Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 535 - Ignore Your Physique & Ignore The Science

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

A fun conversation amongst the crew discussing an array of topics covering the fact that you can't ignore genetics, but you should ignore your physique and focus on your performance. On top of that, searching for a study to prove whether or not a diet works is a waste of time. Just try the diet and ignore the science. Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Eat Rite Foods: http://eatritefoods.com/ Use ode "POWERPROJECT25" for 25% off your first order, then code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off every order after! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢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 ➢Sling Shot: 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 ➢ https://www.facebook.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 FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Figure skating, especially, I mean, a lot of, a lot of, uh, um, there's a lot of Asian athletes in that sport. A lot of Asian athletes in Olympic lifting that do really, really well. I mean, the Chinese and Olympic lifting are, I don't know if you guys ever seen some of those smaller athletes like squatting 600 pounds for reps and stuff. I mean, it's, it's wild. You know, I think some of the anatomy of certain, uh, individuals sometimes lends itself to be better at certain sports. True. Let's talk about this for a little bit.

I mean, I think it's just like, you know, I'm not trying to be offensive to anybody, but I think it's like just a little bit factual. You know, it's like just a recognition, right? It's an observation, I guess we'd say. I also wouldn't say it's a fact for sure, but it's like an observation. I want to talk about this andrew are we live we're live now can you say well so i'll get the live link from youtube uh guys we're live right now hey mark hey andrew so uh swipe up check it out all right so um this is a

this is a very interesting topic because actually andrew chime in for a bit. I want to have this live. I want to get this live thing and then I'm going to chime in on this because this is a really good topic. It really could trigger people. I remember the football player Reggie White, legendary football player. Green Bay? Yeah, Green Bay Packers.

And the Philadelphia Eagles for a long time. He talked one time as a preacher and talked about how some of these different ethnicities are good at certain things. And then people just really just, yes, he was saying stereotypical stuff, which sometimes is unpopular. But for the most part, it seemed from what i remember i could be remembering some of it wrong but i remember like most of it was pretty positive you're saying this group of people they do this really well this group of people over here do this really well and i think when it comes to sports i think sometimes um i remember there was a white athlete in a hundred

meter dash like maybe like two olympics ago and i was just watching it i'm like i'm like oh my god they're not going to talk about it if they're not they're not going to have any mention of it and he finished like fourth or something and it could have been like four by 100 meter or or whatever but anyway uh it was a white dude doing a 100-meter dash. He stuck out like a sore thumb. He did well. And when the event was over and he placed, they finally mentioned it, like, the first time since, like, 1950. You know, and I was like, man, like, that should be a little bit of a story. Like, it's kind of, you know, it's just interesting, right?

And so we do see these differences amongst people. It's kind of, you know, it's just interesting, right? And so we do see these differences amongst people. And Joe Rogan actually has a bit where he talks about the differences between male and female, right? There's clearly genetic difference between male and female. Most of the time, males are bigger. The tallest people in the history of the world have been men, right? Probably the heaviest person ever has probably been a man. Like there's certain things that are kind of obvious

and Rogan talked about even within a sex, what discrepancies we can have. We got like us, kind of normal-ish people. All three of us are within three, four inches height-wise of each other, right? But then there's Shaq. Right? Then there's Shaquille o'neal like there's there's mutants out there yeah i mean yeah i mean uh we've heard of tribes being really tall where there's like multiple people that are you know six eight is like on the shorter side there's a specific tribe in africa where like the average height is six foot seven the average height

is six foot seven you're six six five. You're kicked out. You're off the team. You're short. Can't survive. Yeah. So there's just some observations amongst some people that have different, a different gene pool that expresses itself in a way that either makes them taller, sometimes allows them to maybe, you know, maybe like out of the gate, you're not necessarily faster or stronger or whatever it might be. But maybe you just have a propensity.

Yeah, your propensity like to be better at that thing. I mean, look at, shoot, Viking genes of Hathor Bjornsson. I'm sorry. Like, there are people from that area, Norway, Iceland, or whatever, that are just big boned large men and women. And they're extremely good at strength sports You look at Russians I know a lot of people like to say the Russians and Eastern Europeans are on drugs or something like that But I mean even so within strength sport We you see a lot of those strong athletes from those countries and they just their joints are a bit like okay

We had a Andre Andre. Okay. okay so yeah we know that andre he looks different man he just looks different right when his hand engulfed my hand i was like what is this thing this isn't a hand it's a glove right it's a glove right and there are a lot of those types of people from that area right so that's it's like, it's so interesting when you were mentioning the guy that you were rolling with. Oh, right. You're like,

it doesn't make any sense. And I would say it's not only as a genetic, but it's also environmental as, as part of it too. Right. The environmental piece of it. Uh, Russians typically are a little more stoic.

And when you listen to, uh, someone like Lexx friedman uh man lex like i don't know he's he's unconventional he's super smart he's amazing uh but he's very like monotone yeah right he's not real reactionary somebody says something crazy on his show he's like wow that's interesting uh-huh you know he's very like always wears the same suit every day type of thing and so so I think on top of it being, you know,

there's a genetic component to a lot of these things. There's also an environmental and who people are surrounded by and societal norms of whatever area it is that you grow up, grow up in that you get used to that. You just, it could allow you to be better at a particular sport, allow you to be better at a particular sport, allow you to be better at a particular thing than someone else.

