Barbell Shrugged - How to Gain 10 Pounds of Lean Mass, Intermittent Fasting, Supplements, and Eating for Performance w/ Anders Varner & Doug Larson  — Barbell Shrugged #354

Episode Date: November 10, 2018

This is a special episode, where Anders Varner and Doug Larson talk about eating for performance, eating for mass gains, cutting weight for weightlifting and MMA, supplements for lifestyle and performance, learning how to eat for wellness, and more.   Enjoy! - Doug and Anders ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs_gain10 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Shrugged family, we're back. Another Saturday edition of Shrugged. This week, I don't know if you've seen Mr. Doug Larson in person lately, but my dude is looking yoked. He's put on 10 pounds of lean body mass in the last 12 months, and he has documented it, he's tracked it, and the guy looks swole. what else is there to say this might not sound like a lot to you if you're 18 years old but try being 35 putting on 10 pounds try having a couple kids try getting married how about that throw a

little bit of a wrench into the mix where you're not just in the gym getting yoked all day long with your friends. That's why it's so impressive. Also impressive. I'm not trying to do that at all. So maybe not impressive at all. But it adds, it creates a really good conversation because I have different goals. Doug's got different goals. And there's a lot of things that we agree on and a lot of things that we're doing differently in our lives when it comes to nutrition and supplementation and things that you should be thinking about when you're choosing an eating plan and setting goals for yourself. If you find this conversation interesting

and want to learn a little bit more about how Doug is eating, make sure you go to DougLarsonFitness.com. My man has all kinds of resources over there, nutrition for weightlifters to teach you how to eat, train, stretch, and anything else you want to know about fitness over at DougLarsonFitness.com. Specifically, check out Nutrition for Weightlifters. This is about nutrition and supplementation, and a lot of your questions will be answered in Nutrition for Weightlifters.

So DougLarsonFitness.com. Also, make sure you're getting into 30daysofcoaching.com. 30 days of coaching, T-H-I-R-T-Y, daysofcoaching.com. I'm so happy and so grateful. All the people that have shown up in the first week, we have emails going to your inbox every single morning, linking you to the best podcasts, articles, technique wads, everything. It's all I've got. I need to have a universal basic fitness education platform that everyone can go to to just understand the principles of living a healthier, stronger life.

30daysofcoaching.com. I'm so grateful for all the people that have signed up. I hope you love the emails. I hope you are entertained, educated, inspired, all of the things. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for making the launch of 30 days of coaching such a success. I'm very grateful for you. This is the first piece of really big content that I've been able to put together in the year that I have been with Shrugged. And I'm just so grateful for all the people.

And I appreciate you all. Thank you so much for being just a part of this journey with me. And go to 30daysofcoaching.com. It's the first cornerstone content that I've put together for all of the people out there in shrugged land. 30daysofcoaching.com, T-H-I-R-T-Y, daysofcoaching.com. I'm stoked for you to listen to this show. We filmed it in Doug's living room, sitting on the floor, and this is just what we talk about. Sometimes we just turn the mics on and make it a little bit more elevated so that you get to come and hang out with us. So 30 days of coaching, T-H-I-R-T-Y, daysofcoaching.com. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged.

We're talking nutrition here. Yeah. We are now. Are we rolling? Yeah. Oh, shit. We're actually on. We are.

All right. You want to do that intro again? No, no. That was absolutely perfect. Awesome? Yeah. Oh, shit, we're actually on. We are. All right, you want to do that intro again? No, no, that was absolutely perfect. Awesome. Yeah, we are inside the Larson living room this morning. Yeah. And as we over-caffeinate ourselves, well, Doug always goes with the half-calf. Half-calf is where it's at.

Probably a milder version of this 16-ounce fuel starbucks that i enjoy i'd be lying if i said that this was the first cup of coffee that i had today there's gotta be more people out there like half calf yeah it's like i don't like a ton of caffeine but i just want a little thing to pick me up in the morning yeah and then if i want to have more because i just enjoy sipping on something that's warm and delicious totally then get another half cap just puts you at normal baseline. You don't overdo it by having a second or third cup. I find that a lot of the time it's the same. I just want to have the thing next to me

because it does taste delicious after you've completely burned all your taste buds. The first time I had a coffee, it's kind of like if people drink a lot, they're like, oh, this beer is really good. I don't drink a lot. I'm like, beer kind of like if people drink a lot, they're like, oh, this beer is really good. I don't drink a lot. Beer kind of tastes like shit, but I enjoy enough of it in a social setting. But I love coffee. Coffee actually tastes delicious. When did you start drinking coffee?

I started drinking coffee until maybe just after graduate school. It was not a thing that I did growing up really at all yeah like some people got into super early but not me i was like the last person i know to start drinking coffee i believe coffee like took this weird turn of acceptance like we didn't have coffee at like my high school cafeteria or whatever but i feel like if you were to go into my high school now and go into our little like the hangout center they probably have a starbucks in there yeah coffee's way cooler now yeah amongst the kids yeah the kids definitely like it my perception of coffee growing up was definitely

that it was like for for old people yeah i did not think it was like something that i would ever do because i didn't identify as an old person i'm not old I'm not old but yeah some for some reason now now I just it's like a part of my day but I never make it at home I only drink it if I'm going out or someone brings me it like this you don't have you don't make coffee here I very very very rarely make coffee and usually it's like someone's staying here yeah and so I make them coffee then I have some coffee while they happen to be here but I never make it for myself, my drive to your house is a beautiful little trip for, for a nice coffee. I rocked out this morning to the John Cena interview because traffic sucked. I got the whole interview in while drinking a coffee and, uh, sitting on the five, which

is like borderline torture most of the time. But, um, it's a great day when Cena's Cena's on the, which is like borderline torture most of the time but um it's a great day when cena's cena's on the on your earbuds dude that show is legit yeah it was good what a great dude what a great guy we uh dude man i feel like every year we need to interview him just because and we'll do it we're gonna do it on video one time we definitely need to his life is so radical so we're gonna go to to Florida and do it. Yeah. Yeah, dude, we got to go to Tampa.

Dude, if we go to Tampa, we can hang out with Ben Pekulski. We can lift weights with him. Then we can go to Cena's gym and hang out with him. And I'm going to walk you into the coolest place ever at Cena's place. There's a spot in which he keeps. If you go to Nikki Bella's YouTube page, Cena has a show on there called like, like grease monkey or car something. Like he's, he's got a,

he loves cars, like really nice cars. In fact, while we were, I watched him buy two Aston Martins over a text message while we were having a very nice glass of wine at his house and i was like dude tell me about the car thing like what is it with the cars like i'm not a car person at all so i don't understand it and like in his house he's got like the ferrari books and like all the things because he's like

really into cars and um he brought me into like the museum of cars and i was like whoa dude and i was like yeah over here's like the rolls royces over there's the ferraris and i was just like damn this is so radical well uh yeah and i was like you have to tell me about these things like you started out as a personal trainer you're like you didn't know about cars like you didn't know about designing houses like where did all this crap come from like why did you start doing it yeah um he actually like really liked cars i guess but the he more or less he it's like his investments so like instead of a 401k he's like i'm really bad at picking stocks so i don't pick stocks anymore he's like i pick cars so um they're all like it's basically walk into like his 401k in this like thing and um people probably pay a

premium price for it as well if they know it's john cena's ferrari totally yeah what a great idea he got sued pretty recently too for some like ford thing yeah it was like ford didn't like him for something i was like john cena's not driving ford's get out of here ford we're talking about fucking rolls royces he's not sued by ford your your expedition isn't that cool um yeah it was a really dope interview you know that was like my was probably what, like interview five or six that I had done. I was pretty stoked on that. You did a great job for only having done a handful of interviews. It's easy.

It's easier when you get to hang out with the guy all the time. But we digress. Talking nutrition today. We're allowed to digress. It's our show. What do we, tell me what goes on in your life for food food to me what what is your like general approach to food like to me i think of food purely as like this thing that i have to do in my life if i could eliminate the need to eat

i don't think i would eat just because i have to think about like where i'm getting my next meal most of the time because we're on the road very rarely at home and then even when i am at home i never put like the extra thought into like is this going to taste good so it usually becomes like four egg whites four whole eggs some salt and pepper if i'm lucky and um like maybe a piece of toast or something usually i'm like eating a stick of butter while i'm doing it to get like additional fat calories yeah i i'm like the worst when it comes to nutrition like everything i put in my body is always very clean but i feel like that's because it's so bland and, like, I just don't keep shitty food around, so I can't eat it. I think that the system, though, when I think about it, has, like, progressed to a point.

But what is, like, the general prescription of your, like, how many meals are you eating a day? Right now it's about five. God! Well, it depends if you count a workout shake as a meal. I would count that just because anything that goes in i count yeah so if that's the case then it's probably about five maybe sometimes six you eat breakfast every day every day oh yeah i eat breakfast at seven o'clock every single day killer monday through sunday i never i have no consistency oh really never

oh well when you have kids all sudden a sudden you have a lot of consistency. That's causing. I have to wake up at 6 or 5.30 every single day, no matter what. And so I always go to bed around 8, 8.30, maybe 9, like no matter what. And so I always get up and make breakfast for everyone. So I make, we eat the same, breakfast is the only meal where we eat the same thing every single day. Yeah. Like we rarely deviate from like the set breakfast. What is it? Like lunch and dinner changes all the time, but breakfast eat the same thing every single day yeah like we we rarely deviate from like the set breakfast what is it like lunch and dinner changes all the time but breakfast

the same every day um for me uh me and my wife and my kids like it's eggs avocado um maybe sometimes like cherry tomatoes if they're if we have them we don't always have them but um frequently frequently we do um and then a variety of berries usually it's like usually blueberries blackberries raspberries um banana oranges and yes we usually have like all five of those on our plate yeah we always have like a spread like a variety yeah and my kids are pretty good about eating all that stuff uh a lot of people are like how do you get your kids to eat that but they've never eaten anything different so they don't know any better.

