Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 314 - Mike Israetel

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

Dr. Mike Israetel is a Ph.D. in Sport Physiology, and training and nutrition expert, BJJ purple belt, competitive bodybuilder, as well as co-founder of one of the most successful training and nutrition coaching companies, Renaissance Periodization. Dr. Israetel has authored and co-authored many books on training, nutrition, and recovery. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Visit our sponsors:                                                                      ➢New Perfect Keto Birthday Cake Bars! 10% of 1 box, 20% off 2 boxes, 30% off 3 or more! http://bit.ly/pkppbday                               ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/powerproject Use Code "POWERPROJECT10” at checkout for $10 off $40 or more! ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject  ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject   ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok                                                ➢Power Project Alexa Skill: http://bit.ly/ppalexa FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

And we're good to go. There we go. Dude, what's going on with this perfect keto-ness? They've been talking about a birthday cake bar. It's not even my birthday. It's not my birthday. I haven't been able to try one. Aren't they following my Instagram?

I'm on World Carnivore Month. I guess technically maybe I could have it because it has collagen in it. That comes from an animal, right? It does, but you shouldn't be having it. You should just give those to Andrew and I since we're not not carnival right now so i'll probably never bring him in good to know yeah and then like i can't even have them because i'm sure they're like high in quality fats so i gotta keep my fats down still oh no well looks like it's all for me it's not all about you bro the bars The bars are great from Perfect Keto.

When I was 330 pounds, I didn't go on a strict carnivore diet to end up the weight that I'm at now. It was a long progression and it took a long time. I needed a lot of keto snacks along the way. And having something to look forward to in your day is extremely important. Perfect Keto has bars that taste really good. They have MCT oil powder that tastes really good. They got way, I mean, everything on the site, everything that, you know,

is in a powdered form that you can drink. Tastes awesome. You want to add some good flavor to your coffee. You want your coffee to pop. Add some MCT oil powder to it. That's going to help you with your fast. Now, you some MCT oil powder to it. That's going to help you with your fast. Now, you know, keep in mind when you're having calories, it is somewhat of a break of a fast, but you can still end up with great results and still end up heading towards

your goals just by simply partitioning out a larger amount of calories for later in the day, which many people have done for many, many years now, you know, by putting butter and MCT into their coffee. So a lot of great options. And then, you know, they, additionally, they have the electrolytes, which all of us take quite often because it's important that we, because we're always on some sort of diet, we were on some sort of nutrition plan and it's tough to get it all from food, especially when you work out really hard and sweat your butt off. Yeah. Yeah. And if you guys don't know where to start, we made it pretty easy.

We have a Power Project survival kit. That's kind of an easy way for you guys to get in and start working with fasting and stuff because a lot of people, sometimes they might just get a little overwhelmed. So we listed out everything for you guys at perfectketo.com slash powerproject. Add a bunch of those things to your cart at checkout. Enter promo code powerproject10 for $10 off of any order of $40 or more. And if you get up to $100, you can use promo code powerprojectbundle, which will get you $25 off that order.

And again, the new birthday cake bars just came out. So they're doing a promo for 10% off one box, 20% off of two boxes, 30% off of three boxes. Hopefully, we get a chance to try those. We'll see what happens, though. And the reason why Perfect Keto is so successful is because they have a high standard over there. They're not using any artificial sweeteners in anything that they have. So those of you that have concern about that, thinking, oh, I don't want to have these weird diet sodas and stuff like that, none of their products have anything like that in them there you go so world carnivore month mark how's it going

you know what it's going great you know uh today is day number 16 feeling really good um been back with doing some yoga been keeping up on running i would say runs, but then people might think I'm ending up like Joe Rogan going out my butthole all the time. But I'm excited to go into Bodega Bay later today. Going to enjoy doing some runs out there, hitting up the hills, which will be really, really hard. But I'm looking forward to it. I've been getting my conditioning up quite a bit. I did some battle rope the other day and i did 10 rounds of it and i was like wow like that's the first time i've done that and it's been pretty you know the battle

rope is one of those things you're like i'm never gonna get good at this every time you know it's like hitting a heavy bag too you hit a heavy bag hard for 30 seconds and you feel like you're gonna die it's hard to get your wind up for that so yeah the conditioning is getting better but uh you know today uh even though today is a great day, it started off with some really, really sad news. You guys know I'm a huge wrestling fan. And unfortunately, The Rock's dad passed away today, 75 years old. I think he actually died yesterday, but they announced it today. So shout out to The Rock and his family.

I'm sure he's getting you know tons of support from all over the place but man that's a tough blow that's his like mentor that's the guy who taught him how to wrestle and the rocks like you know one of the greatest wrestlers of all time um so yeah and you know i grew up watching him i grew up watching him and uh the other wrestler that he would tag team with was tony at And Tony Atlas, if you bring up some pictures of these guys, Tony Atlas looked like a goddamn, well, he was a professional bodybuilder. Yeah. I mean, he had over like 20-inch arms.

And then Rocky Johnson, The Rock's dad, was in amazing shape. And when I wrestled, I used to do, he does like a shuffle, like when he's wrestling, when he's like beating the other guy up. And I used to do that when I wrestled. All of us used to do we all used to mimic it when we were in practice and stuff because yeah yeah that's tony atlas right there and then uh the rocks dad is in tremendous shape too but you guys you know you guys follow along with what the rocks got going on and and uh many people have heard him talk about his dad before and i'm sure having your dad be a pro wrestler and having your dad travel as much as he did i'm sure there's some like rocky situations in there um you know with with the family

relationship and everything but you know later on in his life it seemed like you know they were really tight and really close-knit family, uh, just makes it all the more, uh, impactful, but man, he lit, he lived a great life, you know, 75 years old. I don't know what like life expectancy is. I think it's probably like 78 or something for men. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but, um, he kind of almost made it to that, uh, range and, you know, live in 75 years the way that he did all the experiences had traveling the world and, uh, you know, getting to meet all the different people that he met and getting to work with all the different people. I mean, he was a rock star. And he got to see his son's success.

That's absolutely insane. Yeah, his son's success was just completely different than anybody else's success on the entire planet. So hopefully the rock can stay in good spirits and hopefully he's got great support around him. Today we have Mike Israetel on the podcast and I'm super excited to talk to him. You know, we get some people on the show where it's like, man, they really built a good, um, they built a good niche for themselves and they end up being such good resources for people, um, when it comes to nutrition and when it comes to training. You know, I think Mike had an unfair advantage because he's from Russia.

It's like, dude, like, of course, you're going to be good at like strength training. Yeah. From Russia. You got it in your genes, dude. But, you know, he is pumping out some great information. There is a lot of confusion. People don't always know what to do. People are confused people are just getting started they're trying to be the best they can they're trying to do the best they can and they're not sure who the hell to listen

to but mike israel has great information he does he has a lot of good information and he's jacked very jacked um he's one of those guys who like he talks a lot about overall training volume so he's the one who i like who i learned about like the maximum recoverable volume stuff from but he has a lot of great information what i'm curious about actually is anything he may have like changed his mind about or anything he may have i don't know um adjusted in terms of like nutrition in the past few years or if he's like still because like they have the rena periodization, like diet coaching thing. And it's,

I wonder if there's anything that's just changed there for different types of diets. So it'll be really cool to get a lot of things that change in, in nutrition and strength training. So yeah, maybe he's got some new things and that's, what's great about talking to people like this is, um,

you know, sometimes they have like new tricks and things and sometimes like, Hey, the shit works. Just that. That's like, I feel like when Stan, shit works just yeah that's like i feel like when stan stan comes around it's like a slap on the on the on the hand you know uh-huh here we go yo look at man this guy's taking up the whole damn screen and it's a fun trick when you just put the camera really close to you what's up mike how you doing what's up what's up good to be on thanks so much for having me

yeah great to connect with you um you know first of all you know we're huge fans and congratulations on uh building a great business and um it's just awesome to have other people in the space pumping out great information so we appreciate you well thanks much. I feel like I'm talking to a, I'm a movie star because you're actually a movie star and it's a trip. I'm having a celebrity moment. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Let's kind of get down to business here.

You know, for me, it's world carnivore month. And so I'd like to kind of get your take on some different dietary interventions that people might try, challenges and those kinds of things. What are your thoughts on a strictly meat-based or meat-only diet? Cool. I have one hour and four minutes. Is that okay, by the way? That's great. Okay, cool.

I just want to make sure. What are my thoughts on a meat only diet? In what context? Or would you like me to speak generally? Yeah, I think, you know, I think when most people are looking at like a carnivore style diet, or a very low carb diet, or no carb diet, they're looking to lose weight. So probably in the context of, you know, somebody needs to lose 50 pounds, something like that. Yeah, that's a good question. So I think that low carbohydrate diets are one of those things that some individuals seem to get pretty good results from. And even all of the best intended diets that have a lot of carbs seem to not work so well for some group of people. So it would be inaccurate to say that low carbohydrate diets are just better for everyone as far as weight loss or fat loss is concerned. But some folks, especially with hunger signaling,

if they eat a considerable amount of carbohydrate and less fat, they just, gee, they just tend to really have trouble getting full. And, or gee, they just tend to really have trouble getting full and, or sorry, have trouble, yeah, have trouble getting full and then they get hungry more often. And even if all the macros and calories are the same, or sorry, if all the calories are the same, they end up being in a situation where they don't find dieting very sustainable for long enough to lose a lot of weight. So they'll do a higher carb, lower fat diet, three, four, five, six weeks in, they're going to start to eat their own teeth because they're so hungry. And then, you know, it's kind of like, what do I do here? And a lot of people, unfortunately, get the idea that sort

of this is the only way to diet. And they just think they suck at dieting. And then they're like, well, I'm just going to be fat or try this new stupid fat or some kind of pill or potion. But I think some people when they have lower carbohydrate diets, and this has been pretty well established for things like very low carbohydrate diets, specifically keto dieting, that you can and it doesn't happen in everyone, but some people just have profoundly lower rates of hunger. So that's a big deal. Because let's be honest, you know, people talk about all this, you know, very sciencey stuff and diet adherence, lifestyle, food choices. But at the end of the day, what really makes you cheat on your diet?

