what happened with other people other people started to notice oh yeah yeah i mean i wasn't having any problems like sticking to it like i was like i was i was rocking it out you and kurt helped me with the the nutrition advice from the Shrug Strength Challenge. Yeah.

And I've just been doing that. And I haven't had any problems. Like it's been easy to follow and all that, which is good for me. But then, like we were just saying, is once people started saying, damn, like that's all the extra motivation. And you start performing. You were performing well, too. Like you were getting in training. You're getting back into your training.

So my goal wasn't actually to do it for performance, but I wanted it to not be at the expense of performance. So, again, my motivation was to fit in my fucking shirts again. I want to ask this, and you may not have an answer, but what do you say, what if you're doing everything right and you're not getting the results you want? Or you had results, you continued to do things correctly, and it went away. What if you started gaining body fat back or you became unhappy with your image, regardless of the body fat or not, are you going

to base your happiness on how you look? Even if, what if you can't control it? Right, right. What do you do? That's a good question. I mean, I would say to that person, like, look at other factors, you know, that's where again comes to, okay, well, how are you performing in that? I mean, that's a good question. I mean, I would say to that person, like, look at other factors. Sure. That's where, again, comes to, okay, well, how are you performing in the gym? Like, are you making progress? Are you making PRs? Like, that's always going to be the case, I think, with anybody. Like, even for, like, just if you're looking at it from a strict performance or strength standpoint, like, oh, I snatched, you know, 250.

Well, that's just not good enough. Like, i want 300 or i want 275 or whatever like you're i think that's just normal for people to always kind of want more sure what you're saying is like if you stall yeah or i'm saying shift the gratitude maybe uh because sometimes those things some people are never going to be lean yeah no matter what the fuck they do they're not going to be you're not going to be super lean right or you're going to be one of those. No matter what the fuck they do, you're not going to be super lean. Right? Or you're going to be one of those people that has to bust your ass. I mean, you have to count 16 grapes, 12 almonds, weigh your spinach every single day, and you

have to eat like that like crazy at the expense to stay shredded. I mean, is that worth it? Like, is that going to keep you happy? What if you're not happy at that point? It's like, I think maybe tying your happiness to that direct outcome is kind of dangerous. I feel like that goes with everything in life, not just losing weight. People find that once you get there, unless you were actually appreciating the journey, then it didn't matter.

I say my advice to that is learn to like that you are putting in the work and doing your body really good. And then also, too. And the hustle. You're like doing something fucking that's hard. I'll never be as lean as I was three years ago or four years ago. Not with that attitude. Let me finish. Without having to go really strict on diet.

Or doing 12 hours of cardio. Well, your priorities are different now. Exactly. It's not your why. This is one of the things I say. I'm just grateful that I'm functional and healthy and able to wear, you know, whatever size clothes, like extra larges. And, you know, I just, I'm just happy that I'm happy with how I look and how I feel.

And that doesn't come from the things I do. It just comes from learning to love myself better. Yeah. And knowing that I'm treating my body good, how it looks as a result of that is kind of out of my control. Yeah. You know?

Yeah. And I'm happy with that because it's sustainable. Yeah. And I think one of the things I like to tell people and I, even myself, like, have a why. You know, like, why are you doing this? Why? Because that's the only thing that's going to

keep you going when the shit gets harder have a beard or a beer have a beer yeah because this shit is gonna get hard it's not it's not easy i think nutrition is probably one of the freaking hardest things i mean weightlifting is hard but dude nutrition is freaking hard because it takes so long to get to where you figure stuff out. There's habits that need to be developed. It can fuck with your head emotionally. No, it really can. And I think nutrition is one of those things where you've got to have a why.

And that's the difference, I think, between – we talk about the difference between like nutrition and dieting um you know dieting yeah you may have this why like why I want to lose five pounds why do you want to do that and it's usually for some other reason other than uh to improve your like it's for some outside external reason rather than oh let's do this live. So why do you want to lose – or what's your why? Start basic and we'll drill down. Well, my why, my main why was, one, I wanted to look better for myself. Why do you want to look better for yourself? Well, you know, I think –

Here we go. Oh, I know. We're pulling the layers. We're pulling back the layers. It's all going to go back to DMs. It's all good. There's no judgment here. This is a judgment-free kitchen.