They just do what you want to do. They've never had cereal. They've never had oatmeal. They've had yogurt at times but usually it's like with that meal. We eat the same thing

every single day and it doesn't seem to bother me. I feel like if I eat the same exact dinner every day, it would bother me but it doesn't bother me

at all to eat the exact same breakfast every single day. Eggs are delicious. Eggs But it doesn't bother me at all to eat the exact same breakfast every single day. Eggs are delicious. Eggs are awesome. I eat eggs at least, we could call it probably on average, like 12, a dozen eggs a day, where most of the days, I'd probably say I eat about 16 eggs a day,

which is a gnarly gnarly number um yeah it's honestly it's because i don't like i i love that there's like a name for the diet like intermittent fasting i just don't think about food and so like when you study the people that live the longest the majority of the people are living at some sort of like small caloric deficit. And I actually have noticed when – so my body type, I put on weight rather easily. Like I think it's just from so many years of eating as much as possible. Yeah. Me gaining weight is a really easy thing and if i'm hovering

around probably 2 000 ish calories a day it's just a maintenance zone and i notice that if i don't eat consistently throughout the day i actually have more energy and i don't have that like lethargic feeling thing to myself, whatever that is. Five meals a day is just so heavy mentally for me to think about. God, I've got to eat again. God, I've got to go find food again. Is it going to be good food? And most of the time we're on the road.

It's not. Canola oil? There is nothing that digests from my mouth to out of my ass when it comes to canola oil. That is like a straight line. It instantly makes me feel awful. And anytime you eat out, that's what you're getting. I feel like it's like 80% canola oil, like 20% meat. And so I try to eat as like as few meals as possible and the fact that they call

this like intermittent fasting now like whatever whatever that is I just try and wait until the afternoon and I feel lighter I feel like I have more energy the coffee kicks way harder. There's nothing to slurp. But, yeah, it's a lot of vegetables, a lot of eggs. And then if possible, and I get home in enough time or whatever it is, like dinner is usually just meat and veggies. It's so plain. And Ashton usually cooks because she's a gangster. She actually, like like thinks about it she she enjoys her food tasting better than just eight eggs in a pan with potentially some pepper a spatula star yeah well i don't it's like early college yeah i feel like though like

there's so many things that i could focus on and most of them turn out to be like talking on this microphone or like making sure we can talk on this microphone more. And food just happens to be like a thing that fuels our ability to talk on this microphone. So I want to just keep it as simple as possible and not have to worry like, is this going to taste great? I don't care if it tastes great i just need the calories like the spoonful of peanut butter probably isn't like the most healthy thing in the world but like i'm taking four of them a day just so i can get the calories and make sure that i'm shoving enough fat in my mouth to maintain strength more or less yeah i'm usually just looking to have like a an easy balance between carbs fats and protein to add each meal you know like i like i

like things that are symmetrical like round numbers so like a third a third a third yeah i just think it's like you know ridiculously easy to remember so uh and i think that works pretty well for me with the amount of training volume that I'm doing these days. I can do about a third, a third, a third. I don't measure and calculate my macros, but I've been doing this my whole life. I know what's in to enough a degree to really feel very confident about exactly what I'm eating. I know what's in all the foods. And so I'm mostly trying to get just a good portion of of protein a bunch of veggies maybe some starch or the volume of the starch might fluctuate depending on you know what i've done that day and when i'm training and what i'm not and all that but um and then and then some healthy fats added in on top of

that and that's that's a pretty average meal for me like i have my breakfast at seven i usually eat again around like 10 30 or so um some days if i if i go to jiu-jitsu at noon, then I'll have a shake with jiu-jitsu and then a light lunch afterward. Dinner's usually 5 or 5.30, and then I put the kids to bed. I usually eat again at like 8, and then go get ready for bed. Yeah.

Are you doing any supplements along the way? Yeah, I do a variety of different supplements. Certainly performance-wise, like creatine and beta-alanine, I've done that stuff for a long, long time. Whey proteins and whatnot for workout drinks. Sugar and whey protein, I suppose you count that as a supplement. I kind of count it as food.

I count that as a meal. Lately, I've been doing some digestive enzymes that have been really good. Those have helped out a lot. I have kind of cleaner poops if I do that. You can't have a nutrition talk without talking about pooping, which is great. I mean, I took those pills, and the next day I was like, oh, wow. It's like one of those times where I didn't realize that until I had perfect poops, I didn't realize I wasn't having perfect poops.

I was like, oh, wow, these are perfect. I don't even have to wipe. This is amazing. This is what it's supposed to be like. I've't realize I wasn't having perfect poops. I was like, oh wow, these are perfect. I don't even have to wipe. This is amazing. This is what it's supposed to be like. I've been waiting my whole life. Marcy, look, it's perfect. I'm taking photos. You can find my poop pics at...

I need a hashtag for it. Yeah. I take the Organifi turmeric pills and the probiotics those are great what does that do uh i don't really feel any different on either one of those things but i certainly think having you know focusing attention on gut microbiome health i eat a lot of fermented foods i drink a lot of kefir, kombucha, things like that. You know, sauerkraut. I eat a ton of sauerkraut.

I've been doing a lot of pickled veggies and whatnot. Just to compliment the meals that I'm eating, if you have like pickled carrots or pickled okra or sauerkraut, especially like I get the sauerkraut that's garlic and dill sauerkraut. Cool. And it tastes – the taste is interesting because it tastes very fresh. Yeah. Like it makes me feel like I'm eating a lighter meal than I'm eating for some reason. Just like it has that hint of some certain flavor that makes – I think it's the dill specifically that makes it feel like that. But that's a great complement to almost any meat and veggie dish. If you have meat and veggies and maybe potatoes or maybe some rice or something on that and that and you put a sauerkraut or pickled carrots or pickled okra like i was

saying like that that adds a bit of flavor to those meals without having to like you know douse it in salt or yeah or you know something that's a little more common and so i do that all the time and that's like the the extra add-on that I put in a lot of my meals. I also use a lot of avocado and nuts. Like I get a lot of pre-made meals, especially for lunchtime, and I'll take a pre-made meal that probably could be a full meal. I'll cut it in half, and then maybe I'll add just like a little extra chunk of protein that I already have in the fridge, you know, just like cut off a piece of a pork chop or something and just like add that to the meal.

And then a bunch of nuts, avocado, sauerkraut on top of it. And it stretches those pre-made meals from, you know, basically one meal into two meals. So, you know, if we're paying, you know, say $12 or $14 for a pre-made meal, you can stretch that into two meals, then all of a sudden getting pre-made meals becomes a lot more affordable. We're not getting smashed, you know, $50 a day on pre-made meals becomes a lot more affordable. We're not, you're not getting smashed, you know, $50 a day on pre-made meals. Yeah. The gut health thing is something that I have become very aware of.

I wish there was like a way that I could just find out if I'm doing it right. But I think you just kind of assume that if I'm taking the gut health pills, I don't even know what's in those things. It could just be sugar, but the placebo effect makes me feel fantastic. We need to have somebody on that just focuses like specifically on gut health and the pills that they make um i really like do the kombucha thing is kombucha is like taking over my life over the last two years and um i find that with just the amount of moving around and like traveling or whatever it is like having the ability to get just some decent gut health like through kombucha whether you're

going and buying it at the store which you got to be careful because there's a bunch of sugar and some of that stuff um but it just it keeps me healthy and being sick i can't get sick like if you get sick your life just shuts down i can't have a week where i'm just in bed like life does not afford that no you're letting way too many people down if you're not taking care of your like nutrition enough that you're just walking around sick all the time like if you're getting sick i maybe once a year but i really feel like with the amount like if you're on an airplane you're gonna you're gonna get sick if you're on an airplane twice a month your life is a disaster like you're just not around good options and i think people need to be on gut health pills whatever probiotics you can find and just that

stuff will balance out so i've really started focusing on that we make i used to make three gallons of it a week which is an absurd number for kombucha that's probably like a gallon a week now but um yeah the sauerkraut thing super cool i really like that I just I feel like it's kind of like training where nutrition was like always like over complicated with me and then I just found like in looking for a simpler way like the paleo thing when I was in the paleo thing it was like so just so aggressive there's so many rules behind it i just couldn't deal with the long-termness of having to like live inside this tiny little box and then all of a sudden i learned about gut health and i was like oh if i can just

keep my gut healthy having a little bit of sugar might not be the worst because i'm training and healthy enough to kind of burn those calories off or like utilize that for something yeah um i'm getting enough protein protein's never a problem i can eat pounds of meat a day if needed um fats are usually pretty pretty easy to come by um but if i can just focus on as is my gut healthy enough am i getting enough vegetables to kind of balance everything out? I think I'm going to be doing all right. And it just keeps it much simpler for me. But the kombucha, the sauerkraut, the gut health pills are a plug to our sponsors, Organifi.

They make a cool one. I've taken the one from Onnit. That's pretty solid. I assume they're great. I assume they're the greatest because I'm not doing the testing on it. Yeah, I mean, taking the pills I think is important. But, again, it is a supplement. It should be like 1% of your strategy.

Is kombucha a supplement? No. I'd say it's just a healthy type of food. But I do think that you can take it too far. And it's tough to always know the quality of something it's like yeah like how much as far as you know live bacterial culture like how many how many you know units so to speak am i am i getting in this glass and then how much sugar am i getting and am i really just drinking a soda with like a few like five bacteria in it

and it's really just totally feeling good about drinking this watermelon yeah watermelon kombucha or whatever the hell it is basically drinking fruit punch it's like so yes so i i don't i don't advise anyone to drink it all day long i think that's a horrible idea but you know but if you're if you're about to go train or you just got done training and and you know 12 ounce glass of it is going to give you 15 grams of sugar. Well, you put that in your post-workout drink anyway. So you might as well drink that sugar with some, you know, hopefully some live cultures that are going to be – give you a net positive for your microbiome.

But I feel like the piece that's often left out is the fact that fiber, eating, you know, lots of different fruits and veggies and getting lots of fiber all those fibers are indigestible carbohydrates that are that are prebiotic they feed your gut bacteria especially in your in your large intestine and so if you're if you're getting a wide variety of fruits and vegetables then then and you're not eating a bunch of total fucking junk yeah then your gut microbiome is probably doing all right. And so, especially if you have, I don't know the numbers behind all this,

but say you have thousands of different types of bacteria as a part of your gut flora, and you're taking a pill that is a probiotic and has six types. Well, okay, so if you take an antibiotic and you kill all your bacteria, good and bacteria, and then you're trying to take a bunch of probiotics to replenish that bacteria, you're replenishing it with six out of thousands. Millions, whatever it is.