Can I swear on here? Yeah, absolutely. I thought this was a good, clean podcast. So you're just fucking hungry, man. People just fucking wanted a cheeseburger. And they're like, well, was it the insulin dynamics? No, I just fucking wanted a cheeseburger because I'm sick and tired of not fucking eating. But if some people for them for a low carb diet, they're cutting calories because low carbs are a great way to cut calories for many people. And you end up asking them like, Hey, are you starving? Do you want to eat your

own arm? And like, you know, I actually just feel fine. And for that group of people, I absolutely think it's a great idea to drop carbohydrates, especially if you're not involved in a really crazy endurance, super high volume training. There you sort of need a certain minimum, kind of a lot of carbs to keep the engine running. But if you're involved in like mostly lifting or just, you know, your average recreational guy that's just sick and tired of being out of shape, if for him cutting carbs is what reduces hunger and gets him eating a regular steady good diet, I think he's well on his

way. The carnivore diet is a variety of low carbohydrate diet. What I like to see folks do is usually I like to see people, you know, get their greens and veggies and so on and so forth, because those can be really nutritious. But the how nutritious veggies are, it's certainly a high degree. but can you go a certain number of weeks without eating any veggies and probably be okay? Yeah, probably. It turns out meat is actually very nutritious by itself. And can you eat a carnivore only diet for a while and be fine and lose a lot of weight and not be hungry? Absolutely. Would I recommend it for somebody to do it like a lifestyle for good? You miss out on a lot of really good fun. And also I think that eating maybe a lower carbohydrate, if that's something that keeps you away from eating a ton of stuff

is good, but keeping some green veggies in there and maybe some whole grains, maybe some fruits and eating different kinds of protein sources is probably more sustainable in the long run. And would you also just kind of say that like, it just seems to make sense. I mean, there's so many different varieties of foods uh for us to eat here you know aside from the processed and over manufactured stuff um there's you know fruits and vegetables and meat and that's pretty much what should make up the majority of anyone's diet that is uh trying to be lean and and obviously there's there's room for some error there's some wiggle room there's some cheat meals there's some uh room for your cakes and pizzas and things like that too

um but would you kind of agree with that part of it where like because that's that's where i that's you know where i sit is like i do the carnivore diet i mess with it quite often i like it i enjoy it i like a keto style diet but i also just understand the fact that I don't think apples are here for no reason, you know, and I don't think oranges are here for no reason. They're here to tempt us in the garden of Eden. Yeah. See? Yeah. So that's kind of my thought. We're just on really low carb diets and that's why the apple looks super appealing. They were like, bro, I haven't had a carbon snake. I'm tired of snakes. They're all made of meat, whatever.

No, I totally hear you on that. And I think fundamentally at the core of every diet, if you're eating mostly unprocessed, healthy food, you're off to a real good start. And if you want to do more carbs, if you want to do fewer carbs, as long as you're getting enough proteins and healthy fats in, there's a ton of variety where you can sort of pick and choose which one is best for you, which one's most sustainable for your lifestyle. And you can even go in and out. You can go through phases where you're eating fewer carbs, go through phases where you're eating more carbs. I think at the very core should be mostly sort of planned meals of fundamentally healthy

food. You can have a little bullshit here and there, but just a lot of people seem to really think in extremes. I don't know if you guys have had a chance, but let the shit talking commence right away. Have you guys seen the Game Changers shit? Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah.. Have you guys seen the game changer shit? Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. I feel, I assume you changed up your game. We're all vegan now. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm enjoying that broccoli. It's great. Vegan it up.

Yeah. I don't, I haven't eaten meat in years. You know, not necessarily on the same note, but somehow this morning I farted in my car and it smelled like broccoli. And I was like, man, that's impossible. I haven't eaten broccoli in months. So I don't know where that came from. You've been waking up in the middle of the night binging on broccoli.

There's like security cam footage at your local store of you just eating broccoli. That's what happened, huh? Yeah. So like, you know, people will say like, okay, like I trained at a jujitsu gym at Balance in Philadelphia and guys on my jujitsu team come up to me and they're like, hey, so like I saw Game Changers. Like I'm vegan now. It's good, right?

And I'm like – I think Bones Jones went vegan. Bones Jones I think is doing it. That's it. That's how you become John Jones. Forget genetics. Forget 20 years of training. You just become vegan and all of a sudden you can see people's fists come at you three times slower.

That's it. So like people are looking for this answer, like this vegan, this is it, right? And you're like, well, you know, if you start from a core of healthy eating already, you can choose to be vegan, or that can really work for you, you're going to have to work at it, because it's a little bit more difficult to get protein, so on and so forth. And then if you start from a core of carnivore, you can layer in some veggies and fruits when you feel like it when you don't when you need it when you don't. And then at the end of the day, you're eating fundamentally healthy and eating in a regular

way and you're on top of your body weight, you know what's going on. And then there's a bunch of different ways to do it. So I think a lot of people are just looking for like the one answer where the truth is both a little bit more complicated, but also much more awesome that if you were fundamentally eating healthy foods most of the time, just a little bit of junk here and there, then you can eat in a bunch of different ways and be totally fine. I think some people think that sounds nice, but some people are like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I got to buy any the thing, any the crazy new diet. It's just going to get me jacked. It's going to make me literally into John Jones so I can finally

beat people up that I hate. I'm tired of being bullied. Dr. Mike, I'm curious because obviously you mentioned a lot of this based off of context, obviously you mentioned a lot of this based off of context where it would be relevant. So you, yourself, where or in what situations would you have an individual, whether it's someone who's trying to lose weight or let's say even an athlete, in what situations would you have someone utilize the carnivore diet if you would? So it's actually, unfortunately, well, unfortunately, it's out of my purview, because I'm not a registered dietitian, I'm not a clinical nutritionist, but there are individuals that have a variety of sensitivities to a bunch of foods and chemical compounds.

Some of those individuals are sensitive to things that appear almost exclusively in plant-based foods. And what they'll have is essentially some form of autoimmune reaction to almost any kind of consumed carbohydrate, even if it's fruits, veggies, whole grains. And then if in a clinical setting, because you know, I don't, I program apps all day and write books. I don't even, I hardly work with clients. People don't like me. I don't like them back. So I'm just kidding. But so, you know, for someone like someone on our team at Renaissance, we have a bunch of registered dietitians who work with folks like this. And they'll do like, basically, essentially, they'll do an elimination style diet where they'll take some food group to take it away and see how you feel. And some people end up with a very carnivore looking diet, because that seems

to be what doesn't irritate their bowels, or doesn't have take them through an inflammatory immune response, or do some kind of allergenic response. At the end of that day, that is the diet or the core of that diet is what makes them feel the best. And then listen, you can have all the science in the world, but at the end of the day, if someone fundamentally feels better or isn't like having these, you know, body attacks from foods, man, that's a huge checkmark. And whatever they're left eating, as long as it's meeting the basic needs, which the

carnivore diet can do with some tweaking, then you have to respect that that's the reality. I believe Jordan Peterson, I don't know if you have to respect that that's the reality. I believe Jordan Peterson, I don't know if you guys know who that is. I think he's doing the carnivore diet sometime. And I think like his daughter is, you know, I'm not going to come in and barge in his house and be like, fucking idiot, you should be vegan. Like, you know, maybe I'm not going to push 600 grams of carbs on him. But I think if you've arrived at that situation where it really is conducive to your lifestyle and eating a lot of carbohydrates or a lot of veggies and fruits just does not sort of bode well for you. You can

absolutely eat a diet much higher in meat and much lower in everything else. And you take someone like Jordan Peterson. I think he said that he was just struggling with his diet. He didn't have a lot of energy. So I'd imagine, I would assume that just from the travel and all the lifestyle that he had, he was probably just picking up some crap here and there and probably just wasn't getting a lot of nutrients from his diet. And I'm in full agreement with a lot of the things you say. I know that sometimes people think that I'm all keto or carnivore, but I do understand there's a variety of different ways to get to the same spot basically. And one of our good friends, Jordan Syatt, um, he just said, he like, dude, I'm addicted to cereal. So he's like, you know what? That means I'm going

to eat cereal here and there. So, you know, different people have different ways and he's in great shape. Different people have different ways of, uh, arriving at a similar conclusion. Sure. I think it's, we started getting into problems with people, you know, carbs are poisonous or insulin is going to kill you. Like, you the Trix rabbit, isn't the Trix rabbit actually addicted to cereal to're like, he's not, he's not right. Like I don't want him around my children. But in any case, like, you know, if you, you know, label food groups as good and bad, you get yourself into a real interesting moral conundrum with food, which is just not, man, we can moralize about enough stuff in our lives. Like leave food as to what's effective, what's ineffective, what sits well with me, what doesn't, make the best choices you can. And whatever you arrive at can be good for you, but that might not be the greatest thing for everyone else. And that's okay.

Like on Instagram, a bunch of people are like, how should I eat? And I'm like, this is probably a good idea. And some other people are like, how do you eat? And I'm like, you know, I eat like weird shit that you might not be into. I post pictures of my meals sometimes. And people are like, you're the shittiest cook ever. And I'm like, I agree with you. And they're like, do I have to eat like this? I'm like, no, you just follow the general principles. And for the love of God, don't ever copy anything I do. Oh, you're awful. Well, anybody who's ever gotten into bodybuilding, you know, you just don't care after a while. You don't give a shit. You're like, this is going to be amazing. I'm mixing some eggs and some rice

and this is going to be the greatest meal of all time. A hundred percent. Yeah. You're down to like three food choices. You got to get real creative. Do you kind of think for some of the, or for the people that you work with, or actually with the people that you work with, where do you usually start with somebody? Let's just kind of say in the context of, let's just say someone wants to lose weight. Yeah. So there's a bunch of places you can start from, but I think one of the good places you can start from is just trying to figure out what are they eating? What are their eating habits or lack thereof? Because you guys have worked with a ton of people over the years and I'm sure some people are, you're like, so what do you eat? And they're like, um, I eat pretty clean yesterday. Yeah. That's what we always hear. No know it's bad. Like they're eating a cheeseburger while they talk to you. So, you know, some people don't even understand.

