Insight with Chris Van Vliet - How I Got Into The Best Shape Of My Life At 40 Years Old - My Workout & Meal Plan With Fitness Coach AJ Simms

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

I had a goal this year to get into the best shape of my life by my 40th birthday. And I'm proud to say that on May 19, I accomplished it! I did this for two reasons... One, I've been working out since I was 15 years old, but I wanted to see what would be possible if we really dialed in the diet and the workouts. And secondly, my daughter was going to be born around my 40th birthday so I wanted to redefine what it meant to have a dad bod. I've received A LOT of messages and emails asking what my diet looked like or what my workout plan looked like -- and we'll get into all of the nitty-gritty details during this episode, but I started at 202 and over the course of these 90 days I ended at 177 -- and I did it with the help of a world-renowned nutritionist and fitness coach AJ Simms (@cementfactory) who has trained wrestling stars like Bobby Lashley, LA Knight, EC3, Johnny Gargano, Apollo Crews and he's the guy who got Tommaso Ciampa looking like a beast recently. I did this all naturally -- although hey, I appreciate all of the comments from people accusing me of taking PEDs or doing TRT. That is honestly the best possible compliment for you to think this kind of result isn't possible without drugs. Hilarious! I hope you enjoy this episode with the one and only AJ Simms! Get $150 off your Plunge with the coupon code CVV at http://thecoldplunge.com Quote I'm thinking about: "Health is the crown on the head of a well person that only the sick person can see." - Robin Sharma For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://chrisvanvliet.com If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests.  Follow CVV on social media:  Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet TikTok: tiktok.com/@Chris.VanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are gathered. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Bleas! Okay, welcome back to another audio adventure here on Insight. I'm CBV, Chris Van Fleet, and you might have seen the photos. You might have seen the posts that I've made recently. I had a bit of a transformation. I had a goal this year to get into the best shape of my life by my 40th birthday, which was May 19th. and I've been working out since I was 15 years old.

I feel like I've always been in a pretty good shape. But I wanted to see what was possible if we like really dialed in the diet and dialed in the workouts. And on top of that, my daughter was going to be born right around my 40th birthday. She was born on May 29th. So I wanted to redefine what it meant to have a dad bod. And I've got a lot of messages and a lot of emails from a lot of you guys saying, how did you do this? What did the diet look like? What did the workout look like? How can I do what you did?

And we're going to die, get into all like the nitty, gritty details of all of this here. But just so we have a frame of reference, I started at 202 pounds. And over the course of just 90 days, I got to 177, like a pretty lean 177 pounds. And I did this with the help of world-renowned nutritionist and fitness coach, A.J. Sims, who's trained wrestling stars like Bobby Lashley, L.A. Knight. Yeah, EC3, Johnny Gargano, Apollo, Apollo Cruz. He's the guy who recently got Tomaso Champa looking sliced and diced like a beast. So I'm working with someone who, you know, clearly knows what they're doing. And that's why he's a guest on the show here today. You can find him on Instagram. He's at Cement Factory. What a name, right?

If you want to check out some of the other transformations that he's done, or in fact, if you want to reach out to him and have him be your coach, send AJ a message. He is at Cement Factory. If you're not following me already, I'm at Chris Van Fleet. And I hate that I even have to bring this up. But yes, I did this all naturally. Although I appreciate the comments from all these people accusing me of taking PEDs or doing TRT, which is testosterone replacement therapy.

No, not of that. But this is honestly the best possible compliment that you could get. It's just amazing to me that people don't think that this is possible with hard work and some dedication. So we get into all of it here. I hope you enjoy it. This is how I got into the best shape of my life at 40 years old with AJ Sims. Well, I have to start off by saying thank you because this started out for me is just an idea of wanting to go to the best shape of my life by the age of 40. AJ, here we are. We did it. Hey, man, you did it, brother.

You put the work in, man. You did exactly what you said you were going to do. In 90 days, we were able to get you in the best shape of your life. And that is a lot due to your consistency and work ethic, man. I appreciate the kind words. I couldn't have done this without your guidance. So let's get into the nitty gritty because I've got so many messages and comments from people going, man, how did you do it? What did your meal plan look like? What did your workout plan look like?