Absolutely. It's like, yeah, let me mention that this guy was rolling with that jujitsu. I only rolled with him once, but I forgot. Vlad, I think was his name. The most stereotypical Russian name. Vlad. Sounds made up. He's over at my jujitsu school and he's a white belt, right?

Everyone's like in SEMA, you got to roll with Vlad's a white belt, right? Um, everyone's like, and see him. You got to roll with Vlad, roll with Vlad, roll with Vlad. I'm like, okay, God dang.

So we're rolling. I'm like, Hmm, this man is very hard to move. And then I grab his arm for him, arm bar. And when I grab his wrist, I'm like,

is this a wrist? Like, like, cause when I put my hand around his wrist, I have very dainty wrist, by the way, Mark, put your hand around my wrist. They're tiny. They're tiny, by the way. Mark, put your hand around my wrist.

They're tiny. They're tiny for a man my size. But Vlad's wrist was manly. And when I tried to go for an arm bar and pull him back. It was like grabbing like a fist or something. It was grabbing like a fist. So, and by the way, he's shorter than me. He's like probably 215, 210, but he has big joints.

So I pulled him out for an arm bar and he's all the way on the ground. Vlad stands up and then bicep curls me out of the armbar position. I'm like, Jesus Christ. Okay. That's what we're doing here. That's how we're built. We're literally built like this. You're like, Vlad, listen, we ain't got no problems, bro.

Like, you know, this jujitsu stuff was just relax. There's no reason to be like that. Like, yeah. Like, like again, and then just, it's some people. And this is the thing thing, there are differences. There are genetic differences between people from different areas of the world. You will see a lot of very, in sprint sports, in very like, you know, football, et cetera, you're going to see a lot of West Africans.

You're going to see a lot of big, really big West Africans that are just like, how are they that big? lot of big really big west africans that are just like how are they that big like a lot of my relatives on my dad's side of the family we all have the same type of shape our head shape our body shape they're all kind of built the same they're just big motherfuckers um and that's it i don't think people want to realize that there is so much disparity we can realize that when there's a height difference like when certain people have big like different heights um but it's very hard for people to come to terms that there are certain people from maybe europe or whatever that they're just built and big joints and they're they're strong and there are certain people from different places

that can build a lot of muscle and it's weird but it's the truth. I also think that maybe something else that's at play is like, what are you aware of that's kind of like in your eye line or what's available to you in terms of like opportunity? I mean, when I was a kid growing up and being a huge football fan, there wasn't a lot of black quarterbacks and there wasn't a lot of black quarterbacks. There was a good amount of black quarterbacks in college where they ran certain offenses where the quarterback would run more, but there wasn't in the pros. There wasn't. wasn't and so if you were a kid growing up in football and you were black i would imagine that maybe you would think like that position is not really available to me because people think that i can't play it or that people that are black can't play it so i think there's probably a lot of things like that that happen in our society uh maybe golf is similar but we had tiger woods there's a barrier there's a financial barrier to entry when it comes to golf. There's environmental.

Yeah. I mean, even when it comes to swimming, I mean, again, when you look at like where training pools are compared to like where a lot of people live, you're not going to have a lot of kids that are going to have access to like black kids or kids that lower income that have access to pools. And what's in the neighborhood of basketball court, probably, right? Exactly. A basketball court, maybe a soccer field. Like you're just not going to pools. And what's in the neighborhood, a basketball court, probably, right? Exactly. A basketball court, maybe a soccer field. Like you're just not going to have a lot of people entering the sports.

But the quarterback thing, the black quarterback phenomenon is always something that I never really understood. I didn't get why. Like, I mean, I saw Michael Vick and nowadays there's a few others. I don't watch football, but you know, there's a few other like major black quarterbacks. But I was always curious, why don't you see a lot of black quarterbacks in football? You'll see a lot of black dudes in every other position, but the quarterback position. I never understood it.

I think we're seeing it more and more because there's been some breakthroughs. But to be honest with you, and I think it's gross, but I think that what people thought, they thought that black athletes couldn't be smart enough to run that position. That was my thought. Actually, that's literally, I mean, I,

I feel like gross, even like saying it aloud, but like, that's what I remember hearing. And that's what I remember. You know, you heard that. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Yeah. People, people like they thought that for some particular, I mean, it's just, we're just in different times, you know?

And I think maybe people thought the same thing as a head coach. And now we're starting to see actions of, uh, uh, black folks being owners of, of, uh, teams and things like that. And so there's, there's some movement there, but man, like, uh, some of these things have just been unwrapped like more recently. Like it's not that long ago. It's not that long ago where people were like i remember having a friend um a friend of my brother's in high school he was such a good football player

and his brother was even better his brother was a quarterback and as soon as brother went to college they were like um like you're playing cornerback and he's like he's like no i'm i'm a quarterback and they're like we'll try you out outside linebacker. I mean, this guy's big. So for him to play like cornerback and cover receivers probably didn't make any sense anyway. Um, but he's a black dude and they're like, no,

you're, you know, you're playing outside linebacker. So he played for like six months. He's like, fuck this. You know, he,

he just, they, but I think he even moved on to another college and it's kind of same thing. Yeah. Like it just, what they wasn't available to him. He destroyed people in high school.