They don't even have like a pattern of eating, which is already bad news because then you have to build a pattern for them. But if they already have some kind of pattern, what I generally like to do and for a lot of regular folks or people involved in sport that just are real new to dieting and they're not used to, because some people you're like, what are you eating? And they're like, here's my macros. Here's my meals. You're like, well, shit, you're well ahead of the game. We just tweak some shit and you're good to go. But for people without really much of a habit or who don't know what they're doing, what you want to do is just try to set them up with a fundamental core pattern. Like I want you to have three to four protein-based meals per day. We're going to throw some veggies into most of those. That's what I want you to do for a while. If you have some other bullshit on top of that, I don't care about it. No worries. Have a little

snack here and there. I want you to get in the habit of just eating well and feeding your body regularly. Once someone has a habit, which takes takes a couple weeks, maybe longer, that someone like has Tupperware with them. And they're like, I got my protein, I got my greens, I got my brown rice. And you're like, okay, sweet. You know how this works. Then you can start manipulating it like, I want you to reduce the rice, I want you to increase the greens, I want you to do this with the meat. And then to them, it makes total sense. Like if someone's never driven a car, you're not going to be like, all right, you're going to put into first gear and you're going to hit the clutch. They're like, what the fuck is all that? What? But if someone's driven driven a car, you're not going to be like, all right, you're going to put it into first gear and you're going to hit the clutch. They're like, what the fuck is all that?

What? But if someone's driven a car for a while and they've used a manual transmission, you're like, I want you to put it in first gear. They're like, oh, that makes perfect sense. They might not even know which gear is the right idea for that kind of road, but they know what a gear is. Just the same way, if someone has a fundamental good eating pattern of I eat four times a day, roughly the same times, every meal is built around proteins and greens, then you can start to manipulate that. But a lot of people, as you guys probably well know, just straight up don't have an eating habit. So you'd be like, you know, what do you usually eat for breakfast? They're like, um, don't really eat breakfast. What do you usually eat for lunch? Like, depends on what they bring to the office. Like, what about dinner? Like, I'm usually banging

the secretary during dinner or lying to my wife about it. don't know is that a kind of feeding so you're like for the love of god like you just got to establish a shit so now after before they bang their secretary they carve up a little bit and they have their own meal then you get them into a pattern you can change it later i don't even know sorry the visual like that that was uh wow. It's nothing you guys would know anything about, right? We're all fine, outstanding gentlemen. We're faithful men. Now, I'm curious about this then also because you get somebody on a routine, okay? They're making their foods, et cetera.

You – in the beginning of part of this podcast, you mentioned people having cravings. Everybody has like cravings here and there, whether it's for super sugary foods, et cetera. How do you help people attack different types of cravings here and there, whether it's for super sugary foods, et cetera. How do you help people attack different types of cravings? I know high-fiber foods will help with satiety, et cetera. But for myself in the past, I had my macro set, and I would be someone who would continuously always crave really, really high carb sugary foods all the time, no matter in what shape I was in, whether I was shredded or not. For me personally, I had- What are you talking about, man? You're always shredded. Get out of here. But for me, I ended up having to just lower carbohydrates. So I eat less carbs than I used

to in the past, and I don't have that as bad. But how would you help people experiment to figure out how they can get rid of those cravings? Yeah, people can be split. That's a very good question. People can be split into general, two general groups. So there's a lot of overlap. One group of people, if they have a little bit of some shit they want, they're totally good to go. I don't relate to these people at all, but they like have like one or two cookies and they're like, I'm good. Like, which to me makes no sense. My wife can do that. I don't get it. It's crazy. She has a gift, like legit, like just be in awe of her. And then another group of people, like if they see cookies, they will stab somebody to get them, like pulling ice cream cones out of

kids' hands in the street, shit like that. So if you're in a group of folks that just can do a little bit, that's the best way to manage cravings. So if someone's like, hey, I really want some cookies on this diet, you'd be like, okay, have a couple cookies, no big deal, if you know that that's how they're like or part of you experimenting. If you know that they're the other way, a lot of times people will tell you, like you just told me, you were like, look, I can't be around sugary foods because I'll just eat the shit. It's so funny, people will be like, how many bowls of cereal did you eat? I'm like the box box. I'm like, well, you get a box of cereal, eat the box. I was understand that that's a single serving. So for folks like that, what you have to do is separate the diet into two phases. One is an intentional phase where you push ahead to lose weight.

And at that point, you don't have cereal. You don't have any of that good shit that's going to make you go crazy. You just, first of all, don't buy it. Second of all, don't come around it. And third of all, use your fucking willpower to say to myself for the next two months, I eat what the fuck the diet says and nothing else because I'm a fucking grownup and I do what the fuck I'm supposed to do, not what I want. I'm not tricks rabbit. I'm not fucking fiending on cereal. I am, but I can control it, right? I swear to God. So for those two months that you and your coach said, I'm going to be on the diet, you don't touch the shit. And then when you're not, so when you've accomplished your goal, let's say you lost 10 pounds. Now it's time to take a diet break. Maybe another two months where you essentially

keep the weight off. Keeping weight off is way easier than taking it off to begin with. Then when you keep the weight off, you start to eat more normal food for the first week or two. You still don't hit the cereal because it's still too fucking good. You're still too hungry. After like two weeks of normal food, you're like, man, I've had just about as much rice and whatever kind of shit that I'm ever going to have. You're not super hungry and gravy.

You're just gravy. And then two weeks after the end of that push, you go in and you have some cereal and you have a fucking box bucket, right? But then your body, your hormones are back pretty level, your metabolism is up pretty high. And all of a sudden, you have a box of cereal and the next day, you don't even gain any weight, you haven't held any water. A couple days later, you have another half box of cereal. A couple days after that, you have a bowl and you're like, man, I guess I got my cereal fix. So I think a lot of times people think of dieting as like, okay, I'm going to start eating well. I'm going to eat low calories. I'm going to cut my shit. And I'm just going to keep doing that forever. That's fucking

crazy. You do it for a few months at a time. You meet your short-term goals. Then you give your body and mind a break for months not days not weeks months so you can just essentially feel out your body's new weight and then your cravings start to go away and you eat much more normal food and then at the end of that process if you have more weight to lose you do another push and you repeat the process so on and so forth i hate it when people have the mentality of like i once i start a diet it's forever like that's total bullshit you can weave in and out intelligently and on the net balance, lose fat, gain muscle. So on and so forth. So at different points in your life,

you might just be in a little bit different shape. You might get, you know, a little bit out of shape because you might take a diet break. And other times you might, might go in hard and get in better shape, right? Well, Mark, clearly you don't know how instagram works because on instagram you always have to be in the best shape just need those photos god damn it you're right you just one photo shoot actually that shit for a year and then everyone's like oh my god you're always in shape you're like five different outfits to that shoot that you know what when i first found out that's how the shit worked i was like man that makes a lot of sense but of sense. You just got to get one photo. You're completely, completely correct. And that's the thing, too, with Instagram and social media is a lot of folks don't know that.

That's how the fitness pros do it. So they think like, oh, Phil Heath is in shape year-round. Like, no, he's not. And he'll be the first to tell you he's not. And people don't understand that sometimes life is way more important than a fucking looking chisel. Sometimes you go on Christmas holiday and you eat fuck all for a whole week and don't understand that sometimes life is way more important than left fucking looking chisel. Sometimes you go on, you know, like Christmas holiday and you eat fuck all for a whole week and don't give a fuck. And it's fucking great.

It's beautiful. Like, and then you can always diet later. Where's that? I saw a fridge magnet once at a friend's house that I dieted for a month and lost 30 days. Sometimes that shit is real. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes.

Yeah. Sometimes you feel like you're missing out. So how do people kind of incorporate, you know, some cheat meals and stuff? What's your advice? I know you, you were just talking about the two different types of people and how you might have to be very careful when saying, Hey, uh, just, uh, go for it. How do you incorporate some cheat meals for people and how do you incorporate even like a diet break? Yeah. So for the folks that can be moderate, they're called moderators, moderators and abstainers for the folks that can eat a little

bit and not freak out. And as a matter of fact, eating a little bit helps them because it prevents the cravings from getting out of hand. Those folks can absolutely do like one to two cheat meals per week. Even on one of those pushing hypocaloric hard fat loss phases, you just program that into their diet. And you say, okay, like Friday and Saturday night, you have a cheat meal and you can agree with them. Or if you're doing your own diet, you can agree with yourself and say, look, I'm only going to have like two menu items or one menu item. Cause you know, cheat meal means a different shit to some different people. I've had some cheat meals that start and they just don't really end until I pass out um so if but but if folks are moderators then that's not a big deal

you'd be like go have cheeseburger and french fries like here's how you know your client's not a moderator anymore and they're an abstainer they're like so like when you say cheeseburger like how many patty you're like dude fail the test yeah you're fat you're you're done right exactly so for folks like that that like you failed the test. Yeah. You're fat. You're, you're done. Right. Exactly. So for folks like that, that like you give them a cheat meal and they end up drowning themselves in fucking coconut oil or whatever it was drink right from the can. It's a weird way to do a cheat meal. But, uh, for folks like that, that can't do the cheat meal, I'm actually a big fan of just abstaining from cheat meals altogether. So when I do my own phases of dieting to try to get into better shape, I straight up just don't cheat, but it's not forever. And that's one thing is it bringing some fucking adulthood to

the conversation. Like I'll tell you guys this, and I'm sure you've had this experience, but if a motherfucker's first question to you when you're programming a diet for them is when do I get my cheat meal? It's a bad fucking start. Bad start. Like it's like joining the army and like someone's like, when do I get a gun to kill people? You're like, okay. Maybe never. In your case, never. So it's about understanding that a diet is a time. It's a temporary time, several months. Once you've accomplished your goal, we can weave cheat meals back in slowly. And I'm a fan of as soon as the diet ends, and this is kind of a mind fuck, you don't start a cheat meal as soon as the diet ends.

of as soon as the diet ends, and this is kind of a mind fuck, you don't start a cheat meal as soon as the diet ends. You raise clean calories, so to speak, normal, healthy foods, you eat more of them for a week or two until you're not psychotic anymore. And then when you have your first cheat meal, you get a couple of benefits. One, it doesn't taste like pure sex anymore. Maybe just like shitty sex. I don't know where that analogy went. You know, like after you are done, he's like, shit, he's like, what the fuck does that mean? So, you know, like a lot of times people will cheat right after their diet. And the shit is like a religious experience. And you're like, I swear to God, the Cheesecake Factory was designed as nirvana. It's heaven on earth, this place, fuck temples and all that shit. Cheesecake Factory. Like that's not good because then you have that amazing

cheat meal and you come home and you start eating clean food again. You're like, this sucks. What do you want to do? You just want to cheat more, cheat more, cheat more. Then there goes the weekend and you've gained three pounds of tissue back and pure fat just because you couldn't control yourself. What I like to do is for people, bring them down in their diet. When they're at the bottom, reintroduce healthy food. A couple, a couple of weeks or a couple of days, even of eating like 150 grams of carbs from rice and broccoli and chicken, you're just not starving anymore. And then the cheat meal is a fun treat. That's fun. But you're not like, that's it. All I'm going to do forever is cheat. So when I reintroduce cheat meals for those folks,

it's usually at a delayed factor, unless like, I don't know, you want a bodybuilding show and then go cheat or whatever. So. Yeah. Kind of, um, you know, whenever I get more serious about my nutrition, I usually give myself a few days or maybe even a few weeks of having like an O pretty open playbook. Like I'm like, okay, you know, for me, you got to do a lot of keto style dieting. So I'll, I'll say, all right, I can have heavy cream in my coffee. I can have cheese. I can have yogurt. There's these things that are like, I don't know, I'd consider them like mini-cheats. They're not going to be something that I'm going to be doing towards the end of the diet.

