Barbell Shrugged - Physiology Friday: [Physique Transformation] How Hormones Help Build Muscle and Burn Fat w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash and Dan Garner

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: The relationship between testosterone and cortisol The relationship between calories, macronutrients, and micronutrients Why micronutrients matter for achieving a lean physique Optimal hormone ratios for physique transformation  How does menstrual cycle affect performance Understanding gut health and it’s affects on physique Stabilizing hormones as a sign of health Visit https://rapidhealthoptimization.com 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. And today we're gonna be talking about science-based strategies for getting absolutely shredded. Even if you are not trying to get absolutely shredded, you're gonna get a ton of information out of this one. Really on the fat loss side of things, how to maintain muscle mass during a fat loss phase,

really diving into some of the nitty gritty kind of details of the process. I think most people listening to this probably heard maybe even thousands of times, I'll say. Calorie balance, eating your protein, but Dan is able to get in here and really dive into some of the deeper sides of how he has worked with physique competitors in the back.

So we're talking about getting people to very, very low percentages of body weight, how to maintain muscle mass or body fat and how to maintain muscle mass throughout that process. So you're gonna learn a ton, even if it is a general weight loss. And then if you are looking to get extra, extra lean, there's gonna be tons of information in here as well

that you will learn. As always friends, you can head over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dr. Andy Galpin is unlocking our three-step process that you can see to maximize your true physiological potential. The step-by-step guide to understanding what we do here, rapid health optimization, how you can use it maybe in your daily life or come work with us and you can access that

free video over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Marble Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson. RapidHealthReport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson. Dan Garner, today on Barbell Shrugged, we're like three weeks early, bros. We're talking physique transformation. Inside, rapid health optimization,

the largest transformation contest that's ever happened inside our one-year-old company because it's the first one, is taking place on January. Well, Dan's already started. I started a little bit and then realized if I keep eating this much I'm going to be uncomfortable for the next seven months. But Doug and I turned 40 next year and what a better way to turn 40 years old to getting absolutely ridiculously shredded. It's like the best birthday present you can give to yourself. So we're putting away all the lab markers today.

We're going to talk about physique transformation and a little bit of the strategies we're taking, best strategies for you going into the new year. And in the end, really, what's the best way to see your abs? Isn't that like the whole goal of physique transformation? Can I just see my abs? What's underneath there? What is in there? It's been 11 months since I've seen them.

What's going on inside there? I do like how very quickly on our internal Slack channels and whatnot, this very quickly went from health optimization company not focusing on health, like how do I get shredded? How do I look good to be detriment of my health if needed? I just want to win. And it was like, oh, this is all shit talking right off the bat. Yeah, it's like it's like more importantly, how do I look from the outside in and what do the perceptions of others are? What is their importance is more important than ever. What do people look at me and think rather than what I think of myself? Like we just we reversed everything.

And everyone was on board, which is hilarious. What do people look at me and think rather than what I think of myself? Like we just everything And everyone was on board which is hilarious. Here's the important part in the hiring process, which I'm very proud of us If you're going to hire the right people, they should at least have a lot of meathead in their history Your meathead Some point you have to do the physique transformation. It's just like part of the game. So everybody's fired up. Yeah, and what better present to give yourself

than to be compared to others? Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Oh, Doug, I'm kicking this thing to you. I wanna hear, let's talk some strategy

going into the new year. How big are you going to get? I see my, my current body weight, I'm about one 95 right now. And right now it's middle of December, early December. We're, we're finishing this up on my birthday, which is June 2nd, uh, here in 2023 when I turned 40. So we have little over six months to get all this done close to seven months. And, uh, for me, I'm going to try and put

on. Sorry, I got an alarm going off here. I'm trying to put on about about 10 pounds or so which, which is not which is not that crazy to say because I often walk around 200 205. And so this is not like new ground to cover for me. I'm just going to kind of get back to where I normally am. And then I'll probably end up leaning up until right about where I am right now. So I'm going to go basically, I kind of go up about 10 and then could probably go down about 10, maybe a little more, maybe maybe finish like about 190, which I don't prefer to get any,

any smaller than that, even if I will get a little leaner. I just don't like being in the one eighties. I feel like I'm just like, I got super long arms, I just get a little leaner. I just don't like being in the 180s. I feel like I'm just like, I got super long arms, I just kind of lanky at that point, where maybe I have to take my shirt off. I do look good, but walking off my clothes, I just feel I feel skinny, which is I've closed on most of the time these days. So hopefully I finished finish up around 190 or so as far as just talking body weight for the

moment. You don't plan on like walking into your own bedroom with your wife and like your kids down the hall. You're like, look at how jacked I am. She's like, can you take the trash out, please? She's like, do the dishes yet? God, why are you so moody? Go eat something.

That's when you that's that's when you pick up the trash bag, though, and pretend you're not flexing your arm while you're holding it. And then you're like, almost like it's a farmer's carry and just everything's poppin. Look how many grocery bags I can carry at once. I wish I could do that without getting an eye roll. That's about all I get these days. Look at the eye roll. How many, what is going to be most different in this than like you've already gone up to really large, like two, two or five to 10, did you get for your four or five

bench press? Yeah. I think that was about the biggest I've been in my life. And I think that it was a two 12 actually how I was two 12 when I did that, when I did that bench. But then you had the marathon. You got down into the one eighties. Yeah. High one eighties. I think I was actually one 90 on race day when I had the marathon, you got down into the one eighties. Yeah.

Hi. One eighties. I think I was actually one 90 on race day when I did the marathon. What is the goal when you get into the single digit body fat? Um, do you think you're going to get to two 10 again? Like have a hard time breathing? Yeah. It wasn't very functional when I was that big.