No, I know. I know. You know, I live this life of fitness, and I want to be an example for, you know, other people, you know, not just, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I want to be an example for other people that can be done. Well, you got that.

Yeah. It was you getting in shape that motivated my eyes. Yeah. Well, thanks. Confidence. Yeah, well, thanks. Confidence. Yeah, confidence. You know, just being comfortable in my own skin. And then also for performance, like one of the big reasons why I wanted to do –

wanted to cut weight is because, you know, I wanted to still qualify and go to the American Open. That's still on the table as one of my goals. And for me to do that with the injury that I had last year I needed to get down to 77 kilos so for me like competing at a higher level is important to me so that's what I that's that's kind of one of the main reasons why I went and got back down and then the other things that happened too were really cool. Like I learned a lot about my body.

I learned a lot about what I – Self-experimenting is really important. I learned what I can do, what I can't do. You'd be surprised. Man, here's the thing. You'd be surprised. People always think like, oh, I can't do this. It's too hard.

You'd be freaking surprised what you can do once you get that fire lit and once you start trying to do it you'd be so shocked it seems so hard at first you seem like it seems like you have like a mile to go up this fucking huge mountain but it's not that bad like you just take it one step at a time what was that you just said people don't wait till the uh till it gets popping what you said like they don't wait long enough to see it out or something like that uh what do you mean fuck it keep moving but but i think what you were getting out was like they don't like get long enough to like see that first result yeah that will push them to stay with it like once that fire gets lit that's yeah yeah once that fire gets lit like it's just gonna

like what you said about getting the compliments and all that kind of lit that's yeah yeah once that fire gets lit like it's just gonna like what you said about getting the compliments and all that kind of stuff it's just going to it's just going to fuel that fire for you to keep going like once i started to feel better in my training and was able to recover like each day hit it hard and then be fine the next day and be ready to hit it hard again have productive workout after productive workout that can only come from dialing in my nutrition you know, that's a good point because I don't think that everyone has that kind of faith in themselves in the beginning. Yeah. And that's where someone like a coach or a good friend or mentor can come in is because if you're someone

who needs a quick result to let you know that it's working to make you feel like it's, you know, it's worth sticking to it, you know, like you're not always going to get that quick result. So having a coach or someone that can show you objectively, like you are making progress, like this is part of a bigger plan. Yeah. It is working. You've got to stay the course. A lot of successful people, that's what exactly what they do, right?

Yeah. Yeah. They don't trust it to be in their own hands. Like, like with nutrition or anything, it didn't take your body. If you say, Oh, I want to see results in like two weeks, it didn't take your body two weeks to get there. How do you think it's going to take two weeks to reverse that? You know, I think, I think when people, and we talk about, I opened the video, the eating for strength video up with these principles and want the first thing

I talk about. And I, and I, and I say in the in the video like if you are not willing to to hear and take in these principles just stop turn this video off yeah stop listening right now it's not a one foot in yeah yeah like one of the big things is like ask yourself how committed are you to putting in the time and the work that you need to put in to make a change yeah if you're from on a scale from like one to ten if you're not at least a nine, you got to figure something else out. This is not a priority for you and nothing that anybody is going to tell you is going to actually help you until you commit to yourself that you are going to put in the time and

the effort to make a change. Like that's it. You have to commit to yourself to do that. Boom. Yeah. Yeah. Powerful, man. Yeah.

I think that's, that's a, that's a tough thing to deal with. And especially as a coach, your, your job as a coach is to teach people how to do things, how to not to do things, and then how to want to do things. Yeah. Right. Like how to, how to want to do those things. That's, that's really tough. And most of us know the answer.