Do you do something similar? Do you have kind of, you're like, okay, I just got to get used to these foods. I know that you've been dieting for a long time, so it might be different for you. How do you do it? I mean, I think you're onto something. Diet should be incremental and they shouldn't be like day one, you're starving to death. What is that? There's that one meme of like, I like yell at a picture of myself for dinner and like, I have ice cubes for lunch. Like that's, that's a thing. People think it's like zero to a hundred, right? In the first couple

of weeks of dieting, and this especially works for new clients, is like, I just want you to eat two meals a day that are not total dog shit. Do not wake up and go to Dunkin' Donuts. Wake up, make yourself some eggs, put some cheese on that shit, whatever. Put some turkey sausage, have a good meal, but just don't eat total crap. After a couple of weeks, because of the change, they're going to lose weight, they're going to lose fat, and then they're going to be more in tune and psychologically more ready for the next step. Now we're going to take out some of this bullshit, you're going to reduce your carbs, maybe take out the turkey sausage. And then a couple weeks later, when their body weight starts to stall out again,

but they're really in tune with dieting, they're really in the habit of it, you can make it even harder, less calories, more restrictive menu. And then at the end of that process, they're very lean. They've lost a lot of weight and they've met their goal. And now it's time to reintroduce that process back up. So you start sprinkling calories back in, sprinkling carbs back in, having them eat more food. So if they don't shoot right back up like crazy, but they slowly ease back in and everything is good to go. So that zero to a hundred mentality of dieting, I really think it bites a lot of people in the ass. And hilariously, what is it, like January 16th right now? Physically right now

is when half of America is looking at their bowl of egg whites and they're like, fuck New Year's resolution. Same old me. Everyone likes me anyway. Why the hell do I need to lose weight? What are some of your thoughts on intermittent fasting? I think intermittent fasting is when you don't eat for a while and then you eat again. I'm just kidding. Pretty much. That's the extent of my thoughts. Like, brilliant.

I knew I had to get a PhD. So intermittent fasting has another benefit for it, similar to keto that some individuals seem to display a disproportionate amount of appetite control on it so some people if they don't eat for multiple hours will start to eat other people just because but some people have this thing where if they don't eat for some time they kind of forget about food to some extent i don't know if you guys ever been through that yourself psychologically where you're like if I wake up in the morning and I don't eat, I'm just not very hungry in the morning. And then by 2 PM, 3 PM, I want to eat. I eat a meal and then I eat another one. And then like I eat my last meal at 7 or 8 PM. And then like, I don't

have to eat, you know, before I go to bed at 11 or 12, I just go to sleep. And all of a sudden, because my feeding window is so narrow, there's a lot of times I don't eat and there's only so many calories you can eat in a feeding window. And if you don't lose your mind and try to eat like boxes of cereal at the same time, because if you have a narrow eating window and you eat relatively well, it's just a really great way to cut your calories. It has downsides. So for some people, that shit just doesn't work at all. It makes them ravenously hungry. Not a good idea. Other folks need nutrition and fuel at specific times. So if you're going, you know, let's say you have a hard rolling session in jujitsu at 12 PM, maybe you don't want to come in fasted because you just run out of fucking gas. And I've done that before. I've had to be more fasted.

And like, you're grabbing somebody's gi 30 seconds in and you're like, I might as well just give up. I have no idea what the hell's going on. I can't even see. So, and athletes to train multiple times a day, bodybuilders need a consistent amount of fuel. They definitely folks that the intermittent fasting is not great for. If you want to maximize how much muscle you're building, you probably benefit from at least four high protein feedings spread roughly evenly throughout the day, which is why intermittent fasting is great for a lot of folks and just people trying to get in shape, especially for people that are busy and don't want to eat all the fucking time. Because to a lot of people, dieting means like, all right, I got to get fucking six Tupperware meals and eat at fucking business meetings, eat when I'm having

sex with my secretary. It's about just dropping food on her. It's just kind of a mess. She complains about it. So at some point, all this dieting is like such hard work. Whereas if you do more intermittent fasting approach, you just don't eat for a long time, you don't have to meal prep as much and it works out super well. Also, some people really like that the meals are bigger, and they're more satisfying. Like especially if you're on low calories, a meal on a six meal, seven meal diet is like half a turkey burger and a grain of rice. Like what the fuck? Like it's just like needless temptation at this point. Whereas if on the other hand, you're doing intermittent fasting, every meal that you do eat, you might only eat two meals a day, but they're like sweet potatoes, big meals,

you actually feel satisfied. And then it's okay for you to be hungry at other times because you can look forward to feeling satisfied. But if you're never satisfied, that shit wears on you for days on end. So if you're more of a serious bodybuilder, really serious athlete, I would recommend not doing intermittent fasting. But if you're somebody who's busy schedule, okay, not eating for long periods of time, and it really seems to work for you, I think rock on as long as you get enough protein primarily, which means you have to eat really high protein meals when you do. Dr. Mike, I have a question. I hope this question doesn't take too long to answer. It's going to sound a little bit selfish, but I'm curious about

this. So I started, um, just utilizing fasting like a year and a half ago, just because people were mentioning like the mental benefits, et cetera. And I wanted to see how it would feel. Um, and one thing I've noticed, cause I've, I've been doing like jujitsu for a while now. And one thing I've noticed is that like when I,, when I do jujitsu sessions fasted, even if it's a double day, I make sure to stay hydrated, electrolytes, et cetera. I can get through those sessions perfectly okay. As long as I have a bolus of food the night before, like I eat a lot when I eat, but I'm wondering in those situations, I would have thought in the past that I need to eat a good meal a few hours before if I'm going to perform well. I'm performing very well. Obviously, I wouldn't compete fasted,

but what... Why not? Well, if I have some carbohydrates a few hours before, I do feel that I have a little bit more of a kick, but it's not that much more than when I'm training. I can still train extremely intensely, get multiple rolls in without gassing. So I'm curious, is this just an adaptation to that? Or is this like, I, I know like, it seems like a really, it's a convoluted question and there's probably much more information that I need to give you for you to give me like a good answer on this. But do you like, do you have an idea of like what might be going on there? Yeah. So like, uh, I think you may be just genetically, you were just better off, uh, handling fasting eating than other people. Some people just don't deal well with it and there's

no adaptation to be had or very little there's adaptation to every single kind of diet for sure. So if you learn how to train, you practice training fasted, it's going to be a lot better the 50th time you do it than the first time you do it. So there's absolutely some adaptation. Also, most of the energy you get in jujitsu that you use to do jujitsu, especially when you go hard, comes from stored muscle glycogen,

which gets loaded over the days and night before you roll, not 15 minutes before you roll. That's mostly to power the nervous system, and that's just a small boost. I will say, though, that if you do acknowledge that you get a benefit from carbohydrates before rolling that's small, the question is, is how big of a difference would that make if you had a little bit of carbohydrate before all of your training sessions over the months and years of jujitsu, just a little bit better of a role every single time, or most times can add up after a year of, instead of losing to some guy two to zero by one sweep, you tie or you beat him three to two or something like that. Right. So there's a difference between things that work well and things that work optimally. And if you legitimately told me

that like, look, I eat carbs before competition and I feel worse, I'd be like, don't do that. But if you feel a little better, maybe it's not something like it's, it's not like an on-off switch. It's a graded switch. Maybe an hour before you roll, at least one of the days have an apple or some kind of fruit. You're going to get a better training session. Look, is that like a ton of calories wasted that you can't eat later at night? It's going to fuck up your hunger. No, you'll be fine. Right. But you know, should you be eating pounds of fucking frozen yogurt before you roll and throw up on your training partners, which I have done before. Um, no, maybe not. Yeah. I used to, so I was, uh, uh, last year I was massing up to 260, 265. And when I passed

260, um, I was, I had multiple times where I was on top putting top pressure on someone and I tapped so that I could turn away and throw up a nod on them because like, it's just, yeah. And it was all like protein shake vomit, which looks, you know, of all the different kinds of vomit, protein shake vomit's not that bad you know like there's worse vomit there's like i just ate a burrito vomit i mean you know you know that's that's real that's disgusting yeah you know also with insima like he's able to really like put away a good amount of food so i would say anybody listening to this that wants to try intermittent fasting and they're thinking of like, hey, I want to try like one meal a day,

you know, I would advise against it unless you have the ability to eat a good amount of food because not getting your nutrients, you know, I think, you know, when you go into a gym and you see there's still a small percentage of people in a gym that are in great shape. And I think half the people are eating too much, and I think half the people are probably eating too little. You know, people are making bad choices kind of on both sides of the spectrum, I think, sometimes. Yeah.

It also just depends on what your goals are. Like if you want to do intermittent fasting and you can't eat a lot of food at once, but you want to lose weight, fuck, that's your golden arrow. Like that's it. But if you, one of the most interesting questions I ever got was like, what do you think of fasting to gain weight? I'm like, not eating to gain weight. Repeat yourself in your head and then ask that shit again. It's like, what? So sometimes people will say, I'm trying to gain weight and I'm doing it in a fasting approach. Let's say you eat one meal a day. I mean, somebody in Zima's size is eating 250 grams of protein per day. You're going to get

that shit in one meal? Hey, sweet. Some people can do it. You probably can't though. So fasting doesn't mean you have a pizza. That's just shitty nutrition for you to have all day. Intermittent fasting done right is a lot of healthy food in one to three meals per day in a short window. If you can do that and it fits your lifestyle and you have great energy from it, listen, rock on. But a lot of people are just not cut out for that sort of thing, which is why intermittent fasting is much better for losing weight than it is for gaining weight or sometimes

even maintaining weight. You mentioned you were bulking up to 260. When you're doing your bulks, what does it look like and how can other people gain weight? Because we get a lot of questions about that as well. Yeah, it depends on your genetics. I would say consistency is the absolute underlying factor in all attempts to gain weight if you have trouble gaining weight. If you don't have trouble gaining weight, then whatever, just tune the fucking next 30 seconds out because who gives a shit? Just eat how you normally eat and you'll gain weight. People who struggle to gain weight, a lot of times what they'll do is they'll be like, man, I'm fucking pounding the food. I'm putting it away.