Um, I, uh, it was for the purpose of absolute strength and with every kind of high performance goal, there's going to be high performance trade-offs. So I ran the marathon at 190 and then less than 90 days after that, I benched 405 pounds. So it was like a real important to me. It's like what percentage of people have run a full marathon, then what percentage of people have benched 405, then what percentage of people have benched 405, then what percentage of people have done both within 90 days. I really wanted to create a real separation. This kind of promoted the industry. I'm not just coaching athletes. I know what the hell I'm doing myself. Right now, I'm typically kicking around 190-ish. When I'm

not going crazy with anything, like my body kind of hangs out at 190. My plan is to really do a recomposition for a month or two, just because I'm not that lean and I think I can put on some muscle tissue without my scale weight actually impacting that much. It's also kind of a comfortable place to be in for the holidays. So I do enjoy the holidays as well. And then I'm going to slowly taper up calories. And yes, I will be trying to get that big again. I will be trying just because I want you to lose so bad. I want you to lose so bad based on some of your trash talk. It's all I think about. I'm going to murder you. So we're gonna slowly taper up calories. I'm gonna get to Probably between 208 and 215

If I pass 212, it'll be an all-time high for me Now, of course, I'm not gonna get to 215 at the risk of being sloppy a bet that I'll never happen So we'll just see where I land and then from 215 I'm gonna the the contest is done in June So about I've got a real thing where when I start leaning out my body loses mass And from 2.15, the contest is done in June. I've got a real thing where when I start leaning out, my body loses mass. It loses muscle mass. So I'm probably going to do a 12-week taper down instead of like an eight-week. A lot of people, like I've had clients who can really just get away with the eight-week

transformation, boom, done. I can do that, but I just sacrifice a good look. And I sacrifice, kind of like what Doug said, he looks a little bit more stringy if he goes too far too fast. I'll just lose, I'll be lean, but I'll lose fullness and roundness and it's just not a better end product. So 12 weeks out. So basically it's a re-comp now and then I'm going to taper up calories for 12 weeks. And I'm going to taper down calories for 12 weeks and we'll adjust as needed along the way. And then do a taper and peaking process for the June 2nd

finish so that we can pull the water out of the body but keep the fullness. Yeah, I feel so good, have felt so good over the last year. But the thing that is the most terrifying is the getting big part. I went like, as soon as we announced this thing inside the company, I was like, started eating more. And not like all of the food. I wasn't like eating until I was like stuffed every single meal. But the scale goes from like 187, 188, like tapping 190, 191 after like a Saturday, Sunday. So like Monday morning you wake up and it's just like more like water in your body, more inflammation.

And I would be like, I feel awful right now. Like it's like the hardest. I feel like it's actually easier at this stage in my life to lose and to, I actually really want to get down to like 178. I haven't seen the 170s maybe since like middle school or something like very early days of lifting weights where I just hadn't grown all the way.

But that the photo shoot that I did, which sounds so weird as a 39 year old man to say, by the way, the photo shoot I did so I could be in Walmart. I was at 181 on the day of the shoot and I felt really like small. Like you lose so much muscle mass in that cut process. It's like so hard to, like sometimes Ben House right now is a great example of it.

He's like deep into a cut if you follow him on Instagram. And every time he does the posing, like I know that's a good sized human being that's very strong, but like when you start sucking water out of your muscles like that, you're in that big of a deficit for that long, you just start to like really lose muscle mass

and feel small. The going up part is very, it's fun because you can loosen the diet up a little bit, but also like when you're at like a healthy body weight that feels good. And then all of a sudden you're like, I'm about to destroy this. Let's go. Yeah, dude, that's the best though. Come on, dude. You cannot, you cannot, hang on, I gotta interject here. You cannot open the podcast by saying everybody's got to have a little meathead in them and then be afraid when it comes to being a real meathead

Real meathead shit, dude He said he said a little meathead in your past Past I actually blame you because I have literally for the past 13 months stayed basically at so my my old walking around weight when I was like competing and, and the meathead passed was like one 98. And then when I needed to compete in anything, I dropped to one 85 whenever I had to go compete in CrossFit. And then one 87 was my weightlifting. Uh, uh, it was like 85 kilos and I can make those numbers super easy. I kept all my strength. It was just like, get all the fat off your body

and like just eat much cleaner. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the Arate program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garner and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers,

award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best. Arate is not a normal coaching program. It's not just macros and a workout plan. It's not physique transformation and pre and post pictures. Arate is something completely different. Arate is incredibly comprehensive

and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors, and solve them permanently. You'll be working with not one person, but rather a full team of elite professionals, each with their own special expertise, to maximize precision, accuracy, and effectiveness of your analysis and optimization plan. Arate isn't about treating symptoms or quick fixes. It's about unlocking your full potential and looking, feeling, and performing at your absolute best,

physically and mentally, when the stakes are the highest. To learn more, visit aratelab.com. That's A-R-E-T-E lab.com. Now, back to the show. Now I live, or was living living like three pounds above competition weight, like basically 187, 188. That's insanely nice when you feel really good and you're just lighter. So as soon as you start like loading the calories back up and like those numbers start creeping

up, you're like, I feel sluggish. My favorite time in the whole process is like eight weeks out to three weeks out because you and from three weeks out to show day is you're very depleted and dry and tired, there's no libido, there's like the pumps really aren't there because the deficit's been gone for quite some time. There's a lot of cardio involved, probably a morning session and then a post-workout session. You're pretty messed up from three weeks out up into show day. But then before eight weeks out, you're still kind of holding a lot of mass and you're out of breath going up and down a staircase that has five steps on it. But from eight weeks out to three weeks out, that's like such a

