Barbell Shrugged - Physiology Friday: [Optimal Bodyweight] How to Live Lean Without Bodyweight Fluctuations w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash and Dan Garner Barbell Shrugged

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: Why maintaining a healthy bodyweight is so hard Why health is the key ingredient to maintaining a healthy weight The myth that you cannot build muscle and lose fat the same time  The importance of feeding your lean body The mental and emotional benefits of maintaining a health weight Connect with our guests: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram Dan Garner on Instagram

Shrugged Family this week on Barbell Shrugged Physiology Friday is back. Today we're going to be talking about how you can live the lean life and why so many people struggle with kind of the big weight fluctuations that happen. They can go on a big diet, they lose 20 pounds, and then all of a sudden the weight starts creeping back up. And all of us like to think that this is just a food specific thing and if we just were able to just eat a lot less for the rest of our lives. But your body is actually significantly more resilient than that and that is what we are going to be digging into today in that once we have optimized the health of our physiology once you're able to really dial in the internal health side of things your body becomes resilient and does not have all of the

fluctuations by reducing inflammation optimizing immune function And this really is like at the heart of what we do of making long-term changes to your physiology so that just eating a high sodium meal or having a big night of ice cream with your family because it's super fun, doesn't mean you have to go and put on 10 pounds, feel like junk for the fall weekend. You can live the lean life,

still enjoy everything that you want to enjoy and build a much more resilient physiology that does not need to be having the the weight fluctuations. As always, friends, if you would like to actually see the practical side of everything that we're talking about on these podcasts every Friday, make sure you get over to rapid health report.com. That is where you can learn more about the program. Schedule a call with me. We'll walk through all things health history, performance goals, lifestyle. That way we can make sure you've got the right labs, the right analysis, the right programming so that you can optimize your health and performance. Get over to rapidhealthreport.com. Friends,

let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, and Dan Garner in the house today. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we'll be talking about, dude, we were hanging out this weekend, and that's when this show came to mind, talking about maintenance calories, and just being at optimal health

so that you don't have to stress over your body weight or physique every single day. Since going through this program, it's been one of the biggest things for me is just like, I feel like I don't think about the scale. I don't think about tracking calories or macros nearly as much as I used to. Yet I just have been like 186, 187 pounds every single day since we started working together. And it's insanely cool not having to worry about things. Um, I'd love to just kick it to you and just get like, why is maintenance calories such an important thing in,

in for people's health? Okay. Um, so I so let's just explain in maintenance calories, because there's probably some people on the podcast are like, hold on, I don't know what maintenance is. My goal right now isn't to maintain, you know, a lot of people don't have that goal. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So like, it's, it's important to distinct that that's a state of energy balance, and not necessarily a state of progression, because nobody comes to me and says, Hey, Coach Garner, man, thank you so much for taking me on. I just want to maintain. I don't really want to do anything. I just want to maintain where I'm currently at. You know, that never happens. So it's important to make the distinction that maintenance represents a state of energy and energy coming in the form of calories. So long

story short, there's basically only three states any physiology can be in. You can be in a hyper caloric state where calories in exceed calories out. So therefore you're going to gain weight. You could be in a state of maintenance where calories in are equal to calories out. So therefore you are going to maintain weight. And then you can be in a hypo caloric state where calories in are less than calories out. So therefore you're going to lose weight. Those are the three energy states that a physiology can be in. There is four plus decades of excellent controlled literature at this point in time that calories regulate body weight, period. So if anybody tells you it's only about insulin or if somebody tells you it's only about,

you know, your carb intake or your fat intake or whatever it is, those people either don't understand science or just have something to tell you, to be frank. If anybody who says calories don't matter, they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about because there's four plus decades. Never once in a controlled study has that not been demonstrated to be the case. These are the

laws of thermodynamics. They're not Dan Garner's laws of the laws of thermodynamics. And I really like actually starting people off at maintenance. Now, I won't always describe it to them as maintenance, because you know, that doesn't always sound sexy. Something that's important when you're working with athletes, it's not what you tell the athletes. It's what they hear. That's like absolutely key because I could go over, say, globulin on a lab for a long time and they could hear that and, you know, like, hey, that sounds kind of important.

But he didn't actually mention baseball performance. He didn't actually mention, you know, how this is going to get my total up. He didn't actually mention how this is going to make me a better hockey player. So I'll always, you know, use some sort of a framework to, okay, well, we're going to be eating in a way that allows you to main gain, or, you know, that there's terminology out there, main gain, or gain tain, no matter which way you want to spin it. You can talk about testosterone in that. You can talk about all kinds of different things in that respect. But I almost always just start people off at maintenance and allow their physiology to create a new level of homeostasis because a lot of people they'll come to you and they've already

got a problem. That's why they're with you to begin with. If they are struggling, losing muscle mass, if they're struggling, gaining muscle mass, or if they're struggling, losing body fat, they already have some type of a problem, which means they have not been in a good state of homeostasis likely for a long time, especially the people who come to me who want labs. Like those are people looking for deep issues to be solved. And they have been all over the map on different diets, different supplements, different things that they're going to do. So I like to put someone in a state of calories in equaling calories out, and then using other things to determine our metrics for

progression at that point. So how do you look in the mirror? What's your energy like on a day to day basis? What are your testosterone levels doing climbing up or down? What are your your numbers in the gym? What are your performance metrics, which you're running looking at all of those things, and they always improve, right? They always improve. And I think so many people kind of just underestimate the power of maintenance and how much progress you can make without having just enormous shifts in body weight gain or body weight loss. Because most people, they don't realize, like what I use most common is a recomposition, which is a way in which you would set someone at maintenance calories, and then they build muscle and drop body fat at the same time.