He was like one of the best quarterbacks in all of New York. He had the stats. He had all the numbers. So I don't know. You know, I don't even think they ever gave him. I don't think they ever gave him an opportunity. I think it just wasn't even there. So I think even just growing up and seeing what's available to you, I think

soccer is probably another good example. In some countries like soccer's enormous. It's huge. Soccer's not as big here in the United States. And a lot of kids grow up thinking more about football. And so the environment kind of plays into it. And then how those kids and how those families kind of act and feed their kids and what they talk about in the household a lot. Okay, we're talking about basketball a lot, so my son's probably going to play basketball. We're talking about football a lot, so my son's probably going to want to eat a lot and be big for football type thing.

Yeah, and also you've got to look at the financial benefit of sports, of certain sports, right? Golf people can make money, but again, there's a barrier to entry. You need to be a little bit well off to be able to get your kid to play at a golf course a lot, right? And becoming a pro golfer, you can make some money, but I mean, shoot, NFL, NBA, like if you can make it into the pros in either of those sports, even baseball, like you're good. And it's a much larger league right so shoot people have a tough interesting people have such a tough time when it comes to physicality of stuff um like they don't want to just believe that someone just has a little a little extra than they do for some reason and you mentioned height that's kind of interesting because

someone could say yeah i'm five seven the other dude's six three you know you and it's like kind of clear like for whatever reason like genetically and when that person was developing their body decided to be that height and for whatever reason somebody else's body decided to be five seven right yeah it's like pretty clear but when it comes to like physical stuff for for some reason, we can't take that and just extrapolate when something is done intellectually and pour that into something physical. Because when something is done intellectually, I've mentioned this many times in the show now, like if we were to if we were to draw a picture of someone reading a book under a tree, like I don't think any of us can draw very well, but one of us would be better. Right.

And, but if we took rather than just the three of us, if we took 300 people and we would see like a better, but the, my, my point here is that you would try to select people that, that all have similar experience with drawing. Right.

For some reason, for some reason, I don't know why, there would be one person who could draw better than most. There could be a couple of people that have practiced it more, but in the grand scheme of things, I'm talking more about amateur. Now, if we were going to a basketball court and we're just to chuck the ball around, for some reason, people are like in denial. They think that they can like like do something a certain way they think they can be better at something in a certain way uh and they don't understand the genetic gaps and we see this a lot with lifting and in talking to our most recent guest people just kind of pass it off to like oh that guy you know that guy just

he's probably taking steroids like that's where, people's mind kind of jump and kind of leap to that sometimes. But I think there's multiple things at play here. I do think that people just start off further down the track than many others. And that's something that you need to come to grips with. Like you may have to put in two hours in the gym. I'm not even saying that's a wise move, but you may have to put in two hours in the gym. I'm not even saying that's a wise move, but you may have to put in two hours in the gym for every 30 minutes that someone else does or something like that. You may have to spend more time reading. In my case, I'd have to spend more time reading than somebody else because I don't read well. I don't, from terms of reading comprehension, like I'm not great at it, but I also don't practice it much. But for whatever reason, it was such a hurdle for me in my life that I chose not to even really entertain really working on it much because I'm like, this hurts.

It sucks. I'm not good at it. Who loves doing stuff they're not good at? And so I tend to and still tend to shy away from it. Whereas some other kids are like, yeah, I read that book last night. They just went right through it. Whereas some other kids are like, yeah, I read that book last night. You know, they just went right through it. And so there's different, people are starting out with different skills and different technique. And I don't think the kid that read the book in one night took Adderall.

You know what I mean? I don't think he's like hopped up on something. I think he just, I also have recognized over the years that doesn't necessarily mean he's smarter than I am. It just means he's better at reading. What's going on with your bicep? Dude, it's twitching. You see what's going on? Is that a signal from your watch? What the fuck? Stop it, please. Damn, bro. I don't know if you guys can see that, but is it visible, Andrew?

Yeah, it is. My arm's twitching. My bicep's twitching. The trend's kicking in. Yeah, the trend is kicking in. Or the creatine. Or the creatine. Or the monster mixed with the element mango habanero, which is amazing. Not really good. But this is another thing, man. Not only does everyone have a different starting point, everyone legitimately starts at a different time.

What age did you start playing sports? Oh, yeah. I started pretty young. As young as I can remember. Six, seven you start playing sports? Oh, yeah. I started pretty young. As young as I can remember, yeah. Six, seven years old. Six, seven years old. I started playing soccer at six. And my mom, because I was such a fucking off-the-wall kid, just ran around the whole place.

She put me in leagues every single year. She had me play soccer, baseball, and basketball. And then finally, when I got to high school, she's like, okay, pick one so we can focus on that. And I picked soccer. But she had me playing all the fucking sports every freaking season so I could just keep busy. So there was like a lot of physical movement from the beginning.

So someone sees you at 14 and they're like, oh, and see him as a genetic freak. And it's like, maybe your genetics are pretty good, but maybe it's environmental too. Maybe it's a combination. It has to be a combination. And I think it also lies into what, like when we had Jim Wendler on,

and if you guys haven't listened to that episode, we just had Jim Wendler on. He wrote the program 5-3-1. That was the first specific strength training program that I started at 18 or 19 years old. I think I was 18 or 19 years old. That was my first specific strength training program. And Jim, he works with a lot of like high schoolers.