So let's start with diet. I was shocked at how much I was eating. Yeah, so that's a huge misconception that the general public has that when they think of diet, they think of the most boring foods for some reason and very little of it. Now, really at the end of the day, it's all about calories in, calories out specifically. What is your energy output according to what your body burning on a daily basis. So naturally what I try to do is set you up when you came to me. You were on a quote unquote bulking phase. So you were eating a pretty good surplus of calories, which was great because it allowed me to come in, kind of tweak the diet to what I like to do, and then customize it after the first two to three weeks based off what your body's responded.

And then we implemented the cardio and then my products with absolute subs and deep with a fat-free hardcore and then we were just basically calorie cycling throughout the entire process. So if you remember, there were some days you had your baseline training day menu, your off day training day menu. And then we worked into refeed days where you're eating, you know, one time I think it was in and out burger and rice crispy's and cereal. And, uh, and you actually looked even tighter about one to two days after that, which is essentially the entire goal. We're feeding the metabolism while we're pushing your energy output a little bit more. And what you learned throughout the process was the more steps you were getting in,

which is called neat, non-exercisal aerobic thermogenesis, basically moving the body and just walking outside, which is great for everybody. There's so many benefits to doing that, just getting sunlight, moving the body in between meals, digestion, insulin, sensitivity. And again, just moving the body is just fantastic. But you learn the more. you did, the quicker you were dropping. And I think we started having big drop-offs after you were doing

about 12 to 15,000 steps a day. I believe that's where we got. Yeah, exactly. And by the way, for anybody who has an iPhone, I don't know if maybe the Google phones do it too, but it tracks your steps. So I was shocked on some days. I'm like, man, I did like 16,000 steps. I don't even feel like I really even did that much. Six meals a day. We were starting out with eggs and egg whites in the morning with some Ezekiel bread. Kind of talk me through just some of the other ingredients that we had on the, we'll call it the menu that we did for 90 days. Yeah, so basically the goal is to always hit macronutrients,

and everybody pretty much knows what that is protein fats and carbs if you don't, but also your micronutrients, making sure we have enough fiber and soluble, soluble fiber, micronutrients from the fruits, greens, powders, or green, vegetables. So we want to be able to feed the body the proper nutrients to fuel it. it not only for your training, recovery, but also fuel it for digestion, fuel for sleep optimization. And there's a lot of things that I had in there, supplementation, natural supplements, again, the absolute supplements, aiding gut health, fat burning the facts, but you were also doing a cold

plunge on a daily basis, which is going to do so many benefits for you, not only neurologically, but also induce sleep optimization and also increased brown fat, which is the good. fat that you want. It's the fat that keeps you warm. And the white fat is the fat that you don't want. That's what we were getting rid of throughout the process. So the more brown fat stimulation you have, the quicker the white fat gets burned off. So again, it was all the things that you were doing as a whole communicating with me, doing the diet. And the diet basically, what I try to do was figure out, okay, what works best for Chris? What does he digest the best? What does he feel the best on? And I think we started in the mornings, I believe, with a cream of rice, and then we switched over to the Ezekiel bread because I think you enjoyed that better.

And that's what I try to tell people is when we figure out what's working for you, macro nutrient-wise, the amounts you're eating. Let's find out what foods you actually enjoy so that you can adhere to the diet. I mean, if you look forward to every morning, you know, berries and Ezekiel bread with some eggs, that's a great breakfast, man. You know, you're getting that flour spread from the Ezekiel bread. And then there's a lot of hacks that I don't even think we got into. You can learn how to make that into French toast with the egg whites, which is a great recipe. So, you know, those things are very simplistic. You know, we had your lean meats in there, your chicken, your 99% turkey, some fish or shrimp,

some Jasmine rice. And basically just figuring out how much you needed, when you needed it, and then just going along with the process. And then getting those refeed days in where we're just hitting a surplus. of calories where I think the biggest repeat we gave you was, man, maybe 4,500 to 5,000 calories. Because I think I gave you a crumble cookie too one time. That was the nicest treat during those. Is this a typo? I can eat a crumble cookie?