But they do it in like the most healthy way possible. Because when you enter a state of hypercalorism, you alter your biochemistry dramatically. Like things such as insulin resistance can comechemistry dramatically. Things such as insulin resistance can come into play. Things such as inflammation can come into play. Things such as creating more estrogen can come into play. A lot of these things, depending on how aggressive you are with them, those can change. But then the same opposite happens in hypocalorism. You are going to get an increase in cortisol. You're going to have a reduction in immune system function. You are going to have a reduction in energy and recovery capacity. You can avoid that stuff for a long time by hanging out at maintenance. You can make so

much progress at maintenance. And one thing I've always been big on is keeping as many ACEs in my sleeve as possible. Because if someone comes to me and they want to drop body fat, and I instantly put them at a 30% calorie deficit, and I instantly pull out all the tricks, I instantly do everything. Well, I've kind of put all of my aces on the table for the first program. And then what happens when they plateau? I, you know, at that point, I kind of add options. So I'm huge at, okay, one ace at a time. We're going to ride that wave as long as we can, baby. And then when you plateau, then we'll pull out the next ace. And when you, then we'll maybe pull up. So it gives you this healthy physiology that has finally had an opportunity to achieve homeostasis

while only playing one ace in your pocket. You got 10 more aces. So that you're able to use that right alongside your training periodization, because as each phase comes, you can pull out one more ace. So that for that reason, and for many other reasons that we can get into, I will keep people at maintenance for typically as long as I can. Then that gives us the foundation that we need in order to go forward in a way that allows us to blast through plateaus where we otherwise previously wouldn't have been able to do so. What do you see as the pros and cons to making a big leap to maintenance? Say I'm eating 3,000 calories a day, but my maintenance really is like 2,300. What are the pros and cons of going straight down to 2,300 where you're knocking off 700 calories a day in a single day, just right away, you're doing it instantly versus going

from 3,000 to 28 to 25 to 23, like every week you're making an adjustment versus making the big leap all at once. I don't really see any cons. I really don't. Like that's just from speaking from experience, because when you're at maintenance, having more body fat isn't going to give you more testosterone. In fact, it's probably going to give you less. Having more body fat is also going to be detrimental towards inflammation status. Having more body fat alters your microbi less. Having more body fat is also going to be detrimental towards inflammation status. Having more body fat alters your microbiome. Having more body fat alters thyroid hormone output. So like when someone has been at, say like your example, I think it was like 3,200 to 2,500 or whatever it was, that immediate drop is, it's not technically a deficit. So I'm not going to see the negative consequences

of a deficit until I go below maintenance. But going from surplus to maintenance, I'm probably just going to feel a lot better because my inflammation status, my hormone status, all of these things are still going to be in an excellent state because I'm not in an actual deficit. I'm in a relative deficit compared to what I was, but I'm not in an absolute deficit. And there's a difference between relative deficits and absolute deficits because physiology is probably going to thank you for going back to maintenance if you've been eating 700 more calories than you should for an extended period of time. Not to mention, there is something to be said about creating sensitivity to a stimulus again. So like, just like in training, like if you haven't

done a movement for a while, and then you do it again, and you're sore as heck for the next few days, even if you've been front squatting your whole life, but you leave it out for a few phases, and then you go back to the front squat, you're like, oh man, like this thing banged me up. And that's kind of, there's a way in which you've resensitized your body to the stimulus of that type of movement pattern. And in nutrition, the body has funny ways of doing that too. Because I think when you go back to maintenance after being in a surplus for so long, you're resensitizing yourself to the anabolic effect of a surplus. Because once you stay in a surplus for too long,

that is when these things I'm mentioning like inflammation and insulin resistance actually start working against you. So going back to that maintenance is like a penalty free way. And I say penalty because you're not going to lose muscle mass. Going back to maintenance, you're not going to lose mass, but you are going to resensitize yourself to the effects of a surplus. So I would never kind of crawl back down. That's just my coaching style. It'd be instantaneous. We are to maintenance right now. And then we're going to go right back into your surplus. I'm way more prone to crawl up the surplus rather than crawl down to maintenance. I think crawling up the surplus is smart because it's one ace at a time. I want to get 200 calories

up, 400, 600. And then we kind of do that nice crawl. But when we reach a point of where it doesn't make sense anymore, which is usually like anywhere from three to six months, depending on the person you're working with, then you just jump all the way back down to maintenance, hang out there for four to eight weeks, and then go back to your surplus. And by the way, that's the same thing I do with a diet. If you've been in a deficit for say three months, then I think it's very wise to do four weeks at maintenance before going back into another deficit. It's like the analogy I like to provide people with is if you've been in a deficit for 12 weeks, then you've been swimming really hard. You head underwater for 12 weeks.

You've been going hard. And then maintenance for one month is like coming up for fresh air. You come up before you go back underwater again. And that refeed, that one month allows many important parts of biochemistry that are relevant towards continued progression for you. That's, what's going to actually serve you better is to get out of the deficit and then go back into it. Cause you'll get better results that way. I have a question because I have so many times heard that you could not, you know, lose body fat and gain muscle at the same time.

And even though I've seen that, I mean, I know that I've witnessed that happen. You know, because, I mean, we use, what is it, the DEXA whatever. DEXA scan. Yeah, and so we monitor athletes. So either the DEXA scan is lying or it's happening. So, like, what do you say to the people who say that, you know, that you can't do both at the same time? I'd say, you know, He doesn't say anything to them because they're not in his frame of reference anymore.

Sweet. Yeah. Okay. When you elevate above that conversation, you let them have the conversation. That person may or may not receive a response via DM. Mostly may not. But to be fair and to answer the question, because it is a very important question. A lot of people say you have to choose. You have to choose one or the other. And the person who says you have to choose is probably not a good programmer. Because first of all, I've got a million case studies of people who drop body fat and build muscle at the exact same time. That is very common. And yeah, and you do too. We've said, we see that a lot in coaching, but fine. Okay. Who's ever listening right now and telling us we have to pick one or another.