I have no idea all the different types. So this is a bit of a projection, but it's probably a losing battle. You have to go back to eating really, really well and getting enough fruits and vegetables to help regrow the bacteria that are left. I think that the gut biome is probably like the next frontier in like understanding nutrition and just how our food is digested. Like for the first however many years of my life, you could call it probably the majority of my life, I always just thought you like ate food and then it was like in your body i never thought that i'm eating food and then i'm digesting it by these bacteria eating that digested food and then as they decide now those nutrients are being dispersed throughout my body like i never thought there was like this universe of bacteria that was controlling everything that goes on like you could so um my wife is having a baby soon so i i love learning about like um breast milk it's like the coolest thing in the

world to me and i was watching this movie documentary on breast milk, and it was talking about how there's an enzyme and protein in breast milk that is not digestible by babies. And they found this enzyme, protein, whatever it is, and were wondering why is this? The majority of breast milk is this enzyme enzyme but babies can't actually use it and what it is is an enzyme that is only used by your gut so your gut is talking to your saliva which is talking to the breast milk saying we need to feed the bacteria in our belly to protect us from external you know things whatever germs are coming in. So we're literally from the day we're born and the food that we're eating is built to protect our gut from viruses, bacteria, anything that's kind of not healthy for us.

And it was like the most mind blowing thing. It was like, oh my gosh, like babies are having this conversation with the milk they're eating and they're eating things that they can't digest so that they can feed the, the bacteria in their gut. It was like, I don't know if we're human. I don't know if this little machine inside us is calling the shots on everything, but it was like, it was just just so fascinating that something could control the conversation from your gut, through your mouth, through saliva, to the breast milk, and now your body. Evolution has created this system to build your gut bacteria to protect you, and we can't even use the stuff. So who's really in charge here the whole time you're saying that i was thinking about this thing that i read the other day was in india if you google

if you're like you know you're on google and you're typing it in it's giving you like the the auto responses trying to like fill in what you're going after with the most popular search things if you type in india if you type in my husband wants the number one thing is my husband wants me to breastfeed him oh really that's like a thing oh wow in india we're going to india i want to try this out yeah right let's just do this you get some boobie action in your life and you get fed at the same time how have we not thought of this it It's like real HGH in there. You're growing.

Growing a human should work on adults too. I told my wife about this and she was just like, no. Let's just try it out. How do we know? Every time I make a cool breast milk joke, it's met with like a, why did I marry a two-year-old child look? I'm so disappointed that I married you. I'm like, yeah, but I could get stronger.

She's like, no, that's for the baby like why do you want breast milk i'm like well i don't know if i actually do but in theory it sounds like i want it well it's basically steroids yeah you're growing a human she should share that with you yeah i agree she's like it's for the baby. You're a child. I'm a large child. So if you were to, if we zoom out real quick, if you were to say what are the top three, top five fundamental principles in nutrition that you follow, what would you say those are? What are the big concepts? Protein. Protein and healthy fat and um my body type like i like i said i've learned

so i guess it all kind of is it has to be told in a little bit better of a story than just here are the things um so i for the longest time and training and you know this was like teenager years to early 20s and i loved college like i got really strong in college because you could go into the cafeteria and just eat everything and it was impossible not like grilled cheese day and we would just get like a stack of grilled cheeses and it was like probably the most unhealthy thing you could ever put into your body but because you were 20 years old everything just turned into muscle you were just constantly growing and i quickly realized like

that was not a very healthy option once i got out and it was like i got out of school and one i couldn't eat like 12 grilled cheeses anymore um and you start to learn a little bit about just kind of how macro nutrients play a role in the thing so um i did the paleo thing for a long time i really tried hard but i was training so much so i would literally take like uh the one pound packet of ground beef cut the wrapper open and turn it over onto a foreman grill three pieces of cheese a package of guacamole and that was like the paleo diet a one pound burger it's like three times a day dang it was i mean i was just trying to just i mean everything was about putting on as much weight to be as strong as possible and um i was actually like in the gym and the whole gym would reek like

fucking cheeseburger which is so gross people be like working out at lunch like guys we can't come to a gym where it smells like a fourth of july barbecue every day this is disgusting um but yeah that was that was like i in order to i wish i had known that carbohydrates weren't going to kill me but when the paleo diet came out, so much of the research was done in, like, a clinical, like, cancer, you know, like, not a performance setting, but in a, like, diabetes, cancer research type setting. And I think it's really healthy for a lot of people that, like, get rid of the shitty carbs in your life, maybe eat some more vegetables. Maybe a little bit better just carbohydrate sources, starchier carbs.

I was taking that into a performance setting. And it was just, in order just to even get the calories, you had to eat that much meat and that much fat. And it was just, it was totally unsustainable um once i got out of like the performance setting like getting into more like the principles that i'm trying to follow now um is really just as clean of sources of meat as possible so if i can eggs are a weird one because if you go to costco and you're eating 16 eggs a day those eggs are terrifying you ever think about like the total number of chickens that are in a costco at any given time terrifying that one pallet of five dozen eggs is like 30 000 chickens i feel like

it's a frightening number like where are those chickens i read something the other day that i was listening to something that said something like 160 million chickens a week that we eat in the united states something insane i was like holy where are they no i've never been to those places that's so foul foul look you. That was your dad joke. So, yeah, I guess the principles that I really follow right now, the number one thing that I really focus on, like we just talked about, is gut health. Like I try to get some probiotics in every day. If I wake up and can take some of those, awesome. If I can get some garlic in my,

even just eating a piece of a clove of garlic, just anything that can really just start to produce some quality gut flora just makes me feel better, even if it's a placebo effect. I don't really know what's going on, but I think there's some real truth to that. That's another thing that I put as an add-on to my meals is pickled garlic yeah i'll just put like like three or four like whole cloves of garlic onto a meal adds a ton of flavor tastes fantastic yeah and it's really good for you yeah uh you know what's interesting about when you eat a thing of garlic like i used to and sometimes i

still do if it's around but you can eat the garlic and please have some water near you because that's a really spicy thing. As soon as you bite into that, you can feel it through your nose. Everything is going to clear up really quick. But you can feel your stomach digest that. And whatever that feeling is in your mouth is also going on in your stomach. And you can feel like digesting all of that stuff. It's a really strange feeling. As the garlic is burning a hole in your stomach and you can feel like digesting all of that stuff it's a really strange feeling um as the garlic's burning a hole in your stomach yeah this feels awesome i don't know if this is healthy or not come on the yeah if the gut bacteria are running the show they're

telling you something's happening down there they're like this is way too spicy for me right now um making sure i get enough protein every day. So that's probably somewhere around 150 to 200 grams of protein. Um, the carbohydrate source that I'm trying to, I really try to eat all the carbohydrates right around, um, my workout, whatever that is for the day, even if it's, it's going for a long run. If there is a weightlifting session, which is two to three days a week, I can eat as much carbohydrate as I'd like right after that. And then quality fat sources.

I think quality fat sources is a really important one for people. Fat can get weird really quickly. What do you eat for quality fat sources? Lots of avocados, lots of nut butters, almond butters, spoonfuls of them, and then whatever's in the meat, like quality meat. If you can eat quality meats, I think you're going to get a huge leg up on just quality fat sources. I don't think that I'm buying the highest quality eggs, but just the fact that I'm eating a lot of eggs.

I mean, if I'm eating 16 eggs a day, that's like two meals of just eggs and avocado usually. Dude, if you're not, do you eat Kerrygold butter? Yeah. Do you eat it like it's in the package and then you open the package you should take a bite right out of the butter no i don't typically eat it like it's like it's an apple i eat it like it's a popsicle oh really yeah like um i'll just yeah like that's like the majority i would say say, of stuff that just makes me actually feel better. If I'm trying to put the grease, whatever pan it is, the Kerrygold butter is going in there.

And then I'm just holding on to the stick of butter. And I'm going to take two to three large bites of butter just straight up. That's usually followed by two to three spoonfuls of some sort of high quality nut butters that are always in the house. And then I'm getting 16 eggs or eight eggs per meal, which you're looking at four whole eggs, four egg whites. And then I think that the big thing that I do that i don't see a lot of people doing i think vegetables are really tough for a lot of people to get because they overthink it like they think they have to cook it or they don't like the taste of them i've really convinced myself that

just bell peppers are delicious and i eat them like apples all day long like i don't need to cook anything i just need four or five bell peppers a day they can get a little pricey because they're like a dollar fifty a piece if you're not getting them on sale yeah um but i just i eat bell peppers throughout the day all day long and it just it kind of balances out that um so that's probably a normal day i mean my meals are really spaced out i try to i think there's some real benefit to trying to let your body just heal all of its processes and all of the organs and all of the muscle tissues and if you're just for me if you're just constantly digesting food it never has the ability to focus on everything else.

Because the processing center is constantly working instead of actually using the energy that it's always processing. Hope you guys are having fun. I hope you laugh with us when you listen to these shows because this is what we like to do. Sometimes I'm going to give you a little insight into what goes on in the world of the podcast life. Doug was staying at my house two weeks ago. We didn't have anything to do. We were having a big meeting. We didn't have any shows planned. But all we like doing is having really elevated conversations.

And the microphones are so crisp that you have to have a really smart and intelligent conversation when you put the microphones on. So what did we do? We went into my garage. We put the microphones on. And we talk about strength conditioning. And didn't even record it. That's crazy, right? We just like this podcasting thing.