And he was just talking about how big of a difference it makes when kids start with a sport when they're younger, not even lifting, just that body awareness that you're able to get from your youth will make a difference in terms of how you, how you express your strength. And as adult, that doesn't mean that you cannot start powerlifting as a late teenager and as adult and not become very strong, but certain individuals are going to be able to maybe hit that a little bit easier because they have an awareness of what their hamstrings feel like, how to hip hinge and activate their glutes, right? All these little things. I mean, the hip hinge, for example, it's an extremely athletic type of movement. Knowing how to do this, you do that in all of sport.

But with a lot of people, you have to teach them how to use their hips in a movement, right? And when you show one person, it might take them four minutes. And when you show another, it might take them four years. Exactly. Might take someone a really long time to figure that out because of the way their body moves. And what I've learned from coaching a lot of people

is each person's body is way, way different from another person's body. And I think a lot of that has to do with what we're talking about here, genetics and environmental stuff. Like one kid sat down and probably played a lot of video games, so his back and his hamstrings are gonna be crazy, crazy tight. One kid might've done gymnastics from the time he was young and maybe he did some jujitsu and maybe his parents had him super active. And so that kid's not going to run into the same problems, but he'll, he might have his own other subset of problems, but it might show up in something else.

Maybe it's scholastically or maybe it's somewhere else. because we only have so much time in a day to manage any of these things. This kind of stuff always reminds me of, like I always kind of reference art or music. Some people can pick up a guitar and just play it a little bit better than the next person, start to learn some of the chords a little bit better than the next person, a piano, same thing. And I think of David Garibaldi, his story a local artist, his story being kind of similar to mine in the sense that we both started really getting into

what we wanted to do with the rest of our lives at a really really young age and then by the time we were 15, 16 people were like holy shit like how are you for me it was you know people always accuse me of steroids they're like you you know you can't i don't really remember them numbers but i know i broke like state records and national records and things like that when i was really young in these teenage uh categories um and you know yeah people just kind of always just wanted to, you know, write it off as something else.

But it's like, well, no, I actually started lifting at like 12. So I've been at it for a while. Like this didn't happen. This didn't happen for no reason. You know, you happen to just see it because we're in PE. And so you saw me bench 315 or something. And the next closest kid did like two plates or something. And so they think it's something miraculous with your genetics or something miraculous with some sort of drug or something like that.

But for me, it was probably a combination, just like for yourself, combination of some genetics mixed in with some training and doing the right things and finding, I found what I was going to be pretty damn good at, at a young age. I found that early on. And so therefore, exponentially, I was a little bit better than the next person coming through. Absolutely. And that's one other thing. I feel like, you know, especially when you start lifting when you're older, you think a lot, you really think a lot and you start any type of sport when you're older, you think too much. And the main thing you're thinking about is how not good you are, how behind you are from everybody else, potentially your age that might've started really early. age that might've started really early. And then you plow, you run into the comparison trap. Like say you're 18 years old and you just start looking and you see some like 22 year old dude on IG, who's like jacked and big. And you're like, Oh fuck. Like he's definitely on drugs. Not realizing that that 22 year old's been at the game for like nine or 10 years already. You know what I mean?

So it gets really tough because you're super aware, but when you were able to start something as a kid, you're not aware at all. You're just a dumb kid going through the motions of trying to get good at something. Like, yeah, maybe you're comparing yourself to the other kids on the field with you or whatever. But at the end of the day, you have no other choice but to do it. There's nothing else going on in your life. You're going to go home, eat, watch some cartoons, go to sleep, and go about your day. So you've got to be a little bit naive when

you're older you got it i feel like think less you got to think less you need to think less yeah let me ask you guys this so when i was little um i i mimicked everything my brother did yeah he's i always forget but he's like six or seven years older than me and like i mentioned in the past like he was like an all-star in everything. So like copying somebody like that was really good for a, you know, a little kid like me. So when it came to playing sports from like for kids my age, so just whatever little league, like I was crushing it. I was better than everybody on the team, almost every single like team I played for. Yeah. And it was all just because i would mimic

everything my brother would do eventually what happened kids got bigger than me they got faster they got stronger they got better and it pushed me the opposite way because at this point everyone caught up and then like i was still like wait no i'm just naturally better than everybody and then they got better and i'm like wait what happened like okay i'm done with this so for you guys did do you guys notice like that like other kids started catching up or did you guys just like you were so into it that you just kept going you just got better than they did or did you notice like that gap kind of start to like oh shit like i gotta start trying now like did that happen or were you guys just like significantly better the whole time for me that

happened yeah especially when i had to stop playing soccer from 13 to 16 there was a technical gap in my foot skills when i came back at 16 compared to other kids like like when i was 16 i came back and i was bigger than every other guy on the field that was the first time i got uh keys to steroids my boy tyler moltby and we have the same birthday september 7th we had the same birthday i came to practice one day i think I slide tackled. He was like, the fuck man, you on steroids.