Okay. So don't even listen to me or mash. Don't even listen to us. Look at the research. There is so many examples of football players and rugby players in certain combines and camps and building muscle, dropping body fat simultaneously and improving performance metrics as well. Things like 40 yard dash and vertical jumps. But there's also a catastrophic amount of research in the military of military guys beating the living hell out of people for four, eight, 10, 12 weeks, and they will drop body fat and build muscle at the same time, by the way, male or female. So even if you don't believe me or mash, which you should, but yeah, even if you don't, uh, this stuff isn't hard to find in research. Like in five minutes on PubMed, you'll find plenty of examples.

I actually did a post on this. I don't know if you guys saw it. It's probably like a month ago now, so it's getting old. But I did a post referencing, I think I brought up like seven studies all in one post that were all building muscle and dropping body fat at the same time. And that's where those things come from, that main gaining or gain tainting. You're staying at the same body weight, but building muscle.

And as you do that, you are able to get leaner at the same time because your total weight hasn't changed, but the composition of your weight has. And that's like, it's real key to get your macros correct there because one kind of easy tool for the listeners to take home is that your calories are going to determine your body weights. Your macronutrients are going to

determine what you look like at that body weight and your micronutrients are going to determine what you feel like at that body weight. I think that's a real important thing for a lot of people to remember because whether you eat crap or not calories in versus calories out largely going to determine what your weight's going to be period we saw you know a lot of people who think they're making the news by dropping body weight on a mcdonald's diet just because they've introduced the calorie deficit like that's like thanks captain obvious sweet man that was awesome we've seen that a million times and people are like, I lost weight on Big Macs. Like, yeah, because you had one a day, you moron. So your calories are going to determine what your

weight is. Your macros are going to determine what you look like at that weight. Because if I had 2000 calories of sugar versus 2000 calories of say like a 33, 33, 33 split of protein, carbs, and fats, those are those, those two athletes are going to look dramatically different for a lot of reasons. And then I say your micronutrients determine how you feel like at that weight. And that's kind of like the number one, the number one bone to pick with a lot of I pure I FYM approaches is because sure, if things fit your macros, absolutely, you'll drop body fat and build muscle. But as time progresses, if you have just been having low nutrient dense foods, your biochemistry is going to start to feel like crap because you're not giving it what it needs to thrive

rather than just survive on this planet of yours. Matt, I was actually super curious because you are in a weight tested sport and the entire, well, it shouldn't say the entire strength community, but my mindset for like 25 years or 20 plus years of lifting weights was I'm off season. So I'm going to eat as much as I possibly can and lift as much as I can. And then I have 12 weeks to go stand on the competition floor, time to get down to competition weight. Do you still have people go through that cycle, or is there a way better way to do that now? Yeah, we're in the Olympic qualifying period now,

so there's no more off-season really until 2024. It will be the next year off. The next off-season is after the Olympics. Yeah, so that's a wrap now. So we're not, we're not going to have that, but I guess, you know,

a weightlifter will get an off season, you know, a say in Olympic, like, like Ryan, someone who was really, you know, determined to make the Olympics and has the ability.

They're only going to have the off season is like, you know, a few months after the Olympics, you know, and some people really mess up by going way too long because you know they take a whole year by the time they come back it's a wrap because somebody somebody was working while they were chilling out so um we don't really have that off season you know we have times i guess that are you know less important but you know it's

important for us to be ready like ryan right now let's say that he was not ready you know, it's important for us to be ready. Like Ryan right now, let's say that he was not ready, you know, in March. It's 2022 and, you know, people will be like, man, you're two and a half years out. Are we? Because, like, had he not done well in March, could have very easily ruined his whole hopes for the Olympics. Yeah. Well, I also think, and I know your whole PhD is, like, kind of on like just

tracking stressors that are influencing performance right um the entire idea of like worrying about your weight can be a variable that you can just eliminate yeah yes and alleviate like that in any time i've ever had to make weight it's always the most stressful thing because I'm trying to cut 10, 12 pounds or whatever it is to get down. I believe I had to get down to like 187 or something like that when I was competing in weightlifting. I don't even know if that still exists. It doesn't, but it was. It was like 187 was my competition weight. weight and instead of focusing on like cleaning up movement or lifting or whatever like training was going on to prepare for competition i always was just like okay i have to go uh

cut all this weight now yeah so how do we do it yeah it's a bad i want them to be i want them to be within a quick striking distance anytime so i want the whole weight cut to take two or three days is where I'm at. Like, I don't want it to be, you know, because here's the thing. If, like, say that we spent, you know, 12 weeks, you know, training at a certain weight and I've watched him lift certain weights a certain way, and then we're saying, okay, now we need to lose 10 to 12 pounds.

I'm not even going to have enough time to make a good decision at the meet because I don't know what those 12 pounds are going to do. They could drastically change his ability to lift. Depending on who you are, are you an efficient athlete or are you not? For example, like Nathan Dameron, it might not affect him at all because he squats 700 pounds. But someone who squats and their clean jerk is relatively the same, it could be devastating.

So I never want to be in that situation. Anyone listening who's a weightlifter, I recommend you don't. Unless you're competing against me, then please do that. And so we'll win, you know. So that's the thing with Ryan. I want to be within a couple-day striking distance, and he is. It takes him about a couple days to, like, cut a little bit, not even a lot of water.