So you're saying on the high end, about 4,500 calories on those refeed days, what was on the low end? And also, let's say on an average day, how many calories? Yeah, so I think your baseline days at the lowest point, so your normal training days where maybe at the lowest about 21, 2,200. And then your rest days were maybe about 18 to 1850, which is, and that was at the end. You know, you never want to start a diet off going 100 miles an hour. It's a slow, tedious process,

and you have to learn how to basically slowly climb it down and then being able to feed it back up. So it's one of those processes where, you know, we push really hard and we pump the brakes. We push really hard and we pump the brakes. So at my very heaviest, I weighed in, at 202, and at the end I was 177. So quick math there, 25 pounds. So this was a pound and a half to two pounds over the course of those 13 weeks, over the course of those 90 days. So I want

people to understand that this was a slow and steady process and consistency was the key through all of this. A hundred percent. That goes for anybody with any type of fitness goals. You have to be consistent, whether it's just starting to go outside and walk. like we said, you know, set a goal. 7,000 steps a day has been shown to reduce all cause mortality by, I think, over 70%. So just getting 7,000 steps and then working your way up, set a goal for 10,000 steps, and then set a goal to go to the gym twice a week, and then set a goal to go four times, and then start fast in cardio.

And once you get into this routine of building your fitness, and then when you start seeing results, man, the motivation from just seeing your body change week to week or every month, it's incredible and it keeps you grounded in life to be able to do in every aspect of your life. You're a new father. So congratulations, by the way, beautiful baby girl, one week old today. And now you're able to take that discipline that you've had in those 90 days and do it across the board. I mean, we already know you're a hard worker. Look at the audience you've built up, the success you've had in what you do.

And you were just able to implement that into your fitness. you told me on our phone call, I want to get in the best shape of my life by 40. And I said, let's churn, buddy. It's time to do it. You took it on and you did it 100% man. And that's the key is when you go in, you got to be all in. Yeah, I think discipline was the main word that kept coming back to me over the 90 days because it's not difficult to eat those meals.

And it's not difficult to work out, but it's difficult to always do this when there's, you know, candy or popcorn or chips or maybe it just feels better to just sit on the couch. It's the discipline of actually making yourself go out and want to do this. You know, I tell people all the time that discipline trumps motivation. There's always going to be days no matter if you're a pro athlete. I don't care who you are. I train some of the top best Olympian bodybuilders in the world to the top, your top favorite WWE to A.W. Superstar, they're human. And there's days that you're not going to want to do it. You're not going to, you don't feel like training. You don't feel like waking up at four or five in the morning and doing your cardio, but that discipline has to override that

motivation. And when you do that, you build what's called resiliency. And it trickles into every aspect of your life. And again, when you start seeing those results, man, it's just, it's something that you can't really describe unless you've actually been through that process, such as yourself. So I started seeing these results. And towards the end, I started posting some photos and I was shocked AJ and how many people accused me of being on PEDs or how many people accused me of being on TRT, testosterone replacement therapy. Like amazing compliment, right? But also it's amazing for me to think that people don't think that this is possible to do this kind of transition or this transformation naturally. Yeah. I think it comes, you know, from a lot of self-doubt from

individuals and not to put anybody out there, but I think when they see somebody do something incredible like what you did in 90 days. The mentality the majority of people have will go straight to well, there has to be some sort of cheating involved in it. There's no way that he just stayed disciplined for those 90 days, 100% adherency.

I mean, I remember you even go into WrestleMania and you were texting me, what can I eat? And I said, send me the menu because you didn't eat there. And, you know, I said, here, this is what you can eat, man. And that's what it takes to reach your fitness goal. And I can tell you guys that if Chris can do it at his young, right age of 40, new father, husband,

super busy businessman, you can do it too. It just takes adherency, compliance, and just working hard. And it was also like it was preparation too. And I know that meal prep is a term that gets thrown around a lot. But it was also like preparing for my day. So if I was flying to Las Vegas, for example, I'd be like, okay, well, how many hours I'm going to be there before I can eat. And I would plan all my meals.