beautiful area where you look fantastic and you feel fantastic. Hanging on to that, that's like the my most favorite part of the process is that like five weeks there. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to ask about the amounts of cardio you intended to do toward the end of your cut. Like some people like to do a lot, some people don't like to do a lot. I was wondering what your general take on that was

for yourself personally. So I'll actually more have a step count goal. So like just to offset non-exercise activity thermogenesis because there is gonna be a major reduction in caloric output as you get leaner and leaner and leaner and that's just a part of an adaptive metabolism. So right now my step count goal is only 7,000 because I want to, the way in which I approach getting lean and peaking is you have to have a lot of aces in your sleeve and you don't

want to pull them all out at once Because then when you run into a plateau then what are you gonna do? All right, that that's a huge mistake A lot of people make they get really excited about getting lean and they do everything all at once but the body you need to introduce new stimulus over the course of time and Utilize those as tools for your plateau busters when plateaus inevitably show up in the process of pushing any high performance goal. So like throughout the process, I will be more inclined purely due to my susceptibility

of losing muscle mass to have some sort of a step count goal like 7,000 for a couple of months, 8,000, 9,000, 10, 11, 12, and that'll actually slowly climb up. And then as we get closer, it's a lot easier to see what's happening with muscle mass when you're leaner. It's kind of hard to see your shape, your symmetry, your fullness, if you have any weak points. It's kind of hard to see that when it's covered in a bunch of body fat. So I'll have step count goals. And then once we get again, kind of like eight weeks out, it'll be a very individualistic approach. But if I know me,

it's usually about 30 minutes in the morning, and then nothing for the rest of the day, except the step count. If I'm kind of if I'm at a plateau, and things aren't moving the way I'd want, I'd probably do 30 minutes in the morning and then 30 minutes post-workout. Yeah. Doug, we're concluding this thing on your 40th birthday. And my 40th birthday is at the end of April, so we're halfway through. Maybe a little bit more.

I got an extra month after I turned 40. Is there a mindset about turning 40? Did you ever think that 40 was like really old and that you'd be as in shape as you are right now turning 40? Yeah, I definitely thought 40 was really old at one point. You were like six. Like I'll never get there. Yeah, I actually remember being a kindergartner and having an eighth grade buddy. Cause I was at a K through eight, Casca school when I was, when I was in kindergarten and I remember thinking that my 13 year old eighth grade buddy

was like a, like a real man. And now I look at like 13 year old kids. I'm like, this is little kids. Um, but yeah, definitely. I remember thinking 40 was really old and never thought I'd get there. Of course. Uh, I never really had any, any thoughts thoughts around like I would ever get out of shape basically ever because I've been doing the fitness thing my entire life and you know

had a mentor since I was really young and have always been in it. So I wasn't really worried about getting out of shape specifically but it is cool that we have a you know we've crafted this competition that happens to end on my birthday so I can enter my 40s ideally in this competition that happens to end on my birthday so I can enter my forties, ideally in somewhat of a peak condition. I'm still gonna be having Jiu-Jitsu as my primary focus. So even though this is a very fun contest, it will be secondary to going to Jiu-Jitsu

and just staying healthy for Jiu-Jitsu. I will do as much volume. Just write that check to Dan right now. Just write that check. Yeah, everybody, there's two Amazon gift cards, each of a thousand dollars at the end of the road here. So that's a part of the fuel of my fire for this. Yeah, it will be very cool to enter my 40s

in tip-top condition, coming in lean muscular. It's a great way to enter 40s. I'm stoked about that for sure. 40, 40 to me is an interesting one because it's, and maybe this is like for most people, it seems a lot older because it was the first birthday. I remember a lot of people getting excited for my parents. Like when you turn 40, like everyone throws a real birthday party. And when you're a kid, you're like, I guess this one's special. Okay, cool. Like you're 40. I guess that means you're old now. Like I guess

this is the end. You're like, the tipping point for you're not youthful anymore. Now you're old. Now you're on the downhill slide. But I think it's only because it's the first time in your life. Like, I think my parents had me when they were 27. So there's I I was 13 years old and it was like, oh my gosh, when they were 30, I was three. So I didn't remember any of that if there was a big party. But when you turn 40, like the whole world celebrates you turning 40 and you're like, my parents, what am I going to do without them? They're 40. They

only got like five years left. So like I've never thought that I would ever be out of shape at any point in my life, but I definitely had like a perception that like when you turn 40, it's like this is the, this is like the over the hill. Like you made it and it's all downhill from here. I feel like I'm in like just as good of shape. I'm in better shape now. Like if you were to like put a CrossFit competition together of me today versus me at 21 today would destroy 21 year old Anders. Awesome. Like on strength anaerobic, any, any of those,

any of those metrics I would destroy my 21 year old self. Um, which is not true in my case. My 21 year old self would fucking murder me. Really? Oh yeah. Everything. I'm much stronger and in much better shape now than I was drinking and partying my face off in college. There was no way that. The big difference between me is I'm stronger and in better shape, but I'm certainly not as resilient. I have to be way more careful with my technique. That makes me feel like a little bit more of an old man sometimes,

like with my low back or my knee or my hip or something like that. When I was 21, I could do anything and not only not get injured, but recover and do it again tomorrow. Like there was just, there's never really like a, like now recovery is part of the program. That's not like, you don't get your training program and then focus on your recovery. Like for me, recovery is built into the system. It's, it's a part of the program now. So like the, the methods at which I have to use to achieve intensity, instead of just putting weight on the bar, I have to use different like pre-exhaust or like rest pause or cluster set. So, something like that whereas in my early 20s, I could have just smashed through anything but now, I take an approach to where I'm purposefully selecting methods that allow me to have a very high effort output and training without beating up my joints.