We try to stay within like two percent of of a weight cut so you know i recommend doing that dan what do you think you're the expert though yeah i mean i don't work with a whole lot of weightlifters getting ready for the olympics right so like when it comes to that maintenance and you're about to get the blood work done anyway. Absolutely. Yeah. So, I mean, using maintenance calories is very beneficial for a lot of sports athletes because, um, a lot of times they don't want to go up a weight class or they don't want to add tissue like hockey players, for example. There's a certain element of elusiveness that you lose when you exceed the weight that's proper for your frame.

So everybody has a different playing weight. And like you know, everybody has a different optimal lifting weight. Like depending upon your frame, and people will ask me this, like I'll get a lot of hockey players to say, hey, coach, I'm six foot foot one what should my weight be i'm like man that depends on a lot of factors dude because your playing style comes into play but also just like at what point is your dynamic mobility your elusiveness your ability to absorb and redirect force instantaneously at like these things are metrics that you're actually going to notice in your dry land

training or rather you should notice in your dry land training before it ever comes time for your on ice work. So that kind of filling out your frame is so key. But then once you've filled out your frame, uh, which in a lot of cases you can do in an off season with, uh, after say a few off seasons, whatever your sport's going to be, you can fill out that frame. But then at that point, you do want to maintain. And that, that maintenance process though, doesn't mean the maintenance of progression. That maintenance process does not mean maintenance of progression

because you can still absolutely get stronger. You can get leaner. You can get more mobile. You can improve the IQ towards your sport. At that time, you can improve, like we talked about velocity, um, strength, like if it comes to whatever an athlete needs, if it's going to be their starting strength, strength, speed, speed, strength, um, accelerative strength, all of these, you're never not going to have something to work on. Like I said, it's definitely not about just bulking and cutting, but in a, in a lot of sports, I actually like maintenance all in season. This is like a major application of any coach listening who has, uh, um, an athlete in a, in any type of team sport setting. So if it's going to be football or hockey or whatever, um, in season, I'll keep someone at

maintenance the whole in season. And I do that because during the in season, the number one goal should always be performance. The number one goal is not body composition management. And as a byproduct of the number one goal being performance, that also means your number one goal has to be recovery because you're only going to perform to the degree that you are recovered. So if I'm in an in season, for example, and I want to drop body fat, well, the very fact I'm in a hypocaloric state is already going to reduce my recovery capacity. But the league isn't going to listen and say, Okay, Dan, so you want to diet? Well, we're going to do less practices and less games this week. We're going to adjust our schedule so that you can have

the work capacity to achieve your goals because that's important to us. Actually, you know, some wimpy college kids probably do complain about that. I wouldn't be surprised in that respect. But if you're in a state of hypocalorism, your recovery capacity is down, which means your performance output is going to be down and you're missing the point of the end season. So I don't like dieting during the end season in an absolute sense. But then I don't like surpluses in the end season either. Because in order to benefit from a surplus, your training volume, intensity, and frequency has to reflect that.

Has to come up too. Yes. Exactly. And no in-season program designed appropriately is going to be high volume, intensity, frequency because then you're sacrificing performance. So then you're on a bulking diet, but a suboptimal training frequency. So then you end up just gaining body fat. So if it's diet or surplus in-season, neither of them really makes sense.

So why don't we hang out at maintenance, maximize in-season training, maximize performance output. And then if you really want to chase body composition goal to get to that next performance leap, do that in the off season, because that's when you can do it with no consequence to when the scouts are watching you. Right. Yeah. They're not going to tell you. I was just talking about back to

his analogy to the hockey no enforcers gonna be oh you're cutting right now i won't beat you up i'll wait till you're i'll wait for your face that's fine right right yeah sorry i understand you have less energy right now i'll back off you right now you know for for-season athlete, like a hockey player, who's there, maybe they're not, you know, weighing and measuring their food and calculating their, their calories or their macros. Like, should they basically just be eating as much as they possibly can with no changes in body weight? Would that be like an easy way to figure that out without really like being too science-y about it? Of course. Yeah. So like a real easy way is, is body weight in pounds times 15. That's typically where an athlete's going to lay for their maintenance. Now, of course,

is that going to be something that they're like 14% body fat, 15% body fat, like where, where's the body fat range in that for like a healthy. Yeah. So that's a good distinction. That's assuming a male is less than 15% body fat and a female is less than 24% body fat. So that's a, that I'm glad you, you made that distinction because you know, if you're a 45% body fat, we're not going to do body weight times 15. We're definitely not doing that. But typically most people, um, you, uh, if you're active, right, if you're training, uh, say three days per week, but then you also have three, four days of say a combination of practices and games, you're going to hang out. My experience

tells me after working with so many athletes, body weight times 15 is actually pretty darn close. And then you're going to be tracking your weight every single week anyways. And nobody, that's, that's an important thing to point out too, because some people will be like, well, body weight times 15. What if that's not it? Like, dude, you're not going to wake up obese tomorrow. What are you so worried about? Like, we're going to track your weight. And if it's not going the way we want it to, whether down or up, then we'll adjust. We'll pull out another ace because that's our job. We only pull out one ace at a time. Listening to you sounds like, you know, like when I prescribe volume, it's like, you know, really all you can do is your best educated guess, you know, so like the body weight times 15. You know, we can start with like what Prilipin would

suggest to be perfect. And then if someone starts getting beat up, we cut it back. If they, you know, if they're eating it and not even sweating it, then increase it. But I mean, and that's the art of it all. So I suppose it appears that nutrition is the same, at least similar. Yeah, absolutely, man. Because even the best in the world, if they tell you, like if they say that it's an absolute knockout, grand slam every single time, it's not true. That's not a thing. And I've got a nutrition