We like this strength and conditioning thing so much that we'll just do it and not even record. Yeah, we're nuts. What do you want from us? Make sure you get over to the program vault. We have 12 programs in there now. Barbell shredded is added to the program vault. Increase lean muscle mass, lose body fat. The holy grail of why we're all here. Do the program. The opposite sex will like you a lot more. That's going to increase your breedability. Breedability, I don't know if that's a real word,

but I'm going to increase it, and you're going to do that through Barbell Shredded. Get over at shrugcollective.com forward slash vault 12 programs increase your breedability people shrug collective.com forward slash vault 12 programs 47 a month let's get back to the show i mean i suppose that's the rationale for for time restricted eating yeah just kind of like intermittent fasting it's like if you're only eating for eight out of 24 hours each day yeah you have like a window in which you allow yourself food, then the rest of the time you're essentially fasting every single day in a way.

Earlier we were talking about longevity and a lot of people that live to 100, 110, like cultures that have on average more people that are centenarians that have lived past more people that are centenarians that you know have lived past 100 years old those those places typically as you said earlier are in a bit of a caloric deficit and and then people that are on the other end of that extreme i don't know what it's like for sumo wrestlers but you know nfl players strong men bodybuilders those people typically don't live until they're 90 or 100 years old like it's very common for those people to die at a much earlier age compared to someone who is always kind of eating the bare minimum just to sustain a healthy body weight, and that's about it. You don't have to be frail or ultra thin, but trying to be as big as possible all the time is probably not good for your longevity.

I was asking Daniel Schmockenberger about this, who's a phenomenally intelligent person. So I said, you know, if you, if you have performance goals and it, it matters that you are a certain body weight or that you have a certain amount of muscle mass or that you're,

you know, especially if you want to be as big as possible, like you're an NFL player and you're trying to, you just, you are more likely to win if you are bigger and stronger than other people so it matters a lot so all day every day you are smashing as much food as you can fit in your mouth like you i was told this growing up you eat until you until you feel like you're gonna throw up and they wait for the feeling to go away and then you go do it again i was big to be big i was

always told to eat as much as possible and and i was training a lot and so like you said earlier like it all went to muscle mass. I never got fat. I never had a problem with that. Thank God. But what Daniel said was that to counteract the fact that you're eating so much, that's where fasting comes in. And so, you know, one day a month, you know, take two days and don't eat anything. Drink water or whatever and he was he was saying that that he thinks that that can help mitigate some of those longevity um some of the longevity issues that might stem from being hypercaloric all the time

the uh well yeah i also think that it's it's so cumbersome to have to eat like that so if i was to so you have to also like think like my goals really right now have nothing to do with performance i enjoy performing but i know that if i were to actually think i want to go set like a 10 pound back squat pr that's a terrifying thing to me right now in life like to think that i would have to go sit underneath the squat like underneath a barbell and a squat rack and have to lift that much weight to provide like some sense of like value to my training and to think that i would have to go through like a six month process of getting my body tuned up to be able to go and do a 400 plus pound back squat would be so gnarly to me. I couldn't even imagine mentally getting into that spot.

So the food will never be there. But if I were to have some sort of performance goals, I think my diet would change drastically. I think it would be significantly more fueled by carbohydrates. I would cut down on the fat a lot um i love the fat because it it fills me up it's super dense in calories um like a spoonful of peanut butter is going to deliver so many calories where if i was to eat that much rice it would it would you'd be walking around uncomfortable all the time. And I just can't do that.

Like it just doesn't fit with my life and my body. So I don't necessarily recommend the diet that I am on now. If you are interested in performance goals, especially if you're a CrossFitter, like CrossFitters run into a lot of problems with not having proper macro nutrient profiles. And I think that they should find somebody that understands that stuff. Because I ran into a lot of the burnout stuff by not having the proper macro nutrient breakdown. I think not being on the paleo diet, not having a lot of carbohydrate and quick energy sources was really bad for my body for a very long time. I mean, I was able to perform fine, but just not being educated in kind of fuel sources,

how I didn't eat carbs right after my workouts, and the ability to recover quicker. I just didn't have, like, the full education. I don't think that, like, in my process, it just wasn't there yet. There's a bunch of great macros programs and coaches out there now. We have a bunch of friends that do it, like Alex Macklin, who used to host the podcast. He's doing nutrition coaching where he, as a part of what he does, helps people focus on macros and find the right balance between the three main ones. And then Jason Phillips at IN3 Nutrition,

Laura King, Lindsay Jinks runs Macro Stacks, which is awesome, Dee, Kazu, she runs Working Against Gravity. They do a lot of macro stuff. There's so many great available options. I highly recommend any of those people. You get great results with all of them. They're all fantastic. If you have never done it before i highly recommend for a period of time you weigh and measure your food especially if you don't really know what's

in all your food yeah like if you're not really sure like if you can't look at peanut butter and just like off the top of your head give me a rough percentage of carbs fats and proteins that that's in peanut butter then then or at a minimum say like what's the majority of the calories coming from in this food like if you can't do that just like if it's not obvious if it's like why are you even asking such a stupid question then then you probably should for a period of time weigh and measure your food because what's going to happen is you're going to have to look up what's in the food at every single meal yeah all day long so all day long you're constantly getting feedback and learning what's in your food. And that's a game changer. And so if you've never done that,

do it for like three months. You don't have to weigh and measure your food your whole life, but you will learn a ton about exactly what you're actually eating, how many calories are in something, how many carbs, proteins, fats, fiber, et cetera. And it will change the way you eat probably the rest of your life. Yeah. I think for a long time, I did weigh and measure everything, especially when I was learning like bodybuilding protocols and what, you know, bodybuilding.com was telling me to eat back in the day. You spend so much time to the point where I don't even need to look like one gram of or like a gram of chickens for four or four ounces of protein gets

you what 24 grams of protein per ounce of chicken four to six per ounce depending on the um like you and you you can just look at it you're like that's about 25 grams of protein if you can't do that you have to start learning what a serving size looks like you need to start understanding what a serving size looks like. You need to start understanding what a chicken breast really is. You should be able to break down, like that's 25 grams of protein. And I think sometimes, one thing that is really going to, if you've never done that,

one thing that's going to happen is you're going to realize the amount that you're eating is not enough. Because if you're a 185 pound person and you're trying to get strong nature gave you 185 pound body but to put on that additional 15 pounds to get to 200 pounds and actually be a really strong person you're going to have to eat 200 grams of protein a day and when you start to break that down or maybe even 215 230 grams of protein a day and you're going to it's eating is just as hard as the training and you have to

you're going to be eating half a pound to a pound of meat at every single meal that you go to and that is such an aggressive task especially when you realize if you want to put on weight as well you're going to need to be eating probably like four or five cups of rice a day you're going to need to eat half a loaf of bread every day if that's what your goals are someone was saying that john wellborn used to eat like 10 sweet potatoes a day or something like that yeah he's an enormous human being if you've never stood next to john wellborn you're like oh wow you belong in the nfl and i do not belong you

are a different kind of human being yeah he's an absolute fucking monster and like to to just be that big eating nine sweet potatoes doesn't sound so crazy but but i bet even for him like smashing that much food because that's of course he's eating a bunch of other stuff too that's just sweet potatoes like like to be as big as possible all the time takes a lot of work it's an all-day job to just eat and it's. And it's not pleasant. It's not pleasant at all. If you've been cutting weight or trying to lose weight for a long time, you're like, that sounds awesome. No, no, no.

It's not awesome. It swings the other way. If you've been gaining weight for a long time and you hear about people that only have to eat twice a day, you're like, really? That's amazing. What would I do with the rest of my day? I feel like that's been like the last three years of my life since I stopped training for performance. It's like I realize how little food I need to just maintain. Because you spend 10, 12 years eating as much as possible. And as soon as you start to feel good again, it's like, oh, I got to start eating again.

And try and be at this like extreme calorie caloric you know intake every day and uh you you just get to a point where it's like 2 000 calories to me i can nail that in two meals with eight hours in between of them that's that's like a really easy thing for me so that that like fits my my current just general health and longevity i don't have a ton of time. We're always on the move. And, um, if, if I can eat a thousand calories for dinner,

a lot of that's going to be heavy and fat, or I just eat Kerrygold butter like a popsicle and it's delicious. Uh, I'm not shy about butter at all. I fucking smash butter. Butter's so good. I put it on everything. It's awesome.

It's unbelievable it makes everything taste better yeah i can't think of a thing that i wouldn't want carry gold butter on do other other grass-fed butter sources that i just don't know about or is that just because costco carries it and i can buy massive amounts of it at once i'd imagine there are but i do the same thing i buy carry gold at costco and in bulk and my my three-year-old does the same thing that you do he just like he's and in bulk and my my three-year-old does the same thing that you do he just like he's like want more butter and i just give him like a like a slice off a big piece and it to me he just eats it like it's like a starburst you know when you you know when

you move in with your significant other the first time and it's like here's the thing i've been hiding from you like mine was like i eat butter straight out of the fridge. Like, the door just remains open. I'm just going to grab the butter and just start eating it. The look that she gave me, like, the first time she was like, wait a second,

you are just going to eat the butter? Like, yeah, this is what happens when you move in with somebody that's constantly shoveling food into their face. Like, I'm just eating it like a popsicle. I'm sorry. How often do you drink? I drink maybe three beers a month would be.

I had four last weekend. So that was a huge weekend. That was a huge night out. We had a little celebration last weekend. But, um yeah we went to the batting cages that was gangster dusted off the old uh the the batting cage game i haven't swung a baseball bat in a long time but yeah i had four four drinks last weekend and uh that that's that's an exception. We threw you a surprise party. You got a couple of drinks, but like what's normal. Maybe two a month. Maybe.

Yeah. I drinking sucks. I'd way rather like, honestly, we live out in California. Marijuana is legal and it makes you feel better. You can wake up for work the next day. There's nothing. I think that, um, I really, like, alcohol is just poison. Like, you're putting something in your body, and your body hates it.

It just also happens to have this effect where you turn into a five-year-old child, and anything is possible, which can also lead to a lot of problems if you can't control it. Sure. Yeah. Bar fights and domestic violence are much more common with people that drink a lot of alcohol just i don't think that beer is look i think that uh on on like a on a health level just stay away from it um on a per like for me i drank a lot when i was like thursday friday saturday night i was the king of college. Like I could do, I could drink all day, all night. And it was a disaster. Like try to be the most fun person at

the party every single night of your life is not a success. It's like, it's not a story for success after a while. Um, and, uh, you got to graduate from that at some point, not just graduate from college, but you got to graduate from the party. Yeah. You can take the lessons. And. You got to graduate from that. Yeah. At some point. Not just graduate from college, but you got to graduate from the partying. Yeah. You can take the lessons. Yeah, take the lessons with you. Like, oh, I worked really hard to be good at partying. What else can I work really hard to be good at?