And they'll give you an example meal that they had, like a fucking chicken and rice. They're looking at you like you're supposed to approve that. Like, oh, yeah, you're the shit. You're going to be Mr. Olympia like fucking tomorrow or some shit. So the problem is you'll be like, okay, what'd you have after that? They're like, no, I wasn't hungry, so I skipped my next meal. Like, well, that's not going to generate a hypercaloric state. It's just not, right?

So consistency and establishing a meal plan that you can finish the food. Number one, food that doesn't taste like shit, like try to flavor your food, have a little bit of junk so that you can put down the calories. A lot of guys seem to think they have to gain on clean foods only. They're like, it's time to gain unflavored oatmeal, broccoli, and chicken. You're like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Whatever happened to like jasmine rice and ground beef with some flavoring in it? Well, my favorite bodybuilder doesn't do that. Well, you're not going to become your favorite bodybuilder anyways. You might as well like, what is it like Stan Efferding talks about choosing the foods that you can eat and that you like and that don't sit poorly with you and that you actually taste

good, right? So pick those foods, stick to more healthy stuff, but have a little bit of junk and be consistent. And then when you don't gain weight anymore, raise the intake a little bit specifically of carbs and fats. You don't want to eat too much protein when you're gaining just meet your minimum gram per pound because protein is really hard to eat. Like it's physically hard to chew and it makes you more full disproportionately the fats and carbs. You can always squirt a little bit more olive oil into your rice and beef, but if you put more beef in, you might just be like, you guys ever stop halfway through a meal and you're like, this just is not happening. There's only so much that I can fill up. So that consistency coupled with some well-flavored food and a couple of cheat meals thrown in here

and there is really the key to gaining mass. And another one is weighing yourself a couple of times a week to make sure that you're actually gaining weight. And man, I had one of the most trippy questions ever. I had a question on Instagram once where a kid was like, Hey man, I'm having trouble gaining weight. It's not working. And I'm eating 5,000 calories a day. And I weigh like 180. And I was like, God damn. Okay. So I asked him a couple of questions and then I was like, okay, okay. That's backtrack. I was like, so how much weight have you gained in the last month? Or I said, I was like, so you haven't gained any weight in the last month. He's like, no, I've gained like four pounds. And I'm like, that's a pound a week. And he's like, yeah,

like that's fucking phenomenal. You're getting, that's as fast as you ever want to gain weight. He's like, I thought I was supposed to be gaining faster. And I'm like, fuck. So a lot of times gaining weight is just about the long haul. Like people say, man, I can't gain weight. You're like, how fast have you been gaining weight? They're like, I don't know, like half a pound a week. We just do that for 20 weeks. You'll gain a fucking shitload of weight. You'll be much more jacked. So consistency, a baseline of eating, some tasty food, and patience, and just do it, do it, do it. And at the end of the day, you'll have to eat when you're not hungry, and you have to treat eating a little bit more like a job. Like yesterday I had a meal that I had to split

into a meal and a half because I finished part of it. And then I looked down and I was like, Nope, I put it in the fridge, came back half an hour later and finished the rest. Sometimes you just got to do what it takes. On that subject of bulking real quick. I'm curious because there's a lot of guys. I know some in this gym who who are just continuing to try to aim for a certain weight and they're heading there. But are there ever times when you think an individual should hold a certain weight or body composition for a while, hold that, then later on continue focusing on gaining? Or do you look at it in bulking, hold, cut, mini cut, then bulk again? How do you approach that? I know it's situation by situation, but. Sure, sure, sure. So a lot of times what you would call a mini cut can be more or less extreme.

So some guys will get up to 250 pounds for the first time ever. And I think there's probably some good physiological reasoning to indicate that if you get to a highest weight you've ever been and you fall right back down, that you don't hold on to as much of that muscle as you would if you stood there for a bit. So I think it's a good idea to spend some weeks, even some months at 250 eating well, staying there, training hard, you gain a shitload of muscle doing that and solidify the gains you have. Once you've done that, you may be in a position where you're like a little too fat to keep massing, which is first of all, you're going to look like shit. first of all, you're going to look like shit. Second of all, you're going to feel like shit.

Have you guys ever been fat enough to where your training has been hurt? Like I have, it says sets of, yeah. Oh yeah. It seems like, no. Like negatively impacted my sleep, you know? And then that, Oh yeah, sure. Your life a hundred percent. So at some point you should, you get leaner just to make room for more gains. And then a mini cut is a good idea. And it doesn't have to be aggressive. You can just back. So for a lot of people that struggle to gain weight, a mini cut is just backing off of the cycle crazy eating for like four weeks. And all of a sudden, you've lost like including body water 10 pounds and like six pounds of that is just fat tissue. And then, then you go back in and you do another bump into eating. Cool thing about mini cutting is it can make you a little bit hungrier or just not hate food as much. So then you can use that rebound into another wave of mass gains. And last thing I'll say is a lot of people who need a lot of mini cuts and need a lot of basically maintenance periods at a certain weight, it starts to be not that they need those things

is that they're rushing the process. One thing I've always been baffled by, and this is something that I think you guys can speak to a lot, is completely random pie-in-the-sky goals people make for themselves that have no basis in reality. And I don't know why they picked them. I remember I was training at a gym once, and this guy benched 315 for the first time ever and as soon as he racked it he's like fucking got it baby 405 is next and you're like next in three years or maybe like what are you fucking talking is that how it works like does your muscle strength have a physiological understanding of like aha another 90 pounds is exactly what we're capable of like that's nonsense people do the same thing with weight like they'll get up to 200 pounds for the first time. They're like, next goal, 220. Bro, what about 205? Let's start at 205.

Some people have these outrageous ideas about how big they're going to get. They have no idea what it takes and they try to rush it. The thing is that you can gain as much weight as you want eating pure junk. My 600-pound life, my wife and I watch that show all the time. It's super fucking interesting. It's a strange show. Those people like 600 pounds and they have no problem gaining weight because they eat pure junk food. You can always gain the weight. The question is, is it going to be a high percentage of muscle tissue?

And the answer is almost certainly not. So when you pare back and say, okay, how do I gain weight? But it'd be a high percentage of muscle tissue. The answer is slow and steady. And there's a certain amount of rushing you can't do. And even if you choose to go to the dark side, so to speak, you know, like pills, potions, and powders, if you choose to go that route, there's a certain amount of that stuff you take that won't rush any more muscle growth and it'll just get you hospitalized. And people do that shit all the time too. They're

like, well, I'm not Natty, so I can gain weight as fast as I want. Like, good luck. We'll see you on the fucking Deadpool on bodybuilding.com. You know what I i mean so patience is a huge thing you won't get big overnight but who gives a shit you're supposed to love the journey anyway you know some people like they're like i want to be big but like what about getting big isn't that fun like no every moment that i'm not 250 i fucking hate like man i feel like you need a psychologist i think something that's probably the miss uh the most um undersold thing in all of this when we talk about nutrition. You know, a lot of the people that we're talking to anyway, they just want to get jacked. They

want to look good. They want to be in good shape. And I think probably the most undersold thing is your training. You know, people, they might be on a certain diet, but the diet, as you were mentioning, you could be too fat and be kind of out of shape and then negatively impact when you're bulking, negatively impact your workouts. I think some people can like over diet, they can diet too much and not have a good strength training session. I mean, being strong is a huge component of all this to gaining size, a huge component to us getting ripped. What, you ripped. I know that you've done a great job helping people get stronger as well, and then you have the unfair advantage of being Russian, which automatically makes you strong. What are you seeing with some of that with people? Because I know like crossfitters and there's a lot of people that you've helped that might kind of get into this kind of like over-dieting thing and then not performing well.

kind of get into this kind of uh like over dieting thing and then not performing well it's so you're talking about people are trying to get gain weight or lose fat or both just uh just people just trying to you know be jacked yeah usually they want to lose lose some fat and be leaner sure a lot of so a lot of what we see with crossfitters that they'll do their regular like workout of the day and they'll do the rp diet and you know they'll have the app and everything. And they'll be like, man, I look better. I lost weight, but I'm not like jack jacked. And we're like, your training makes you really good at CrossFit, but it doesn't make you the most jacked thing you've ever wanted to be. And when you look at the way the pros train in CrossFit, all the people that are ranked and go to worlds, um, they do not just do the workout of the day. They do a whole lot more than that.

A lot of us just high volume training, just lifting reps and reps and sets and sets. That's how you get to looking like that. One thing that a friend of mine who actually specializes in helping people with their special sports supplements, Brad or a job as he says that, you know, your training, your diet has to be justified by how much training you're doing, and same thing with your supplements. So if you're not willing to train with enough volume, hard enough, frequently enough, and consistently enough, there's not a single diet that's going to make you jacked, and there's not a single pill or potion or powder you're going to be able to take that's going to make you jacked. The fundamental baseline is, do you train? And do you train hard? And do you train enough? Then you layer the diet on top of that. And then if

you want extra special help, you layer whatever kind of bullshit you want on top of that. But fundamentally, at the end of the day, it's do you train hard? And man, I tell you what, this is tripping. You might get this at jujitsu as well. Guys will be like, I want to gain weight. What should I eat? And you have this thing where you're like, do you train with weights? And they're like, no, I just do jujitsu. And you're like, okay, you should try training with weights. And they're like, what's that going to do? I'm like, oh my God. Well, you see, it tells your muscles to start growing and then the diet feeds them and then they get bigger and they're like, oh, okay. So it's one of these things where a hundred percent, you've got to train hard and consistently, and then the diet

feeds into that. Because if you have a good diet, but you're not trained to get jacked, you're not going to be jacked. And along with that, within, I guess, powerlifting, and this is something I've wondered. I know like when you're training for like a meet, right? You don't want to add in a bunch of extra bodybuilding volume, but a lot of powerlifters ask me, oh, how can I get big and strong at the same time? And it just seems like what you just said there, it's kind of simple, like you can do your strength training and then you can add on extra volume at the end of your workout, get that volume in to get bigger over time. Would you, like if you were talking generally, would you simplify it like that? And there doesn't necessarily need to be, I guess, a divide

