Habits and Hustle - Episode 68: Sal Di Stefano – Host of Mind pump Podcast and Fitlosopher

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

Sal Di Stefano is one of the Hosts of Mind Pump Podcast, and a Full Fledged Fitlosopher. With decades of fitness, health, and training experience locked in his obsessive nature he showcases the need for “knowing your sh**” Instagram models, fitness fads, health hacks… Di Stefano barrels down on these dangerous modern enticements and explains the need for real, tried-and-true knowledge and hard work in the health & fitness space. Not sure how to navigate this modern era of countless “professionals” with seemingly endless “expertise” promising results but churning out duds? Who do you trust? How can you find that help and get educated on your body? This episode has some hard truths you know you’ve needed to hear without lacking that hope you’ve been looking for. From diet to discipline; body signals to supplements… This episode delivers. Youtube Link to This Episode Mind Pump Podcast Sal’s Instagram ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Did you learn something from tuning in today? Please pay it forward and write us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. 📧If you have feedback for the show, please email [e-mail]  📙Get yourself a copy of Jennifer Cohen’s newest book from Habit Nest, Badass Body Goals Journal. ℹ️Habits & Hustle Website 📚Habit Nest Website 📱Follow Jennifer – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter – Jennifer’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When there's a penalty on the field, referees are there to sort it out. When there's an accident on the road... Sergeant Lindros, I'm glad you're okay. That's where USAA steps in. We help make the claims process easy, so drivers can get back on the road fast. Making the right calls. That's what we're made for. USAA Membership eligibility and product restrictions apply in our subject to change. USAA means United Services Automobile Association and its affiliates.

San Antonio, Texas. Vitamin water zero sugar just dropped in all new taste. It was zero holding back on flavor. You can be your all feeling. I'll play and all self-care you. Grab the all new taste today. Vitamin water zero sugar. Nourishcare you. Grab the all new taste today. Vitamin water's zero sugar, nourish every you. Vitamin water is a registered trademark of glass O.

Welcome to the Habits and Hustle Podcast. A podcast that uncovers the rituals, unspoken habits, and mindsets of extraordinary people. A podcast powered by habit nest. Now here's your host, Jennifer Cohen. First of all, you know that you guys are the reason why you even have this podcast, right? No way.

Well, remember, I was on your show. Was it like a year and a half ago? And I was like, I think I want to start a podcast but I don't know what the name should be, should it be inspiration, should it be you know don't you remember this whole thing? I do, I do remember now, that's right we were talking about like names and what you're gonna do on it. Yes well I knew what I wanted to do, I just didn't know what the name would be and we were going back, it was like 20 minutes of back and forth on your podcast about what name this name and then like this name came out of you know were going back, it was like 20 minutes of back and forth on your podcast about what name, this name,

and then this name came out of, you know, I just thought of it one day, but I actually owe this podcast to mind pump. So thank you. Oh, thank you so much. Well, you're a natural, it's easy for you. You're so good at it. Oh gosh, you're too kind.

Go on, no, I'm just joking. Yeah. I'm just joking. But by the way, also, congratulations, you had your baby, right? Right? No, no, no, that was Adam who had the baby. Oh, I said, you had a baby. No, we're expecting. So we're going to have one in in October. Oh my gosh, this whole time, I thought you were the one that had the baby. No, I have two kids. And I have one on the way. So we're only I think we're 16 weeks right now, but Adam Oh my gosh, yes, so that's how I was thinking I always get you know, there's there's four of you. There's dog you

Adam was and the and what's the other one the other guy just Yeah, well he's quiet. He's more quiet. That's why but yeah, we tease him all the time We call him the other guy. Well, because you know, just because he's more of a subdued kind of character, you know, he doesn't have a big mouth like Adam and I do. Right. It's just good because it balances it balances us out. If there was another Adam or Sal on the show, we would annoy everybody to be over. That's what you need to get into the A. You know, that's what I kind of, you know, you need to have that balance. You got to have somebody to balance out the two. That's what I kind of, you need to have that balance. You got to have somebody to balance out the two massive egos, so it comes out right

that way. You're like the most knowledgeable human and in the whole umbrella, I believe, of fitness and health. You're like an encyclopedia. I find like, are you just all self-taught? Did you just, besides, of course, having your certifications for training and everything like that? How did you become like this extensive

in almost like everything? Horror Moans, gut health. I feel like fitness. Yeah, I have a bit of an obsessive personality, so if I really get into something, I just dive really, really deep into it. And I have been utterly obsessed with fitness and health since the age of 14. I got into working out at the age of 14 because I was very insecure as a real skinny kid. So I started lifting weights. year decided that I wanted to work in the health space in some way, shape, or form. And then by the time I turned 18, graduated high school, I went straight to the local

twenty-par fitness became a personal trainer. Four months later was managing the fitness department and maybe six months later was a general manager. And since then, I've always learned and read as much as I possibly could. It's just something that really, really interests me. All things, health and fitness. So that includes working out diet and then, of course, gut health. You start to learn about that.

You start to learn about relationships with the people around you and how that affects your health. You start to figure out that health is a sphere that encompasses much more than just working out and diet. You learn about spirituality. That's another part of health. And so it's just, it's just so much to learn. I don't think I'll ever stop. I think there's always going to be a growth,

you know, a period of growth for me. I think it's going to be lifelong. Yeah, it's also looking at evolution. I know that when people ask me like very basic questions about like fitness, I always try to talk about the holistic thing, right? Because it's not just the physical. There's so much of all of this is mental, right? Like your behaviors, your mindset, and all of that dictates.

The physical part, I always found, was the easier part if you have your head on, right? And you're doing all the other pieces that kind of puzzle together, you know? A hundred percent. I mean, you've been doing this for a long time, and I think when you train people for a while, especially if you really want to help them, you start to figure that out. You know 100% I mean you've been doing this for a long time and I think when you train people for a while Especially if you really want to help them you start to figure that out We all start off as trainers really wanting to focus on You know getting people you know sculpted and burning body fat and looking good

But then you start to figure out that hey if I want to really help these people long-term I need to be able to talk about the full picture of what this looks like. And the truth is, if you're motivated by just by looking a particular way, that will only get you so far. At some point, you have to really develop a good relationship with fitness and nutrition and health in order to develop a long-term life-long relationship. Because if you always always only focus on the way you look, it tends to motivate you in particular ways.

You tend to over-trained or over-diet or hate yourself. So you go to the gym because you don't like the way you look. And so what kind of workouts do you do when you hate yourself? You punish yourself. You don't listen to your body. But eventually, if you stick with it long enough, and if you really are a growth-minded person, or if you work with a good coach that helps you along the way, you start to view exercise and nutrition really as ways of taking care of yourself. And it really does help

direct your decision-making process. You start to train more appropriately, start to eat more appropriately. You realize that, you know that depending on the context of your life, your workout programs can help with the context. It's a tool that can be molded to where, if you're going through a very tough period in your life, for example, years ago, I went through a very difficult period in my life. I didn't go to the gym seeking to hit PRs or get shredded. Really, I was going to the gym to maintain my energy and health and fitness so I could be there for my family. So it was a totally different way of working out,

but it benefited me. Now, had I gone to the gym and not molded that tool to fit the context, I would have over trained burn myself out, probably would have caused myself a lot of damage, maybe stop working out altogether. So I think this is an important thing that people like us should communicate to everybody else because the message that we continue to get from the fitness industry is get shredded, get sculpted, do in 30 days, which nothing necessarily wrong with that, but if that's the only message you get, you are not reaping the full and amazing benefits of what fitness and nutrition can do for you.

I agree. I also feel like motivation is it wanes, right? Sometimes you're more motivated than other times. It's a feeling. And I find that people are like, how do I, a big question, and I'm gonna ask this to you, is like, how do I get motivated? And I know when people ask that to me,

I get stumped because I don't believe there is such a thing for long-term success. So what do you believe in that whole thing? How do you, I 100% agree with you. Motivation is a feeling. And we're complex creatures. We can't live in one feeling all the time.

Right. And you don't need to be told to work out and eat right when you're motivated. That's easy when you're motivated. No, obviously you're inspired. Exactly. The hard part is when that feeling starts to go down, which it inevitably does, how do you

maintain consistency? So the key is to not fall in love. It's okay to enjoy motivation inspiration. When you get it, it's great to take advantage of it. But don't fall in love with that. Rather, fall in love with discipline. Discipline is a completely different feeling. Discipline is, I do it Discipline is a completely different feeling. Discipline is, I do it regardless of how motivated I am. Discipline is what gets us to brush our teeth in the morning, take a shower, and get out of bed. I don't need to be motivated to brush my teeth every morning. And it's a process that's a mental state.

So what does that look like? Well, this is what it looks like. When I'm motivated and inspired and feeling good, I'm getting an after in the gym, I'm pushing myself a little harder, I'm getting these amazing workouts. When the motivation wanes and I'm feeling a little bit down, I have the discipline to go to the gym and then I ask myself the following questions, how can I take care of myself right now?

I'm feeling down, I'm not feeling motivated and inspired. How can I use fitness as a way to nourish myself, to take care of myself, and I value the discipline aspect. And I think if you fall in love with the discipline, then you're going to stay consistent regardless of when motivation is up or down. And if you view exercise as a way to take care of yourself, then that exercise is going to shape and mold based off of the rest of your life. And so you developed this long-term lifelong relationship with it where, you know, and what's the side effect of that?

I mean, let's be honest, the side effect of that is you look amazing, which everybody wants. The funny thing is- I just walked in here. No problem. Thank you. So I'm just busy doing, can I come to talk to you after? Thank you. Thank you.

This is what happens when you're doing this. This is what happens under lockdown and quarantine, okay. This is my life. That's awesome. I love it. I apologize. Go ahead. You want to bring me a problem.

Yeah, no problem. You develop a long-term, lifelong relationship with exercise and fitness. And so, now, here's the thing. It's harder to communicate that. If I'm, it's really easy to communicate, get shredded quick, and it's easy for me to develop a program and have a persona that is just inspiring and motivating, like the bootcamp instructors or whatever. But the reality is, if I really want to help people, I don't need to figure out how to get them to the gym when they're motivated. That's really easy. I need to figure out how to communicate the hard stuff like discipline,

context, how to treat exercises a way to nourish and take care of yourself. And you know, one thing I'll say, you know, Jen, we started Mind Pump five years ago and we had no media experience whatsoever. We never podcasted. We never did anything in front of the camp. We were just trainers with, you know, 15 to 20 years of experience. But one thing that we did have was that experience of communicating these ideas to people over and over again and really figuring out how to do it in effective ways. And that's what we try to do on the podcast. We try to communicate the right information, but do it as effectively as the people

who are communicating the wrong information. How can we beat that? Absolutely. So you said two things I want to touch upon. Number one is the discipline, because of course, I mean, you need to have the discipline to have, to really change your lifestyle long term. So the question is how does someone find discipline?