And that was something that I think a lot of people, I think flying is a perfect example of that, they'll get to the airport and go, well, what can I eat here? And they'll just, you know, indulge and have whatever they want. Yeah, yeah, absolutely 100%. This is something that I deal with the wrestlers, specifically with their travel schedule,

whether it be just they're on the road doing house shows or they have a big paper view or maybe they're going to the UK for European tour. It's all about preparation. I mean, even to the point where one of my guys went to, a few of them actually to Saudi Arabia, they were there. The food is different there. And on the flights from America over there, you can't bring any food with you. So we had to plan that.

We had to plan that. Again, it's all about planning to prepare and being proactive rather than reactive. Because if you go out and you're on some, you know, a diet or a fitness plan and he didn't bring anything with you. really hungry, chances are you're going to stop somewhere and get something you probably shouldn't. But if you have prepared and you planned, then you can adhere to your program and continue to seek those results. So let's talk about the workout. We've talked a lot about cardio. I was doing fasted cardio in the morning, walking on a treadmill or just walking outside. What was the actual workout plan that you had me on? So I think what we had you on was more

of a higher volume, high frequency, intensifier type training where we're not focused on so much what's called progressive overload, where you see guys go in and they're just super, super heavy training, you know, where you're going to risk an injury doing three or four repetitions. I'm more of the believer of what's called time under tension, putting the muscle under as much tension as possible under a specific period of time with a specific type of weight. So you're getting a lot of stimulation, but you're also avoid. you know, tearing something or hurting yourself or your joints and your ligaments and your tendons. Remember, this is a lifestyle. We're trying to go for longevity. We want to be doing this

at 70, 75, you know, God willing, at 80, we're just still churning and looking great, you know. So the type of training you did was more of a higher volume, higher frequency, you know, when you were in the gym five, six times a week. And, but, you know, it's just incredible that you're, the way your body's shaped up, you know, and I was looking at it. And I was like, man, you know, I know he doesn't have time for this, but I can put this guy on stage in a men's physique show because you have that natural shape of a bigger chest, wider shoulders, great midsection. And if I would see something that maybe lagged a little bit during the process, you know, I'll throw in, do this movement or maybe throwing this body part extra throughout the week. And again, it's all about building a program for an individual customized on what their body needs and when it needs it. But yeah, the training, more frequency, more volume.

and you really keep yourself away from getting injured. It's the same thing I do with all the wrestlers, all the boys know my style of training, and I try to take them away from doing super, super heavy stuff because we know if they tear something in the gym, they're out of work. They're out of the ring. That's the last thing they want.

So, you know, one of the guys I've been working with recently, Bobby Lashley, and he's a beast in the gym. I mean, the dude is just an absolute animal, genetic anomaly. But when I sent him my style of training, He really enjoyed it because it was a different feel to the muscle as opposed to, again, the super heavy progressive over them. So I was doing about one body part a day. So I had a back day.

I had chest and shoulders. I did just quads. I had arms and I had hamstrings. We call that a bro split. The bro split. I'd actually never split my legs up before. That was really interesting for me. Yeah, because again, you know,

your legs is such a large body part that doing them both together is really not optimal. If you're going to want to attack your quads to the full extent of using all your energy, there's no way you can realistically go to your handstring. So I always like people to split those up because of just such large body parts. Smaller body parts like your shoulders and arms and chest, that's where people will implement that push full legs protocol, which is very popular. And that's great. And a lot of people see great results from them.

But I'm again, I'm more of the old school mentality. I came from, you know, training with Jay Cuthler, four-time Mr. Olympia when I was a teenager, and adapting that higher volume, higher frequency, you know, really taxing the muscle, but not taxing those joints and those tendons and those ligaments to where you're just aching and you're hurting. And, you know, training is more mature. So let's get into some of the, you know, my audience will know a lot of the wrestlers that you've worked with. So let's get into some of these guys you've worked with. Bobby Lashley, you mentioned Johnny Gargano, Tomaso Champa, Moose, Apollo Cruz, Drake Maverick.