in that form of training. Correct? Yep. There doesn't need to be until it's time for you to compete. The fatigue that you're carrying. So you actually said this earlier, the fatigue that you're carrying with all of your high volume training is going to fuck you up for the meat. So you can train for both strength and size at the same time and get a good measure of both. When a couple of months out of your meat comes up, you should be doing less volume for your accessory work and do stick to more heavy work and give your body that bandwidth to recover. You're not going to be getting more jacked two, three months out from your meat. You're just going to be getting stronger. Remember, nobody gives a flying fuck how jacked you are at the meat they care about well nobody

cares anyway about what you total but you care about what you total and like you know imagine like missing your last deadlift and be like yeah but did you guys see my fucking traps so you know for two three months before you meet you put the hammer down and you do mostly low volume work enough make you know size maintenance to keep your size, but nothing extra. After you meet, you start threading in the more bodybuilding type work back and maybe back off on the super heavy lifting. And then you go through these, basically these waves and cycles where sometimes you're doing slightly lighter, slightly lighter, like sets of eight and six, not sets of 50 and more volume. And then sometimes you're doing slightly heavier sets of three or

four peaking training and a little bit less volume. And then that way you get the best of both worlds. But it happens over time. But for most people in most times who are just trying to get more jacked and strong and don't have a meat in mind, you can absolutely do a mix of heavier, lighter work and get a good measure of both. What do you think is the biggest problem facing people that want to get stronger, that are really struggling, they're really stuck? What are they maybe not understanding or what are they maybe doing wrong, you think? Do you want like a useful and motivating answer or the actual truth? Either one's good. We'll start with the truth, genetics. So the number one reason most people can't get as strong as they like is genetics

and that's been very well studied very well confirmed because some people go in and just throw around weight and they just get stronger regardless of program i mean you've known those people your whole career like you could probably name them like and it's funny because you so we have some insight that we've been around the game long enough to like have talked to those people with good genetics and then people on instagram they're like so can you tell me about your program like dude this guy barely ties his own fucking shoes this is not a person you want to ask things and facts about the world like if you could get his genetics and just have them that would be all he knows you know so genetics is definitely a big part of it the biggest part but that's not a very good answer because okay well you're not going to

fucking change your genetics although i don't know what the chinese olympic team's doing nowadays who the fuck knows right we gotta get out some of that shit uh so until we can change our genetics which will happen eventually we gotta uh figure out what's going on and at the end of the day two big things come to mind for me for guys who can't get jacked and strong. Thing number one is, are you doing the right amount of training volume per week for your goals? If you're doing a program that is like four working sets per week for your legs, but your legs don't grow until you do six working sets or more, it doesn't fucking matter how hard you go on those sets. Yeah, but I go to absolute failure. Like who gives a shit? Like you're basically warming up. People have different

volume tolerances and needs. Some people need two sets to grow per week. Some people need six, some people need 12, some people need more. And it's been shown pretty clearly that the people who are more often hard gainers need more, not less. Part of that is because they have slower twitch muscle fibers, which just have higher thresholds for growth and just don't grow as responsibly. And they recover super fast. They can be trained more frequently. You know, guys that are like, man, I squat once a week and my legs blow up. Like, don't listen to anything that guy says about legs because it's just all genetics at that point. Right. So guys need to train enough, but also not too much, right? If you're not recovering

from a program and the program is just kicking your ass and you need to do it every two and a half weeks, you're trying to do too much. You have to stick in that band between your minimum effective volume and your maximum recoverable. All the shit in here is great. You're going to grow. If you train above your maximum recoverable, you're just going to have to deal with it all the time. You'll be broken in half. You train below your minimum effective, you just give me one of these guys that goes to the gym and nothing's happening. So that's point one.

Point two is nutrition. You have to be eating enough to, first of all, support good, high-quality training, but also sometimes gain weight. And this is something that I can't believe we have to fucking discuss because it should be obvious, but I've done a lot of shit in my career that was backwards of obvious. Guys will say, man, how do I get more jacked? And I'm like, how much do you weigh? And they're like, 145.

And I'm like, well, you should gain weight until you get to 160. They're like, well, I kind of want to be jacked, but I don't want to gain weight. Like, show me someone who's 145 and jacked. What the fuck is wrong with you? You know what? Don't show me something. I don't want to see that shit. Like, unless you're four foot six, this just doesn't happen. So a lot of times people are like, man, I want to get bigger. And I'm like, are you gaining weight? And they're like, no. What do you mean? Why? Like, what about in the gym? Like like you don't get bigger in the gym you dumb asshole you get bigger in the kitchen I guess or you know whatever so like you get bigger eating and gaining weight in the gym is what lights that fire it's what provides a stimulus for growth but you've got to justify it with physically gaining

weight and some people like yeah man I try to gain weight but I can't eat enough and then they give you this like blank stare like they're expecting you to say some wise Yoda shit. And I'm like, I don't know what to tell you, man. You got to eat more food. You got to do that consistently because no one's ever been jacked at 145 pounds. I'm probably offending someone who weighs 145. Listen, you're plenty jacked. Sorry. I take that back, Mr. 145. You know what I mean? Like you just got to get bigger. So a big part of that is training enough. And the next big part is eating enough. And like we talked about earlier in the podcast, that shit can be uncomfortable at times. And that's just some shit you're going to have to deal with. What you got, Andrew?

Actually. So at the end of last year, I cut for the first time in my life. I've never been big. I've never been jacked. So someone skinny like me cutting didn't make a ton of sense, but I had a goal in mind and I scheduled a photo shoot. So Nsema was doing my nutrition. Mark was doing my training programs and stuff. The training team. Yeah, yeah. It was fantastic.

So I obtained the physique that I didn't think I'd be able to actually obtain and I was ecstatic about it. And what ended up happening is I told him, see, I'm like, hey, dude, like I like carbs a little bit more than fat. When I eat a lot of fat, I feel a little weird. I feel heavy. It just doesn't really fit me right now. Eventually, maybe someday that'll change. But what ended up happening is I started tracking everything and I started being like, hmm, like that actually fits in my day. Like, okay, that actually works. And then eventually Mark was like, hey, dummy, like you need to eat real food. You can't be cheating that way.

Like don't be a dumbass. Like we have a really big goal in mind. Like let's not cheat our way through it. So now that the goal was obtained, I'm still maintaining, but I kind of went back in and I'm kind of looking at macros, playing with things and looking at like YouTube, uh, you know, bodybuilding diet hacks and whatnot. Um, do you find that like there, there's an issue with doing some of that stuff? Like, you know, I'll look at like a, a bodybuilder pizza where it's like a flat bread, uh, like a pound of loaf or no fat, uh, cheese and then like turkey pepperoni. And I'm like, like dude that looks fantastic but i'm like there's something's got to be wrong with this so i wanted your take on you know kind of

like the uh the bodybuilding hack like recipes and stuff like mini cheats yeah like a mini cheat like obviously like i understand like i'm getting all my protein from like steak and meat and stuff but i'm not gonna lie like i mean that pizza looked good i mean shit i really wanted to make it like the day that i saw it but i'm like you know i i don't know i feel like this is wrong no cheese yeah so it's like uh like a meat your macros kind of cheat yeah yeah so and like i wouldn't say like i'm quite like a uh if it fits your macros type of guy but now that i'm learning more about nutrition and learning what like, okay, that's, that's X amount of calories and X amount of grams of fat, like that definitely fits. And I can still get in, you know, my monster masher, my chicken and rice.

But again, like, I just feel like, like, oh, this is dirty. This is wrong. I have probably shouldn't be doing this, you know? Well well so i'll tell you this there's no good reason to feel like the shit is dirty and wrong um you know it's probably a good idea just not to moralize about food uh moralizing is for like other people you see at the bus stop like look at you know look at that guy that that fucking asshole like i bet he's a scumbag like you know it's not it's not right so we all judge people. I judge random people too. I judge myself. It's great. So we have way more opportunities to moralize in life.

Food shouldn't be part of the moral equation. Food accomplishes a purpose and it can make you feel nice when you eat it, but there's no good and bad, all that shit you can just fucking just get rid of. What is a good idea is to form a fundamental baseline of eating mostly unprocessed, healthy foods like Mark is telling me to eat. That's a good idea is to form a fundamental baseline of eating mostly unprocessed healthy foods like marcus telling me that's a good idea but every now and again a little fucking bullshit bodybuilding pizza is going to be cool most i said cool they're not great because it's just not going to taste great i'm going to burst your fucking bubble right it's going to be like oh this is nominally pizza i can recognize that it's pizza but it's not like pizza it's like a shitty version of the matrix we're like we're not in reality so it's gonna be like don't expect it to change your life and you're like oh my god it's like i'm eating pizza all the time like

what is that uh pizza bagels commercial amazing right those shits uh so you can eat that stuff know what you're getting out of it which is like like a cool, fun treat. It's not the end of the world. It's never going to replace pizza. Point one. Point two is you can do it on occasion, like once or twice a week. It's totally fine. You don't have to eat just like turkey and whatever steak. But as long as you know that, as long as most of your food is good, unprocessed stuff, because if you make one on body, the pizza is like, that's mostly processed food, right? As long as you're not just doing that all the time and trying to wiggle everything into your macros then i think you're totally good to go so it's all about just not going crazy with it having a little bit of it

moderation fitting it in and you're totally fine at the end of the day if the fundamental baseline of your intake is good high quality unprocessed food every now and again a fucking weird body building pizza uh is totally fine i didn't mean to say weird. I'm sorry. I take that back. I mean, yeah, it is kind of weird because I'm like, I don't know exactly what the hell is in fat-free cheese. Is it still dairy? Who knows? Nobody knows, man. Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Just real quick, the fat-free cheese thing. I eat fat-free cheese every now and again. It just fits into my diet. And the flavor that we buy isn't called sharp cheddar it's just called sharp because they can't legally put

i'm just like sharp that's interesting yeah i'm gonna have to go shop for some sharp then yeah so we're in january obviously like once the summertime comes i'm'm going to want to try to get back to, you know, the, uh, the leanness that I was a couple of weeks ago. Um, I definitely don't want to look like just super skinny. Um, for someone like me, like right now I'm only one, like 175. Um, when I was my leanest and I looked the best, it was like 171. Um, how much weight should i be trying to put on right now to where it's not so far out that like you know come like i don't know june i'm just like oh shit maybe my next summer i'll be able to catch up again right when is your when are you trying to start your pre-summer get sexy for summer diet? You tell me, I have no idea.