Like how do you build, how do you start building that trait? If you don't naturally have it in other ways. Like how you do one thing in life is typically how you do a lot of things in life or everything in life. So what would you help people? How can they start building that, developing? Yeah, so what would you tell people how can they start building that developing? That's an Excellent question discipline is a skill

Okay, so like any skill you start at one skill set or point and you develop it over time So the question is how do I develop a work on that skill? Okay? Here's how you do it in the context of fitness. Give yourself a challenging or realistic goal. Something that's challenging enough to give meaning because if it doesn't challenge you, there's no meaning behind it. It won't be worth anything. But also make it realistic so that you don't guarantee yourself failure. So what I mean by that is don't say to yourself, okay, I never go to the gym right now. So now my goal is to be at the gym five days a week. That for the most part is probably very unrealistic. Right. So ask yourself the following, what do I do right

now? How much can I add or do that I know I can maintain forever? What can I add that I can maintain forever? Oftentimes, that sounds like one day a week or two days a week. You start there, start there, and be consistent, apply discipline to it, and what ends up happening is you end up building the skill of discipline, you end up becoming confident. So I used to do this with clients, right?

In my early days as a personal trainer, if a client came to me and said, you know, one of the biggest things you'll said, one of the biggest things you'll get, one of the biggest objections you'll get from a client is that they don't have enough time. They'll say things like, I've got kids, I've got a job, I just don't have the time to work out. Now the young inexperienced version of myself

when I first became a trainer would say something like, you just gotta get, everybody has the same 24 hours in a day and you got to make the time. And if you make the time, then you'll be motivated for the rest of your day. It'll contribute. It'll make you a better mother. It'll make you better father. It'll make you pull productive at work. And all of those things are true. They're not untrue, but it's a very ineffective way of communicating to a client. And it's really not a good strategy. So what I started to learn was, rather than saying all that, it's still true, but very ineffective, I would say this, how much time can you realistically dedicate to fitness

now? There are no wrong answers. And then they would tell me, 30 minutes a week. And you know what I would say? Fine, that's what we're going to start, or they'd say an hour a week, or whatever. Whatever they gave me is what we would start with. And here's what would happen, Jim. It would start with that small, challenging, but realistic goal. They would stick to it more often than not, because it was realistic.

And then on their own, without me prompting them, without me motivating them, without me saying anything, eventually, it would come to me and say, you know what, Sal, I'm ready to do another hour a week. Or you know what, do you think I could work out with you more days a week? Or you know what, I started changing my nutrition now on top of it. And little by little, they start to develop that skill of discipline. And what that produced was long-term success. I mean, I haven't trained a single client. Well, I can't say that, but I have a really trained clients for about four years. So about one year in the mind pump, I sold my personal training studio, stopped training people. And the clients I had worked with, the average client was with me for anywhere between six to 12 years. Every single one of them, I stay in contact with them. Every single one of them is still at working out. Every single one of

them is still consistent. Now, if I go back to the beginning of my career, almost every one of my early clients stop. Absolutely. So it's a totally totally different approach and strategy, but again, discipline is a small, is a skill and think about it this way. I know people listening are like, oh, I want to get there faster. Okay. If you take two parallel lines that are perfectly parallel and I move the top one, one degree up, just one tiny degree, fairly noticeable. If you follow those two parallel lines for a mile, two miles, three miles, they start to become further and further and further apart. So these small changes, although they may seem insignificant, they may seem like it's not happening as fast as I want.

Trust me with this, before you know what you will be making profound changes to your lifestyle, of course, the way you look and feel, and it'll be permanent. It's more likely to be permanent. And I don't think anybody wants to accomplish something only to lose it later on.

We're looking for permanent lifelong results here. So it's basically you're gonna practice, like anything else. Totally. Like any skill you have to practice basketball, if you wanna be good at it, Spanish, if you wanna be good at it, discipline, like anything else is that same kind of skill.

And then people feel, like as they practice and get better and better, it's motivation, that's the motivation, right? That kind of propels them to be better. Yes, you're going. Absolutely. You start to embrace and enjoy the skill of discipline. You know, one of my favorite, as a trainer, I had favorite categories of clients, right? I love training everybody, but there were categories that I really enjoyed. We all said more than other training. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Well, yeah. So my favorite was people were people in advanced age and my second favorite were kids. Let me tell you why I love training kids because I would notice profound effects to the rest of their life. So somebody would, you know, bring me their kid. Typically it was a client that already was training and they somebody would, you know, bring me their kid. Typically it was a client that already was training and they'd say, you know, my son, you know, he's 12 or 13 and I want to hire you to start training him.

And so I would, and I'd start training him. And we would, I would apply what we're talking about this, you know, developing the skill of discipline. And, you know, they come and see me one week and they do 10 pushups and then the next week, they do 11 and I'd point it out and they'd say, wow, you know, you do realize that you're not the same person this week that you were last week. You did one more, which means fundamentally speaking, you're not the same person. Now, it just kind of communicated to that, that to them. Well, over time, their parents would come to me and say things like, you know, he's doing his homework now consistently and I noticed that he's better with his friends and he's you know

Doing better things at home and it was because they would learn the skill of discipline and see the progress and results And it just bled over into the rest of life You know what you said earlier about how you do you know some things is kind of how you do everything I think it's totally true So and one thing that I love about fitness chat is it's a very lack and white way of seeing this. It's easier to learn the skill of discipline through fitness than almost anything else, because you feel and see the results very black and white.

If I told somebody, hey, we're going to develop discipline to make you a better husband or to help you build your business. I mean, you could do that, but so complex. And there's a lot of ways you can measure whether you're succeeding or not. But if you go to the gym and you add 20 pounds to your squat and you're stronger, it's very clear. So I love fitness for teaching discipline.

I think it's one of the best ways to do it. You know, it's a big, I agree. I actually wrote a whole thing, and I did a whole talk about the fact that I think that there's a correlation between super successful people and fitness. They take fitness seriously usually because exactly that thing. I think fitness is like sometimes the first thing that you can see measurable results to what you're doing. And that leads over into everything else in life.

And I think when you start young, like you were saying, you teach the kids at a young age that skill it leads into everything else. Because I feel like fitness is, there's so many different ways you can do it. Like I feel it also, as you get stronger, you get mentally stronger. Physically stronger versus it gets you get more mentally strong.

But what I was gonna say also to you is that what you guys do well at Mind Pump is I think, but you were set, you touched upon this, there's so much information up there overload, right? Especially now in social media, there's so many people out there who are fitness models or selling these online programs, and they don't have the wear with all,

and they don't have the knowledge base to be probably like teaching people how to do these things. And what do you think about that? How do you decipher between people who are real, who are just pose or so to speak, a fitness model who looks a certain way, and you're gleaming all their,

the knowledge from that person versus someone who I think you broke it down in one of your posts about coaches and academics versus these models slash you know quick buck social media people. Yeah, so that's what we're trying to counter because you you know, here's the thing you want to consider. A lot of the best looking bodies that you'll ever see on, you know, magazines or social media. Oftentimes, and I know this from personal experience because I've worked with a lot of these people. Oftentimes what drove them to those extremes were really bad body image issues. In fact, I'll tell you what, there's a much higher percentage of people with eating disorders in the social media fitness space than you'll find in the average population.

It's very, very high. So what you're getting is you're getting information from people who probably shouldn't be coaching and training other people. They're taking it from a place of probably poor health, although they display, you know, looking really good, oftentimes, animal steroids, oftentimes, you know, extreme dieting habits or whatever, they're not communicating the right stuff.

Now, trainers, trainers in particular with lots of experience, have the experience of working with lots and lots and lots of Average everyday people and what they're going to communicate is information that through years of practice and experience working on lots and lots of people is What really works? What really helps people long-term? But yeah, we're always trying to counter that. Now the problem is that the really good looking shredded fitness marketers through social media are really really good at selling their ideas. They do a good job of doing that. The people in fitness who have the right information oftentimes don't sell

it as well. So they're losing the battle of information. What we're trying to do is we're trying to win the battle of information through selling the right ideas. Like, how do you sell the right ideas, right? So I'll give you one example. So let's say I want to communicate the very true statement that you should chase health rather than looks when it comes to your workout and nutrition. So what I mean by that is, if you are working out and eating and the number one reason why you're eating a particular way and working out a particular way,

is just because you wanna change how you look, you're far better off if you are motivated and you chase optimal health. You're better off if you chase optimal health. And here's why. When you're chasing how you look, you oftentimes ignore your body's signals. You oftentimes are focused on,

you start to confuse your body image with your self image. So how you look objectively becomes who you are. So you hear the term like, I am fat, rather than I have fat. So it changes and it motivates you to do things that aren't necessarily healthy for you. This is when you see the abuse of plastic surgery, the abuse of supplements, crazy diets, overtraining, and all the steroids and men. That's what can motivate that when you're looking at the extreme examples of that.

And women, Bob. I wanted just to get that. I feel that women now, I didn't realize it as much But I feel like women are like taking a lot of hormones also that to kind of to shred faster It has like they're up in their testosterone when they shouldn't be I mean people are people sorts of things Anything that can that has the promise of changing the way you look and getting you there faster can be abuse you're right women We'll do the same thing now. here's what happens when you do that. Eventually, you start to lose your health. And when you lose your health, what follows? How you look? So find me, when people have poor health,

they lose their attractiveness, they lose their aesthetics. Now, when somebody has very good health and they chase good health through exercise and nutrition, what follows along with that? What's the inevitable side effect of that? You look amazing. Right. Finding me someone who is healthy on the inside and out. Somebody who has a healthy body, somebody who exercises to take care of themselves,

someone who has a healthy mental state, healthy spiritual practice, great relationships around them, and you'll find somebody that's attractive. So how do I sell the idea? This is how I sell it. If you chase aesthetics, you'll eventually lose your health and you'll lose your aesthetics. If you chase your health, you'll get a great deal of aesthetics and you'll keep it. And so that's how I take that message and I take the wrong message and I counter it with a better sales message, but it's true. I'm being honest. I take the wrong message and I counter it with a better sales message, but it's true.

I'm being honest. No, I like that, but I think what happens is psychologically, right? Because everything is instant gratification, right, with Instagram or whatever, and you're like swiping and looking, and you think because exactly what you said, psychologically, someone looks hot, great, they have the ripped. You think, oh my God, that's the person, I want to do what they're doing. And you don't have like, your brain's not able to decipher

between, you know, the fact that the other guy on the next page is probably much more knowledgeable. He could be a professor in this, but he looks normal. And so you gravitate to the other people and see it all the time. And it's like when you actually peel the onion, the layers of the onion, you find out this person is naturally, this is what I wanted to talk to you about.