I'm like, well, he's like, yeah, like you got hella big. I'm like, right. Rage,

bro. Nah, I'm not. But, but there was a technical gap between me and those other kids. And it took me a while to catch up. Um, even though I was,

I, I had strength, I had speed. I probably went to a camp or something, or you probably practice more. Oh yeah. I had strength, I had speed. I probably went to a camp or something or you probably practice more. Oh yeah. I had to do a lot of practice. My mom got me like, um,

uh, she knew some, she knew a coach within the community that his son played at like Davis. Um, and he was like, I'll work with, let me just work with your kids. So outside of practice,

we would also work on our own, like on, on, on weekends and on days that I had practices. So there was a lot of catching up because technically like I was a little bit behind on foot skills and other kids I like what you're saying there Andrew because I think that sometimes a kid can start out way further ahead sometimes other kids can catch up a because maybe they practice B because they may be mature see just because C just because they found out like, this is like, I love this.

Like, this is what I want to do for a long ass time. Like maybe they don't know for the rest of their life, but like, man, I love pitching and all I ever think about is pitching. And I, you know, I know how to throw a fastball, but I need to know how to throw a change up pitch and a screw ball and a curve ball. And like, that's just, that's just all they,

all they run through all day long. They just think about, uh, that constantly for me, um, what you're referencing didn't really happen to me because in soccer, you're more exposed to a wider array of like players, especially because especially nowadays, soccer is more sports like soccer.

There's like travel soccer. Right. And there's you do it like year round. Yeah. Football was like I just had people in my league that I played against and like. My league and my section, they just it just wasn't that good. You know, quite honestly, it just wasn't that good. You know, quite honestly, it just wasn't that good in the state.

The state of New York football is pretty good, but basketball is the main sport. It's not anything like Texas. So I never really ran into that because I, but I always had to train for it. I had to like work for it. So I was the biggest kid on the team. I was usually one of the fastest on the team, but that was because I trained for it. Like I was the biggest kid on the team. I was usually one of the fastest on the team,

but that was because I trained for it. Like I would, uh, as soon as the football season was over, I was because I loved lifting so much. Like that was my passion. It wasn't football. And I was actually probably kind of confused by it at the time. Cause I thought that I loved football, but I really just actually loved training more so than anything. So every year that went by, it's like like I would gain a little bit of strength. I'd gain a little bit of weight and I was already stronger. So like when I got on the field, uh,

I never really noticed, you know, much in terms of like other people like catching up until we'd get in like a playoff game or something like that. And there'd be like some other dude on the other sidelines that was big and had great genetics and was training. And I was like, okay,

fuck. Yeah. I really didn't see that until I got into pro wrestling. And when I got into pro wrestling, that's when I kind of recognized like, like, Oh dude, like you're,

you're pretty good at a bunch of stuff, but you're not really shit. Especially when it comes to athletically, like you're, you're okay. Like you get on a scale of one to ten you're a six and a half but you're six and a half compared to like these other shit these these other guys can do so uh i got kind of put in my place once i got around some of those other athletes and that you know those guys were

high level athletes but they some of them weren't even like you know what i mean there's still a whole level above all that stuff too. Yeah. I think also a big thing that comes into developing, like obviously a big thing that comes to developing as a kid, but I was, I was really lucky that, um,

my mom was very big on good food. Like, like my mom didn't necessarily, she, she wasn't paying attention to like your proteins, carbs, and fats, but I'd always be eating whole

foods and she'd feed me a good amount of meat um she didn't really like red meat so i was eating a lot of chicken growing up right um but she would feed me good food greens vegetables uh lots of lots of rice good amount of meat right and that was my whole childhood. She would not get, she wouldn't go to like the store and get pop tarts or whatever, or anything like that. Didn't have that in the house. Didn't drink soda. So, so automatically growing up, um, I, I already had a leg up on people nutritionally without really realizing that I had a leg up on people nutritionally, which yields a lot of benefit to your development. And we know like, even if you're older and you start paying attention to your nutrition,

how big of a difference that can make. So if you've been doing that your life, like you'd be ahead of the game. Like just like, I mean, let's just be real eat right that we have right now. Yeah. Makes it convenient. Makes it very convenient. So yeah, my kids are digging it. We have the ground Turkey, the Southwest ground Turkey.

And, uh, you know i just i i heated up a bowl of that stuff and i put it in a different bowl so that my kids didn't think it was some sort of weird uh you know healthy food sometimes they are allergic to healthy food right that's it they really do that yeah they they will yeah sometimes i mean somebody sometimes they're kind of open to trying it but like if they hear it's like keto or low carbs you know they'll shy away from it but they plowed right through that uh southwest turkey and i'm digging the uh the shrimp a lot yeah that's really really good honey uh steak and it's fantastic so they got some delicious options yeah i don't know i i personally have never paid attention to shrimp like at all like you guys know

i don't really like i'll lean more towards steak and chicken but like i don't have seafood but dude that that shrimp is incredible it tastes amazing but it has like an insane amount of protein like over 100 grams of protein and nutrition hack very little or 128 you know it's like that too is scallops look into some scallops at some time they're delicious i've never made them though they, though. Oh, they're so good. They're so good. You've got to search eatrightfoods.com to see if they have scallops. But one thing that they do have for sure, so they've got the steak. That's amazing. They've got the shrimp that we just mentioned and the turkey.