Fucking right now, bro. You're going to be the sexiest person alive yesterday. Right. So I think that being, you know, what you told me that you looked your best at 170 or whatever, I think like probably eight weeks is more than enough to get you back into super awesome shape and probably generous, but it's better to start early. So I would say like, if you want to be, you know, by June 1st, you want to be where you want to be within, you know, April 1st is probably when you should start settling into your next fat,

fat loss diet, right? Which means from now until April 1st, some good weight gain is in order. And I would say half a pound to a pound per week between now and then is totally good. Probably closer to that half a pound because you want to be a now and then is totally good probably closer to that half a pound because you want to be a bit more jacked but you definitely don't want to be a fat piece of shit make excuses for yeah people like hey come out on the boat you're like i'm not leaving the house because i'm doing shit so i think you can stand to gain five to ten pounds between now and april 1st and you'll be in fucking great standing and if you push it closer to 10 then that diet might have to be a little harder or take the standing. And if you push it closer to 10, then that diet might have to be a little harder

or take the whole eight weeks. If you leave it closer to five, you might start that diet. And after six weeks, you might be shredded to the fucking bone. And then the next two weeks, late May, you could just start your summer partying early.

Yeah. Cause I was just looking at the RP strength, Instagram account and just getting pretty fired up, dude. Some of those transformations are insane. It's yeah. I supposedly designed a some of those transformations are insane it's yeah i supposedly designed a bunch of those products to help those people and i look at that i'm like holy shit how come i don't look like that what the fuck i'm trying to redesign the products for

myself yeah it's pretty cool yeah that's sick dude thanks for the uh for the advice my pleasure best of luck man i'm gonna follow you now and judge the fuck out of you all right so yeah it sounds good you're gonna be fat i'm gonna be like what the fuck happened to you. All right. Yeah, sounds good. You're going to be fat. I'm going to be like, what the fuck happened to my thighs, bro? You don't take me seriously? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's that's extremely great motivation right there. I appreciate that.

Hell yeah. Where can people find out more information about you? Where can they find out about the RP Strength app and so on? Yeah, totally. So if you want an AI algorithm that writes your diet

and reminds you when to eat and all that stuff, we have an iPhone and Android app. You just go to the Google Play Store or the – where do people find iPhone stuff? Apple Store? The iTunes Store. Yes. Yes. I know. iTunes Store, right?

App Store. The App Store. The App Store, yeah. I promise I work with technology. So go there. It's called RP Diet diet and you download it. It's two weeks for free. And then it's like 15 bucks a month,

but 15 bucks a month for a private, essentially like private diet coach that auto regulates all of your shit is pretty sweet. And then if you are curious about more about the products and so forth, best place to find us is at RP strength at Instagram. We're big on the gram. You know, I don't run the account, so I can say things like that. And if you want more of my bullshit, then I'm RPDRMIKE, RP Dr. Mike on Instagram.

I have over 100,000 Instagram followers, which means I'm a real important person and people love me. Just kidding. I cry a lot. Mostly I don't have any real friends. So come talk to me on Instagram. It'll make me feel better. Awesome, man. Thank you so much for your time today.

Really appreciate it. Thank you for having me, guys. Have a good rest of your day. Thank you. All right. Take care. Man, he's funny as shit. Oh my God.

Yeah, he's hilarious. Crack me up, man. Oh God. Yeah, he was great, man. He had a lot of great information. Yeah. Now, if you're a lifter, you should pay attention to a lot of information that he has on his site, on the Instagram, et cetera, because there's a lot of good stuff for performance athletes. He does jujitsu.

He's a lifter. He does bodybuilding. So lots of good stuff there. Yeah, it's great to have somebody that has uh you know some practical information and also simple like he's able to simplify stuff you know we tend to complicate stuff uh and um i don't know just make things too weird and i think his advice to you is great you know andrew eat up yeah i get some food going bro like that excited yeah just don't go on the journal book like someone we know

well don't don't don't name them I'm not going to name them but I'm excited to be like hey dude like take a couple days off lose a little bit and then you'll see what happens but yeah I think Insima and I will look at my macros and probably figure something out

something different for right now i got uh my boy joel green who's going to come back on the show sometime next week we're working on scheduling that's going to be in the norcal area so yeah that'd be great to have him back on the show and i think it's really important that we talk a lot more and a lot more in depth about diet breaks uh joel is somebody who helped me uh spin out of my bodybuilding show without uh you know without gaining 90 pounds and without to getting too big and bloated and stuff but he had a lot of really weird stuff and uh but he's super smart guy he was like oh you need to have like three grilled cheese sandwiches a day and he's like

and if you're you know if you're hungry he's like throwing a few more of them you know but he had these strategies and he has got like specific reasons on why he's gonna say this is gonna spin up these hormones in your body and this is gonna make this happen um and it it worked but you know i'd also say like i don't know like all kinds of shit would probably work great after a bodybuilding show because your body's just ready to like absorb ice cream yeah your body's really i'm excited dude joel's so smart he's so smart he's uh you know i was even just saying earlier i was like i don't even think anyone can really like refute what he's talking about because i don't think anybody knows what the fuck he's talking about talking about like

uh you know if you drink uh to eat like a cucumber something like that eat a raw cucumber and then it helps you you with your hangover. I don't know what's going on. But it'll be fun to talk to him, and hopefully he'll give some kind of take-home tips for people to try at home rather than eating a raw cucumber, which might be kind of odd.

Didn't he mention something about pizza and ice cream to you guys last time? Yeah, he had a defense mechanism against pizza and ice cream uh that was um he put on like a like a spanish uh uh pepper or something we were on i forget what it's called habanero no i i don't remember but you can look up the video on our i think it's part of our power project it was like a 10 minute thing that he did he talked about alcohol and he talked about pizza and ice cream yeah he had um yeah i think oh cactus it was some sort of cactus something some sort of uh cactus vegetable that you can eat wow yeah yeah i don't know yeah

go ahead and eat some cactus yeah that works no but whatever it was it i remember that it actually does taste good it's just like you just don't see it everywhere all the time. But yeah, having Dr. Mike on was awesome. And we'll have to have him on the show again. Talk a little bit. It'd be great to talk a lot more about strength. Oh, yeah, definitely. Because this whole episode is pretty much on diet.

Strength and size would be cool. But honestly, like back to the simplicity thing, it really is that simple. You know, when like when lifters wonder, oh, I can't get bigger doing this or will i lose strength if i start like no just add it all together like your workout's going to take a little bit longer but just get it in you'll get bigger it's not it's not too difficult and it's the same kind of thing that he echoed there so and if you want to get stronger the fastest way is just to gain weight yeah you know just figure out a way to try to gain some weight you know you can't imagine like um like the amount of like younger lifters i've heard say like 17 18 i don't want to gain

weight because like right now in my weight class like i can get this record in the juniors and i'm just like bruh like this is the prime time you can gain weight so easily. Why are you trying to get a junior record? That won't matter in two years when you're finally 20 or whatever. They're training great and they weigh 175 pounds. You're like, yeah, I'm going to dip down to 165 pounds. You're like, no, come on. Why? Just stay where you're at and pull that 500 pounds or whatever the weight is.

I don't get it yeah i don't get it at all it's so funny because i know there's tons of people that are in that situation right here too about like i do want to look jacked but i don't want to get like fat i don't want to you know whatever but it was funny because he was just like show me somebody who's 145 and jacked but i think his opinion of someone jacked is different than like you try a favor right because your eye is obviously always going to look jacked but yeah he's a little bit shorter so i think that's yeah four foot six that's what he said i think i think dr mike is like five seven five eight 240 240 250 now he's fucking he's a ball of muscle yeah you gotta make a decision

you know you have to make a you know i don't think you always have to have a goal i actually think it's it's great to have a little bit of time where you don't have a goal uh but then you have to re-establish one quickly because otherwise you're kind of floating out there in no man's land and so it's a good idea you re-establish a new goal and then you just say you know what this is what i'm doing and recognize that that's just going to take you to another spot so you know you're you're 171 and lean and so next time maybe you're 178 and lean maybe you're 180 like we don't really know and uh i don't really know if you ever really like with the knowledge that we have now and with what you know now and the and the training that you're doing now i don't know if you ever really

tried like a real uh hardcore bulk i don't know if you ever really tried like a real, uh, hardcore bulk. I don't know if you ever really, I mean, just, just as much as like, you know, it's yeah. The,

the knowledge wasn't there. So there's no way that I could have, you know, I always thought I was doing the best I could, but now it's like, no, it makes, you know,

again, like knowledge is power. So like, I actually have some of the knowledge and then, you know, resources of course. It's a different ballgame now. It's exciting.

At the same time, you don't want to just blow up to be 205 pounds or something. That won't really do you any good. But if we take our time and have you gain some weight slowly over a period of time, when you cut back down, you'll look amazing. You'll look even better. I like the half pound to a pound per week. That's what it should be for most people. That makes so much, I mean, it just seems like it's so much more attainable. Yeah, very reasonable with your, it makes you very reasonable with your food too.

If you're weighing yourself here and there and you're like, I've gained like four pounds, like whoops. That just kind of tells you, all right, well, I need to knock it off. I need to not have the bodybuilding pizza. Yeah, and slowing it down will make sure that all of those new pounds gain, most of it is not going to be body fat. Because if you're gaining, you could really gain three pounds a week if you wanted to. That's not three pounds of muscle a week.

Right. Back in the day, down the street from Gold's Gym, Venice, there used to be a Metrex Cafe. And the Metrex Cafe had Metrex pizza and it was actually pretty good. It was real pizza. It was pizza. Yeah. Just fortified with protein.