We know what not to do, especially when it comes to food. Like, like, you know, that certain things are bad now, but like, why do we not do it? Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like, why do we keep making the same mistake over and over? It's, it's like, it's like going, um, like going to a restaurant, like you have a choice, right? You could order something like a cheeseburger and fries,

or you could order grilled chicken breast, broccoli, and brown rice. You have a choice. And it's whether or not you are committed to making those choices or not that's actually going to do. Someone asked the other day in one of our programs, in the Shredded program, they said, how do you guys – he's new to the group, and he asked, how do you, I'm new to this, I'm working on the diet stuff,

how do you avoid the temptations? He's like, I go in and I see stuff everywhere and I want to eat it, like the donuts and stuff. And my answer was like, it doesn't go away. It doesn't go away. Temptation never goes away. No. To me.

What you can do is, basically, you gotta have a plan. You gotta know and set some guidelines and know. Set rules for yourself. This is what's allowed and this is what isn't. That way you don't even have to make the decision. You just follow through with it. You just go on autopilot. Like Wednesday, Monday through Wednesday, I don't touch anything that I wouldn't consider clean.

You know what I'm saying? Thursday night is like my only night to do that. Like if you just stick to those rules and trust it yeah like that makes the decisions way easier and then the temptations become they're just not as apparent yeah and try to control your environment too like if you're trying to quit weed don't go to a snoop dog concert right don't put yourself in those situations exactly that's a good point exactly like it if you if you are prone i've heard a lot of people say well if it's in the house i'll eat it well don't put it in the house yeah like if you are prone, I've heard a lot of people say, well, if it's in the house, I'll eat it. Well, don't put it in the house.

Like if you don't go buy Oreos and bring them home and if you don't want to eat Oreos. Go give them to someone that you want to fail. Go give them the Oreos. Don't be afraid to throw some shit away if you've already made the mistake. Like just because you bought the tub of ice cream doesn't mean you got to finish the mother and and going i want to i want to touch on this this line of conversation is that okay we're not saying that you can't ever eat that kind of stuff and we're not saying that at all like we still do cdp what you lost 20 pounds you still have a device friday every friday yep yeah every friday we're not saying that however what we are saying is that if you

do other things consistently, you can have that kind of stuff. Discipline equals freedom. Discipline equals freedom. You would say, oh, this is too restrictive, but really, it's allowing you to have more freedom. If you can follow something

80% of the time, that 20% of the time is not going to do shit. It's not going to do anything to mess up your stride. It's like if you were shooting at a target and a fly come and buzzed you at the face or whatever, you swatted and you missed, well, you just get back on the target. That's it after you missed. The old fly target. So can I switch gears just here at the tail end?

What are some of the specific things, you know, the kind of what we were hoping to hit on was like nutrition for performance and for strength. So what's some of the specifics that aren't just good nutrition advice that are some, you know, if my goal is performance, if my goal is strength. Carbohydrates. Yeah, like some more. So you're talking about some more tactical. Yeah. I mean, I know that's what you go into in this video.

We can just guide them there. But for the people listening to the podcast, don't have the video yet. I mean, yeah, if you don't have that video, go download that video. But I don't know. We don't have a link yet for that, do we? Not yet. So maybe look in the YouTube description and maybe in the iTunes description and we'll have a written link.

All right, yeah. We'll put something in there because we just made it today. Or just follow us on Facebook, Instagram. find it yeah okay well the main thing uh is important again calories right getting enough food if you don't eat enough food um you are not going to perform or get stronger period like it is going to hurt your performance your ability to get strong the other thing would be macronutrients. So, uh, getting an optimal for you. I say optimal because optimal is different for everybody. Optimal for you, macronutrient profile, right? Protein, carbs, and fat protein. Obviously we need protein because that's what is

used to repair muscle tissue and, uh, build muscle tissue. So, you know So muscles being what we use to move loads. Oh, those are those. Those are those things, dude. So if you don't get enough protein in your diet, if you don't get enough protein in your diet, then you're not going to be able to recover as well and build muscle and maintain it, especially if you're cutting weight.