course called the Nutrition Mentorship. And in that course, I say adjust accordingly, like 100 times, because we can use all of the science in the world. And that's phenomenal, because a pyramid can only peak as high as the foundation is wide. Science gives you that unbelievable foundation to give you the best educated guess possible to peak that athlete to the highest level of performance output. But unless you are talking to that athlete, unless you have a weekly update structure, that's what I've been doing with my coaching for 10 years. It's called my weekly Sunday update. My athletes would fill out a weekly Sunday update form every single week. And if things weren't going the way we wanted to, the adjustments made that week. It's already,

so there's no point of like, oh, what if that first guess is wrong? It's never going to be absolutely perfect. Not to mention your physiology changes very frequently as well. So I think body weight times 15 is a great place for people to start. And then you should be maintaining your body weight in that kind of zone. That's like a good place to start for most people. How does overall health play into this because that's something that i personally like i've always been i think there's like an athlete mindset piece where it's like if i'm not training for something i'm supposed to be eating and lifting and getting strong getting huge basically and then all of a sudden game day shows up. But

now that I'm like an adult, I don't, I don't have game days. Like every day is kind of game day. Like I just want to be healthy. And since going through your protocol, um, that just seems so much easier right now. And I don't know why. And I'm guessing it's because I've just gotten healthier. Yes, that's absolutely true. Like a lot of people think that you need to lose weight in order to get healthy. But the truth is you need to get healthy in order to lose weight. Like many people get that completely backwards. And I actually use health as the forefront of my performance process. Most a lot of people think that those two things are different. They're definitely not, especially with respect to career longevity to be excellent.

And we're learning very quickly right now that just because you lose weight, it may make you healthier, but definitely not healthy. Yeah. It's like how you do something is everything. It's not just what you do is how you do it. People don't have a weight loss problem. They have a maintaining their weight loss problem. That's what people really have. Millions of people lose millions of pounds every single year collectively, but 1% of those people actually maintain that loss. And that loss, that maintenance of loss comes down to health. Because if you have a crappy physiology, and now you just have a lighter body weight crappy physiology, you're going to go right back up that

roller coaster, baby. It's as predictable as the sun's going to come up. But if you are somebody who's healthy, then you have now the different type of metabolic output that's going to allow you to experience that happen more naturally. And that's why I say people think they need to lose weight in order to be healthy, but they need to be, the truth is they need to be healthy in order to lose weight. There is an element of truth that you do need to lose weight, like for sure. But until you make the, the connect the dots in your head that you need to be healthy first, you're not going to experience life transformation. You're just going to experience temporary body transformation. Because when you

are healthy, weight loss comes naturally. Like the body doesn't want to be overweight. It doesn't want to be insulin resistant, doesn't want to sleep like crap, have no energy, have brain fog. It doesn't actually want any of these things. And your energy balance doesn't always correct those things. It'll correct some of them in some way, you know, and the consistency of the program is key too. Because if you have a program, and this is something that my brain's going in a thousand directions right now, because there's so many people out there that got it so twisted. The first thing I would say is if you can't see yourself following your current diet, say 12 months from now, then it's not the diet for you. It's not going to work,

right? Because if you can't see yourself following it in the future, it's not going to work for you in the future. And you're going to end up right back where you are right now. And most extreme diets do exactly that. And then people jump from one diet to the next. Consistency beats intensity 10 times out of 10. So if you can't see yourself doing it a year from now, don't even start because you're wasting your freaking time. Okay. The second thing that I would say in that similar vein is that if somebody's promising you that dramatic weight loss so quickly, they're going to be more expensive in the future. Because if you think hiring an expert is expensive, try hiring an amateur because you're going to need to hire 30 of them. And none of them are

going to get the job done. And then it's going to end up being more expensive than the expert you should have hired to begin with. Because that expert would never say something so silly. Yeah. I'm not trying to beat you. No. Yeah. For a lot of what we have been doing, it's been a very strange process.

Like things that I didn't expect or the things that I thought I knew at the beginning of the process. I'm not saying that all of them were wrong, but I have a different framework for understanding all of it. And like my body just appreciates like where it's at right now. I can like feel that it's happier at this, at this place. And there's no, like it has also created a space where it's like, I don't have to go train six days a week because I'm like, I like need to do it. I feel like I'm all like going back to what you were saying at the beginning, like your body can still build muscle and maintenance and still do like achieve what it needs to achieve. I feel like my, my,

my total volume is lower than it's ever been in my life on, on training, but all the numbers are basically the same. Like the intensity, how I feel about doing it. Like there just seems to be, uh, because of the health side of it, a lot of like the, the self for, for lack of better terms, like I put all of these pressures or demands on myself about the weight room, like many of them have just disappeared where I'm just like, I just feel healthy. And that healthiness has created a body weight and less pressure on myself that I have to go like fight the battle every day because it's just unfolding for me versus like having to go like fight it.

For sure. Okay. So that's so important, man. Isn't training fun again? Yeah. When you're healthy, things get fun again. You forget that you freaking loved weightlifting, that you freaking love eating healthy, that you freaking love yourself, that you love the process. You can be patient with the process because the process feels good.

It doesn't feel like you have low testosterone. It doesn't feel like you can't get an erection. It doesn't feel like you can't go to sleep at night. It doesn't feel like any of this crap that people think. You think that's a part of being healthy? Who wants to feel that? Why would you buy a program that makes you feel that way? It's insane. You had me at Good Direction. That's all you had to say. Dude, that happens, though.