Who else in my AF are getting here? Let's see, man. Eli Esther, an AEW, EC3, Buddy, Buddy Matthews. I don't know if he goes by that anymore. Man, there's a long laundry list of guys that actually worked with L.A. Knight. Yeah. Yeah, man, exactly, right? Just a, man, a lot of guys. I should have written it all down because it's a long list. I remember getting, we call him Sput, Drake Maverick, but he was texting me backstage at Raw. And he's like, dude, you literally work with almost the entire locker room. Everybody's talking about cereal right now. And I was like, that's great, man. That's what I brought into the industry. That's awesome, man. So yeah, no, it's great. I love, you know, I grew up. wrestling fan a lot of people don't know this but the reason i got into bodybuilding is because i wanted to be in in wwe eventually one day oh wow those were just not in the cards for me um

it funny uh i took a couple bumps the uh like a year or two ago for the first time in a rain never did it before ran the ropes and i was like man i got a new found respect for you guys the first bump i ever took that knocked the wind out of me so hard and then running the ropes you know on the lats i had nice marks, red marks on there for a couple days. And I was like, man, this is some cardio. I got blown up pretty good. So I think that if there's somebody watching this who wants to take this fitness journey themselves, but it goes, man, AJ, six meals a day, all that cardio, all that working out, I don't do anything right now. What are some steps they can start to take right now to start to see some results? I think the biggest thing is it starts with a mind, right?

everything starts with making a decision in life and everything that we do. You change your mind. You change your life, you know. So you have to make that decision. And it doesn't take time. It's an instantaneous decision that I'm going to do something no matter how uncomfortable it is. It's kind of like you have a cold plunge so you understand your mind will tell you the first 10, 15 seconds, get out of this thing. You're dying. You know, it's even worse about the cold plunge is when you're getting ready to, do it. Your mind has every excuse why you shouldn't get in there. Oh, we could do this later. Oh, you know, let's wait until it's warmer. Exactly. I was telling my wife, there's two types of people

in the world. There's ones that run to that cold plunge. They'll do it no matter what their mind says. And there's people that are like, yeah, maybe tomorrow or maybe next week, right? So it's changed. That's just in life. There's two types of people that are like, let's do this thing right now. Or, and I love this quote, I just interviewed Arnold recently, and I told him how much I love this quote. It's you get results or excuses. You don't have both. And it's like, yes. Like that is so true. 100%. I mean, he's the prime example of a guy that came over to America and he had that mentality of a work ethic that started with fitness and started with bodybuilding. And then I, you know, listen to a few things where when he tried to get into Hollywood, people made fun of them, you know.

And it's a, it's a mindset that I'm going to do it no matter what. So if you're starting a fitness goal, you're starting, don't even look at it as a, diet. It's a lifestyle. You want to look good, feel good, sleep good, digest all your food well. You just want to feel good because people get so used to feeling suboptimal that they think that's normal. And then when they actually start feeling optimal, they're like, man, this is living. This is life. So you get started. You just get started by the mind and then you start moving the body. And everything eventually will follow. Preparation. Biggest misconceptions throughout this whole thing is, oh man, it must be.

nice to have the kind of money to eat healthy. And I'm just blown away by this because most of my meals were ground turkey, ground beef, rice, Ezekiel bread, eggs. Like, most of my meals came in at, I'd say, two to four dollars. That's it. It's actually a lot cheaper to eat this way than you go to Starbucks every day and get your, you know, 1,000 calorie drink with a foam on top, right? So, you know, again, it's a mindset thing. There's a lot of misconception and misinformation out there and people kind of get set into that. There's no way I could afford to do that. I can't eat healthy. I can't join a gym. There's gyms out there that are $9 a month now. They've made it pretty much affordable for everybody. So it's changing your mind and it'll change your life,

guys. So just be encouraged to get the body moving. You've seen Chris's transformation and you've say, he already was in shape. Yeah, he was already in great shape, but he took it to the next level. He did work that he's probably never done before. And you can always look back on those photos and you know exactly what you did. And if you ever want to do it again, you know what it takes. You know what it takes. And the cool thing is, is he got your wife watching you and you have your daughter who's going to be watching you now. You have that mentality, that beast's mentality.