So what you're saying is I need to buy a whole bunch of whey protein. No, I'm not saying that because, I mean, you can, but ideally you would get your protein from real food, actual food like lean meats, ground turkey, GT. We got that. Buffalo chicken. Buffalo chicken. Oh, after we film this, we're about to.

I'm going to make the McG's buffalo chicken. McG's slow shrug chicken, which will be in the video we just talked about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I like Doug has always taught me the less legs the better. So typically the less legs it has – That's Berardi advice too. Oh, yeah. He probably got it from him.

Berardi got it from – Oh, oh. Berardi got it from somebody else. Jurassic Park. Okay. Yeah, so like fish, chicken, ground turkey, things like that. So those are the kind of like protein sources. And typically, I mean, we've all heard, you know, one gram per pound of body weight, but that can fluctuate. You know, I like,

I like 0.85 for men and then 0.7 for women. Yeah. It's a good starting point. Yeah. A good starting point. It's all it is a starting starting point. Then carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are your specific energy source that your body uses for energy, right? It breaks down the glucose. Your body uses it to fuel activity, fuel intense exercise and recover from intense exercise. So getting enough carbs in your diet, particularly people don't think about this, that vegetables and fruits are carbs. Yeah. This is one that I think is important too because carbs have this negative stigma now in diets that you can't eat them at night. You can't eat too many of them. I think we're looking at that way wrong, especially with the types of exercise that most people listening to this show do.

Right. We need carbs to support that kind of intense exercise. And especially at night, some people, I've been sleeping terrible. I can't go to bed at night. It's like, you're freaking hungry. Eat some carbs, let the cortisol drop and you will go to sleep much faster. Like it's directly related. So don't be so afraid of the carbs. This doesn't mean blow it out and have a tub of ice cream. But if you're hungry at night and you're having trouble and you're feeling stressed about it, thinking about not being able to eat any carbs or snacks before bed is going to make it even worse. Go try it.

And this is not necessarily advice for people with diabetes or anything, but I'm talking about if you're a normal, healthy person, eating enough carbs. Well, that caught me off guard when I started doing how y'all told me to eat because it was like I didn't eat that much starchy carbs like i wasn't like strict paleo i would eat that stuff but it'd be barely and not because i was really trying to avoid it but i just i don't know i wasn't including it and then you you gave me my numbers and said eat this and like and then i was like holy shit i'm gonna be eating a lot of rice and like a lot of like and then i'll have like a wrap for like a burrito or whatever which is the cars too and like i'm like, man, I'm going to be eating a lot.

How is this going to work? I was really doubting what you guys were telling me. And I was like, how the fuck is this going to work? But it's worked. Well, the thing is that many people in our community, they don't eat any carbs. They're very low carb so you wonder why when the first thing anybody asks the first thing i ask anybody is if they uh if they're having trouble during training they're feeling tired they're feeling sluggish well one i ask them okay well how much are you eating what's what's you know give me a

food log and i always usually see super low on carbs yeah super super low on carbs so i tell them hey eat some more carbs and then boom they, they feel fine. I'm like, oh, I feel great. This feels awesome. Now, if you haven't been eating a lot of carbs at first and you start adding more carbs, it can add a little bloating. Did you get that bloating for a little bit? There were different things here and there, but that's a very good point to make is like when you first make these changes, how you feel that first week or two is not going to be exactly what it ends up being.

Your body hates change. Your body's whole job is to – homeostasis. Homeostasis. Your body's whole job is just to stay where it's at. So it hates change. So if you change it up, it is going to freak out, but eventually it will start to go the direction – It'll adapt.

It'll adapt and try to maintain that homeostasis. So carbs, vegetables for the bulk of the volume, right? the direction it'll adapt it'll adapt and try to try to maintain that homeostasis so carbs vegetables uh for the bulk of the volume right like i'm not talking about i'm not talking about calorie content i'm talking about volume so eating a lot of vegetables green leafy vegetables all the different types of colors in your diet getting as much vegetables as you can into your diet for micronutrients have you ever traveled and felt like nutrient depleted? Yes. Like you're like, I need something green.