Because partying is a very short time in your life. But, no, I don't drink really at all. I don't really enjoy drinking. The San Diego, like, beer scene out here is pretty cool, I guess, for some people. There's a lot of craft breweries. There's a lot of IPA out here, which is awesome because I love IPAs. I like the IPA game, but I drink so little. My wife, she goes out to work dinners that are really nice with like doctors and surgeons and things

that need, that want fancy stuff. So they buy really nice bottles of wine and nice beers. And they talk about alcohol as if it's like a thing. And I drink so little that anytime we go out and you know, like you have like friends ever that like, they have like their drink. It's like,

Oh, I'm like a scotch person. I don't know what I am. Oh, really? I just always, I literally just default to her. And I'm like, you just order the drink for me so that I don't look like a fucking wimp in front of all of these other men. Even though you're ordering the drink for me. I just have no, I don't pay attention to it.

I would prefer not to drink i would prefer to just have somebody order a cool drink for me i probably will enjoy it a little bit and then i just it's just not a thing for me yeah i'm kind of like i'm just like i am with coffee it's like i rarely make coffee for myself at my house and just, you know, drink it routinely. Same thing with, with alcohol. Like I never drink at home ever. The only time I ever drink is like, if I, you know, like last night I went to an event, it's called Taste of Lucadia, you know, it's like, it's like you walk down the street and there's, there's 45 different shops that you stop or shops like restaurants and bars that you stop into and you get a little like you know taster of wine and then you get like um you know some uh like little little tacos or or beer or whatever like everywhere you go you get

something something a little different so so last night i drank but because i was out at like a fun like event where like that's the thing you're supposed to go out and eat and drink and try all these samples of all this different stuff uh but at home never like yeah i had i had i like apas and i had ipas like i put them in my garage like not even in the fridge like in case i would need them at some point that's like that's like okay now i know i'm going to a super bowl party yeah i'm just gonna put a couple of these in the fridge and take two of them with me that type of thing like but i i don't drink that much compared especially compared to college like you're talking about where i used to just fucking drink my face off all the time see if you could you could win the most like as if there was

like a shortage of beer like i have to drink all of it or there'll be none left um yeah totally viv actually gave me a 12 pack of not a 12 pack like two six packs of like some sort of craft beer that they threw they They threw some event. What was like National Women's Day or something, and they had some big event, and she gave me some beer company, sponsored it for whatever was going on at Aloha, and they had a bunch left over.

She gave it to me. It's sitting in my garage. It'll never get touched unless someone comes over, and then I'll have to pull it out. I hope she's not listening i'm sure it was delicious viv um yeah i just i especially at home like it's there's something about like sitting on the couch and having a beer to me that is not like appealing some people like really enjoy that some people that's like their thing um they have it to like relax um I find it the exact opposite of it makes me feel like shit. It brings me down instead of relaxing.

Yeah, I feel like that's for lack of better options in a lot of cases. I know a lot of people that, mostly people that are married and have kids that are like, I just need a glass of wine at the end of the day or I need a beer. Stereotypically, the woman wants a glass of wine and the guy wants a beer. It's not always like that, but that seems to be a pattern that i've noticed especially in the south like when i was living in memphis but now like you said like living out in california cannabis is legal it's it's all it's all professionally made and dosed yeah where you know exactly what you're going to get and so like as opposed to having a beer if i want to relax i can have like three

milligrams of cannabis which is like nothing yeah it's like the equivalent of like a half a beer or a beer's worth of cannabis where it's like it's barely any altered state whatsoever but like i'm just a little bit more relaxed yeah i can kind of just like chill at the end of the night and that and then i i sleep well i wake up and i feel totally fine um it makes me a little bit hungry which is which is great like the last meal of the day i don't have any bad foods. I don't snack on junk. I eat like a big meal before I go to bed, especially if I'm trying to gain weight, which in the last like six months I put on like 10 pounds.

Thick. Kids thick these days. I did my body fat yesterday, and I put on almost no body fat and put on 10 pounds since July. So that's been – we're shy of a year now. Damn. And I feel way better looking fresh these days dude i don't feel good at like in like the 190s like i'm like 193 you know 192 i'm like god just like i just don't feel the same like when i'm like 200 205 that's where i just

like feel the most normal yeah and i i think uh athletically i perform a lot better too like a jujitsu yeah i i feel much much better than when I'm like 5 or 10 pounds lighter than that. Like 200, 205 is perfect for me. I'm going to go to the bathroom, and then we're going to talk about cheat meals. Let's do it. Okay, okay, now we're ready. Now we're ready. Go for it.

Welcome back to Doug Larson's living room. We're hanging out on Barbell Shrug. Bro show. Talking about nutrition. It's pretty sweet. We left and we were just discussing how awesome this California residence is. We've got legal marijuana out here and we like that a little bit better than booze. But you want to know what the downside to that to me is sometimes?

What's that? Cheat meals. Yeah. They get a little carried away. Do they? If they don't for me, do they get out of control for you at your house? What do you do for cheat meals in general? Do you even think of things like this anymore?

I don't have cheat meals at home ever. There's nothing to cheat with, really. Yeah. Again, the only time that I have a cheat meal is when it's, like, provided for me. I never order. You don't have, like, a Saturday night, just, like, let's get after some sugar?

No. Oh, you're so mature. How are you so mature? You made it 34 years, and you're just a, you're amazing. I mean, I wasn't always like that. You're a perfect human being. I have,

I have crossed over in a lot of ways where like, I just, I simply don't want most of that stuff. Like last night when I was at that taste Lucadia thing and someone offered me a brownie, I was like, I was like, I was like, I will taste it,

but I don't, but like I taste it and I'm like, fuck, I don't want this. And like, I was sitting there, the person who made it was like standing right in front of me and I was thinking, how can I spit this out

without this person like being offended and brownies aren't really my thing so that's unique but like you had your surprise party here a little while back and Ashton your wife brought some pizza and I was like I was like I'm gonna taste this

pizza and so I had a piece of pizza and I got done and I was like that was awful taste this pizza and so I had a piece of pizza and I got done I was like I was like that was awful what the fuck oh you didn't like it yeah well I mean it was a good pizza but I didn't like it yeah it's different it's like it did kind of taste good but actually didn't taste that good like I genuinely I genuinely like eating you know like steak and in brussels sprouts yeah in in asparagus and and avocado and nuts yeah i like eating really good food and and i know enough about cooking to make it taste good where when i eat something that is is not a highly nutritious meal yeah um i don't enjoy it yeah i

don't enjoy in the moment i don't enjoy it after the fact like i almost every time i ever do it i regret it and so it's it's kind of like drinking too much you get a hangover you're like i'm never drinking again and then like six months later like you kind of forget and then then maybe you do it again yeah i don't do that anymore but i used to do that like in college i'd be like oh my god like i'm cutting back and then then i end up like having like a you know birthday party or or bachelor party or new year's or like some like big event where like people are drinking a lot and then i'd take it too far and then i'd be hung over and i'd be like i'm never doing that again and it happened like twice a year once twice a year and i feel like that's where i'm at with with food right now where it's like i'll i'll take like a bite of a

piece of pizza and be like chewing it and being like what the fuck is wrong with me and like i've i've spit it out before i've been like man i don't want that at all yeah i just don't want it anymore yeah well i'm not sure how i got to that point but i've definitely crossed over where it just doesn't doesn't really occur to me um that said like a cheap meal man that never happens yeah like a whole meal that that just that just never happens but but occasionally i will taste something yeah i'm actually really good about that like if i want to taste something i just taste it but like last night with the brownie it's like i had one bite of brownie and then i was done yeah um if someone has like some candies or something like if i'm leaving the dentist office and they have like they have like you know spearmint gum

like just like in a little in a little bowl or something like that like the place i get my haircut they have like little candies like right where you check or something like that. Or like the place I get my hair cut, they have like little candies like right where you check out and like I'll reach inside and be like, oh wow, you know, an hour later. And I'll just like eat an hour later on the way to my car. Sugar's like an experience thing.

You're like, cool. Yeah. That was worthless, but cool. I like those fruity candies, but they taste really good. But the thing that I actually like about the best is that, you know, if I'm, if I'm, if I just eat a meal, I probably won't have that.

But if I'm really hungry, it kind of satisfies the, hey, I got some flavor in my mouth. But at the same time, it's like five calories. The damage being done is not a meal's worth of damage. It's not 500 calories or 1,000 calories. It's like 5, 10, maybe 20 calories. It's like four grams of sugar. And you get a little taste in your mouth, and then it's like it's like 5 10 maybe 20 calories it's like four four grams of sugar and you get a little taste in your mouth and then it's no big deal so just the quantity of it just doesn't have as big of an effect as someone who like i love cheesecake and so so i get a cheesecake

you know a slice or two of cheesecake and it's like a thousand calories yeah um you know every friday night i am not even close to the level of maturity that you are when it comes to sugar. I have to have it out of my house or it will get eaten. So Saturday night. So does Marcy bake? No. Ashton loves baking. No.

It's like a thing. She really enjoys doing it. So even like these like cheat meals, whatever the hell you want to call them. If I'm eating real food, I never really eat. Like the pizza thing is maybe like once a month I'll go have like a slice of pizza. Just, it's literally like an experience thing where I'm like, oh, that was delicious. Cool.

Next thing. Like, and it's usually because somebody wants to have a piece of pizza like that's like oh let's go grab a slice of pizza and you're like i don't really do that but okay i'll go like right um yeah kind of like for the party last week like there's two large pizzas and it's like okay we're eating pizza today. But, dude, I'm a huge fan of ice cream. Oh, really? Ice cream is like my jam. I will eat a lot of ice cream on a Saturday night.

But anything else, I have no real interest in. And even the ice cream that I eat is like, it's purely like vanilla ice cream with five ingredients. Like it's the most bland, normal. And what I've actually really noticed as I've gotten older, I feel like all these things like kind of like come to fruition. As you get older, you start to recognize like, oh shit, like that makes me feel like crap.