They're naturally really skinny, right? And then they just do a little bit of weights, let's say, the first of their 21 years old, then they do like a little bit of weights. And so they look super shredded and fit. But really, it's not like they have any knowledge. It's not like they're doing anything that's extra special on the health side. So my question again is body,

like having like a, do you believe that people have like a certain place where they're genetically most comfortable and you can only, I guess you can only like, you can only like screw with it so much one way or the other, right? Like, I guess a body weight setting, right? Because I know for myself, and I know maybe you might disagree, no matter how hard I would try, I would always, it would be very, very difficult for me to get below a baseline. So I guess the question is baseline. Do you think people all have a baseline that you can only reach so much?

Yeah, so, okay, so you have a genetic, you have genetic set point, but you also have psychological set point. Okay, so if you grow up a particular way, you live a particular lifestyle, you eat a particular way, then you may have developed a psychological set point in terms of what you feel most comfortable doing or how you feel most comfortable living. So that's one part of it. There's a genetic point. That's a good, I've never heard that before.

Yeah, and now there is a genetic set point as well, but that genetic point set points pretty wide. Okay, so do we have genetic set points that say we should be 60 pounds overweight, highly unlikely? That's, that is a modern phenomenon. In fact, if you, if you were to Google circus, like circus fat man or whatever, back in the day, you know, very cruel, but circuses used to have these, what they used to call free shows,

and they would have people who, you know, look different or whatever, and people would pay money to see them. And they would always have typically a very, what they consider to be very overweight individual. If you look at the pictures of the late 1800s of these circus fat man or fat woman, that's what they used to call them, you would see someone that today would blend in to your typical Walmart crowd or whatever. That's how far we've come. So yes, genetics

play a role, but genetics do not account for the severe obesity that we see. Nor does it account for the extreme opposite end of the scale where people have eating disorders and get themselves to it. I'm very unhealthy. That's all right. Go ahead. I was going to say. Yeah. So your genetics will give you this range right here, okay? And your lifestyle will dictate where you are. So let's say your range is, you know, LeBron James for basketball skill, right? His potential is much higher than mine.

Like I could work my butt off. I will never reach LeBron James's skill. However, if you look at my potential, it's this big. And it's highly unlikely that I've reached my full potential as well. So you can play within that. The other thing to consider too is that there's a wide, all of us have a range of what's considered healthy genetically. So like, for me, it's probably, you know, anywhere between 9% body fat and maybe 16 or 17% body fat. So if I'm taking care of myself, if I'm training right and I'm eating healthy,

you're not gonna see much difference in my health between 17, 16, 17%, and 9% now look different or look very different. 9% I got a six back, 17% I got more of a dad bod, maybe. But my health is pretty darn good. So yes, there is a genetic range, but I think, relying on the, oh no, I have this particular set point.

That's more of a psychological set point, because your genetic set point is a range. A psychological one tends to keep us stuck at where we like to be. And there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And here's the other thing too. I can change my behaviors.

I can change my thought patterns. I can change my activity, my lifestyle. I can't change my genetics. I really can't. So I think it's important to focus on the things that you can change and to leave the rest on the side. Because what ends up happening, if I focus on the stuff that I can't change,

I am not, I am creating an enemy out of reality. You know, that's the truth is my genetics are here, or whatever. Okay, so I'm gonna fight that every day. I'm gonna hate that every single day. That's gonna make reality unbearable. Why don't I just accept I have a certain genetic whatever. I'll never

I'll never be as muscular as Mr. Olympia, you know, because I wanted to build muscle as a kid. I never I'll never be as muscular as Mr. Olympia. Okay, that's fine, but I have a potential for myself that I can get to. Let me focus on that instead. Right. Exactly. I think that's a good point too, because, but again, it's about people, people sometimes it's very hard, because you see other people, it's much easier for some people than others, and that can be a deterrent. That can make people not want to continue.

Now, I'm not talking about the extreme people who need to be shredded, but people who want to have a flat stomach, never mind a six-pounder, and no matter what they do, it's not working as well as, like, you know, married or Bob. So, like, so you do believe there is some kind of genetics at point, and it's, but there's also the, do you think the psychological set point makes people, gives that people that feeling, like they kind of,

that not, I hate to, we're, we're, use the word motivation, but kind of help derails them sometimes because they feel like they feel like they feel like they're not, it's not doing anything. They have, it spirals them into a place of negativity. Yeah. Yeah, it's, do you know a hard, I mean, you know this, this is just a question for the audience. It is, do you know how hard it is to change fundamental behaviors?

It is very, very difficult. Okay, so let's look at one set of fundamental behaviors that we all have, how we eat and the foods that we choose to eat. This food is not merely fuel, okay? Food, we have entire cultures that are around food. There's Italian food, there's Mexican food, there's Chinese food, there's breakfast foods, lunch foods, dinner foods, there are foods based off of context. Like when you're at a birthday, you expect to

eat birthday cake. Yes, exactly. When you're at the movies, you expect to eat popcorn. In fact, I don't need popcorn except for when I'm at the movies. We are motivated or driven to eat not just because we need fuel, but because of how we feel. We can eat because we're happy, because we're sad, because we're stressed. We can celebrate with food. My family's heritage is Italian and we use food as a way to celebrate all the time. Food can be tied to memories. I mean, I could go on and on. No, I agree. I'm just like everything is related. It's everything around food, right?

Every you soak lies around food. And it's like, it's very difficult. Like, I think that's one of those psychological points that you were talking about. Yes. That really kind of plays a big factor in your, in your set body baseline, right? Like you won't let yourself go below because you're so programmed to be doing other things. Absolutely. It's, they are fundamental parts of who you are.

Okay. So let's say that you're somebody that, you know, you, you, when you find yourself stressed out, um, that you eat, you eat because you're stressed out, okay? So that food has now become a coping mechanism. You're self-medicating, if you will, with the food. And you might not even be aware of it. But let's say you start to become aware of it, right?

Okay. So now I'm going to take away that food is the, I don't eat when I'm stressed. Have you solved the problem? Not really. You got to figure out a way to deal with your stress and a health. Yes. In a way that's not that food, right? So what about when you're bored or how about this?

Here's an easy one. You're starting to change how you eat, right? You want to eat healthier. So you go to a party and you're with your friends. And then your friends, you know, you eat your dinner and then the friends bring out cookies, right? Home baked cookies and they say, hey, would you like a cookie? And you respond by saying, no, I can't. I can't have a cookie because I'm trying to eat better. Okay, let's let's break that down for a second. First of all, of course you can have a cookie. What do you mean you can't have a cookie?

You can have a cookie. If you want the. The reality is, you don't want that cookie because you're trying to change how you eat. And yet we tell people and ourselves, I can't. So let's break down the psychological phenomena that's happening here. I can't implies that you are being forced. Who is forcing you? You are.

You have literally created a separate version of yourself who is this dictator who's telling you what you can and can't do. How long do you think you're going to last with a dictator telling you what you can and can't do? Not very long. And what does the behavior look like when you finally break free from that rebellion? It looks like the opposite. So if you have this mental state where you say,

I can't, I can't, I can't, even though reality is you don't want to because you're trying to change your behavior, but you keep saying to others and yourself, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't. Eventually, this is the point that you reach. You say to yourself, you know what? I'm just gonna live my life.

I just wanna enjoy life. Why are you saying that? Because nobody enjoys being tyrannized by anybody, even if it's just you. So then what do you do? You rebel. And what does that look like? Not just I have a cookie here and there,

but I'm gonna have a whole box of cookies. I am going off. I'm going the opposite direction. So it looks like a binge or whatever. And so why don't we change that? Why don't we change that a little bit? Instead of saying, I can't, why don't you just say, I don't want it. Now, here's the important part because people will say, but I do want it, but I do want, I can't say that. Okay, no.

Acknowledging that you're going to enjoy the flavor and acknowledging that you're going to enjoy the hedonistic value of a food is okay. That does not mean you necessarily want it because you can say to yourself, yes, I like that. That's going to taste good. Yes, I'm going to enjoy that. However, the reality is, I want to feed myself in a way that takes care of myself. So I actually don't want it. Or, or you're with your kids, you bake some cookies, you haven't had me in a while and you say to yourself, you know what, I'm going to enjoy the taste of that cookie and the value and I'm going to enjoy and right now that's the value that I want from that

food. So I'm going to enjoy that cookie and you end up not binging or not going way off. This is how you develop balance with the foods around you, but it is a, it is something that's much deeper than just eat this way, don't eat this, and eat that. It's much deeper than that. And so it takes a long time. That's why I said earlier, small changes that are challenging yet realistic. It's the only way.

The other way that you change fundamental behaviors is with an epiphany, which is extremely rare. Most of us don't, that would be like you go to the doctor and the doctor say, oh, you've got three arteries that are blocked. We need to do a triple bypass and then maybe you think, oh my gosh, I don't want to lose my life. And then I'm not going to see my kids and you have an epiphany. Very unlikely to happen.

In fact, even in those situations, oftentimes, an epiphany doesn't happen. Vitamin water just dropped a new zero sugar flavor called with love. Get the taste of raspberry and dark chocolate for the all warm, all fuzzy, all self-care, zero self doubt you. Grab a with love today. Vitamin water zero sugar, nourish every you. Vitamin water is a registered trademark of glass O. I mean, that's, I mean, you're, you're talking, it sounds like you're, you have to reframe how you talk

to yourself. That's, that's a lot of reframing. Like instead of saying, I can't, so you say, I don't want to. I mean, and that again is like a scale you got to practice. All of this is basically practice. That's all that, all of the, all of this is, is practice.'s all that, all of the, all of the, all of the, all of the,

this is practice. 100%. Look, it's no different. Let's say you're in a dedicated relationship. You're married and you see an attractive person. You can admit to yourself, ooh, that's an attractive person. But I don't want to, you know,

you know, cheat on my spouse. I don't want, or you may say to yourself, wow, that person's a jerk. I really like to punch them in the face. Yeah, you might might want to you might enjoy punching the face for a second, right? But do you really want to? Right. You don't so really it's it's about these behavior and the problem is especially when it comes to food Jen is that we were never taught To do this instead We're in it. We're in a very unique environment today, right? We have unlimited access to inexpensive food.

You can literally have any flavor or experience of food that you want within a very short period of time. In fact, you probably don't even delete. I mean, I could right now go on my phone and if I wanted something sweet, salty, Chinese food, whatever, I could order right now. So it's a very unique time. And so we have to learn how to develop good relationships around it. We're maybe thousands of years ago. That wasn't that important.

You had food you ate it, and if you didn't, you didn't need it. So it's just much more important today than ever. What do you believe about, like, are you a guy who likes hacks? Like the word hacks I've never loved. It feels like it's like a shortcut that I never find shortcuts work personally. But it's all the rage, right? Like I feel like health hacks, like everything you see now is like hashtag, health hacks.