My joints are not as resilient as they used to be. Yeah. When you, because probably a large chunk of the world, everybody when the New Year turns over is like, I'm going to go lose the weight. And then they're assuming that they're, even if they're not entering into some sort of transformation type contest, but everybody's kind of main goal coming out of Halloween, followed by Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas, followed by New Year's is like, I gotta get this thing back on track.

You mentioned a couple of things earlier about having like aces up your sleeve along the process. Dig into a couple of those things. Because a lot of times I think people, like you were saying, it's like the only thing that they know how to do is cut their calories. Yeah. So you give them 16 weeks and they're cutting their own calories. And next thing you know, they're doing it like they're at a 500 calorie deficit and

then it's seven and then it's a thousand. And by the end of month two or week, week eight, nine, they're starving themselves and they don't have anywhere to go except to zero on the, on the calorie side of things. And they've just like, they've hit the end. Couple little like just strategy pieces that you think about that aren't solely just cutting calories. Well, I think in a big way, actually build some muscle. Because if you aren't cutting calories, then you can absolutely do a type of recomposition phase

to where like what I'm in right now, where you're building muscle and getting leaner at the same time. I think it's very key to build muscle because you can't sculpt a pebble. If you have a big boulder in front of you, you can make a beautiful David statue, right? But you can't sculpt a pebble. Meaning if you have no muscle, once you lose body fat, you

kind of just look like shit but without body fat. You're just like a way less... People need muscle in order to have the lines of definition that they envisioned in their mind when they pictured themselves looking in the mirror, being leaner in that new outfit that they wanted to get in, right? And I think a way to do that without burning yourself out is to first put on some muscle mass so that there's something to see once you get leaner. And you won't need to actually cut out a lot of calories to do that. You'll simply operate around maintenance, which will help, which will allow you this

time and space to develop habits that will help you remain consistent across this journey instead of feeling in a state of deprivation right away. So I think that would be a big one. And you also achieve a lot of structural balance and you can work on some weak points, you know, like a lot of girls, you know, before I got totally into what I'm doing right now, I built a lot of my reputation locally doing bodybuilding shows and fitness and figure and bikini stuff for people.

I was doing a lot of that. One thing that I had to explain very often to women is because they would want to get leaner but they would also want to build their butt. I was like, okay, these are kind of two contrasting things. So you got to understand that if we're going to put you in a major hypochloric state right now, there's not going to be a lot of animalism to build your butt. So you're kind of just going to get a little bit leaner. So it's my opinion that we spend the first four to eight weeks here doing a recomposition phase. So you can build all the things that you

want to build. You want to have a fit looking back for when you're wearing a dress, right? Yeah. Do you want to have fit looking arms and shoulders so that people know that you're lean and fit? Yeah. The sculpting, there's this girl on Instagram I wanted to look at. Okay, yeah. That comes from the initial recomposition phase that we're doing, plus we're going to be able to build your glutes along the way. After that, when we do lean down, there is going to be a way better presentable physique at the end of this process. So, you could enter X, Y, and Z pain points of weak muscle group that you build up during that initial recomposition phase and then those plateau busters you're pulling out are periodization, strength, hypertrophy,

density, intensity, frequency. There's many other cards you can pull out through that whole process. And then since you're not in a state of deprivation, you actually develop habits in the background of meal prep, of getting to bed on time, of respecting recovery, of structural balance, which is reducing injury risk, which is going to allow you to not get injured and actually be in this game long enough to see the end point of it. All these things naturally take place. And then as you begin to lean down, it's a whole different set of plateau busters that you've put that you would pull out.

We can discuss that as well. But that's kind of the first big thing that I would recommend people do. I like that. Doug Larson, give me what do you what do you think people miss in this process the most? Whether it's on the way up on building muscle or on the way down and really stopping some of those plateaus that happen? Yeah. I'd say a beginner mistake is that people don't realize how much body fat they have

to lose to actually look shredded. And so they don't start their cuts early enough. That's a big one. Yeah. It's a huge beginner mistake. Yeah. I mean, 12, eight to 12 weeks is kind of the standard, but it really just depends on, on where you're starting at. To Dan's point, you got to put on some muscle mass, but at the same time, it's like, if you actually want to get super lean and have actual six pack abs and, you know, even leaner than that, like have like muscle striations and all that, like, you might need to lose an extra like 10 pounds more than you think you do in order to like get super, super, super lean. So that's a big thing that I think a lot of

people don't think about. Yeah, like me for example, like a real beginner, me, would have been like, okay, I'm 210 right now, bro, I'm gonna be shredded at 195. Like, no, you won't. You're still gonna have another 15 to go. There is so much more than people think. Doug hit the real nail on the head there is that did people think they're going to be shredded at some obscure number just because they haven't seen it in a long time. And I realized they're still like 20 pounds away from actually being shredded. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here actually on that note. So I'm going to comment more on the initial thing that I said earlier. I'm starting at one ninety five. I'm going to go up with go

up like 10 pounds, come down like 10 pounds. Like again, Jiu-Jitsu is my real goal. And this is like a for fun contest for me. If I was an actual bodybuilder and I was doing this to win on stage and this was like what I do, that would not be my plan. I'm gonna put on some awesome ass, I'm gonna get a little leaner, I'm gonna quote unquote look good

and be totally happy about it because Jiu-Jitsu is like my primary goal. I don't want to get too skinny. I tend to not get injured at jujitsu when I'm around like 205. That's when like my body holds together the best. And I've definitely noticed when I get below like 190, for some reason I get injured more. I don't know all the reasons for that, but it's a very common, it's like a motif of my training career. It happens all the time, especially when I used to cut weight for fights where I'd get into the low one, mid 180s before I would water weight cut down to 170.