Like, we laugh. Dude, I'm telling you, we laugh about that because it is funny. But a couple of the most common things. That shouldn't be funny. Like, I would not want that at all. No. I'm not laughing at anybody. People, that's like, it's like people who have extremely low sex drive,

constipation or diarrhea, have trouble sleeping at night. Like, these three things I just said should be on autopilot. Like, pooping, it should be normal. You shouldn't have to have a ritual to poo. Going to sleep should be something that happens naturally. You shouldn't have to have a 10-step program in order to fall asleep. You know, these things, like if it's constipation, sex drive, that should be normal. You should have have a sex drive you should have functioning organs like these things that's normal physiology you guys and that happens that maintenance because maintenance drives health let's get you healthy first and then we'll focus on the other stuff i love that i've quoted you 10 million times today i've been taking notes like i'm gonna

steal all these but i'll give you i'll give you credit. Those are awesome. Just don't even give me credit. Just say, in order to lose weight, just say it. Be healthy to lose weight, man. It's so beautiful. Mash, you could just go, you know what I always say? I would never do that to anybody. I've had it done 10 million times. I would never do that to anybody. I've had it done to you. I would never do that to you. That's what Mike Boyle used to joke about. Like, I give you credit for two weeks, and then I thought of it.

Actually, Mark Bell said the same thing. If I say your name twice on the video, after that, it's mine. All the different fitness professionals are making the same jokes. Yes. You're joking with each other after two times. Circling back to gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time, if you are overweight, if you're 300 pounds and you're 40% body fat, even if you are gaining fat and losing muscle at the same time, you might also, you should be able, even if you're doing a good job,

losing one, two, three pounds a week, but you may be only gaining half a pound of muscle, quarter pound of muscle, one pound of muscle. It's not one to one ratio. Like you're, you're very unlikely to go from 300 pounds obese, stay 300 pounds for two years and end up 300 pounds and totally shredded. It's very unlikely that for a long, long time, and you just continue to lie to yourself of, no, I'm just gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time. But you kind of look at this. At some point, you probably do need to lose some weight. That person, even if they're doing it perfectly, they're 300 pounds, maybe they're 40% body fat. And so their lean body mass, no body fat is like 180 well maybe they they build muscle and lose body fat and

they end up at like 210 and they're in their jacked at 210 and pretty dang lean they're not going to end up at 300 pounds though so i think that's if you're a trainer and your person keeps not their body weight keeps not training keeps not changing and you keep telling them, no, you're just losing body fat and gaining muscle mass at the same time. At some point – You're lying. At some point. This person is just not making progress.

Totally. It can happen, but it's not one-to-one. Even with an in-shape like Ryan got to the point where there was no more – I could not squeeze one more kilogram out of 67 kilogram human like you know like i feel like we maximized you mean because i think we peaked at like right around 300 kilogram total and his body fat was super low and then now then we go up and so now we'll do the same thing as set you know so i would say the same thing no matter if you're lean or you know overweight you know there's going to come a point of diminishing returns, right? I mean, that's just obvious, I think. Yeah. And

there's no, there's no penalty if you're obese and you want to go on a deficit, your body's going to thank you for that. So if someone came to me, if someone came to me at 300 pounds, I wouldn't do 300 times 15. That's where we're going to stay. I wouldn't be doing that. That's not going to be our started calorie intake because you're going to be on Eddie Hall's diet for the next few years, you know? That person was fat. I'm actually super interested to hear what you think about Eddie Hall's diet.

And then we could even talk about like the guys eating Bob Evans at Westside every morning in the most unhealthy fashion ever. And the idea of like building all of the muscle and having all the food. I mean, Eddie Hall is eating like, what is he like 12,000 calories or something? Just insane every day. And passes out after a deadlift. So like, you know,

almost died. Yeah. After a deadlift. And it's not like it's some deadlift that other people can't do. So let's be clear. Like, you know, he uses that elephant bar. And I'm not hating on – I like Eddie Hall a lot. But it's not like he's doing something so extraordinarily out of this world

that, you know, that's what happens. It's just his ass is out of shape. That's what's up right there. For sure. Those guys have abs now. Like, they're lean now. I know. Yes. That's crazy. Yes. And now he wouldn't pass out if you did a deadlift though yeah yeah so like that that kind of answers a bit

of the question though you know it's like what do i think about that for the first 40 minutes or so we've been talking it's been about health and then we just brought up a guy who almost died after doing a single on deadlift. One rep. That's just the cost of making history. Someone just has to make that decision, what they're going to do in order to make history, because that's different than what I'm talking about. The emphasis of this episode is on maintenance.

That is as extreme of a surplus as possible. Eddie wasn't even very tall and he's over 400 pounds. Like that's an absolutely different animal, not to mention the genetics, not to mention the training volume, not to mention the drug use, not to mention all of these things. Yeah. So that's just somebody who's cramming in as much as they can possible to maximize what recovery they have left from their training volume. And when you say West side, like those dudes are not healthy. Nor would I say that that's optimal to be the best power lifter. There's better power lifters than those dudes. I beat them. So the comma, but they're the strongest people in the world.

No, they're not yeah would they be uh could they be as strong if they got healthier and eat less that's that's the thing yeah like that that's 100 almost as like the freak show that goes along with it well those things don't those things don't matter like when someone says to me like cindy crosby is the best hockey player in the world i might have talked about this on this podcast i don't know i've been on a million podcasts and i'm on no sleep right now sydney crosby he's mentioned before that his pre-game hockey uh meal you know we're talking about the best like one of the best hockey players in the world and has been for a decade and his pre-game meal is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich so that's like me saying okay

well then the optimal pre-game meal is peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So that's like me saying, okay, well, then the optimal pregame meal is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It's like, no, that's not the same. It's like, well, Sidney Crosby does it. It must be good. You have to be Sidney Crosby for it to work. That's not a thing. That's not a thing.

And it doesn't mean that someone with that ability couldn't be better if they dialed stuff in. Yeah, if those powerlifters, they do that kind of a silly diet, someone with that ability couldn't be better if they dialed stuff in. Amen. Yeah. If those power lifters, they do that kind of a silly diet, yes, I think they would recover better. And yes, I think they would be stronger if they didn't eat like idiots. No kidding. When I was power lifting against them, I did not do that.