Which are, like do you believe in health hacks? Do you think what do you have any health hacks? Or another euphemism for hacks? I think you use it because I hate that word. But yeah, no, I do too, but I know what you're saying. No, I just told you one, right? So one of them is rather than saying I can't. Yeah, I like that.

I don't want. That's what made me think of it. The reframing how you speak to yourself. So that's one. Here's another one. If you attach, let's say you want to increase your activity, let's say that you want to start walking for 20 minutes three times a day or twice a day, okay. Here's a health hat.

Attach that activity to a ritual that you're already consistent with. So rather than saying twice a day, I'm going to walk for 20 minutes. You're more likely to be consistent with that if you say, after I eat, I'm going to walk for 20 minutes because you are going to eat. That's something that you're already consistent doing. So I already breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So if I attach my walk to that ritual that I'm already doing, I'm far more likely to do this. Marketers know this, by the way. Supplement manufacturers know this, so they'll tell you, I'll give you a great example. Years ago, protein powder companies realized that if they really pushed the post-workout

protein intake, that they would attach it to a ritual that all people who work out have, which is working out, that people are more likely to use protein, and protein sales explode it. Another category of supplements that does that is pre-workout. They've attached it. They've attached it to a ritual. All people who work out work out, attach it to the ritual and you're going to get people to be consistent.

So, that's another way to do it. So, if you want to be more active, attach it to things that you already do. So, you may say to yourself. I need to work on mobility Well, if you watch 30 minutes of TV every night with your spouse then attach it to that every night when I watch TV for 30 minutes I'm gonna sit on the floor and I'm gonna do You know easy mobility movements while I watch TV and if you do that you're more likely to be consistent Okay, so away from the fitness portion. Let's talk about the other stuff like the nutrition the other other elements, right that kind of Go full circle. You do have like would he do believe in supplements then do you take supplements? So supplements can play a vital role in proper nutrition, but they don't come anywhere close to proper nutrition

If you look at you know if I were to very generally and loosely make like a pie chart and say exercise lifestyle, which includes sleep, relationships with people around you mindset and nutrition and supplements, what percentages of each lifestyle, exercise, nutrition, make up about 99% of that pie chart, supplements would make up about 1%. Unless you actually lack a key nutrient in your diet, in which case supplements can be a godsend. So let's say you're somebody that is actually lacking in B vitamin. You'll find this a lot of women sometimes will be lacking in B vitamins, especially vegans or people who don't eat much meat.

Supplementing with a B vitamin can be a total game changer. Or let's say same category of people who don't eat much meat, creatine can be a game changer. Creatine is only found naturally in animal products. Studies will show that vegans who supplement with creatine actually get a immeasurable cognitive boost from taking that. show that vegans who supplement with protein actually get a immeasurable cognitive boost from taking that. Or let's say your vitamin D levels are low and stuff like that.

Or maybe you're somebody that, let's say you want to maximize your body's progress. You want to maximize strength and muscle building. You're trying to eat adequate protein. Did you do that? Studies will show anywhere between maybe 0.6 grams to 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight is roughly where you'll get maximum results. Any more than that is kind of a waste and lower than that. Just start to get, you know, reducing results.

Maybe a protein powder might benefit you because I know I've had clients who just really find it difficult to eat an adequate protein. They just don't like the taste of meat or whatever. Then a protein powder can be beneficial, but supplements, they cannot make up for a poor diet, bad lifestyle or exercise or activity, they just can't. I feel like it's a craze right now. I feel like vitamin D is one supplement that people are all, like not just talking about, but I want to get my blood tests. They were like, I live in LA, I feel like I'm always in the sun.

And they're like, no, no, no, you need to take vitamin D. I feel like, is that just, you feel that it's a fad or do you feel like really everybody is actually deficient in vitamin D? And what is it for you? I think that was so vitamin D acts more like a hormone than a vitamin in the body. Vitamin D is essential for bone development, but it's also essential for hormone function.

Low vitamin D levels in men will cause low testosterone. In women, you start to see progesterone and estrogen imbalances. It can cause, it can exacerbate autoimmune issues. So let's say you have psoriasis or Crohn's disease. Low D levels can cause some big problems. It's very important for immune system. So people with low vitamin D levels are far more likely to have severe side effects

from respiratory illnesses like the flu. So it's a very important nutrient. Just like many nutrients are very important. Are a lot of people deficient? Studies show that it's relatively prevalent, mainly because we just don't live outdoors the way we evolved. So we're inside all the time,

and so our D level is kind of below. Also, your body synthesizes vitamin D from sunlight, but also uses cholesterol to do so. And if you have low cholesterol or if your diet doesn't contain much dietary cholesterol, you're going to synthesize less vitamin D from sun exposure. And then there's a lot of genetic factors and lifestyle factors that can affect that. Now they have established a range of what's considered ideal vitamin D levels. I'm not familiar off the top of my head with what that range is,

but you probably want to be somewhere in the middle. At least that's what the current science is showing us. But if your vitamin D levels are adequate, supplementing with vitamin D, not only will give you zero additional benefits, but may actually become, may actually be detrimental. You may actually be causing yourself problem. And this is true with a lot of nutrients, you know, especially the fat soluble ones. If you have adequate levels and then you supplement with it, it was a craze for a while for women to supplement with calcium. Oh, yeah, it was years ago, but I remember it.

Yeah. Yeah, it was all about osteoporosis, strengthening your bones, and obviously calcium is part of the bone strengthening or building process. So they said take a bunch of calcium and see you had all these women supplementing with a lot of calcium who weren't sending the signal for the body to strengthen their bones. They were just sedentary because your bones built like muscles do. I could eat a bunch of protein, but if I'm not working out, I'm not going to build more muscles, same thing with calcium or whatever.

And so you had all these women taking tons of calcium and what they found was that they were building deposits in the arteries and causing problems with their heart health. So if you have adequate levels, supplementing won't help you. So I think the best thing you could do is go get tested, get tested for your nutrient levels and see where your levels are at and then supplement accordingly. And if you have adequate levels, then supplementing is not going to benefit you. What do you think about circuit training versus traditional training? It depends what we're talking about,

but if we're talking about the context of modern life and the average person, so if it's okay, I'll set the context up, so people kind of understand. So modern life is very sedentary. It's designed that way. In order to create lots of activity, you actually actuallyary. It's designed that way. In order to create lots of activity, you actually actually have to go out of your way.

In fact, when I would track client steps, just to see what movement looked like. I mean, people are getting, you know, 2,000, 3,000 steps because most jobs or many jobs are now at a desk. You drive to work. You come home. You sit down quite a bit. but we're also very busy. So, it's not like we're not moving a lot because we're not busy, we're not moving a lot because life is designed that way, but we're also very, very busy. So, we just don't have a lot of time

to try to inject lots and lots of activity to try to burn calories. Now, you combine that with the modern, the context of that food is very, very easily accessible. It's hyper-palatable. It's all around us. So we have easy access to food that tastes really good as inexpensive and it's very hard to manually burn a lot of calories. In other words, it's very hard for me to burn it off by trying to move. So your best strategy, in my opinion, is to positively influence your resting metabolic rate, your metabolism. The best way to do that is to train for strength and muscle. Now simplistically speaking, muscle burns more calories than body fat does. It's an expensive tissue So just having more muscle on your body will result in a higher calorie burn

But there's also something else that happens Just sending the signal to your body that you're trying to get stronger that you're trying to build muscle Even if you don't gain a ton of muscle even if you only gain Three four five pounds of muscle which by the way for, four, five pounds of muscle, which by the way, for most people, five pounds in muscle gain, you're not going to appear bigger, but you will feel a lot tighter. But sending the signal to get stronger does tell the body that it can try, it can, it doesn't have to be quite as efficient with calories.

So you also get an amplified calorie burn from that. So in my opinion, if you are limited on time, if you can only work out two or three days a week and you want a long-term strategy, your best bet is to focus on training in a way that speeds up your metabolism the most and the best way to do that is to train for strength and for muscle gain. Now, circuit training does build a little bit of muscle and some strength, but circuit training really is more like cardio than it is resistance training. So you burn more calories for a 45 minute circuit training session than you would with a 45 minute session of traditional strength training, but the metabolism boosting effects are superior with the traditional strength training.

So the best long-term approach for most people should be traditional strength training. Now, if you've got all that already, you've got a lot of time, you like to exercise a lot and your goal at this point now is just to burn more calories manually. Cercat and you want a condition, you want to get more stamina, more endurance, you like more of the athletic performance, and Cerc circuit training can have a lot of value as well.

You know, why is it psychological that we feel that if we run for 45 minutes, that we're getting a better workout, then if we would do weight for 45 minutes? I think it's because we've attached the difficulty in the challenge to the intensity. We've also attached sweating, gasping for air, how hard it feels while you're doing it, to effectiveness. Now, the truth is, and anybody who's been training people for a long time will tell you, intensity doesn't tell you if you've had a good workout or not, just tells you what you did was hard. So literally, you don't need a program to feel something that's difficult. Go dig a bunch of holes and fill them back up and you sweat a lot and you, you know, you got intense workout.

But that doesn't necessarily make it effective. What we need to do is attach what are, okay, what are our goals? What are we looking for long-term? What's going to set me up for the future? And what is my progress looking like? If I approach my workout with the, I need to burn as many calories as possible, approach, I may burn more body fat initially,

but long-term, I'm going to hit a lot of plateaus. First off, the body learns how to become efficient with calories when you do that. It's very good at that. In fact, there was a study that they did. I love this study. It was actually one of the best studies of its kind where they went and studied the, I believe they're called the Hodd said tribe, H-A-D-Z-A, I think it's the spelling of it, and their modern hunter-gatherers. So these people live very differently than the way we do. They hunt their food, they gather their food, they, everything's very manual, they move a lot.

And the researchers through sophisticated testing were able to calculate how many calories their bodies were actually burning every single day, not estimated, but how many calories their body was actually burning. And they predicted that these people would be burning three, four, five times more calories than the average person. Now, what they found

was actually shocking. What they found was that those people were burning a little bit more calories than the average modern sedentary individual. Now, you think to yourself, how is that possible? They're moving so much. Well, our bodies evolved in that environment for most of the time humans have been on earth. For most of the time the humans have been on earth, we were hunter-gathers. Our bodies learned how to become efficient with calorie burn. If that's what we do over it, just think about it. It makes no evolutionary sense for you to be a hunter-gatherer and burn 10,000 calories a day. You wouldn't be able to find enough food to survive. So your body adapts. It learns how to burn less calories. It becomes like a hybrid car, half electric, two cylinders.