And then I've been chowing down on the buffalo chicken. The chicken's good. Chicken and rice. It's so easy. I hate cleaning. I do like meal prepping, but I just hate cleaning. So it's awesome to have somebody else do it for me, which you guys can do as well. Head over to eatrightfoods.com.

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And then once you guys fall in love with the food, after that, use promo code POWERPROJECT for 10% off your order. Again, that's at eatrightfoods.com. Head over there right about now. Right now. I remember when I was a kid and there was a, there was a couple kids that were like kind of randomly jacked-ish. And I remember like arm wrestling, you know, some of my friends. I remember like sprinting against some of my friends. And like these other jacked kids were always the kids that could like sometimes beat me or I'd beat them.

It's like 50-50, right? But I was a heavier kid because we kind of had access to like whatever food we wanted in my home. And I think you bring up a really great point that these kids like had like abs and stuff. And I never understood. I was like, I was like, how are they?

So how are they? So like, I didn't think about it much, but I was like more like thinking how, how are they so skinny? Cause I didn't know about like being ripped, but I look back on it. I'm like,

those kids were kind of jacked actually. And I, I, I guess like what, what can happen for people is that for one person to start playing soccer at like 16 or football or baseball or get involved in any of these sports. Um, if you're already starting out and you're, you're way overweight, uh, shit, man, like you got a huge mountain to climb. Like it's going to be really, really, you're not ruled out of anything. I mean, you could still work hard and you could still end up, you know, maybe eventually getting ahead. But like it might take you like five years just to get even keel with everybody. years just to get even keel with everybody.

You know, if you're, if you like soccer and you're trying to play soccer and you're trying to run and keep up with everybody, like you probably just, you probably won't even choose to play soccer. It just will probably no longer be an option. And I think parents need to take a lot of personal responsibility with their children and you're trying to provide the best opportunities for your kids. Having a lot of junk food in the house is a great way to ensure your kids don't get the opportunities that they deserve. And I understand how difficult these things are to navigate, but it's an area where I think people should spend a little bit more time. They should concentrate on a little bit more because a little bit can go a long way.

You know, I'm really fortunate that my kids, they understand the choices that they're making now. I don't really have to have discussions with them about it exactly. They know what they're doing. They'll still eat. They'll still eat normal kids stuff. They're not like just eating. They're not on a carnivore diet or anything like that. But we also cook meals in my home pretty much every night.

And it sounds like your mom cooked for you a lot. And I think that, and I used to post on my Instagram almost every morning, I would post, you know, cook for your kids. My kids like just decided they don't like me cooking for them anymore. So that's fine. But I'd cook them some eggs. I'd make them some French toast and I would try to make them something that was kind of rich in protein that didn't have a crazy amount of calories in it and stuff like that. But I wasn't trying to make it any sort of really crazy healthy thing. I was just trying to

give them like nourishment, try to give them some protein carbs and fat, set their day up. Well, they're not eating a donut before they run out the door. And all that kind of stuff. And so I think that right there is a huge thing because when somebody, you know, when a young kid walks on a football field or soccer field and has a shirt off, people are like, oh, it's easy for you because you're jacked because you're ripped, you know, just genetically. you're you're ripped you know you just genetically it's like well yeah maybe I'm a little leaner than most genetically but I've also just have eaten really well my whole life yeah I think there's there's a homie of mine and he was we were talking about like nutrition stuff one day and we were I was telling me though I know you like to eat these types of foods but uh you know, you know, you, you gotta get them, you gotta get all that stuff out of the house.

If you're really trying to make a difference, get all that process junk that you tend to binge on, get out of your damn house, bro. And he was like, he's like, yeah, but you know, like my, my kid likes this. So I was like, in the back of my head, I'm like, so you're, you're gonna, you're're gonna you're gonna use that as the thing you're gonna use your kid as the excuse because first off your kid probably shouldn't be eating that more so you shouldn't be but like dude you how much stuff do you give your dog that you shouldn't have nothing right right so i mean it's like i feel like a lot of these fun foods or whatever that we think are like snack foods for kids, et cetera, that's not good for them and it's not good for us. Right. And I totally understand the whole idea that in flexible dieting, when most people think of IFYM, you allow yourself, if you're counting, to fit some of these foods in but a lot of times people don't have control of the amount of that food that they tend to eat even when they track it like there's always going to be the tendency and i've done this many times myself take a scoop of peanut butter take a little bit extra even

though you know that that goes over your macros but it's the fucking peanut butter right so it's just much easier to just not keep these things around and just try to focus on eating whole real food get rid of snacks it's like these are just concepts but they make your whole life easier yeah and it's not fair to throw something like this like in your buddy's face but since he's not here we can say it but it's like damn like so your kid has a job they can go to the grocery store by themselves and they can pick out the foods themselves like somebody bought it right somebody brought it into the house and so like you can't really use the kid excuse at that point yeah no yeah or my wife likes it like like okay this is this is the whole family here yeah like

you're trying to get healthy but i'm assuming that you want your whole family to be thriving as far as their health is concerned so with that the case, how about we just remove all the stuff that you're going to tend to not have control over and try to input some things that are just good for you? Well, and then when you do something that's off plan, it could actually be more exciting. Hey, everybody get in the car. Where are we going? We're all going for McFlurries. Like, really? Wait, what?