I ate healthy. I even did a trade-out with someone who did my, they cooked my meals for me. And so like I was super lean and I was not purple. Those dudes in every picture look purple. That is not good. I am not as good as Dan in physiology. I can promise you that's not good. When someone is purple, that's bad. Yeah. You don't need a medical degree to look at this giant purple thing that looks like the mascot from McDonald's.

I knew that before I went back to school i knew that was not good like those dudes are purple i don't want to be anything like them so like yeah yeah for sure yeah what you take from the pros always consider that in context because it that is like one of the worst arguments on the planet to to justify that you should do it too. Because they do it. You know, whatever happened to be wanting to be better than him? I always looked at, you know, like Ed Conn, for example. I looked at him, like I watched his stuff every day, every single day.

And I was like, how can I be better? So instead of doing things exactly, I copied what I thought was good. And then I did better than the things I thought he did poorly. So I could do what? Beat him. So yeah, there's no sense in trying to copy a Michael Jordan, try to be better, try to see what in his game was lacking. Well, if he's eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before the NBA finals, there's your answer. That's one of the answers right there. For sure. I, that's something I think coaches could learn from too. I have this analogy of how an owl eats. Um, when an owl eats, say a mouse, they, what they'll do is they'll eat the entire mouse. They don't, they don't just pick apart. No, an owl actually eats a whole mouse hole and then his body spits out, say, fur and bones. And that's what I like to do with every

single faucet of learning because you can learn something from everybody. So eat everything you can, keep what's good and discard what's not. Use the owl philosophy in everywhere in health because are there a lot of wackos in the world of detox? Yep. But are there nuggets of truth in there? There are. So you can actually take something from that. What about learning from allopathic medicine? What about learning from functional medicine, learning from powerlifting, learning from strongman, learning from team sports, learning from it, do it all, man, do it all. And the worst that's good, like there's no bad outcome if i read i read books i don't agree with because one of two things happens a it affirms my current stance or b i learned

something to add to my current stance take take it all in be the owl when it comes to all of this stuff this dude i've just got a running tab on my notes of dan garner isms be the owl garner isms yeah al eats a mouse the entire thing spits out the spurs and bones yeah so eat what's good and discard what's bad yeah that's one of my quotes um isn't there just like a almost like a visual as well of like just feeding people's lean body and not having to worry about it. Like that is something in our Diesel Dad program that I, it's like the, the way that I describe it when people, well, what's the diet they ask?

It's like, cause they want it, they want to know the name of it and they want to know exactly like how they're going to be slowly reducing their calories and all that. And it's like, well, for two weeks, all we're just doing is just feeding the lean body. But because you have 40 extra pounds to lose, it's going to feel like you're in a deficit because you're not actually, you're only in a caloric deficit because you've made your body too big. So if you just.

It's relative, not absolute. Exactly. Like it's, it's not a maintenance of where you're at now is not a good place to be. We don't want to maintain this. No, it's like maintaining death. Yeah. That's not smart. And I'm going to take that quote.

Maintaining death is not smart. I love that. Hell no. I'm trying to avoid death, man. Yeah. And Anders, it's important to point out too, that I don't think we've mentioned, you were already healthy, but like struggling at 197. And now you're easily maintaining 187, if I've got my numbers correct and feeling way better. So like you've dropped that weight, leaner, the strength has stayed absolutely

the same. And you're not overly obsessing about your food in order to maintain that new lean, healthy body. It's feels natural. And that's the way health and performance should feel. It was actually, I thought that my adult body was just going to be 197. Like I thought that that would just like, if I wanted to get lean, I would go to 190. And then that's roughly what 14, 15% body fat somewhere in there. And I was like, I can get down there at seven pounds. It's like a seven week process. It's so easy to be two weeks out or whatever. And now I can maintain 10 pounds less than that, which is leaner than the lean body that I assumed that I would get to when needed on a game day. And now I'm actually maintaining,

this is a really weird thing for me being able to be at this weight for this long because my, when I, every time I competed in CrossFitter and weightlifting, it was, I needed to get to 185. That was like when I was the lightest and still felt the strongest. And now I basically maintain that for the last five or six months. That's really strange that it seems easy to do that when that was like the big push to get to that number for a game day. You know, like for anyone, any athlete listening, who's like worried about, you know, performance, you know,

an example of someone who worked with these guys, well, worked with Andy. So when I was coaching Hunter Elam, you know, like we were looking at, this was the last quad. We were like, you know, the odds of her making the Olympics at 71 were pretty slim because you had Kate and I, Maddie. It was just a bad weight class to be in. And she would have had to go on to 76. Anyway, that's irrelevant.

So we did her body fat and we, you know, we decide with Andy, Andy's guidance that we would cut to 64. So she drops. She had been weighing like 73. You know, no one is at their weight. So she cuts down to 64 and hits all-time PRs and everything and then makes her first world team because we made a very wise, educated decision with the help of Andy and then he guided us in the way that we did the cut.

And so if you're listening, you're an athlete, you might be worried about performance and you might very well be missing performance because you're too high of calories right now and you have too much body fat because guess what? Fat does not contract. It just sits there. It does nothing. It's like a weighted vest, man. It does nothing for any, even for you powerlifters who think that being fat is a good thing. You are lying to yourself. If you look at the best powerlifters in the history, like you look at Ed Cohn, you look, well, when I was competing, I was ripped. My wife met me and you can see all my abs. And so like fat does not do anything. So just know that. Yeah. I say the same thing to my hockey players and, and mash, I'm sure you get this all the time where like a weight lifter is like, Hey, I want to gain weight. What should I

do? I'm always like, Hey, don't gain weight. Don't gain weight, gain muscle. Those are two different things. The weight is not going to help you on the ice or in any other sport. So go ahead and gain muscle. And then, then we're going to be on the same page. You're going to be, you're going to be happy. I slowed you down. Right. I think that really helps, you know, holding Ryan back so many years. Because now, if you've seen him, like, he's, you know, he's in that 73 weight class. More ripped than when he was 67. Like, I don't know what happened. If I were not his coach, I would for sure think he's on drugs.