If I was actually doing bodybuilding, I would be A, much bigger than I am right now. I'm fairly thin as it is. I would have to walk around at like 230 and then cut down to like 205 or 200, that type of thing in order to actually like be, to look like a bodybuilder. I don't look like a bodybuilder. I'm not trying to be a bodybuilder, we're doing a fun in-house competition, but I would have to put on much more muscle mass and then get with that much more muscle mass, get much leaner than I am to actually look like a bodybuilder. I'm just doing this for fun. Yeah. One of the pieces that always is really the timeline

that people think these things, like when I look at myself, I'm like, even if I had six months to go build muscle, does my lifestyle really allow for six months of like really hard hypertrophy training? I don't know what the answer to that is, but it's not a hundred percent. Yes. And if you're going to do that, I feel like having the law, the longer the timeframe, like we're, we're talking about June.

That's like beginning of summer and it just started getting cold. That's a long timeframe to be able to lay this thing out. I feel like a lot of people get into their New Year's resolution and they're like, I've got like eight weeks to be in the best shape ever. And it's like, you can't really do that much inside eight weeks. Like you may be able to drop your calories a lot,

you lose a lot of water weight and you will lose the weight, but it's not an eight week game. I'm actually really excited that we have 16 weeks because when you have this like, it's almost like a maintenance plus idea of like overeating a little bit for a couple months, like you don't have to go gorge yourself every single day,

but you're allowed to go have a little bit, a little bit more fun. But then allowing like 16 weeks on the back end, that's a long time to be in a little bit of a deficit. Uh, like four months is a, is a long time to lose 20, 25 pounds. Um, and even when people get into their new year's thing, having just a longer timeframe to be able to accomplish the goals and do it where it doesn't feel even when people get into their New Year's thing, having just a longer timeframe to be able to accomplish the goals and do it where it doesn't feel like

you're just dropping all your calories or you're trying to build muscle and you're just eating everything you possibly can because you have some date that's not actually, that's not a reality. It's a timeline that will not allow you to succeed. And I also think that timeline is much more important. It's important for the actual transformation piece of it, gaining the weight, losing the weight,

and still being able to enjoy your life. But also on the back end of it, when you're trying to get back to maintenance or a normal walking around body weight, the longer you spent during the transformation process, the easier it is for your body to maintain just that healthy body weight, the longer you spent during the transformation process, the easier it is for your body to maintain just that healthy body weight that you like to be at. It's not just like up, down, and then you quit. There's like a slow up, a slow down, and then an even slower up to where a stable body weight is because your body's gone through. It's like finding a new set point, which I think is why it's been so easy for me to stay at like 187, 188 this year, because it just, I did it over a long period of time to get down. And then it's been, it's been very easy. Just living my life and being at a healthy body weight.

Yeah, for sure, man. Like, when say, like, this is a long time, like, what I hear when you say that is that you need to develop consistency in order to actually create any true form of transformation because biology adapts to averages over time. Unless you learn how to be consistent, you're never actually going to create a true transformation. And that's why I've said on this podcast before, is that you adapt the science to your lifestyle. You don't adapt your lifestyle

to the science, because there's going to be some dude who knows a lot about whatever. And he's going to say, this is the optimal volume, intensity and frequency. This is the optimal periodization. This is the optimal cardio. This is the optimal... There's a meal frequency that all of that out there exists, but you use the science and adapt it to your lifestyle. If you try to adapt your lifestyle to the science, then you're not going to be consistent because it goes against your lifestyle. And if you lack consistency, you're never going to ever hold on to your results or even make it that far. You're going to be four weeks in, say, this sucks, and then you're not gonna ever hold on to your results or even make it that far. You're gonna be four weeks in, say this sucks, and then you're not gonna accomplish your goal and you're gonna blame

yourself because you saw this area of science as God and although that science represents an amazing way in which you can achieve results in the perfect scenario. The perfect scenario doesn't represent the real world. So you have to adapt it to yourself, your schedule, your current goals, like even Doug, having the self-awareness to say, Jiu-Jitsu is my main thing. You having the self-awareness to say, man, I feel great around this.

All of us having the self-awareness, like, yo, my kid's gotta be driven here at this time. I gotta be up to school at this time. Like, a lot of those things, you will quit fast if you do not adapt the science to your lifestyle first. And when you do that, a lot of that science stuff actually answers its own questions. Because people like, how much volume,

where should my intensity be? What should my frequency be? Those questions answer themselves after you look at what's a non-negotiable in your lifestyle. And then it can make perfect sense as to the perfect schedule that you'll be on to be consistent and create a real transformation. Yeah, I think the lifestyle piece too,

when you start to analyze the way that you live, it creates so many opportunities to get to whatever that goal is. Especially like you were talking about steps earlier. Like if you just wake up and put a weight vest on and go walk around your neighborhood, you just magically burn more calories. Like just go walk to the grocery store more often than you used to. Like on the way down, you don't have to go just deplete yourself of calories, but actually build it into the way that you live. And I've actually had, I've enjoyed that process,

especially when I got down last year to 81. And it was like, instead of just trying to sit there and starve myself, I just tried to build in like habits that allowed me to get to where I needed to be versus like solely focusing on the food side of it. So every morning I'd wake up and go walk a couple miles with a weight vest on. And then of course the calories have to be kind of like on the lower side, but I can make the 500 calories up or whatever it is a day by increasing the thing that I like more, which

is moving and being outside, then focusing on losing the thing that I like more, which is moving and being outside, then focusing on losing the thing that I like, which is food. So you end up kind of like winning by observing the things that you actually enjoy doing, figuring out how to make them just a little bit harder, which means burning more energy and maintaining a calorie amount that keeps you happy without starving yourself. Maybe that's stuff that you like learn as you've done this a couple of times, but I think that those those little things make a massive difference over the long haul of just general happiness and ability to stick to the plan because

it does get really hard, especially in the later stages of it. Like if you if you are not happy, it is way easier to fall off the rails but if you can figure out the things that you like to do like for me i just like going outside so the more i'm outside the more i'm playing the more calories i'm going to be burning and i can still go eat just under maintenance without uh it being completely miserable so observe the way you live and implement the things you like to do inside the strategy that you have. For sure. And speaking of misery, Doug, you've been in weight cuts. You've probably been in extreme deprivation in the past. So like I think that, have you had strategies for craving control that you've used during any of those times?