It's going to burn a little bit of calories, but get you to go long periods of time. Now, strength training tells your body to be less efficient with calories, because the priority, the adaptation, the priority that you're sending, the signal that you're sending to your body is saying, I need to be strong and have more muscle. And I'm feeding myself.

I forgot to say that part. If you train for strength and you train for muscle, you also need to feed yourself accordingly. If you want to crash diet while doing that, you're not going to accomplish much. So eat a high protein diet, feed yourself appropriately. You're not trying to go in a bulk. What we are trying to do is eat to fuel the muscle growth, eat to fuel the strength gains. You might even be able to eat at break even,

in which case you'll burn body fat while building muscle. That's difficult to do, but that's possible. But both of those things tell the body, we can become less efficient with calories. Because in the past, when can become less efficient with calories. Because in the past, when we were hunter-gatherers, a fast metabolism was detrimental. If you require 6,000 or 7,000 calories a day to survive,

you had a lower chance of survival than somebody who was super efficient with calories, who was only burning 2,000 calories. But today, because the context has radically changed, it's the opposite. If you have a super efficient metabolism, you're at a disadvantage, unless you're okay with eating very, very little for the rest of your life,

which is fine, that's totally fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But most of us find that very difficult. We want to be able to enjoy food. We like to, know set it again Our lives are sedatory a fast metabolism is a huge advantage now It is great insurance policy against modern life So that's what you want to consider when you pick your route to your workout program

How many days a week can I work out? Oh, I'm busy. So maybe three days a week I'm already sedentary. I think I enjoy food a lot. I want to fast metabolism. If that's you, then focus on building muscle, building strength, and you'll be much better off. Yeah, I think that people's goats, especially girls, I think women feel like they have to do cardio. It's like a very psychological thing

that to burn calories to be thin. It's very hard to convince a lot of women that they need shrink training over cardio. Right? Oh, totally. I'll give you an example, Jen. I had, I'll give you one client I trained a long time ago, her name was Sharon. And she came to me and she worked out five or six days a week, lots and lots of running,

lots of circuit training, you know, a week, lots and lots of running, lots of circuit training, you know, all the stuff that burns lots of calories. And she still had, I forgot, her body fat percentage was somewhere around 26 or 27 percent, not bad, but not super lean or at least for her. She wanted to get down to like 20 or 19 percent where she could see some definition. She was healthy, otherwise no problem. So she was maintaining that body fat percentage in her body weight, consuming about 2,000, it was anywhere but two, it was about 1,700 to 2,000 calories a day,

doing five to six days a week of a lot of working out. That's how much she could eat to maintain her weight, right? So she came to me and she said, I wanna get leaner, what do I do? And I said, well, either you eat less, or we speed up your metabolism, or you burn more calories. And she said, look, burning more calories, I'm already working out six days a week.

Like, what am I going to do? Work out seven days a week twice a day? Like, what am I going to do? Right. Eating less, she said, okay, I could do that. But I enjoy food. And for the amount of exercise I do, I don't want to eat 17, 118, okay, I could do that, but I enjoy food. And for the amount of exercise I do, I don't want to like eat 1,700 or 1,800 calories all the time. So let's see if I can

speed up my metabolism. So what we did slowly, as I had her slowly transition from burning manual calories to building muscle and strength, slowly reduced her running and cardiovascular, slowly increased the strength training. I had her lift weights four days a week with me. Eventually, we got to more advanced resistance training routine. Three days a week would have been fine too, but she was, again, she was advanced. So we went four days a week. She was running once a week versus the five or six days a week. I had her do something called a reverse diet where I slowly increased her calories. Increased her calories, no weight gain, no weight gain.

Did this over a period of, I think it took us about eight months. diet, where I slowly increased her calories, increased her calories, no weight gain, no weight gain. Did this over a period of, I think it took us about eight months. Then when we got to the point where she was eating a lot of calories, not gaining any weight, doing strength training, working out way less than she was before, then we could cut calories and she got lean. She got down to 20% body fat and she got down to 20% body fat eating 2500 calories a day. So she essentially ate anywhere between 700 to 500 more calories a day, worked out less

and she was 20% body fat instead of 27% body fat. So that's just a, that's one way that you can tackle this goal and I think it's a more long-term realistic approach for the average person. And women, I mean, when you explain it that way, they're gonna love it, just like men will love it. I think resistance training's got a little bit of that stigma, but it's not as bad as when I first got into personal training, but I mean, the truth is,

look, if you're a woman and you lift weights like a bodybuilder and you train that way, here's what you'll end up with, a very tight sculpted tone physique and a fast metabolism. That's the truth. Very few, very, very few women are going to lift weights and look bulky or muskets. Very, very rare. That takes a special kind of genetics, which I've probably seen in person in my life once or twice. Especially if you're natural, you're going to be fine. Well, I think what happens also at the beginning,

you know, if you don't see instant gratification, right, you don't see that happening and you just like, when you stop, when you transition, when you do the opposite, like more strength, for you in less cardio, I think it's so hard on people because they're not seeing what they want to see right away and they're not doing it, so they're not getting that endorphin release, that's what's really hard. So they go right back to what they're not seeing what they want to see right away and they're not doing it, they're not getting that endorphin release.

That's what's really hard. They go right back to what they're doing before. And then they never even give themselves a chance, really. Yeah. And the hardest people to convince of that are what I call the cortisol junkies. Now these are people who, you know, their job is very stressful,

they're go-go-go, they've got their kids, you know, they've got their kids, they've got their their mortgage and they find a stress relief or at least what they consider to be stress relief from the super intense workout. You know what's really happening is here's a person who's pushing their body and they're stressed all the time, their cortisol levels are high all the time and because they're cortisol levels are high all the time. Just like if you're insulin levels are high, you start and because they're cortisol levels are high all the time. Just like if

you're insulin levels are high you start to become resistant to insulin. This happens with other hormones in the body as well and I'm generalizing here because it's much more complicated but you can start to become resistant to these stress hormones and by the way a lot of people don't realize this cortisol feels good, cortisol is a if you if you get a boost to cortisol, this is what it's supposed to, it's supposed to raise in the morning to wake you up and make you feel alert. But if you push it all the time with your lifestyle, then you start to feel resistant to it, then you throw coffee on top of it, so now I'm gonna throw caffeine, get more cortisol. Oh, now I feel dead. Let me get more cortisol, go hammer my body with an orange theory class or a hard push. Right. Or what you'll find a lot of times with these cortisol junkies

as they are late to appointments often, not realizing that subconsciously, that cortisol feeling is making them feel, but over time, if they push that, you start to get, you know, HPA access dysfunction, it's what they used to call adrenal fatigue back in the day, that's a disdain. You know, that's not the best term,

but those symptoms start to appear, excess fatigue, hormone imbalances, fat gain out of nowhere. I feel terrible. I have to drink four cups of coffee a day just to keep my eyes open. Terrible place to be, that takes like a year sometimes to repair. So I tell people this, like when you're building a house,

yes, you can build it faster if you put up the walls real fast. And from the outside, it's gonna look really good, but you're not gonna have a real house. You gotta start with the foundation, build it right, put the plumbing in, you're everything the right way, and then you'll have a house that'll ask you a lifetime. Breathe in, breathe out.

Get dressed, head out, grab some friends, camp out. Get hyped up, buy about them. Take your Dean. Get dressed, head out, grab some friends, camp out. Get hyped up, vibe out. Take your Dean, let it all out. That RRI co-op, we're here for all the outs. We want you to spend more time outside our doors and in there. Try it out, check out, think it out. RRI co-op, all out.

Visit RRI.com. What's, what are the symptoms of adrenal fatigue or what you called HBA? Would you call it HBA? HPA access dysfunction. So the hypothalamus pituitary and the adrenals communicate with each other. And they, you know, if one, you know, sends a signal, the others have to adapt and they

work with each other. And when there's a dysfunction there, you get hormone or chemical imbalances in the body. The symptoms of that are the excess fatigue, intolerance to cold and heat. So you're in a warm room, but you're always cold, poor sleeping patterns, or you sleep a lot and you wake up still exhausted. You need mood swings, irritability, cravings for foods that like hyper palatable foods like sugars, processed foods where you just,

you feel like you need to eat them, even though you've just eaten something. So it's all those symptoms of that, you know, that we all are, I think, familiar with where you just feel overall, you know, hard to burn body fat, your calories are low, can't figure out why that's not coming off your body, digestive issues, that's a very common one. Why is my digestion off? I'm, you know, constipation or diarrhea or bloating, that's a very common one. Why is my digestion off? I'm constipation or diarrhea or bloating.

That's a very common one where you eat and then all of a sudden foods you ate before that were fine now cause you to look like you're six months pregnant by the end of the evening. So these are all this compile all those together. Those could be under the category of HPA access to function, the remedy for that being more rest, stress management, you could use supplements that help with the body's ability to adapt like Ashwaganda for some people is a good one. And taking your workout routine and focusing on

building strength, building muscle and rejuvenating the body. So, relaxing type stuff as well. The stuff you don't want to do is beat yourself up all the time with these circuits and these crazy high-intense workouts. Right. Can you imagine? I've got some friends who are ultra-marathoners and they're running like a hundred and they're doing in one year, two iron man's and two ultra marathon's I'm like what is the point of doing all this stuff like they think that they're they're doing something good for themselves But aren't they just breaking down their body like isn't that just Madness really like yeah, it's well anytime you push faster

Absolutely, it's very oxidative Anytime you push yourself to the max of whatever performance you're looking for Then you start to lose longevity and health benefits that that's true for any physical pursuit So even strength strength training if I was Hard core like competing as a bodybuilder. I'm gonna lose some of the longevity benefit So what I'm talking about is how to incorporate Strength training so that being lean is easier so that you get a

aesthetic physique not extreme. I'm not talking about looking like a physique competitor or being shredded. That's a different approach. I'm talking about being fit, healthy, having longevity. That's the approach that I'm referring to. What are you doing? You're like ripped all the time. No, I've been, I've just been... Even in this quarantine, you're ripped. I saw a picture, you posted on Instagram, I mean, I thought like, you're like Wolverine in that picture. And you're just rolled out of bed.

No, that's lighting in a pump. That's what it is. Whatever it is, it works. I know. I knew resistance training pretty regularly, a little bit of mobility training. And I've just been doing it for so long, Jan. I mean, you know, it's works. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

I know. I know. I know. It's not a struggle for me because it's something I've been doing for so long. Okay. So how about body parts splits versus whole body? What do you prefer? So for resistance training, whole body routines for most people are vastly superior.