You know when you need to turn it up, man. And you don't even make excuses. And you're a busy guy. You're traveling all over the place, putting out, content left and right, but you still get it done. It's because you changed your mind. I remember interviewing Mario Lopez years ago when he came out with one of his cookbooks. And I said, look, Mario, you're a busy guy. You're on the go. And he said something that I'll never forget. He goes, well, Chris, we're all busy. We're all busy. It's just a matter of

what are you going to do at the time that you have in your day. And that changed my whole perception of everything. You know, I always say that people make time for the things that are important to them. So if you can carve out 30 minutes to an hour every day, kind of maybe turn the TV off for that time and just say, I'm going to dedicate this to myself and my body. You know, it's amazing what happens in every aspect of your life when you start really taking care of your internal health. And then, of course, externally it shows. And then up here, it changes everything. And I truly believe it changes you as a better husband, father, friend, businessman, co-worker, son, whatever the case is. It all starts with that.

And again, changing your mind. Make time for the things that are important to you. And fitness and health should be at the very top because we can have all the money in the world. We can have all the material. But if we don't have our health, then it's just worthless. I love that quote that it's the healthy man has a thousand problems and the sick man has one. Health as well. Look at that, man.

I'm going to be writing these quotes down. I got so many quotes. What do you think is something that people need to stop eating or stop doing that could really start to make a big change in their life right now? Yeah, I think some of the biggest red flags in the diet, especially I'm going to speak on American diet, would be your refined sugars and seed oils. So if you noticed on your program, I only put extra virgin coconut oil and avocado oils, spray specifically to stay away from inflammatory seed oils. So a lot of refined sugars and a lot of seed oils are going to be very detrimental to your health. And it's kind of the opposite. Like, you know, salt is good.

So we've been told that salt is bad. But so if you know, I put a lot of salt on your plan. And, you know, we had to kind of change it a little bit. But keeping you well hydrated is absolutely key on the cellular level, which is what good salt, Redmond's salt will do. But staying away from all those very saturated. fats, those very heavy, dense fast food, refined sugars. And then people say, well, you gave them crumble and in an alberger. Well, that was part of a refeed. So once in a while, you can introduce

those foods, but on a daily basis, you want to try to stick to your lean meats, your lean proteins, your easily digestible carbohydrates, healthy dietary fats, good organic frozen berries, hitting your micronutrients and making sure that everything you're taking in, your body's saying, thank you. I appreciate it. And you'll only know it because your energy is going to be good. Your sleep is going to be good. And up here is going to be better too. I'm going to add one more thing on top of this.

If you could just cut out soda, pop, whatever you want to call it, wherever you live, the juice, that makes such a massive change. Yeah, no, that's a great point because if you're drinking calories, that amount of calories. And again, it's like, or like going to a coffee shop. And instead of getting a black coffee, you're getting a coffee that has a thousand calories. Or if you're drinking soda, you have to understand that it's never going to satiate you. So you're always going to be more hungry and you're just going to continue to go to that.

But it's also going to do some more cravings. And it'll make your body and your mind crave more dopamine from fats and sugars. And it's just a cycle. So once you cut that out, then things just continue to. It happens really fast, man. But I get a lot of lifestyle people that will come to me and they drink that on the regular. When we cut that out, man, these people, will lose eight to 10 pounds like that.

Really fast because their caloric intake is so high just from those things that they don't even know. I knew that this was possible because when you look at your resume and everybody who's watching this, go check out AJ on Instagram. He's at Semen Factory. The transformations you've done from lifestyle average people like me to, you know, guys who are stepping on the Mr. Olympia stage, it's unbelievable. So I am very much of the mentality. if somebody else is doing the thing that I want to do.

That just means it's possible for me to do it too. So let's reverse engineer this back and figure out how we can make this happen. Yeah, absolutely. And the cool thing about what we did, not only did we get to meet each other and form a relationship, I was able to help you build this physique. The cool thing is, is you have information now that you can take for the rest of your life and implement it to be successful in reaching those fitness goals. Because once you figure out what works best for your body, man, that is like a million dollar question everybody asks.

What do I need to do? And again, we're talking to an audience who may just be getting started on this. So we don't want to overwhelm people. You certainly don't have to have a coach, but just get the body moving. But you have this information. And I tell all the boys, all the rest of it was the same thing. You can now go do this. You have it.