Oh yeah. Back in the day they were like the original quest nutrition, I guess. Yeah. It was, uh, it was good. They had a bunch, I mean, they had kind of like regular food there too, but it was like, you know, as you can imagine, it didn't last very long. There's not a, I mean, there's bodybuilders in the area, but you know, bodybuilders are didn't last very long there's not a i mean there's bodybuilders in the area but you know bodybuilders are they're impossible to cater to chicken with no salt and no

skin and no bones and no nothing that can't be cooked in anything and right and then like who else wants to go to that restaurant if you served food like that everyone's like fuck this place nope yeah yeah i think just being in the uh the caloric restriction or even maintaining fasting makes everything so much easier um i i know what he was saying about like you know having more protein scattered throughout the day but i just i just know for myself what i've found is that it makes life so much better you know because i can't pound food at night you know it's it's great yeah Yeah, it makes a big difference. Yeah, what he did mention though,

like, so there's a few things like, like when I'm asked the jujitsu question, if I had like a little bit of carbs before my sessions, would I be able to perform a little bit better and maybe feel a little bit better? Yeah, like probably. But the difference isn't so great where it's something that I need to do so like the same thing with even protein feedings throughout the day will that benefit protein synthesis a little

bit more will be a little bit more optimal yes vastly so than just having a large amount of protein within a few hours not the biggest like it won't it won't be the difference of five pounds of muscle versus you know something it'll be very minimal a lot of times when i'm talking about like hey that's not my fight when i'm talking about like vegetables people like can i have vegetables and it's like well vegetables that's not part of it's not part of anything that i really care about yeah of course you can have vegetables they're they're fine it's not going to make a huge difference whether they're there or whether for some people it might bother them that it's not that they're not there because they might just enjoy them um but it's one of those things where it's like,

this is kind of a really small, minute thing. Some things that might not be small over periods of time, especially if you're new and you're trying to gain size, you know, trying to get some post-workout carbohydrates, you don't necessarily need like a shake, but that is a pretty convenient way to make sure it happens immediately. You know, but, but finding a time after training, and it doesn't always have to be immediately after training where you're, you're getting in some carbohydrates and those are things that you still do. But if you were younger and you were bodybuilding, you would, you know, and you're trying to make things the most ideal environment possible, we would want to try to get carbohydrates in, you know,

immediately after the training session. There's like those little things, again, how big of a difference, probably enough of a difference to where you'd want to do that for a while. And I did that for many years. You know, I used to have a shake that was 50 grams of protein and 50 grams of carbs. I did that for a decade. And I don't know how much it helped me get, you know, get, get bigger and stuff. But, um, I liked, I liked how it felt and it felt like it

was working and it was the science that was around at the time. And the science seems to be similar now, even though there's a lot of people fasting. Um, but it was just something that I, I did for a long period of time and it was very effective. And Seema if uh so i think what what i mean what he was talking about is like if if carbs help you a little bit you know before this rolling session helps you a little bit before tomorrow's rolling session over the course of a year that helps you quite a bit would you consider maybe trying that if you oh no not at all you can look at the big picture that way yeah no no let me tell you why um the reason is is like with the way i'm able to roll right now i'm able to go i don't get tired and those carbs wouldn't make me feel tired

they also wouldn't give me like with the way i'm rolling versus upper belts etc i would still feel better training fasted than if i ate beforehand i just would it so in terms of like even my skill acquisition like thinking about that because jujitsu is like like being able to do techniques well train techniques well yeah some memory and stuff too yeah yeah it's not purely about force production in comparison to lifting if we put this in a lifting context and i'm trying to become an overall stronger power lifter and i know that those carbs will help me push more weight every single session hell yeah yeah hell yeah but jujitsu is different i'm not i'm i'm not worried about like overall force production.

I mean it does make a difference, but it's not making a big difference in terms of the way I do techniques. Also too, why not – even if it's not harder for you, why not make training conditions like not great? Make them kind of suck here and there. Make them a little miserable because on game day when you do have that little burst of coconut water and a nice meal beforehand, you'll probably feel amazing. But if you do it all the time, I don't know, maybe it won't have the same effect and impact. No, I do test myself every now and then, every few weeks. Rob will have a little bit of carbs before. We need to get Rob Wolf on here because Rob Wolf tests his blood and he tests his glucose all the time yeah he's way

into all that i was just talking to him the other day and yeah we need to get him on here uh he lives just in reno oh we should just go see him which is he he is like too much of a bum to come out here but we should just go we should just pack up and go see him. He's like, I drove out there before. He's like two hours away or maybe, yeah, that sounds about right, two hours away. Yeah, that's not far at all. Yeah. Reno's not far. Yeah.

He's a badass. He's got great information. I mean, he's always like, you know, testing his blood glucose and stuff throughout the day. And he's just, you know, he's the one who put the paleo diet on the map and has a lot of great information. Anyway, I think we should get the hell out of here all right what do you think about that uh i i think let's stay and talk for another three hours why not guys i'm down what are we gonna talk about talk about the tomahawk ribeye that i ate the other day again sure let's talk about the dynasty the dynasty collection it was gold Dynasty. The Dynasty collection. It was gold-wrapped? Yeah.

My tomahawk wasn't gold-wrapped, but that's okay. It was gold. I think it was real gold, too. Yeah, it was. It's plated. Piedmontese is really going all out. Yeah. I cooked that sucker.

I threw it in the oven. I just had the oven on. I don't know anything about cooking, by the way. I hear people say stuff, and then I just had the oven on like, I don't know anything about cooking, by the way. I just like, I hear people say stuff and then I just try it. And, you know, people will be super annoyed, especially when I release the next Smelly's Kitchen video because like I don't use anything. I just salt it. Like I leave the meat out. I salt it.

I throw it in the oven for a little while and I did a reverse sear. But I'm not using any thermometers. I'm not like, I'm just like, hey, you just poke at it and you just look at it. And then like, you know, it's done. And then when it was done, I sliced it open and it like looked, looked amazing. And I cooked, uh, cooked that. I cooked some Piedmontese fillets and I cooked up some of those sliders. And, um, I was like cooking for everybody, but then everybody like left.

They like, I don't know, Jake had to go somewhere and Quinn had to go somewhere. And so I just sit down with this absolute feast. And you know how hard it is. Even though the stuff tastes really good, it gets to be really difficult to eat large, large amounts of meat unless you're Dr. Baker. But it was freaking amazing. It was really good. It's great how you're making all this cooking super simple though like you there are no excuses now for for people in terms of cooking it's not difficult it's very easy yeah hard yeah and i

don't i don't think people understand really like when you just put salt on a steak oh it's good and just but just also you know i know there's a lot of rules and there's like cooking is like a science. You know, there's a lot of like I have a lot of respect for chefs and stuff like that. I know a lot of chefs, but like cooking, while it is a science, you don't have to apply the science to get the food to taste to your liking. You know, if you want it medium rare, then you cook it that way. You know, if you want it to be well done, then whatever way you love tons of garlic, you love tons of salt, whatever your thing is, tons of pepper. I don't really like pepper and my wife likes pepper, so we don't pepper the food

until it's done, then she can pepper it herself. I like more salt. Jake likes more salt, but we don't over salt everything because Quinn doesn't like it everything because quinn doesn't like it that much and annie doesn't like that much they like salt on there but not tons of it and so you know you just make stuff to your liking and it's actually fairly easy you just need some practice at it yeah and you you also want to put pepper on last because pepper burns yeah it burns and gets a little weird yeah yeah oh wow yeah i know but really i mean i've been to places like uh people's houses where they want to put literally everything like, like every seasoning on top of the steak. It's like, no, just a ton of salt. That's it.

Yeah. Yeah. We're just talking about Piedmontese beef. It's second to none. You guys need to check it out. It's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E dot com at checkout. Enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free two-day shipping.

And it's some of the leanest steaks. You know, you go ribeye against ribeye, and Piedmontese has nearly, what did we look at? It was like half the amount of fat? Yeah. Something like that? It's ridiculous. That's really crazy. They also have grass-fed, grass-finished beef.

Go over to Piedmontese and check out what they they got that's all the time we got for today where can people find you mr andrew at i am andrew z on instagram but make sure you guys are following the podcast all over the damn place at mark bell's power project podcast on instagram at mb power project on twitter uh that's also on tikt Oh my gosh, let me switch the camera. Wow! You guys can follow those at facebook.com slash powerproject. We're on LinkedIn

and little preview, sneak peek. We're even on Alexa. Hmm? Oh yeah, check out your Alexa skills app. Andrew's done some cool stuff there. We're having fun.

So that way you guys literally cannot escape us. And Zima, where are you at? Real quick. Old Spice sweat defense does not work like it said. I sprayed this shit this morning and I swear I'm picking up my arms. I'm smod my armpits and this is not ideal. I don't think sprays work, period. You know, I'm kind of upset because I love the Old Spice commercials.

Right, that's what got me to this thing. I'm a huge fan. Like, I love the commercials. And then you're saying it doesn't really hold up. I just use it and now I'm just like, what the fuck? Remember that one they had with Ray Lewis? He was like on a rocket or something. They have like the weirdest.

The Terry Crews ones? Yeah. Bizarre, right? Isaiah Mustafa, look at your man. Now back to me man now back to me back to me I love that one who the hell

is making those commercials it's good stuff a damn genius maybe somebody else has maybe the same person that makes the commercial has to make the deodorant

and then we would be somewhere damn it anyway at Nseema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube at Nseema Inyang on TikTok and Twitter Mark

I think you smell great ah it's because I'm keeping my arms down. You can find me at Mark Smelly Bell. Thank you guys for going and checking out the YouTube channel. I believe we're over 10,000 subscribers. It just

keeps growing and I really appreciate all the support over there. I'm filming everything that I eat. I don't know why anyone would care about that, but I'm filming everything that I eat. I don't know why anyone would care about that, but I'm filming everything that I'm eating for the entire month of January for World Carnivore Month. I'm teaching you guys a bunch of stuff about carnivore, the carnivore diet, teaching you about intermittent fasting and showing you just exactly what I do day to day. We are going to the Los Angeles Fit Exo. I'm really fired up and excited for

that. We're going to have Paul Saladino and Dr. Dr. Baker on the podcast. Uh, at the same time, I think that's going to be really cool having both those guys speak and, uh, they have different viewpoints. They got some different vantage points, you know, uh, Saladino really feels that you got to eat nose to tail and he feels it and he feels very adamant that you need to figure out a way to get other things in other than just the meat. And Dr. Baker, while I don't think he disagrees with that statement, I think that he just doesn't think that it's necessary. He thinks you might have a little added benefit by getting in those extra nutrients,

but he doesn't care. He's like, no, just eat the muscle meat. You're all good to go. It's got everything you need. So it'd be great to kind of sort things out between the two guys. I'd also love to play some devil's advocate with those two and kind of think, see what they really think about, you know, vegetables and fruit, you know? You know, I think that both of them would agree that it makes sense that

people should be able to eat it without any problem. But I would also like to know what is the problem with uh eating some of those things they both explained some of that on the podcast previously but we'll get some more of that uh information from them again i can't wait to see those guys and be a lot of fun and then being at the la fit expo we're hoping to run into a lot of you um We are doing a bunch of podcasts, so we won't be at the actual event that much, but I'm sure we'll stroll over there a few times and hopefully run into some of you fans.

Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell everywhere. Catch y'all later.