Yeah. I need vegetables. Well, when you travel, you probably eat in that outside food. When I eat a lot of rice and just meats and stuff, I can feel it. If I don't throw in vegetables or have some salads with it, I feel like trash. Yeah. It's crazy. My body craves it now.

Well, I mean, you're not giving your body the things that it needs to actually sustain itself. Do you think it's going to actually give you the energy or the ability to perform and train? I actually drink this stuff. Can I reference this? Greens first. Greens first. Because what I do is like my safety. Yeah.

If I don't get enough of it in. Send us a check, greens first. That was like a shameless plug. Well, if your body, if you're not. I've been drinking that stuff for years. The vegetables and fruits and things like that, those provide micronutrients like vitamins and minerals that your body needs to survive if your body is barely capable of maintaining health do you it's there's no way it's going to give you what it needs to add add strength training on top of that um so

and then your bulk of your carbs your calories should come from you know the bulk of your carbs, your calories should come from the more starchy carbs. So I like brown carbs, like brown rice. Why does it got to be brown carbs? Typically, that's actually a really good question. That's actually a really good question. Higher fiber content. Oh, and fiber. Yeah. I mean, I love to poop.

You know what I'm saying? You need that dietary fiber. Exactly. So the browner carbohydrates like the whole grain pasta, the whole grain bread, the brown rice typically has more fiber in it. Can we please make a brown rice matters shirt? Brown rice. Wow. Man.

Anyways. Anyways. Yeah. So. Barbellshock.com so putting those into your diet uh around training right so we talk about window of gains and eating those that's not your your fucking excuse to go eat a smash a donut uh-huh eat some good quality yeah yeah starchy yeah that's a whole nother topic for another day yeah the door diabetes people taking taking advantage of that. We tried to film that episode.

We were already tired. That was a three-for-a-day. Let's explain that real quick. Back in the day, we had a pretty popular episode called Window of Gains. Window of Gains.

We may have overdone it a little bit. Everybody was like, woo, 12-pack of donuts, I'm getting my post-workout in. We were like, eh. Okay, we made a mistake.

Got to reel it back in. It can't be the door of diabetes. It needs to be the window of gains. The door of diabetes. Doesn't mean just donuts all the time. Yeah. And then fats. So in terms for strength, I would rank fats like the lowest.

Basically, that's more of your caloric buffer to get to where you can maintain or stay at your weight or lose or gain. Now, fats are also important for – they're precursors for a lot of hormones like testosterone. If your fats are off, you might not be in a good spot hormonally, which can affect your strength training. Got it. know, be in a good spot hormonally, which can affect your strength training. So, I mean, it takes, it takes balance. Like you have to play around with, with your, your intake because you could say, well, um, what if I just increase my, my carbohydrates? Well, then you'd probably have to decrease something else, which would put you in a position to where you're not performing well either. I know the answers are easier if the people are like, well, it's like the one thing I could

work on. I'm like, it's not just one thing that's more important than the other. I think it's all important. Yeah. Just what's the one thing to you that's the easiest to fix? That's the way, that's the place to start. Like what do you mean? Like what's your biggest weakness when it comes to the getting better protein sources

or getting carbs or eating better fat sources? That's like, they're all important. Right. I'm not going to say like, well, it's way more important to eat fats if you're trying to get stronger. It's way more important to get protein in. I think it's all equal. I think you just need to look at it objectively and think, which one of mine is down that I need to probably work on?