Yeah, one thing that I do is that currently I like to chew on strawberry flavored five gum, like the brand five gum. And it's super flavorful. It's very sweet. And so oftentimes at the end of any meal I like I just ate a bowl of chili just now and I was sitting here thinking I would love to be chewing on some gum right now but I don't want to be smacking into the microphone because that'd be annoying of course but

run when this calls over I like to have something sweet after I eat and so I very often you know if I if I'm not going to eat some grapes or some other type of fruit, especially if I'm about about to leave the house I'll chew on some five gum gum. So just having that like taste in my mouth and just being able to sit there and chew on something without taking in any additional calories, something that I do quite often. I used to do that a lot when I was doing very big weight cuts, which I did a lot. At the time when I was fighting MMA, I was fighting welterweight, which is 170. So you got to weigh in at 170. Of course, I don't walk around at 170, but then I was also competing in weightlifting,

you know, either at 85 kilo, which Anders talked about earlier, so 187 pounds, or I was competing at the 207, what's it, 94, or 94 kilo. And so I was going from usually like the low 200s down to 170. And then I'd go back up to like 200 and then down to 170, you know, having to fight every every four to six months or whatever it was. And so I was I was making big weight swings all the time. And so I was actually having to do like big cuts over and over and over again, which I was happy to do and actually really enjoyed it at the time and I lived at my gym. And it was my sole focus just to train and compete and I didn't have kids and all that. So it was totally fine back then. But I didn't really have a lot of like, I don't remember having

big problems with cravings. Like, because still all the food that I was eating was was healthy food that I liked. But I think that's a big part of it's like when people cut, they feel like they have to fucking eat shit that they hate like I gotta eat a salad, I hate salads, I gotta eat broccoli, I hate broccoli or whatever it is. So the whole time they feel like they're depriving themselves. I never felt like that. If I was eating, you know, steak with a little bit of sweet potato and broccoli, and you know, maybe the proportions are different than normal, instead of being a big steak and a lot of sweet potato and a little bit of broccoli, maybe it was like, like a medium

amount of steak and just a little bit of sweet potato and a lot of broccoli or whatever it is. Like I was still eating the same foods I normally would eat. And I really would be going out of my way to bump the high nutrient dense, but low calorically dense foods like broccoli or whatever vegetables I happened to already enjoy. That way I had a lot of food in my stomach, but my caloric load was still low. So I wasn't walking around really hungry all the time. I was still eating a high volume of food, but a low caloric amount at the same time. So I think that's a big strategy is like when you're trying to gain

weight, you need to find caloric dense food because you can only fit so much food in your stomach, especially if you're a hard gainer and you're trying to gain new ground and all that and you're already you're already kind of a, you know, plateaued as far as gaining weight. When you're losing weight, it's the opposite you want to find food that is caloric, uh, how's the start low calorie, but high volume. That way you can actually still fill up your stomach. You're not just sitting around hungry all the time. Yeah. Oh, totally. The volume versus density thing

is like, cause I like the kind of the old school, again, like the way I kind of built myself up locally, there's a lot of bodybuilders ask me for information. And it's like, it's such a bodybuilding thing to have tuna and egg whites. Like that's so bodybuilding. But they'd be trying to build mass on tuna and egg whites. I was like, okay, as far as caloric density goes, you're gonna have the same satiety, but have whole eggs and steak.

So like instead of having egg whites, have your whole eggs and instead of tuna have steak. You're going to have an enormous difference in caloric density to be able to put on mass and not feel so starving all the time and then save those higher volume less calorically dense foods for the lean down. So you actually can put something in your gut during that time when you're at your most deprived. That's a huge mistake a lot of people make is simply not even considering density. Watermelon's another one, right? Four ounces of watermelon is seven carbs and three of those are fiber.

Four ounces of watermelon is basically water. In order to actually get calories from watermelon, you have to eat the watermelon. But nobody does that. It's a great sweet treat with a massive amount of volume that will fill up your gut. And your gut has, there's a stretch receptors in the stomach where you're actually stretching your stomach that creates a satiety signal to the brain. And that stretch can come from Ben and Jerry's or that stretch can come from broccoli, watermelon, egg whites, these kinds of things. The way in which you create the stretch has nothing

to do with the caloric load of the meal. Yeah. Yeah. And that's delicious. Yeah. Also, I made sure I made sure to put a heavy focus on workout nutrition. It's like, when my calories were super low, especially like the last couple of weeks leading up to my fight where I was very lean. And at that point, it's like, you're not trying to look good. You just need to weigh a certain amount. And so skipping meals sometimes

is just really what you have to do, just because you just need to make the scale, say a number, and then you can go back to your regular life. And it's a very short-term thing. But because my calorie amount was so low at times, but I still wanted to be able to train, like I still need to be able to train well. I very often would would put a heavy focus on workout nutrition that way. That way I was getting a lot of carbohydrates, especially, you know, pre training during training, and right after training. That way