I didn't know that I was feeling like crap for so long. And what I've really noticed is that my allergies from eating ice cream like that night my whole face will like like my nose will get clogged up i'll like sneeze and it's like did i just start developing like an intolerance to milk products right which is strange because i drank whole milk from like a farm growing up all the time. I probably drank half a gallon of milk. We would have it delivered to my house. So I've had milk in my diet all of my life.

But then you go and ice cream is phenomenal. But I've noticed that I actually start to get sick very quickly now. And it's made me really think about, is this really something that I actually start to get sick very quickly now. And it's made me like really think about, is this really something that I actually enjoy? Or is this just something that I do because it's a habit that every Saturday night I like watch a movie and then I go and eat some ice cream. But yeah, it's really interesting. I'm getting to a point where it's very similar to what you're talking about of like, I just want to feel good. That stuff doesn't make me feel a point where it's very similar to what you're talking about. I just want to feel good. That stuff doesn't make me feel good, and I don't need it to be a part of my life. You can totally compartmentalize, like, oh, that's shitty food.

I can go eat that if I'd like, but most of the time I don't really want to. There's no real benefit to it. It doesn't really provide that much value. It's a very short-term high that you get or whatever it is. But look, you want to go and pop 15 milligrams of some delicious, humble-grown chocolate on your Saturday night, a pint of ice cream goes a long way. I bet it does.

It turns into an experience yeah i i have found the cheat meal thing to really just not be something that is like that cool to me anymore like the brownie thing it really bothers me like you look at like if you were to go like buy a cake or something like at riley something, like it was Riley's birthday we were at. That big blue cake you guys got? As an adult. Oh, my gosh. That thing's terrifying.

Like what is in that? Like how did that stuff get blue? It's not that it's not delicious. It's not that I don't like know that it would probably taste really good. But now that I have this like understanding of nutrition and food and like how did that thing get blue why is it smeared on their faces and it's going to take a week to get it's like am i just eating like die like what what you know all of it tastes delicious i'm sure it's fantastic if i was like really into interested in eating delicious cheat meals i could probably eat a

whole lot of that cake but even the like breading and all the stuff there's just so many weird ingredients you know you're not gonna you're just eating preservatives you don't know what's what's what's in there and i think that maybe that's like one of the biggest things that's happened is like i just want to know what the hell is going into my body more than ever now a big part for me too is that it's not necessarily that the i think the food is so bad for me specifically but it's like if i fill up on something that's that's not good for me if i fill up on pizza then i miss the opportunity the opportunity to eat the good meal yeah so i think the opportunity cost is is a big part that that i'm always considering it's like it's not that i think the piece of pizza is gonna fucking kill me or make me fat so that

it's that all the high quality nutrients that i would have gotten from eating a balanced meal of of you know protein healthy fats veggies fiber etc i missed out on getting all that because i filled up on something that didn't have any of it yeah it is a lot like the alcohol thing where it's like when you're in college it's like i'll have 20 of those like i don't need 20 beers for anything that's the stupidest thing so it's like you start to bring it back it's like well how much do i really want to feel like i'm completely out of control of my own actions or like if do i is like is one beer really going to do anything because you're kind of drinking for some result and then all of a sudden it's like i just don't need that feeling i don't need any of the whatever the result is of that so who gives a shit and it's the same way

with sugar it's like over time it's like do i really want to chase this like whatever high comes from eating a bunch of brownies? Probably not. I just feel like shit at the end. The feeling like shit is way worse than how whatever the high is. So you can't have one without the other. So you might as well just not have as much of any of it. I think understanding how to cook is super important a lot of people they

might know what food is good for them yeah but they don't know how to make it or how to flavor it put a bunch of eggs in a pan get after it yeah i mean there's there's many different ways to go about it there's there's like the super super simple easy things like all you do is eat hard boiled eggs yeah uh and then and there's other things where if you're not very good at eating vegetables as an example making it where you have to take them out of the meal yeah rather than add them into the meal is really valuable because you're less likely to take them out than you are to add them in and so if you make like a frittata or something like that and it has you know it has a bunch of veggies got onions and bell peppers and and mushrooms and broccoli and then you you know frittata is basically like an egg

casserole kind of without a crust on it if you don't know what frittata is delicious they're totally awesome but you know it's served to you as a slice and all the veggies are baked into the eggs in this case so all you need to do is take a slice of this one thing, put it on your plate, and it has everything that you need in it. As opposed to if you make a bunch of eggs in the morning, what are the chances that you're going to proactively go seek out a bunch of veggies and add them to your plate? You could do it, but you're much I and much less likely to do that than I am if I just made a frittata and it all comes as a part of the same, the same one product. Same like if you make a bunch of like, you know, soups or stews or chilies or, or casseroles. Like I like making things where it's like one comprehensive thing. All I have to do is scoop the one thing, just take the soup, put it in a bowl, heat up the soup and eat the soup. And then the meat, the veggies, potentially some type of starch. If you

put rice or quinoa or something in your soup or whatever else, it's all in there. And then you can still add some nuts and whatever toppings you want, depending on what the meal is, but making things in bulk that have everything I want that way, when I'm, I show up, you know, after, you know, not eating for a while, I get home, I show up, you know, after, you know, not eating for a while, I get home, I'm hungry, I'm tired. I just want to eat something real quick and go to bed. As an example, um, I don't have to like piece together a meal, you know, where's my meats, where's my veggies, are they cooked? Do I need to chop them? Et cetera. Like having to just grab one thing, scoop it into a bowl, heat it up and eat it. And everything's already there works for me much better than,

than having to like have the willpower and the, and like the drive to make a meal from scratch every single time. I love that you talk about heating it up. The majority of the time I don't even heat it. Yeah. It just goes in the mouth. Eat with the refrigerator door open. Yeah.

Just from the Tupperware directly into my mouth um I fall into that pattern sometimes I think it's the best and that's another time in which Ashton looks at me and she's like why are you a five-year-old heat the stuff put it on a plate like I'm busy I got stuff to do just yeah it's like I just want the calories so I can go back to doing what I was doing. But, dude, you also, though, like you spent a lot of time. I can't remember what the name of the show was we were talking about. We were meeting with Organifi the other day, and you were talking about it with Susan.

What show was it where you learned how to cook? Oh, not our show. Yeah, Alton Brown used to have a show called good eats yeah that show was totally awesome if you've never seen it before like he had like 15 seasons or something like that on the food network where uh in a very entertaining you know it's not like a regular cooking show where it's like a camera just is looking at two people behind behind a you know a kitchen island and they're just like telling you how to cook food. It's, it's much more of an experience than, than that where each episode is about a different type of food.

So say the food is about rice. And so he'll, he'll give you like the whole history of rice and he'll talk about all the science behind rice and like, you know, nutritionally what, what's in it, you know,

how much, how much amylose and how much, how compared to how much amylopectin and like short grain rice have a different variation of those two different types of starches and how does that affect how you know those different types of rices are used used for different types of meals you know you can make sticky rice with short grain rice because it has different types of starch in it compared to like super long grain you know other types of rice so um and then once you have like the history and the science behind it then

he talks about okay here's a couple different rice dishes we can make and then once you have like the history and the science behind it, then he talks about, okay, here's a couple of different rice dishes we can make. And then he'll show you how to make a couple of different dishes with, with, you know, the rice that you just learned about where you have the background and the science behind. And so, uh, that was, that was a really interesting, fun show, uh, that taught me a lot about how to cook and what was in, in my foods. And I was of course studying nutrition in a variety of other ways. Um, I had, I had a strength coach who, who would make me dinner after we lifted weights and he would teach me what was in all the food um you know i went to i got a new you know minor in nutrition and yeah in undergrad and

was always very interested in in learning about nutrition since i was so into training i took a bunch of clinical nutrition courses in graduate school as my electives just for fun just because I thought it was just super cool to learn about cellular nutrition and all the components thereof. And it's just always been something that I have been interested in. So I just do it for fun to learn more and more about how to optimize my own health and my performance. Yeah. I never got into that. I really never had like a such a formal background and understanding all this stuff it's always been such trial and error we talked about

a little bit on like when we were talking about our training history is like man it was always just like eat as much as possible there was never like a science behind it to me um and now i think all that stuff just like carries forward to me where it's like I just need to eat. I don't need it to taste great. I don't need it to be like the most beautiful looking thing. Most of the time I eat, it's really not an attractive looking thing on my plate. And it's just calories to me. But one of the questions we get a lot um and it always comes anytime we pop

on like instagram and people are always asking like what protein bars do you guys eat what do you recommend for protein powder they always are looking for like some answer and like weight gainers um did you ever do any of that stuff oh yeah did you um i mean protein powders certainly i still i still have a some type of a protein, sugar supplement drink, peri-workout drinking it while I'm training. I typically have 40 grams of protein, probably 40 grams of carbs, like a one-to-one ratio, 3 to 5 grams of creatine, 3 to 5 grams of beta-alanine. I'll take that to my workout.

I'll just drink it usually during the first half of the training session, especially if I'm in a Metcon. I try to drink before the Metcon starts. But I've been doing it for so long that it doesn't bother me at all. It never makes me feel weird or pukey or anything like that like it does for some people. So, yeah, I've done protein powders my whole life, like weight gainers specifically. I remember ordering some weight gainer one time. I got like these two buckets.

Five-gallon bucket. They come in a bucket. Yeah. You're literally buying paint. Yeah. After looking at the ingredients, which I didn't do ahead of time. This was like 15 years ago or more. There was no science for this stuff. Looking at it with my strength coach, I was just like –

I don't think actually – I bought them from a friend who was like, oh, I'm not going to use these. And then I, so I took them off his hands for super cheap. And then once I actually

dug into it with my strength coach, he was like, you don't want to eat that shit. And I was like, oh, okay. I guess that was like late high school.