What are we doing? Like, shit. Okay. And you eat it in the car. It's gone. It never even enters the home. I can throw it out. we're all going for mcflurry's like like really wait what what are we doing like shit okay and you eat it in the car it's gone it never even enters the home i can throw it out done deal it's over with you got it out of your system feels great how many times a week you need to do that once twice probably enough right the big goal i was just gonna say like that's the other thing you know like in sema saying like get this out of the house. Like, but we're not saying, like, you're never going to experience this. But, like, let's just get on a good roll where we enjoy whole foods again. And we remember what, you know, nutritious food tastes like.

You can't really get away from if you have, you know, Cheez-Its laying around every day. Yeah. That's the thing. Like, I don't have that thing around the house, but, like, probably last week or whatever, me and a homie went to Rayleigh's, got some Ben and Jerry's, right? I don't have multiple laying in the house, but we're like, fuck, I want some Ben and Jerry's. Let's go. So we went and got some Ben and Jerry's.

Damn, I got problems with Ben and Jerry's. When I see, especially when I see the new flavors, you know, have you had s'more yet? Have you had, give me s'more? I haven't had give me s'more. I'll see. I shouldn't know about this. You guys are are funny i can't believe that's the thing but see what what will happen is it is like you know i have my staples of of everyone has their staples of ben and jerry's that are their favorite you know but like you see like fish food like i like fish food a lot

i like half baked a lot baked is good i like know, there's a bunch of them, right? Netflix and chilled? Oh, God. Oh! That's good! Hell yeah. Yeah, that shit is... It's good.

Yeah, which one has Jimmy Kimmel on it? That one's good. That's, oh, Tonight Dough. Tonight Dough! Yeah! That was really good! But what will happen is I can't make it... You guys are funny.

I can't make a decision on buying it. So I'm like, you know, it's kind of like blonde or brunette, right? You just choose both. You're like, I want both. So you get, you end up, I end up with like two or three of them in my cart and I eat all of them. So lucky that Andy does not ever listen to this podcast. Well, she's normally blonde and sometimes her, you know, her natural hair will come through and she'll be brunette. There we go. I'm hook right now is that the same you're safe now you're safe now

oh man but by the way everybody who's listening if you are fans of ben and jerry's the best flavor is called gimme s'more um i will say i i did say that i don't keep multiple of it in my house but it's one that does sell out flavor just because it's new or is it actually the best it's been out for years this has been my best this has been my favorite flavor for years now okay i kind of fibbed when i said i don't keep any in the house i usually don't but gimme s'mores usually sold out so if i go to rayleigh's gotta load up and i see like an aisle a gimme s'more i'll be like one two three four, three, four. Let's go. I'm sorry. It happens sometimes. I don't eat it all in one day or two days, but got to stock up sometimes. Don't do this, guys.

Do not do this. I do think it's important, though, that people do feed their cravings here and there. I think it's for some people, they may have, meet them halfway with something that's kind of bullshit. That's not the exact food that they want. They may have to like make their own pizza at home or do something a little, a little different. Uh, I know a lot of like fitness type people, they do that often. They'll make like a protein pizza or they'll do things like that.

For me, I'd rather just, you know, wait it out and just chow down on the food that I love and enjoy and, uh, just kind of, I guess, get it out and just chow down on the food that I love and enjoy. And just kind of, I guess, get it out of my system. That's always worked well for me. I can end up in a position where I binge. I can end up in a position where I end up just eating all kinds of stuff after that. Just consuming a lot of calories. But again, I don't have a lot of junk in my house. There's really not much, not much I can do.

I mean, I can eat some like peanut butter, I guess. Like, is it really not? There's some like quest products or some legendary food products. I'm not going to get very, my son sometimes has cereal. That's what gets me. But really it's not, I can't, I mean, I guess I could if I, if I ate everything, but I can't really even do that much damage, even if I was to be enticed to go further because I had Ben and Jerry's or something like that. This is what I think. There's so much.

When people ask, what's your nutrition plan, this and that, there's so much little nuance within this because there was a phase within this whole process that I was very very strict because I wasn't doing as much jiu-jitsu I wasn't as active so I had to be more strict with what I allowed myself to have like I wouldn't like I wouldn't have certain things now so I wouldn't ever allow myself to eat certain things because it would just lead to overeating and body fat gain so I think everybody there is a stage especially when you're trying to learn about all this nutrition stuff and you're trying to learn about different types of diets. Maybe let's say you're doing the keto diet. Let's say you're doing carnivore. Let's say that, you know, you're doing low carb. Um, if you're new to this, you have to have a phase where maybe you are very stringent. Right. Um, and you like, let's say, yeah, okay. You go out one day a week or something with your significant other, or just with some friends, you get a meal out, but you have to have a stage where you are stringent so that you can build good nutritional

habits so that over time you can get to a place. This is where we are kind of where, you know, we're not, we're strict. We have good concepts as far as we'll be most of the time. But if we have some Ben and Jerry's, I literally am not even thinking, I'm not sweating it at all. I go out to eat with a friend. I'm not sweating it one bit. That's a really great place to be in a healthy place to be because a lot of times people's conversation in their head is I can't do that because it will make me fat.