I could still train hard and train well. I had enough energy for training. And then the rest of the day, if I was really tired, I didn't really care because my training was still on point. Yeah. Before we go take these after pictures, what's the best strategy week of to get, to just like look super jacked, not depleted,

and take a selfie in your own bathroom. I'll tell you after the competition. We're just holding information. This isn't for us, this is for the audience that is looking to build their Instagram following by posting after pictures of themselves significantly more jacked and lean than they would ever walk around in a healthy state. I'm not going over a weekly taking strategy on this podcast. I'm dead serious. We are

not running through that. It's extremely, extremely individualistic for one. That is a real thing. Yeah. It's a lighting strategy really. Yeah. Just a real thing. Yeah, you know lighting strategy really? Yeah, just the lighting strategy top light light lights come from Higher than you are and down so there's shadows on your abs for sure Everything's higher from where I am. I'm five seven

Big your best bathroom to do it No, but for real and it doesn't have to be specific to your strategy on how you're going to take all of our money here. But if people are coming into the last week and they have, and obviously they're going to be feeling relatively depleted, reaching their goal, there is some strategy to getting the water back into your muscles, increasing carbohydrate intake. I know it's very, very specific per person, but do you have any strategies that people can follow? Like three days out, four days out, five days out, and then day of? How do you get all of the water back in your muscles so that you look very strong heading into without without really like you can't really

sabotage it because you're in such a deficit over the weeks before but you're not going to go put on body fat in a week but making sure that they they at least are have full muscles going into whatever after pictures they are, maybe even scheduled a photo shoot or something like that. Yeah, for sure. So first of all, if you don't look good in any lighting, you're not ready. So you should actually look good in bad lighting. That's a good rule to actually have look good in bad lighting. If you don't look good in bad lighting, you're not ready. Done. Okay? You should also actually be ready about three to four weeks out because the three to four weeks out are very much about fine tuning things and knowing you're ready and basically guaranteeing

you're ready. You should not plan to be ready on photo shoot day or show day. You should already be ready and then hold on to that conditioning and fullness leading in because if you think you're going to peak on that one day based on some sort of preconceived notion that that's the day I'm going to be ready, you should already be ready in advance, just like a fighter. They already have their fight strategy. They already know what they're going to do. They have the technique down. They have the systems down. That's not something that's, of course, a fight's a bit of a weird example because there's going to be some adjustments on the fly.

But you get what I'm saying. The strategy, the conditioning, the strength, everything is already there and it's not decided and figured out the day that they show up. It's the same thing for peaking. So number one, look bad, look good in bad lighting. Number two is you should already be in shape three to four weeks out. And lots of times there,

and if you learn from a guy like John Meadows, rest in peace, he was one of the best guys in the industry, gave so much good information. In many cases, he actually didn't have this big peaking process. He actually just got guys in great shape and then he kept their water intake solid and then he would just boost the carbs up a bit.

So he would have them depleted, but he's not messing with sodium, he's not messing with water, and he would get them in phenomenal shape. And then he would just incrementally increase their carbs over the course of Monday to Friday so that they could bring in the fullness but not lose the conditioning. So that's something that is to be considered as well because if you've never gone through

some sort of water depletion or sodium reuptake or carb uptake protocol, you probably don't want your first time to be when you're competing for a couple thousand dollars like we are. It's something that you should actually already have figured out well in advance. And that's like one of the things about being in shape three, four weeks out. You can actually try some things and have no penalty for it because you're already in shape and then you can see what your body's responding to. Another way in which you can approach this is there are people with different types of gastrointestinal tracts. So, the idea leading up to a photo shoot is to increase muscular fullness, but also increase

dryness. So, we're trying to get water out of the system. At the same time, we're trying to get carbs into the system. So you can actually, I'm just going to put it very loosely here because it is going to change for a lot of people, but you would pull water out at a certain point, but then continue to eat carbohydrates because for every one gram of carbohydrates you store, you're going to store roughly three to four grams of water with it. So what you're basically doing is keeping water regular until

about 36 hours out and then you can begin tapering down water or even completely pulling out water. Your body is going to still expel water because it takes a while for something known as antidiuretic hormone to make adjustments based on current intake. So, you're actually pulling out water, your body is still peeing because the hormonal adjustment hasn't taken place yet, and the extracellular water that is still in your body is being pulled intracellular because you cut water at noon but you kept eating carbs until 9 p.m. And then you wake up the next morning dry and full as a house because the extra cellular water is now

Intracellular and you kept peeing because their hormonal alterations and water retention have yet to Adjusted so you wake up looking like a Greek God at that point And then the morning of and leading into the photo shooter show you really want to emphasize Three things you want to emphasize carbohydrate you really want to emphasize three things. You want to emphasize carbohydrate intake, you want to emphasize sodium intake, and you want to emphasize accomplishing those two goals while minimizing gastrointestinal distress. Because if you have gastrointestinal distress, then you're not going to be able to keep your waist tight. And we've seen that before where people look lean, but then they kind of have a turtle shell set of abs. And that's because

they did something stupid. You don't fuel up with food. You didn't have your entire prep. So like these like sometimes guys like, I'm going to fuel up on pancakes. I'm going to fuel up with rice cakes. I'm going to like, absolutely not. You fuel up with what you ate during your prep, because we know that's gastrointestinally friendly for you. So you're going to have zero distension, you're going to have a tight waist, and then the sodium is going to allow you to have even more intracellular fluid getting into the muscle cell. The water is still very dry, but you've got all of those new carbs. And those are some big things to take into consideration. My last kind of red flag that I would have for you here

would be that some people's gastrointestinal tracts, you're actually going to want to begin the carb load on Monday, even though it's a Saturday show or photo shoot. Because if you give them giant carb loading meals, it blows up their gut and they actually don't look very good. It can ruin. It's amazing. When you're that lean, you can kind of ruin your look fast because you can see everything. So there are some people who if their GI track isn't healthy, then I would actually want to increase carbs, maybe 25 grams on Monday, 50 on Tuesday, 75 on Wednesday, 100 on Thursday, 120.