Here's the thing, and this is what I think is the most important thing when we're talking about weighing and measuring food, prepare. Like, look, bulk preparing your foods, that way you can just prepare everything and weigh it out and have everything ready. That will take off so much of the worry. People freak out about weighing and measuring food because they're like, well, how am I going to sit there and weigh out all the food i'm supposed to eat or whatever like that it's because you're not doing it you're not preparing for it you're not you're not doing this taking the steps

beforehand so i would even say if a person you asked me earlier what's a what's a what's something that somebody could just do very very simply and without like all this crazy stuff and worrying about all these numbers, just prepare your food every freaking week. Take one day, go to the grocery store, take your favorite recipes, make out a list, go to the grocery store, buy your shit, come home, cook it, and then have it ready so it's there for you. Turn that son of a bitch sideways and stick it straight up your candy ass. So it's there for you. Speaking of which, look, right here. Yeah. If you're watching the video version, this is Alex's.

This is yours, right? Yeah. Well, the rest of it's in the refrigerator. Me and Alex both bought some nice cooler bags. He's got his brown rice matter. Yeah. He's got his brown rice matter. His fruit.

All in a cooler. You ready to go. And I got mine in the fridge, too. Yeah. And that helped a lot, man. Because you're not going to be tempted to just go somewhere and eat something that maybe you shouldn't eat. So I would say like that will solve a lot of your problems. And it seems like something very obvious and we've said it before.

But literally, if you prepare your food ahead of time, you can have a lot of these issues. They won't be issues. We're doing our best right now. We keep saying these things over and over and over, and it's been repeated a bunch, but now we're taking action to try and make it easier for you. We're going to have these recipes ready. We're going to make a video here in a second about the slow chicken.

If you're just getting started with this like step one is like let's just make it really easy for you to take action on it yeah if you're listening to this and you're like man i i know all this stuff well then pass this along to someone who doesn't like right yeah share the love yeah there's some here's some refreshers on how to maybe get someone to want to do it like i mentioned earlier they know what to do but how do you get them to want to do it create that why why. Well, I guess for the rest of this stuff, just go watch the videos. Yeah, just go watch the videos. We'll put the link in the descriptions, yeah, for where you can download it.

But in that video, I'm going to go into a little bit more detail about, you know, the macros and then the principles. And I'm also going to give, you know, a very general broad but specific prescription on where to kind of start right with with macronutrients and eating for strength again like it may not be right nobody knows what's right but i'm gonna go into like making adjustments you know and making changes yeah but that's what nutrition is a journey it It's not something that's going to take you a day or even a month to figure out. It's going to take you months and years to figure out what is the thing. Sounds like training.

Yeah, it sounds exactly. It's exactly like training to figure out what works for you because the best nutrition is what works for you. Yep. And how are you going to get the best performance and best strength from nutrition? You got to figure out what works for you. Yep. And how you're going to get the best performance and best strength from nutrition, you've got to figure out what works for you, and that takes time. What do you think, Buster? You've been quiet all day.

Yeah. Yeah. All right, Pimps. Anything else anybody, like, you want to add or – I don't know. No, man. I think we covered. I don't know. Appreciate you listening, guys.

Yeah. Anything else they need to go check out? You can check out the guide. And you know what? Honestly, if you want to talk and ask me questions, like, dude, shoot me an email, like alexatbarbellshrug.com. Like, send me an email. Like, I love to talk about this.

Follow the hashtag shruggedeats. We've been using that so you can see the food we're kind of eating. And if you make the slow chicken, tag us again. Yes. We love seeing videos. When I made that Instagram video on how to make it, it blew up. So many people went and made that recipe.

Yeah, and check out the video that we just made today, and we'll have a link in the descriptions. And we're going to add the recipe you just talked about in that video, whether you like it or not. About to do it. And some other recipes. We'll put some other stuff in there too. Yeah.

Yeah. Just keep thanking us. We'll just put whatever you need to get help. We give you the tools you need to succeed. Honestly, I really – If you want to write me an email and say hi, just go ahead. Honestly, I really want to see people get their stuff figured out, man. It's like one of those things where if you can figure it out,

it's going to change so many things in your life. And I really think if we can help people figure it out, that would be awesome. Make it easy. Make it easy to take that action. Cool. All right, Pimps. Later, guys. Later.

Bye, everyone. Thanks for listening.