There's a couple of reasons why. Body parts splits tend to hit body parts less frequently. So like an example of a body parts split would be Monday, I hit chest, Tuesday, I hit back, Wednesday, I hit shoulders, and so on. Full body routine, it's the whole body each time that you work out. Studies show so we can actually measure the muscle building or

what you would refer to as the muscle adaptation process through something called muscle protein synthesis and right after a workout muscle protein synthesis spikes it goes up predictably but it also drops very quickly after about 24 to 72 hours. Now this is true even if you're recovering. Okay. So recovery and adaptation are two separate things. Now they can happen simultaneously and they often do, but just because you're healing, which is recovery, doesn't mean you're adapting. So if you work out your, let's say you work out your legs on Monday and you do 15 sets of exercises and then you wait

a week to rest and recover and you get really sore and all that stuff. You may be building and adapting for one to three days, but then that drops and now you've lost three, four days or consider this. The body is always adapting and that means it'll adapt in the opposite. So you may build, go to baseline and then the body adapt in the opposite. Your muscles are always either adding or taking away. They're always trying to match the demand.

You'll only ever be as strong or as muscular as you need to be. Your body will never be stronger than you need to be. So the best approach is rather than doing 15 sets for your legs on Monday, is to do five sets on Monday, five sets on Wednesday, five sets on Friday. So I'm not telling people to triple the volume or the work, I'm saying, do the same total volume

for the week, but divide it amongst three workouts. The other thing to consider is when you're doing a full body workout, functionally speaking, it tends to send a more complete signal to the body. So, if I work out my legs only on one day, I'm sending a little bit of a different single, then if I work out my legs in my back, my chest, my shoulders, my arms, all in the same day. So, and this is just, this was also based on my experience training clients. They got far, but I trained full body. I've been working out for over 20 years consistently.

You do? Yeah, absolutely. I do full body three days a week, and then two days and Thursdays and weekends, I'll do mobility type work. For the average person, no joke. Average person who's just looking to get fit, healthy, they're not trying to be super crazy shredded or anything like that, they just want to have good metabolism, maintain good longevity.

Two full body workouts a day with resistance training is great, plenty. You may always, in a week. A week. Now the rest of the week, I still think it's a good idea to walk throughout the day, it's a good idea to maybe incorporate some stretching or mobility. I think that's still also very important. If you want to take it to the next level, you want to push your body a little more, three days a week of full body, and then advance would be four days a week.

But most people, two days a week, they'd be so happy if they did that the right way. They'd be so happy with the results. That's so great. I mean, I think for me anyway, and a lot of people I deal with, they like the mental part of it, right? Like how it gives you feel. It gives you that. For me, if I don't work out, I don't feel as productive, I don't feel as as on point. So I need to be working out every day for people like us, you know, three times a week or four times a week isn't enough. So, and then walking is not even enough So if you want to if you want to do strength training like five times or six times

Are you saying that's actually counterintuitive? No, no, no, it depends how you design it so So there's a couple things that I would do so I too like to work out most days So I do mobility I'll do mobility work Like what's that me me? Oh. So mobility would be like mobility work? Mobility work is different than flexibility training. Mobility aims to connect to create new ranges of motion, but also connect to them. So an example of a mobility position would be like the 90-90 on the ground. Handcuffs with rotation, lizard with rotation.

If people aren't familiar, by the way, we have a YouTube channel, Mind Plum TV, you can look those up and we teach them. They're much more like working out than they are stretching. So there's that. Here's something else. If you really like resistance training on those days in between of those, let's say you do the three hard full body workouts, you can do what are called trigger sessions or focus sessions.

So you're still going to the gym or your garage or wherever, you have your workout set up, and you're doing light, lower intensity workouts. You're just trying to get a little bit of a pump, you're trying to connect and squeeze the muscles, you're doing mostly isolation movements on those days, exercises that don't create a lot of damage. Maybe you're using lots of bands or body weight exercises.

So that's how I would approach that. So for me, I like to do the focus sessions or trigger sessions sometimes. So I'll go into the my garage, and let's say yesterday I did my hard, full body workout. Let's say I want to put a little bit more emphasis on my chest or on my my my quads or for example I'll go into my garage and then I'll do some

isolation movements for my chest with some bands, some dumbbells, a squeeze, get a little bit of a pump but it's nowhere near the intensity of my my hard full body workouts but just enough to keep that muscle protein synthesis signal elevated. I can handle it. I can recover well because I've been training for so long. So that's kind of how I would approach it. And how long are you session today?

45 minutes an hour, 30 minutes, what is it? So if we're talking about the average person doing two or three full body workouts, you're looking at 45 to 60 minutes. If you include your priming warmup, which should take about 10 to 15 minutes. So about 45 minutes to an hour, and you can do between three to five sets per area, I would focus on compound movements because they just produce the best results paying for your buck. Compound movements are exercises that use more than one joint.

So an example of a compound movement for the legs would be a barbell squat. An isolation movement would be like a leg extension. Compound movement is just give you far better, again, for time spent paying for your buck. And then on the days in between, better mobility or what I call the focus sessions, you're looking at, if you want 30 minutes or if you want to do an hour, you could do that. And again, keep the intensity much lower on those days. But you know, you could do that, like I said, most days. So you'd be in the gym, you know, between five to six days a week or even seventies a week.

The key with lots of training is to manipulate the intensity. You don't want to have six days a week of hard, weight training workouts. Most people's bodies can't handle that. Right. What do you think of hip training? Because hip training is all the rage, right? Everyone's like to burn the most.

You get the most pain for your body, most efficient, blah, blah, blah, hip training, what do you think? It depends who we're talking about again. So if I'm talking to, you know, I'm going to create an avatar, right? So let's say I'm talking to Miss Jones. She's high stress, doesn't get good sleep,

nutrition's off. You know, her work is stressful. She's coming to me talking to be about some of those symptoms that I talked about earlier. She, you know, cold, hot, intolerance. She's not eating very many calories, we're tracking, and yet she still is having trouble losing weight. Her history is over applying too much intensity with her workouts. Hit training for her terrible. I'm going to push her over the edge. I'm going to throw

too much stress on her. It's not going to help her. For her, it's going to be much more of a lower intensity approach. Now, let's say I'm talking to somebody, let's say I have that hippie person who's super chill, they don't really work out super hard, they don't really push themselves that hard and they want to do 20 minutes of something that's going to burn a ton of calories. Hit training can be very effective for that person. So it really does depend. And the problem is when they come out with these studies that show, hit training burns more body fat than low intensity cardio and time for time.

Context matters. It's not going to be the best for everybody. You have to consider that. You have to consider what's best for me because the wrong thing for you is the wrong thing. It's not going to give you better results. So if you're that person who's, like I said earlier, you're not getting great sleep out of shape, I would not take a beginner who doesn't have good movement patterns, who hasn't worked out very hard, and then have them do hit training. That's just not a good idea. They're movement patterns are bad. Oh great, now I'm

going to do intense bad movement patterns. We're just gonna make things worse. So it really depends on the person. Right. Okay, that's fair. And then what was the other one? Oh yeah, I also wanted to ask you, I thought you said something about the most, was it the most overlooked fat burner is your gut is your gut health, right?

That what you said somewhere? Things like that. I mean, it's around a long time ago. Yeah, I think I wrote a post about that. Well, when your gut health is off, it's gonna be very hard to burn body fat, build muscle, or really get your body to adapt in ways that, get your body to burn, like speed up your metabolism,

for example, when your gut health is off systemic inflammation is high Your you're you're gonna get less serotonin production You're not gonna feel as good anxiety as you be higher. We know this is all connected So I would say for people who have poor gut health issues Here's the bottom line if you want to maximize your body's ability to earn body fat, then you want to start from a healthy point. So if your health is poor, then going to try and burn body fat is not a good idea.

Unless the body fat is the reason why your health is poor. So I feel like a lot, everyone's talking about gut health now or the microbiome. And that's like the very, those are like very buzzwords right now, right? And number one, how do you know if you have poor gut health, how do you know if you have a bad, if your microbiome is off, how do you know any of this for the average person, right? How does, how do they know and how do they, how do they, what's the, how do they fix it? Yeah, okay, so if you have bad gut health and it's really bad, you probably already know. Okay. Symptoms would include...

Symptoms would include chronic acid reflux or heartburned, off indigestion that's common, bloating, lots of gas, of course the obvious constipation or diarrhea. So if you're not having one or two bowel movements a day, or if your stool is loose, or if it's super dry and hard to pass, some subtle symptoms of poor gut health include chronic skin issues, so chronic rashes, hives. If you feel like you have histamine issues, sometimes that can come from the gut.

Yes, that's from your gut. Even if you have a child, for my whole life I had bad allergies, right now I'm on tons of allergy meds. It can come from the gut. Now, I'm not a gut health expert. I've had a lot of gut health experts on my show and it can be a symptom of poor gut health. Now I've had a lot of gut health experts on my show and it can be

a symptom of poor gut health. Now, how do you fix it? Depends what the problem is. If it's SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, which the last study I read said something like 70% of people with IBS or IBD had SIBO, then the course of action would be to treat the bacteria, which would be either pharmaceutical antibiotics or herbal treatments, which believe it or not, the herbal treatments are just as efficacious in studies. So you don't have to go pharma route, you can actually go herbal route. And then during that process, managing symptoms. So oftentimes people with SIBO, a low FODMAP diet, a lower carbohydrate diet, a gluten-free

diet tends to help reduce symptoms, so at least they can tolerate it while they're treating their SIBO. But I would recommend if you feel like you have gut issues, get tested, they can do a SIBO test, you can do a stool test, you can work with a functional medicine practitioner, and then follow the protocol. SIBO can be a bit of a pain to treat. I can take as long as, you know, it can take months, sometimes to treat,

and or as little as a month for some people. And so how about your horror modes? Have you heard of peptides, by the way? That's like, I feel like I've been hearing a lot of that. What do you think about that? You mean like the great market peptides that people are buying online and then there? Yeah, I don't know.

What is a great, I think it's like a lot of, I feel like a lot of like biohackers have been talking about it and there's a lot of like, there's a lot of, especially in LA in New York. There's people who are, especially in LA, in New York, there's people who want to take their health or their longevity to the next level, or they want to burn more fat and get more lean. There's a hack that they say would be,

as you age, your hormones can be lower testosterone. We talked about this before. People are taking peptides, they're taking, you know, as there's all sorts of different ones. You can inject them. You have to go see a doctor. They take your, not not actually to be honest. They don't necessarily even take your blood.