And then you actually slowly taper in a way in which you can fill someone out in a gastrointestinal friendly way. But if somebody has no gastrointestinal issues and they're consuming the foods that they consumed all prep, for example, white rice, then you can just give them 500 grams of carbs, you know, in the three days leading up and just really slam them and they'll come in full as a house and dry and that's ultimately the goal.

Yeah. What body fat percentage do you think you're going to get down to? Whatever is going to make you the most disappointed with yourself. Whatever number slowly sucks my soul out of my life. Gotcha. No, no, I'm just talking trash. It depends, right?

People on a DEXA, like if you're 8% on a Dexa, you are absolutely diced. But if you're, you know, 8% are on calipers, you're probably not ready for the show. My kind of telltale is if my legs are lean. That's kind of like, I don't really care about percentage. I won't even check to be honest, because I can be absolutely diced, but then my legs still, they don't have a fully cut. It's kind of like my last thing. So, if I can get my legs lean, I know everything else will be super, super lean. And that's probably going to be around 5%, we're going to say, because I don't want to risk muscle loss throughout the process. I could tip I have to that's very quick to explain is for people out there with lagging muscle

groups, when you're dieting down, your bad muscle group will be the first one to go. So if you've got small arms and you're dieting down, the first thing you lose isn't going to be your dominant chest. It's going to be your lagging muscle group that seems to always suffer. That's going to be the first one to go. So what I like to do for myself and for my clients prepping for things like this is to have your cheat meal on your lagging muscle group day. That's just been like a way in which I've helped my people, including myself, retain

bad muscle groups in a hypochloric state is get that cheat meal in you on that specific day. Yeah. Would you also increase the frequency just for those lagging muscle groups to any degree to help hang onto them. And then those last weeks during the whole, during the whole cut, rather really, really? Yeah.

The whole cut really. And I typically, I see a point of diminishing returns after a three times per week frequency. I think that one isn't enough. I think two is a real sweet spot for maintenance. But three is where if you can get it into your schedule, that's where actual optimization and retention in a deficit is best played out. Yeah, the reason I bring up the body fat percentage is because part of the annoying part about

getting really lean is you also never actually everything yeah is like anytime I've ever done it I'm always like I look in the mirror and I'm extremely low in body weight and the only thing that stands out is the pieces that don't get lean quick so like dude yeah it's the most frustrating thing because you're putting in all this work and then you look in the mirror and you're like, well, why doesn't, why?

And you could just like grab skin and fat and you're like, why is this? Try to avoid hating yourself in the process. Like actually like go through it and try to be as happy as possible. Like getting down to 5% body fat is awesome, but it's not awesome if you're a miserable human being to getting there and then you start to like take yourself apart to a point where like remember that we all lift weights and do these fun games because we have the

ability to. It's not necessarily like the healthiest thing at all times to just go to get five, six, 5, 6% body fat. Cause every time I've ever done this or every time I've ever gone into something similar, it's like, you always notice the lagging body parts so much more because they stand out in a way when everything else is dialed in.

The fastest way to unhappiness is to play the comparison game. You lose that game every single time. Totally. So that's why we structured a contest for all of our team members to compare each other. To each other. Yeah, like the fastest way for unhappiness. If Anders compares himself to me like my god, you know, there's just no way we had a positive happy culture until this time to

we should see in my labs what my testosterone levels look like on January 1st and then what they look like when I'm walking away with like a one of those like big golf checks. I should do want to take a lot of work. Billboard. The day of. Yeah, and they're gonna be like, damn, Anders has. Let's get big checks made. No. This is how decisions are made

at Rabbit Hill Organization right here. Big checks. Let's do it. Big, big billboard checks. Yeah. Dude. Or we can have a trophy or something and then we'll do it every year.

Look at that. Or a title, a title that we have to pass around. You're no longer the title holder. We'll get a whole like WBD belt made. I feel like every time we have a Zoom call, if you win Dan, you're gonna be like drinking a protein shake out of it as if it's like the Stanley Cup or something like this.

Like, hold on a second guys, I need to take this giant sip of protein shake out of it as if it's like the Stanley Cup or something like this. Like, hold on a second, guys. I need to take this giant protein shake out of the Stanley Cup. Also, I'm in my basement, but I'll be on every Zoom call with sunglasses on because I can. Because I have to tie them. I won. Yeah. Where can people find your selfie pictures of you while we do this? Dude, I better show up now.

Imagine if I screw this whole thing up after this trash talk. My God, I just show up looking like we didn't even get into my double cut strategy so that I peek on my on my birthday and on Doug's and Doug's birthday. There is nothing to spare. Spare the audience would be provided with no value. Fear the double cut. You can find me at Dan Guider Nutrition on Instagram. Yeah, go to your physique transformation course too. Yeah, I've got a whole seminar on specific on physique transformation.

So if you want to, it's how I made like almost every before and after in my career. So I've got a whole seminar. It's a recording of a live seminar I did in 2019. So go check it out. Includes all the lectures on training and nutrition and even the done for you muscle building and done for you fat loss programs, templated, ready to go. There it is. Doug Larson.

Right on my Instagram. Doug was C Larson. I am Anders Varner at Anders Varner and we are Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged and make sure you get over to ritalab.com. That is the signature program inside rapid health optimization where you can go and experience all the lab, lifestyle, performance, testing, analysis, and coaching

to help you optimize your health and performance. And you can access all of that over at ritalab.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.