But it was just, his body was ready, you know. When you have to bump him up a weight class, do you just let his body naturally grow into that or is it like we're going up i need to put on like 12 pounds you know with him to that that place we were really having to hold him back like crazy to make 67 so i knew the first surge would be fine i knew he would get on those first few kilos easily. And so, but now, now we're going to go to you guys to figure out how to maintain those calories and lose body fat gain. You know,

we're going to maximize, we've got two and a half years where we cannot gain anymore. You know, so now how do we maximize those, those kilograms that are on his body? So that will be where Dan, so if he doesn't make the olympics it's not my fault it's dan and andy's fault that's a long time two and a half years a long time for a kid that's it is years old he's like he's like designed to grow right now it's

like i had someone reach out the other day that was very young, like 14, 15 years old. And they were like, should I cut for the summer? And I'm like, dude, no, stop. You're at this like most amazing time in your life. One, you're already lifting weights, which means you're like two decades ahead of everyone else that's going to find weightlifting when they're 35 and can't do it anymore. And like, go get huge, Like, eat everything right now. Because... Get huge muscles. Right, Dan?

Get huge muscles. Not huge belly. You should not be worried about being in a caloric deficit at 14 years old or 15 years old. Like, this kid was like, don't stop until you get like 32. I think that's a good time to talk quality. Not so much like...

Not so much quantity either up or down but just like you know making wise decisions it's a great time for that eat as much as you can skinny abs so yeah there's there's a there's a few populations that can build muscle and lose fat at the same time like if you're if you're a new person to the gym you're gonna build muscle and lose fat at the same time if you've got if you're a new person to the gym, you're going to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. If you've got the testosterone of a male teenager, you're going to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. If you're obese, you're going to build muscle and lose fat at the same time by changing your diet and training.

And one thing I know Doug, I'm sure has seen when a fighter has outgrown their weight class and they're going to move up that natural, lots of times their body was just waiting to absorb. And it didn't even want to absorb more fat. Like it just absorbs more tissue. And a lot, it's not that hard to go up a weight class when the body's ready for it. If you're forcing to go up a weight class, then it's like, whatever. But if you've been cutting hard to say 35 and you're like at 160 and your body's kind of like, okay, let's, let's go to 145. You're it's,

it's a very natural progression where you might actually go up a weight class and lose fat at the same time. That's what it appears in Ryan's case. It looks like he's gone up and lost body fat. Cause he looks way, I mean, obviously – and we just did his body fat the other day. And it was like eight-point something. And that was on the DEXA, so it's pretty damn good. So that's pretty low in my book for a weightlifter especially. Doug, I bet you have some weight gain and weight loss stories from Team Quest, some old-school methods that were probably pretty wild eh

uh well for me me personally like i i did big weight swings for sure um i i like think i did in you know the best way that it could be done but um i always tried to cut from 10 above my weight and so i would walk around like 200 pounds and then i fought welterweight 170 so i would just i would lose weight and get as lean as i could down to like 187 and then water weight cut after that um but i every time i made weight i would try to go a little heavier next time until i found the line and so the biggest the biggest like water weight cut I ever made, I was 198, like hyper hydrated the day before. And then I capped out at 172. I just fucking couldn't get any more weight out of me the next day.

I was just in the sauna for fucking hours and hours and hours. We used to call it crockpot method. Like we would go in the sauna and just like lay on the floor like low and slow slow but just be there all day and just be in for 50 minutes go out for two minutes catch your breath go in for two minutes and just like just let it come out and i got to 172 and just couldn't do it and for a visual for a visual for everybody going from 198 to 172 is 26 water bottles of sweat that's a pound per water bottle so that would be 26 water bottles leaving doug's body on the low and slow method also you could get a cage fight well so that's why i super lucked out i was fighting a guy named joel cooper who was who

was another guy who was like very big for the weight class and and he actually also totally lucky just made it to 172 and so we fought catch weight at 172 so i didn't lose anything by not making it he just happened to also not make weight so we fought at 172 and uh the guy who was actually weighing us in this this is like not pro fights where you're like weighing in in front of a crowd of people this is like you're weighing in in the back room and the guy was weighing me in actually was like fairly close with and he was like giving me every last little bit that i could get he was like i kind of like got on a scale and it's like one of those doctor scales where you like you put the little weights along the bar until like the thing kind of bounces in the middle and he like was like barely tapping it barely tapping until

like just cleared where it was like kind of in the middle he's like okay great get off you're good yeah 172 you're in so yeah 172 and a half but when i fought though rehydrated back in there i fought three very tough rounds with a really good guy and it felt fantastic the whole time even though i had a big cut the day before that sounds insane yeah awesome dan garner where can people find you at dan garner nutrition on instagram there it is coach travis mash at masterly.com or masterly performance on instagram doug larson douglas e larson dan thought i was saying douglas c larson for like the first like 20 shows we did together edward my middle name is edward make sure you get on Twitter and find Doug Larson too because that's like a motivational speaker

that people I get tagged in all of his quotes all the time poor guy yeah I said that I'm very enlightened I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner we are Barbell Shrugged Barbell underscore shrugged make sure you get over to

rapidhealthreport.com that is where Dr. Andy Galpin and Dan Garner are doing a free lab, lifestyle, and performance analysis. That is over at RapidHealthReport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.