And so, yeah, I bought something like that before, but I never really got into it. More like the gallon of milk a day type thing was more, was what I was advised to do much more than taking a bunch of pills, powders, and potions, so to speak. But I think there's some value in some of these supplements. But again, until your nutrition is on point, your recovery is on point, you're sleeping a lot, you have a solid training program, of course, supplements, they don't really need to be a big part of the conversation you know if you want to take the basics like have a workout drink

creatine and beta-alanine that i've mentioned multiple times now you know they have good efficacy behind behind those three to five grams you know depending who you are um but other than that you don't need to take a whole lot of stuff yeah um vitamin d and fish oil are pretty standard these days for most people i still take those things um but you don't you don't need yeah necessarily any of these things like you need to to eat better and you need to get enough sleep and you need to fucking train hard yeah i never well i say never i have i don't think i've ever bought like the the five pound bag of protein yeah and finished it like i'll maybe get through half of it.

And then it just becomes too cumbersome for me to be thinking about like, where's the shaker bottle? Do I have my protein? Am I going to like, it just, I struggle with the consistency of that stuff so badly. And I've never, ever been able to like a protein bar.

The majority of them are just candy bars with protein powder packed into them. They're really gross. Well, they might taste delicious, but they're really like not good for you. But I've always, I've never been able to be consistent with that stuff ever. And it actually is like a struggle for me sometimes when people ask for nutrition advice. Because I'm like, you know what to eat. Like, eat a vegetable. Eat enough meat to sustain your training.

And if you're going to train hard, like, eat more carbohydrates. What's so challenging about all this? I feel like a lot of people are looking for this like if you get the perfect weight gainer you're not going to have to work hard in the gym like no you're probably just going to get fat like you don't need all of this stuff to go along with it you just need quality food quality sleep and a program that's that's gonna but people people look for the stuff um what when um one of the the ideas that i do have and i wish that i was able to be more consistent sometimes with some supplements is i you know i buy into this kind of methodology with business with a lot of things in life um just like personal

development things but if you're able to be consistent, even if it's like the smallest little thing, so if you're taking creatine, and maybe you're not like, if I was to take just a little bit of creatine each day, and it's been proven that it helps with brain function, it helps with recovery, it helps with muscle growth, all kinds of fun stuff. But if you were consistent with it, it probably isn't going to make like a 10% jump in your performance. But if you're getting maybe half a percent a month, a little bit of help each day, how long does it take before those little half percents add up to the 10%?

And I've never really been able to be consistent enough with supplements to ever know where I would be if I was consistent with them. And I don't know if it really matters enough to me to add that level of like stress or need for the stuff into my life. Like with business, it matters a lot to me because it could be like setting yourself half a percent away from the field and knowing exactly what you're working on makes a huge difference um i guess it's kind of like picking your battles but um do you how like how much do you think that people need to focus on i know the training and nutrition all that stuff but um i don't i don't know is is there some sort of time frame that people should be looking at for, like, if you're going to do this, stick it out for a year.

Stick it out for a 12-month program or a 12-week program. What is exactly, and there is no exactly, but how should people start to manage what supplements they are taking? I'd say it depends on the goal of the supplement and how you can potentially see if it's doing anything. So if you're taking creatine, you've never taken it before, and you do take it, and all of a sudden you put on, you know, two, three, four, five pounds over eight weeks, and you hit, you know, PRs on whatever, you know, or you, you know, hit a rep max. That used to be a three rep max.

Now it's a four rep max or a five rep max well okay well maybe it's doing something like depending on you know how often you've hit prs before that assuming you don't you didn't train change all these other components of your of your program you know you didn't get on a new program and you didn't start sleeping more and you start eating better and if you can you know convince yourself that you've isolated this one variable and so it's the thing that's actually providing the causation, so to speak, that's causing the improvement that you were seeking, then that thing might have worked for you. Because supplements don't work for everybody. If we say creatine works, really kind of what we're saying is that we tested a bunch of people on one very specific thing. Say it was 40-meter sprint times, 40-yard dash times.

And on average, people that took creatine got a little bit faster. But out of the 20 people that were tested or however many people, 10 people got faster, 5 people stayed the same, and 5 people didn't get faster. But on average, people got faster, and so we say that it works. And some people might have gotten slower and there there might be other reasons for that that have nothing to do with the creatine but you know we're looking at the average but you might be at the extremes of that bell curve one direction or another and so but you could be a total non-responder or you could respond amazingly well and that was something where

um we were talking with bradley martin uh a little while back and and uh they're in the bodybuilding scene and him and uh one of his business partners were talking about you know professional bodybuilders the guys that that do really well they're the guys that you know genetically they respond really well to the training and they respond really well to the drugs yeah like so it's not just that they train hard and they're doing the right the right drugs for the sport you know taking you got to take all the steroids if you want to be a pro bodybuilder it's just a part of what they do yeah but you have to you have to genetically respond very well to those things as well like you have to already be someone who's you know has good symmetry and and you're pretty lean but you

can put on muscle mass well but then you know if you respond to the drugs in a way that other people don't respond to the drugs and you just fucking blow up then number one you don't need as much as other people so you don't have to just you know constantly be flooding yourself with excessive amounts of of all the things that they're taking uh which is good for for their longevity and then and then also you know you you can just you can just get the biggest cause you got the highest sensitivity. So, uh, that's something that I hadn't,

I hadn't considered in the same way that I, that I have since, uh, being a part of that conversation. I've never done steroids. Do some steroids. I'd like to one day. Don't do it.

I mean, I don't need to do them now in my life, but I think it would be such an interesting thing. Like I, I feel like I'm one of those people that my body adapts really well to whatever like i would not be good at steroids for a long time i would get a lot of benefit early and then my body would like any type of medicine or supplements i've ever taken i felt like i got like a really good initial response and then my body stabilizes really quickly.

I don't think I'd be a good professional bodybuilder because I would just, I would be totally, if I took steroids, I would be so like psychologically addicted. Yeah. I would never want to stop. Yeah. I'd be like, this is amazing. I'm going to keep doing this forever. And if I stopped, I'd like see all my, all my gains like go away.

And I'd be like, I'd be like so sad I'd be like this is bullshit I'm getting back on and I know that I would want to do that so I just fucking stay away from it but there are some other drugs that I've thought that about but not steroids every once in a while someone who totally doesn't know what they're talking about like says like oh you do steroids or something like that and I'm looking at him like are you serious like yeah like have you seen people that do steroids have you seen me i'm 5 11 200 pounds like if this is all i got from doing steroids i want my fucking money back because they were not very good bullshit this steroid thing is a lie um you know i i think that so my my old partner at the gym brian is a pretty

shredded dude and a lot larger but he started lifting when he was 14 and just has the genetics to be larger and is more shredded than the majority of people like and he used to get that all the time when we're in college like are you on steroids it's like no you just don't know strong people like you don't surround yourself i think that anybody that thinks stuff like that is always living in like, it's like, well, you must be on steroids because everyone in my corporate office and people that sit in cubicles all day does not look like you. You're on drugs. It's like,

well, if you lived in my bubble, you would realize like I'm the weakest. I don't like everyone else is bigger than me. I think that was one of the things when I, I used to show up to CrossFit competitions and these people would be like, like, I'm not shredded guy and like i'd show up and there'd just be like 12 packs and just these like giant monsters and i'd be like how am i gonna fitness against these

people how in the world am i ever going to beat somebody that looks like that in anything. And that's when you realize genetics plays a massive role in stuff like that. And yeah, nutrition is cool, but a lot of those guys can put whatever trash they want into their body and they're just going to be shredded. LeBron James is going to look like LeBron James even though he spends a million dollars a year on his body. They're freaks. And there's a lot of freaks in the world i think that's one thing also too like growing up in the gym you realize like you start to see all the shredded people it's not like like when we started it was

just the people in the magazines and you were like i gotta do what they do to look like that and then you are around it all the time you're like oh there's just like they're just like there's some people are like genetically gifted to dunk and shoot three pointers. Some people are genetically gifted to be able to look fucking yoked. And it just is. Those ones just happen to get a lot of attention as some people are on the juice.

Some people are not, but there's a lot of people that are just gigantic human beings. Like talking about Sina earlier, there's literally a wall of all the drug tests that he's passed over the last 16 years like the paper they're signed by whatever agency does all the stuff he's just a monster you shake his hand and his fingers are like kielbasa fucking sausages he is a gigantic human being like you can just like look at people's wrist size and try and touch and i'm one of those people like my finger and my thumb like barely touch you're not touching your fingers when you feel his wrist like his bone density is different he is a different human being

um you don't have to be on steroids to look like that some people are just born with the ability to put on like bovine cow looking muscles but when i was with the carlotta rockies the the big league head strength coach was there was a guy running by just like you know just going for a jog some random person and uh but you could tell he was like like a legit distance runner yeah he wasn't he wasn't he was some random person to the baseball team but you could tell this guy like runs a lot yeah he was he was running well. He was running fast. And he looked like an Olympian, 1,600-meter runner, that type of guy. And the head strength coach goes, why is that guy running?

And people are like, you trying to get in shape, trying to burn body fat? Given all these reasons, he goes, goes no he's running because he can right just like these guys who are pitchers for the carl ron rockies they're pitchers because they can yeah like they they just woke up one day and they could throw 95 they just can yeah like they and of course they work really hard and they work on it and they're they're always trying to perfect their craft but the same guy that can wake up and throw a 95 can't necessarily, you know, wake up and do an Iron Cross. Yeah. Like those are different types of people.

And the guy that can do an Iron Cross, even if he worked his whole fucking life, as hard as he could, did everything right, he probably couldn't be an NFL tackle. Did you ever read – He's a different type of person. Did you ever read – Oh, man. Sports Gene. Yes.

Yep. So good. Sports Gene. Yes. So good. When they talk about the 10,000-hour rule, because I think the 10,000-hour rule is like 85% true. Like you can become very good at something if you practice the skills for 10,000 hours, 10 years dedicated practice. But then they have the guy, the high jumper, just happens to have a really tight achilles

tendon and it's like a spring inside his calf right you're like oh so really they're legitimately like they created sports like when i like they created sports to accentuate the people that were born a specific way to be the best at the thing that they were born to do. Like I was backstage at a Jason Aldean concert. Damn, that was such a like, I'm cool comment right there. And I got to go into,

you know, that like, I don't know. If you go backstage and like, you're at the party, like after concert party, there's like a room where like, I imagine if you were like, you're at the party, the after-concert party, there's a room where I imagine if you were in a rock band, there's one of these rooms where all the weird shit goes on after.