And they can put you on these places because these compound pharmacies are making them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm very familiar. So first off, you don't have to go to a doctor. That's why it's great market. The way that they're sold online is as research chemicals. So really? Yeah, so. What are the doctors for them? Who's going to give them to you? No, now you, you can buy them online. That's where most people are getting it. Yeah, I didn't know that you can but the real like the ones that you car compounding. Not the, oh, okay, I didn't know that. Yeah,

okay. So here's a deal with hormones. I'll start there. If your hormones are off, it's often a signal that something else is off, okay? If now that being said, if hormones are off, they can cause their own hormonal issues. That, so sometimes taking hormones can be healthy. For example, if I'm a man with very low testosterone

and I try to address all the common reasons why it might be low, diet, sleep, stress, still not working, I'd be better off going on testosterone because low testosterone could cause health problems and man, but oftentimes you can fix whatever was causing the hormones to be off and then you don't have to go on the hormones. The reason why people like to go on hormones is because they feel good and it masks all

the symptoms. If my testosterone levels are low because I'm getting five hours of sleep every night, I'm drinking 400 to 500 milligrams of caffeine every day, my diet is off. So now I got low testosterone, low libido, and I refuse to fix anything. I just want to take some testosterone so I can have a sex drive and feel better, and that's what's gonna happen.

That's why people, a lot of times, will do it. They don't want to fix the stuff. They'll take the testosterone, go better. So that's the whole hormone thing. Pep dides are not approved by the FDA. They are in research status. Oftentimes, they've gone through maybe one phase of FDA approval.

Oftentimes, they've gone through no FDA approval. They are experimental. Now, the reason why you can buy them is because you can, websites will sell them as research chemicals, which is a loophole. That's why it's a gray market. Now, oftentimes these peptides are either what are known as secretedogs. Secretedogs are compounds that cause your body to release more growth hormone or insulin-like

growth factor. And if you get more of those, you'll start to feel good. By the way, those hormones, like IGF1, insulin-like growth factor, and an inflammatory pro-cancer state, will increase the risk of cancer. So I just want to say that, that they're not without the risks. Okay. Wow. Yeah. So, I've heard of CJ, I'll tell you the ones that my,

some of my people I know are on, CJC, in Pamolin, in Pamolin, I don't know if this is. So I'm not familiar with those exactly, CJC and in pommolin and in pommolin, I don't know if this is. So I'm not familiar with those exactly, but if they do release more IGF1 or growth hormone, if it's in the context of, if you're in a pre-cancer state inflamed, you've got potential tumor, but it's not a tumor

then you throw some insulin like growth factor on it, it'll spot up. Now if you're healthy, you're probably gonna be okay. But here's the problem. None of these compounds studied, tested thoroughly. You're experimenting essentially on yourself. I mean, there's another class of these compounds called SARMS, S-A-R-M, which stands for selective

androgen receptor modulators. These are chemicals that attach to the androgen receptor in the body, much like testosterone will. And pharmaceutical companies are experimenting with these because they're trying to create a replacement for testosterone because one of the drawbacks of using testosterone is not only do you boost the libido build more muscle but then you get the masculineizing effects

that testosterone. So if I gave you testosterone, you may feel the libido boost the muscle building, but then you also start to grow facial hair, voice lowers, all kinds of weird stuff might happen, right? And in man it may cause hair loss, prostate, enlargement, that kind of stuff. So what they did is they're trying to create these chemicals

that give you the good without the bad. So far they haven't been very successful, but they exist. So people are buying them online, injecting themselves, getting some of the effects of like you're on a mild dose of testosterone, except you're not. You're still shutting down your own hormones because the doses that they're taking are way higher than there be. So it's like, I tell people, look, it's your body, you can experiment with it however you want. I'm a big advocate for that, so whatever. But my advice, if you're going to take hormones, then at least go with the ones that we know

that they've been around for a long time, you know, go to your doctor and take testosterone, at least we know what that does, like, or take growth hormone. We at least know what that does, or take growth hormone. We at least know what that does. But all these peptides and sarms and gray market drugs, they haven't been tested. We haven't been using it for a long time. Doesn't sound like a good idea. Wow.

So I'm in L.A. And there's doctors, functional medicine doctors, natural paths, who are prescribing them. So they're not doing it. Do people that I'm in contact with, they're not doing this gray market, they're just people who are all about longevity and high performing. And they're trying this out as like the, you know, just another thing to like add to the you know.

Nothing against functional medicine doctors. I know some that are very, very good. I love what they do. I like their approach, but they don't prescribe medicines. They're not MDs. Right. And some of them are just like any profession. There's terrible personal trainers out there,

and there's really good ones. There's a lot of these functional medicine doctors that just, this is their stick. This is what they do and they give people, which is so against, in my opinion, what functional medicine is supposed to be. Functional medicine is supposed to be find the root cause and get your body

to be able to do it naturally. So it's insane, but I mean, you're in LA, so that doesn't, I mean, that makes perfect sense. Right. And then also, I thought because's everyone's talking about them being an amino acid and therefore if they're amino acids, they're there they're 100% safe. There's no there's no side effects. Terrible. No, testosterone is a string of amino acids, you know, or chemicals like, you know, that's such a that's such a deduction, a simplistic deduction to try to make your case. It would be like, okay, steroids are cholesterol molecules.

Okay. So I could say to you, hey, inject you with cholesterol. It's a steroid. It is technically it's a steroid molecule that doesn't make it the same thing. You know, a corticosteroid, an anti-inflammatory steroid is a steroid, but it doesn't do the same thing as anabolic steroid. Like that's a silly thing, that's one of the silliest things I've ever said. And by the way amino acids are not without side effects. If I give you, let me give you an example, Jen, if I give you too many branch chaining amino acids, branching amino acids are like a buzzword in the fitness space, right? Yeah, yeah. Lucine, isolucine, and valic. If I give you, yeah. Lucine, isolucine, and valic.

If I gave you a ton of lucine, isolucine, and valine, the branch-shamingo acids, you would get a reduction in dopamine production, and maybe even serotonin in the brain, and you might not even notice depressed symptoms. If I give you enough of a dose, it could be pretty bad. So to say that it's because it's amino acids, it's there's no side of potential side.

That's the stupidest thing I've ever had. No, I mean, listen, like, that's what I'm saying. I think too much knowledge is actually, people, there's too much knowledge to be with dangerous, right? Because people don't know what's right, what's wrong. They hear little bits and pieces. They're looking for a shortcut, right? And this is what happens.

I mean, and it's people who have the access a lot of times, right? So I have the ability to have, they have like expendable income. They are educated. They want to like take their performance, their longevity, their health, whatever, is to the next level. And these are the things that are available and they take a chance on it. And then other people, you know what I mean? This is what happens.

It reminds me of, do you remember the HCG diet a while ago? Oh my gosh. That was like a thing for like a second, which was. What was that one? I don't remember. HCG's a hormone. Yeah, so like. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like when you're pregnant, like, that's the hormone that the that's the right. That's the right.

That's a fine right. It's really scary and like a lot of these people are like, if people look at, we were talking earlier in this podcast about how people look to the wrong sources and they look really good. Physically, they look really healthy. And they're saying, oh, I'm taking this peptide or I'm doing this. And they're like, oh, that's what I can do. But it's like, you know what I'm saying?

It's just a very slippery slope. Nothing looks especially in person, okay? Because I'll tell you what, you see all these fitness models or these, you know, on Instagram, I've been to figure competitions. I know many of these people who are, okay, when you see them in person, you can see the poor health oftentimes, you see them in their skin, you see in how they, how they look, okay, nothing looks more attractive in the real world than being truly healthy. Nothing. And I mean, inside and out, okay? Our bodies, your body, people watching this right now, your

body has a tremendous potential when it's healthy. So all you have to do is try to become healthy. That means looking at everything. If you do that, you will be happy with the way you look. I really do, I really believe that. And I know that. Like I said, I've done this for a long time. That's the best way to approach it. What do you think of like all the red light therapies and saw infrared sawnas and all those

types of things to ice baths. Do you believe that any of these things help with your health long-term? Or is it all just another thing that are like cryotherapy or whatever it is today? It depends what we're talking about. So red light therapy, very interesting. There are lots of studies that support, it's used for wound healing, scars, psoriasis, believe it or not, hair growth and men. Do I think it replaces the exercise diet lifestyle? No. But it's got some interesting things that it does. Now you brought up ice baths and sauna. That's very interesting.

Our ability to acclimate to temperature is like a muscle. If you don't train that, you actually start to lose that ability. Like any muscle, if it atrophies, you start to notice some health issues. If you train it and get stronger, you notice some health benefits. It was a huge study that was done on sauna use, for example. And they found a dramatic reduction in all cause mortality among people who use the sauna. I believe it was two or three days a week on a consistent basis. People who do cold therapy, you see a reduction in their, how often they get respiratory illness or colds every year. I

think you know because we evolved you know without temperature control our body starts to look I'll give you an example when I lived in Palm Springs for a while when I was in my early 20s and that's the desert right and it gets really hot there in the summer, like 120 degrees. And I remember it was shocking at first. Like I would go outside and it felt like somebody had a blow dryer and it was just, and I couldn't believe how insanely hot it was.

But after I lived there for a little while, it was still hot, don't get me wrong, but I kind of got used to it. Then I remember I came, I would come up to San Jose to visit my family and it would be like 89 degrees or 90 degrees and I, and everybody be, oh my god, it's so hot and I'd be like, it's not that hot. My body actually started to acclimate and I would, I would remember I'd have clients that were from like Minnesota or from, you know, Chicago and they come train with me here in San Jose so back when I had my studio up in Los Gatos

and it would be 55 or 60 degrees outside and I'm wearing a sweater and I'm cold. And they shorts and tank tops and they're like, what are you talking about? There's not, it's warm outside. Your body can actually acclimate to temperature and if you lose that ability, studies are starting to show

that that actually can reduce your potential for health. So it's probably a good idea to get your body to learn how to acclimate to this stuff. But like anything that you practice, you want to start slow, move your way up. So if you're watching this right now and you never do cold therapy or sauna, I don't think you should go from nothing to every day, slowly work your way up. But there's definite health benefits. When you download the Croger app, you have easy access to savings every day.

Shop weekly sales and get personalized coupons to get the most value out of every trip every time, whether you shop in-store or online. Download the Croger app now to save big. Croger, fresh for everyone, must have a digital account to redeem offers. Restrictions may apply, see site for details. Save big on your favorites with the Buy, Fiver, more, save a dollar each sale.

Simply buy five or more participating items and save a dollar each with your card. Kruger, fresh for everyone. That's so funny. Can I from Winnipeg, right? In Canada, I'm used to, like, minus 40. It's like a total place in the world. And it's so funny what you're saying, because when it was like 10 degrees outside, 10 degrees,

people in LA at 10 degrees would be like, in their house wearing a park out the heat on. We would be like, oh, it's 10 degrees. We would literally be outside in our bathing suits. Thinking it was like the hottest day in the world. It's gonna be. Yeah, that's so true, right? Right, because like it's just, it's all relative, right? Right, because it's all relative, right?