You know what to do. So just adhere to. to the program. It's the biggest key is being compliant and consistent and always being proactive rather than reactive and just staying on course. We can all stay in shape year-round, look great, feel great, and continue to eat, you know, cereal when we need to and all the refee days and not kill ourselves, right? Because a lot of the guys, they love the keto and the low-carb guys, but they figure out, hey, I can actually eat a lot of food and still getting great shape and feel Yeah. We mentioned some of the supplements, but let's actually list some of them off that people might want to be using if they want to get in this kind of shape.

Yeah. So off the top of my head, I know when we implemented, when we picked up your program, we implemented fat free hardcore, which is a fat burner that I formulated myself through absolute substance D. I'm a co-owner of that company and I do all the formulations. We had gut health supplements. I think we started your morning off with gut optimization for your internal health because when you, you wake up, you're in a dehydrated state. So the first thing you want is hydration on the cellular level with water with salt, a gut health supplement, aloe juice. You want to set your internal environment. So then when you actually go eat, your food's being processed. So we had all that implemented into the first phase, into the fat burgers. We had essential amino acids.

We had glutamine, which is great for gut health and recovery too. Creatine monohydrate. And we kept it pretty, pretty basic, man. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Chris was only using the things that he needed. He's not using some crazy supplement down at weeder farms that we picked for him and, you know, or whatever the case is we figured out all he needs is just to be consistent. And these are the supplements that he needs.

They're working great. The fat free was making you sweat for four to five hours. And it was burning and melting that fat off. But again, there's no magic pill when it comes to supplements. That's a big thing I want to get across the people. Don't go waste a bunch of money on supplements and think that's going to be the silver bullet for your body changing. What you've got to do is nutrition first, training, cardio, and the supplements will come after that. It's just the cherry on top. Look, I feel so good. It was, you know, the goal was

to be in the best shape of my life by my 40th birthday. I just feel the best. And so much of this is because of you and your guidance. So, I appreciate you, Chris. AJ, thank you. And we end every conversation with gratitude that's a big part of my life. I wake up every day. Stay out loud, three things I'm grateful for. I do before I go to sleep too. So, AJ, what are three things in your life that you're grateful for right now? I'm definitely grateful for my family, first and foremost, my beautiful wife, my almost two-year-old daughter who's taking a nap right down the hallway. You know how that's going to be. So grateful for that nap, I bet. I'm grateful for you, Chris. I'm grateful for the fact that you allow me to come on this podcast, speak to your audience,

kind of show face of what I've been doing, not only in the wrestling industry, but also for you to answer some of the questions that people may have had. And I'm just grateful that I'm able to get out and move my body. There's people that didn't wake up today. There's people that are laying in a hospital bed that would give anything to have two good working legs just to get up and get moving. And the fact that I get to do that, I got to do that today. I'm extremely grateful. And I will not take that for granted.

Love it. Thank you so much, brother. My pleasure, man. Thank you, Chris. All right. There we go. I mean, that was pretty information dense there. We threw a lot at you. And I know this may be one of those episodes that needs a re-listen so you can really take in everything that we gave you there. But I hope that this inspires you to start your own fitness journey. Or if you're on a fitness journey of your own right now, I hope that this lights a little fire under you. Because I just want you to know it's possible. It is all possible, but you need two important ingredients.

We talked about them here. You need consistency and you need dedication. If you really want to, you know, someone to hold you accountable, reach out to AJ. He is at Cement Factory on Instagram and also you can check out the amazing transformations that he's done there. It takes people from being good to being just freaking great. So he's at Cement Factory.

I'm at Chris Van Vleet. And I'll leave you with one of my favorite. quotes about health. Dropped a few quotes during this interview, but this is my favorite quote about health. It's for Robin Sharma. Health is a crown on the head of a well person that only a sick person can see.

That makes sense, right? You don't realize what you got until it's gone. Be great. Be grateful. We will see you on the next one for some more insight. An 80s flashback mockumentary. Back in the 80s, there were a thousand bands trying to make it in the world of rock.

But there was one band that had it all. Hammer Alley. Whatever happened to Hammer Alley? How did they go from top of the rock? I'm looking for a music video. They're a band from 1987. Hammer Alley. Ever heard of them?

To Rock Bottom. Dude, I was born in 1987. I can't believe he's doing this. Hammer Alley. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.