Sure. I was in one of those rooms. And I looked over and Dan Henderson was in the room. Okay. And I didn't know who Dan Henderson was at the time. Yeah, yeah. the room and i didn't know who dan henderson was at the time yeah but um i didn't need to know who dan henderson was to know that he was the baddest motherfucker on the planet like you do not if you punched him in the face you would hurt your wrist so bad and then he would just kill you and it was

like three four weeks before he dropped that flying elbow on that dude and it was the most terrifying thing i'd ever seen yeah like i watch that sometimes i'm like oh my god like i shared air with that guy in a very small room but like the from the bone density and his face was so intense to me like everything about his face was flattened so that it would legitimately hurt your hand really bad to be like punching a steel wall and i had never been in a room with somebody who was designed to get punched in the face. Right. And, like, not just get punched in the face, but, like, he had turned his face into a weapon. Like, if your fist wasn't prepared to hit that steel wall, you were going to hurt yourself by punching him.

Uh-huh. And it was, like, it was so obvious. It was, like, I just literally turned to Ashton and I was like, you see that guy? That is like what a trained killer looks like. Like that guy is on this planet to hurt people. And he's probably had to go through a lot of training to like make this full package to be the best in the world at hurting people. But genetically, his bone density, the way his face is shaped the flatness like every piece of like you could just look at him and you were like oh my god they have

molded this human being to like take a baseball bat to his face and not feel it like it was unbelievable just what had happened to his body. Or you look at me and it's like, oh, we could punch Anders in the jaw and he would just fall. We know it. He looks so soft. Right. If you don't know who Dan Henderson was, he was a top UFC fighter for a long, long time. Go Google the flying elbow.

Pride as well. Yeah. When he knocked out Michael Bisbing, it was like the most vicious knockoutout ever i remember watching that live like eight years ago or something like that yeah i actually started training mma at his gym if you didn't know that at team quest in portland did you yeah it was uh dan henderson ran a tour matt linlin they all started that gym together robert robert false ran it for a long time and then uh like i trained there back when when the ultimate fighter was just getting started like back in like 2005 uh where Chris Lieben and Nate Quarry and Ed Herman and Chris Wilson and all those guys were the coaches over there

before they got on the show and ended up fighting the UFC and got all famous. It was a dope gym to train at. Yeah. Well, who did we interview the other day? Man, I'm drunk. Dominic Cruz. Dominic Cruz. Like, even, I mean, it might

be because Dan Henderson's such a such, like, a larger person. Right. I don't even, what does Henderson fight at? 205. Well, he bounced back and forth between 205 and 185. Might even be the champ of both of them. So he's probably walking around at, like, two and a quarter. Probably.

Yeah, that's heavy. He's a big boy. And Dominic Cruz probably walks around at, like, 160. Probably. He's a bantamweight quarter probably yeah that's heavy he's a big boy and dominic cruz probably walks around at like 160 probably he's a band of weight champ so that's 135 yeah but i mean you could tell that dominic cruz is like a much craftier less like i don't i don't i don't have to know anything about mma to look at those guys and like you can see dominic cruz is a crafty intelligent fighter dan henderson's going to beat the shit out of you. It is going to be a long afternoon fighting that guy. Like, you may be able to catch Dominic Cruz doing something crafty and get him in a bad position.

And I literally know nothing about the MMA world or fighting. But I know that if you stand in a ring with Dan Henderson, it is going to be a long night. He's going to fight you forever. Has that guy ever been knocked out? I don't remember, actually. I don't know. I would wager to there's no chance.

I don't know what you would have to do to clip that guy in the right spot. So you've hung out with him. Like, you know, you've seen him. He's terrifying looking. He is.

I gotta, I gotta check out his pride belt at one point, like 12 years ago. Yeah. I've, I've never been in a room where I just like looked at Ashton and I was like, whoa, like fucking frightening human being.

Like, let's just not say anything dumb for the rest of the night i literally so i and i knew so he had like a small crossfit gym inside what's the name of his gym it's like dan henderson's gym or something right uh well he was he was a team quest guy for a long time last i last i heard he was doing team quest in temecula like team quest maybe maybe that's what it is yeah whatever it is um But I knew someone that was a trainer at his gym. They had like a little CrossFit side to it or they had some kettlebells or something. He was running CrossFit classes out of there.

The one here in Encinitas? The Sukajews? Temecula. Okay, yeah. Fuck, I forgot what I was going to say. But yeah, they ran. So I didn't really know like who he was at all but i just remember like literally walking in there and seeing that person and just being like whoa that is fucking terrifying that is what a an assassin looks like like you just don't want to be tangled up with that dude oh yeah that's what it was i would so i

like had this like one person connection that i was like okay like slowly reach your hand out to shake his hand like draw a connection make sure he knows that you're on the right side of a good person like what is i wonder what it's like going through your life knowing like you're an mma you could like knowing martial arts at any point like you're a nice human being you talk to people for a living that guy actually fights people for a living it's got to be terrifying going through life and knowing that at any moment you literally like are a professional killer. Like how do you how do those people get through their day? Like road rage is different for them.

Like I feel like there's like this like weird thing that they have to go through because like they're all 25 at one point. And they had like everyone gets tied up in some sort of bar scene everyone gets tied up in alcohol at some point like they have to go through such a weird process of becoming who they are you've been around all these fighters what do they do like are they all the majority of them like i i guess having that power makes you a nicer person as well. Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. Most people getting in fights in public are trying to prove they're tough. Yeah.

And you don't need to prove you're tough if you're a top 10 UFC fighter. Everyone knows. They're watching you on TV. Quote, unquote, everyone knows. But then the people that don't know you, they don't know, but you know. You don't have anything to prove to anybody. So a lot of like the tip-top fighters that i've met like they're super nice they're really humble and they they probably just like chill the situation out in a lot of cases but um but yeah definitely if they ended up in the situation and they somebody crossed the line and

it turned into a fight then yes they would absolutely pummel a regular person. They're going to sleep. It is like LeBron James playing basketball against someone who's never played basketball before. And I think there's this weird thing with guys where guys just think they can fight. And yeah, if you're super athletic and you're really powerful, yeah, you probably can beat the fuck out of somebody.

But if you're going up against a professional fighter that is the difference between playing pickup basketball with lebron james yeah and when you've barely played basketball in your whole life like it's it is not difficult for them to beat you up i've wrestled with people and done jiu-jitsu people and they're like like fought fought with someone who who has no training but but definitely have like grappled full speed with people that are just like, I just want to feel what, like what it's like. And it's almost like you can't grapple with them. You can't even wrestle with them because they fall over before you can finish the move,

that type of thing. And you're like, oh, I was going to do this really cool thing, but then you fell and you tripped basically. It's like, you didn't know how to even maintain position long enough for me to finish the move and so you just kind of collapsed and now I'm laying on top of you. They just don't know what to do.

I remember watching this video where Roger Huerta was at a bar and something happened and he walked over to this guy who was really, really big. Roger Huerta was a very good 155 pound fighter in UFC and he like walked over to this guy who was who was really really big roger huerta was like a a very good 155 pound fighter in ufc and he just like just beat the fuck out of this dude that was way bigger yeah and that guy just had no idea what was coming his way because roger huerta is a fucking machine um yeah i think this whole mma kick yeah we we totally we totally abandoned

our nutrition conversation that's all right um dominic cruz is like one of those people that i think about when i that I think about when I think about situations like this. Like if you ran into Dominic Cruz and you were like thinking you were

some macho, ego, awesome dude and you were like that little guy over there, Dominic Cruz would fuck you up so quick you wouldn't even know.

He would hit you 12 times in the jaw. You'd be laying on the ground and you wouldn't even know what happened to you. Like those people are just they're fucking dope yeah um let's wrap this thing up yeah dude where can people hang out with you do come follow me on instagram my handle is douglas e larson um of course everything

barbell shrugged them all over that yep yeah come to movement-rx.com all of the rehab strength training programs to get you healthy feeling good low back knee shoulder pain make sure you get into itunes download like subscribe tell a friend talk to all of your people about how cool doug larson and i are because we're going on world tour we're going to meet all the people we're going to be a paleo fx i don't know when this is airing but we're going to be a paleo fx we're going to meet all the people. We're going to be at Paleo FX. I don't know when this is airing, but we're going to be at Paleo FX. We're going to be at USA Weightlifting Nationals. We're bringing Colton. We're bringing Viv. The whole crew is coming. It's going to be

badass. Just trying to create a really cool fan experience. You guys can get on the microphone and share a little bit of your life. Come and hang out with us. We're really stoked to meet everybody. We're just getting this party started. We'll be at the CrossFit Games And we're just getting this party started. Yeah. We'll be at the CrossFit Games as well.

CrossFit Games. And more than likely the Spartan World Championships in Tahoe. That'll be super dope. Awesome. And then I was talking with Andy earlier today about going to the NSCA's Combat Sports. Dude, look at this. Seminar at the UFC Performance Institute in Vegas. You guys want to know how to throw in Vegas? Yeah, yeah.

It's at UFC headquarters in Vegas. We went there last year and met with the guy that's the head coach over there that kind of oversees all the performance stuff for the athletes and he's

super happy to have us over there and we can interview anyone, everyone from the UFC that happens to be there. Andy's buddies with Forrest Griffin. I want to get him on

the show. I think he would fucking smash a Wobbleshark episode. That'd be a very fun conversation. I remember watching him on The Ultimate Fighter. I think he would fucking smash a Wobble Shrugged episode. That'd be a very fun conversation. I remember watching him on The Ultimate Fighter.

I think he was on it. Yeah, season one. That was the last one I watched, too. Yeah, we might be in West Palm if things work out to go to the regional down there. So, World Tour,

you're listening to How It Happens. We just come up with cool places and we'll meet you guys there. So, follow along. Yeah. Talk to you guys soon. Come follow along. Yeah. Talk to you guys soon.

Come hang out. Yeah. Later.