So when people are all this cryotherapy, they're like, oh my God, I mean, I lived like that for like eight months of my life. I had to plug in the car. If I wanted to, we had to plug in the cars, if you wanted to go anywhere, it was that whole. So, that's why it's funny that when you said that about your people from Minnesota,

from Chicago coming in, they're like 65. And they're like, Yeah, and here in California, no joke. If you're not from California, and you're watching this podcast, if it's below 69 or 68 degrees, people are like long sleeves, cold like, you know what I'm saying?

They're wearing like their ung boots up to their knees, they're wearing a car, and they're like wearing scarves. I mean, like literally,, if it was 65 degrees of where I'm from, I, I, I, I kid you not, school would be out and we would be like, sun tanning outside and it would be like, popsicles and like, it would be like, totally different experience, right? Nope, nope.

It's just so funny how like, it's so, everything is so relative. I think that's basically all. I mean, I, I think I've asked you enough. I think we went another all. I mean, I think I've asked you enough. I think we went another hour. Awesome. I mean, I feel like I can talk to you for hours. I have like a million more things to say.

And I'm like, I think what we should do is have you on again. And maybe go through. I love it. And have a whole other plethora of things to go through with you because you're a fountain of information. Like I feel that you know more than like medical professionals. And you know a lot about a lot of things. Like some people know like a little bit about a lot of things.

You know a lot about a lot. It's crazy. I appreciate that. I don't want to be put in the category of medical professional. I have tremendous respect for them and they really know what they're talking. I'm just an obsessive person and I really, really love things that affect our health and our well-being and I've been obsessed about it for decades and so I just love learning and I have a little bit of a what's it called.

I have a memory where I could just recall things and it usually makes me annoying, but in the context of podcasting, it's very valuable. So I found the medium that works for me. I just have a random question. Even now that you have all the success with my pump and do you even take on clients anymore because do you have any private clients

or do you don't do that anymore at all? No, I stopped. I sold my studio about a year into Mind Pump. I did a little bit of online coaching for a second, but we've gotten so busy here. And I have two kids, and I have a baby on the way. And so I try to devote my time and energy to Mind Pump. I do a lot of the content creation for us and you know

We podcast pretty regularly and it's at some point I might start training again. I love doing it But I don't currently do any so people have what's that so you have a program though called maps, right? Is that what it's called maps? Yes. Yeah, so we have many Maps programs each of them for different, different goals, different people. Right now, one of our top sellers is maps anywhere because it doesn't require any equipment. You just need resistance bands and a broomstick and you can do it at home. So it's a at-home workout program.

Of course, people are stuck at home, so I think that's why it's so popular. But what I do want to tell your audience is, so our programs in comparison to others are priced at a premium. But if you DM me on my Instagram page at MindPumpSal, and you tell me that you heard me on this podcast, I'll give you half off any program that we offer on our website, mapsfitnisproducts.com. So half off any of them,

but you have to tell me that you heard me here on Jen's podcast. Oh wow, that's amazing. I want to try one of your programs. I want to look like you. How old are you? Oh, I'm 41. I forgot for a second.

Because you're like a testament that age is just a number because I think you're more fit than anybody I've ever seen that's like 19 or 20 who work out like you're doing everything right. No, you are. Would you have do this specific? I know we talked a little bit but just quickly download. Is there any like top five foods or beverages or something? What can what are your go-to's like every day? If you have a ravenous appetite and you kind of like you love to eat, what can people eat to kind of make the feel satiated that will actually work to their benefit? Pizza, now I'm just kidding. I love that I'm going to bring that one down.

Well for me, my favorite sources of starches, if I want carbohydrates for to fuel my workouts, white rice is just very, very easy to digest. I like to make my white rice with bone broth though, so this is a little hack. If you use bone broth instead of water, you've added 20 grams of collagen protein to your rice, so that's something I like to do. I also, I love grass that me. I digest it very well, it affects me very whole eggs. I have a great lipid profile, dietary cholesterol,

don't have a negative effect on me. They don't have a negative effect on a lot of people. So I consume probably 800 to 1,000 milligrams of cholesterol a day through eggs. And it's great for my recovery, my strength, my testosterone levels. So for me, that works really, really well. Fruit, I'll have occasionally. I love my favorite vegetable is ripening.

Not a lot of people know what that is here in America. Broccoli, Robbie is also called so R-A-B-E. It's a very leafy green. and I'll just cut the stems off. I'll boil the heck out of it until it's really really cooked. Drain the water, pour some olive oil on it, a little bit of salt and garlic. I love it, my favorite. Why, why that versus broccoli? Is it better for, is there a nutritionist, a nutrient content different or? It's so easy to digest and I can eat a large quantity of it, especially if I boil it. So it's very, it's cooked down.

And it affects my digestion is so good when I eat, when I eat ripenia at least a few days a week. Really? I like that. I'm gonna try that. So, so do you believe that this whole, what do you think of all this artificial meat? Like people are eating bion meat and possible,

all this, isn't it better just to have real, pro, like the real thing? I mean, that's all garbage. It has like salt and more salt. And then there's no eating. Yeah, I think if you're, I mean, if you're not eating meat, you're sponsored by Beyond Meat.

Sure, yeah. Sure. Well, look, if you're, if you don't eat meat for, you know, because you have a belief that you don't want to kill animals, I get that, I understand that. But if you're eating these products because you believe to be the health, that they're healthier, that's so wrong.

I mean, when you look at the average person's diet, okay? Oftentimes, the only thing that they don't eat that's processed, the only things are eggs, steak, chicken, fish, and maybe dairy. Everything else is processed. So what we're doing is we're essentially telling them, let's remove the only thing that you're not eating that's processed. And let's replace it with a highly engineered processed vegetable food that's, it's so engineered and processed,

that it tastes like meat. Like that's crazy, like it's not healthier. Oh, it's crazy, but it's such a craze. I mean, these companies are making so much for money. It's like, it's really, it's like, it's skyrocketing. And people are under this assumption that it is like the healthier way to go. But like if you want to be healthy and did it eat this, not that. And like you can't, it's a great

it's a great marketing. I mean, they're brand they're they're marketing is so on point that just goes to show you advertising does work, right? Because people think, oh yeah, I'm going to have this whenever artificial, you know, alternative to meat hamburger and I'm being yeah, I'm going to have this whenever artificial, you know, alternative to meat hamburger and I'm being healthy, I'm taking care of myself, which is like so contrary, bothers me. Oh yeah, it's because we're falsely led to believe that it's healthier for us, that it's better for the environment, that it's, you know, it's a better for us product and it tastes the same. So people think, oh, I'm going to make that choice.

The truth is, even if you don't believe in process versus unprocessed natural versus even if you don't believe that, the macro nutrient profile, just the protein fats, carbohydrates and calories, it's not even better there. There's literally, you are not getting anything from it, except you're trying a franken food that's trying to replace something that is far more natural. It doesn't make any sense. Oh my God. And like, if a digestive process, the bloating, I mean, like it's unbelievable, but, you

know, I just want to vent and I want to know what you thought, what your thoughts were, because it just drives me crazy, but It's just yeah anyway, you're so I guess I should let you go. It's been like forever. So Please please come back where it could so people can find you of course on mine pump and It's a great great podcast. I was in guess as you know and My mine mine pump cell right at my pump cell on Instagram. Yes. Anything else? Where else can we find you anywhere? Yes. Yeah. So don't forget you can DM me there. You have to tell me you heard me

on this podcast. Otherwise I won't give you half off. So you have to say that. You can go on our YouTube channel Mind Pump TV. So I named a few mobility movements earlier. If you're not familiar with those, you can literally type it in the search function for Mind Pump and you'll see us demonstrating those movements. So you can figure out how to do them the right way, excuse me. And then if you want free written material, like how to work your arms better, how to get a better midsection, improve your squat. We have one for personal trainers,

to help personal trainers start off on their business. You can go to mindpumpfree.com and then we have a bunch of guides there that are totally free sets one more place. Wow, so you give away a lot of free content that we've seen too, right? Yes, that's good. That's the name of the game, right?

These days it's like, if you, you know, our goal with MindPump really was to provide as much free information as possible that could benefit people. And then through that process, delivers so much value that people will come to us and want to buy our products. And so it seems to be working, but that's the strategy.

Let's do more more free information than anybody else. How many hours a week are you are are you doing so buying pump the podcast and these programs are taking up all your time now basically. Oh luckily yeah luckily I don't work. You know, all of us probably work a regular schedule, I would say 40 hours, 50 hours a week. I used to work crazy, crazy hours, but going through a, you know, I got divorced and now I have dual custody and I realize that I need a more balance in my life. Luckily the way we've designed and created, you know, our business and our company, MindPump, are much more efficient. And I have the best partners in the world.

They're all of them are so much better at the things I'm not good at that we can rely on each other to do the parts that, you know, to control the moving pieces in the business. So, because of that, all of us, you know, have a lot more balance, I think, that we've ever had. And thrive. I mean, that's like the secret to success for partnerships, right? Find people that you would have, that could do the things you can't do well, right? And you can thrive in the things that you can do. That's and you guys do a great job. Like look at Doug, the

technique, you know, that that technical wizard over there, right? So that's that's a great point. I think that's it. So I think it's enough of your time. Thank you. And you're awesome. And I appreciate all your very wonderful knowledge. And we'll hopefully see you back here soon. Thank you. It's my pleasure. Thank you. Habits and hustle, time to get it rolling.

Stay up on the grind. Don't stop. Keep it going. Habits and hustle from nothing in the sun. All out, a host of bio-general food, Cohen, visionary, stooning. You can get to know. We inspire you. This is your moment. This episode is brought to you by the YAP Media Podcast Network. I'm Halataha, CEO of the award-winning digital media empire, YAP Media, and host

of YAP Young & Profiting Podcast, a number one entrepreneurship and self-improvement podcast where you can listen, learn, and profit. On Young & Profiting Podcast, I interview the brightest minds in the world and I turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your daily life. Each week, we dive into a new topic like the Art of side hustles, how to level up your influence and persuasion and goal setting. I interview A-List guests on Young and Profiting. I've got the best guests.

Like the world's number one negotiation expert, Chris Voss, Shark, Damon John, serial entrepreneurs, Alex and Leila Hermosi, and even movie stars like Matthew McConaughey. There's absolutely no fluff on my podcast, and that's on purpose. Every episode is jam packed with advice that's gonna push your life forward.

I do my research, I get straight to the point, and I take things really seriously, which is why I'm known as the podcast princess, and how I became one of the top podcasters in the world in less than five years. Young and profiting podcasts is for all ages. Don't let the name fool you, it's an advanced show. As long as you want to learn and level up,

you will be forever young. So join podcast royalty and subscribe to Young and Profiting Podcast. Or YAP, like it's often called by my YAP fam, on Apple Spotify, Cast Box, or wherever you listen to your podcast. for you. Listen to your podcast.