And the word can't isn't a great thing to say. And the word make isn't necessarily a great word either in this situation. I think, uh, maybe instead a better way to look at some of these things would be, uh, that's not really in my plan at the moment, but I'll get to it at some point. You know, I want to, you try to remember the goal. You try to remember how does this hurt? How does this help? It seems like it's going to hurt. It's not going to be something towards my goal. Yes, I do have a craving for it. Yes, I do recognize that. Hopefully you have enough variety in your diet to where you're not really sweating out these cravings and you're really, you know, Jones and forum. But even if you are, I think there's other things to,

to examine. and i think for you increasing your jujitsu maybe over the last couple weeks do you feel like you have a little bit more cravings are you hungrier and things like that or no i don't have more cravings um okay so but your sleep is usually in check and a lot of other things are in check and you are are you lifting a little bit less because your jiu-jitsu is up or you just have to kind of go through some rigorous ass training to get ready for this tournament so the past two or so weeks i have lowered my training volume a little bit because i am training much more in terms of jiu-jitsu um and i am i'm having a harder time

holding body weight we were talking about this at this post on instagram a few weeks ago where i said I was feeling frail and people were roasting the fuck out of me because they're like, I'd love to look like you and feel frail. Because I really was feeling weak because the amount of expenditure I was having on the mats and calories I was burning on the mats, I was trying not to fast, but I literally was not eating enough food to stop the body fat loss. So I ended up having a low of like two 37. I was just like, shit. So I've, I've just been really eating. Um, but like, that's the thing. It's like, there's so much expenditure that like, I don't have extra cravings, but I eat more food. Like I'm eating much more rice. I'm eating much more meat i cooked those five hop dotty patties one day you remember

this day because i came in shitting like just water um so by the way guys piedmontese they have these hop dotty patties that are really amazing they're 75 25 75 proteins with like the percentage 25 fat right cooked up all five i then took rice and fried the rice and the fat from the meat to sop up all the fat. So you're on a keto and a carb diet. Yeah. High carb, high fat, high everything. That's a new diet.

That's a new diet. Just like high everything. Eat it all. It all fits. It all fits. That's what it's called. But the reason why is because I'm just like, I have to put body fat back on. I have to put weight back on.

And I'm burning so many calories through jujitsu that it's necessary. But that's also why I think that like, you know, as you're going through this whole thing, if your goal is like maybe body fat loss or weight loss, try to find a habit. It could be cycling. Maybe you start doing some running because you like that. Find something that can allow you to do some expenditure without feeling like it's work. Because jujitsu doesn't feel like a task. It doesn't feel like a cardiovascular task that I'm trying to do. But it's just, it keeps me lean. Right.

Right. A thousand steps, I think, is like three to four hundred calories. You know, something I was sharing earlier today. I've heard other people talk about it. You start to add that up and you do 70,000 steps, which sounds like a lot, but it's 10,000 steps every day. You do 70,000 steps. We start to end up with like 2,800 calories and you do that for the entire month. And now we're ending up over 11,000 calories.

That's just from walking. I mean, that add on, like I do understand 10,000 steps might be a time commitment, but even if it's, let's just say it's half that and you burned 5,000 calories for the month or 6,000, like that's pretty damn good. It's a way to increase your NEAT without really trying to. It's a way to kind of increase your metabolism, I guess you could say, in some way. kind of increase your metabolism, I guess you could say, in some way. So I think there's kind of these simple tasks that are fairly easy to do. You don't have to be a master at your sleep. You don't have to necessarily be in bed at 9 p.m. and all these things.

But just work on trying to be a little bit better at your sleep or work on trying to calm yourself down a little bit more before you go to bed. Because the small advantage that you might pick up from your sleep may be the one thing that helps annihilate some of those cravings and some of that hunger. A lot of our hunger, a lot of our cravings comes from not having satisfactory amounts of, and not having enough nourishment from our nutrition, not having satisfactory amounts of, uh, and not having enough nourishment from our nutrition, not having enough macronutrients, not having enough micronutrients. Um,

also maybe just not doing things that are pleasurable and fun or rigorous throughout the day that make you feel good about yourself. And then on top of all that, getting that sleep in it, we just, we learn more and more how important it is. I know we talk about it all the time and everyone's like, Oh my God, I wish they would shut up about it, but it's important.

And it's something I'm still working on. Like I'm not great at it, but I'm getting better at it. And the better I get at it, the leaner I get and the easier the diet is. You know, let me, let me, let me tell you guys a quick story real quick about an old friend of mine who used to, they used to work their job they were like i think a server and they were walking around during their whole shift and at that time they were in great shape a few years later they ended up have they ended up switching jobs got a better

paying job but they were working at a desk and within like six months they put on 20 pounds okay 20 pounds in six months because they went from working a job that they were walking and they were on their feet to now being sedentary for a majority of their day. All right. This can be fixed. If you get a desk riser, you know, you can always ask your company, Hey, can you buy me a desk riser? Or you can buy it on Amazon for a hundred bucks. You can literally buy a really good desk riser, put it under your computer so you can lift your computer and you can stand and work. And you will burn way more calories by standing and maybe moving around a little bit. Even while we're doing this right now, whenever we podcast, I'm always fidgeting.

I'm always twitching. I'm always like… Yeah, we're doing calf raises and shit back here. I can't stay still, right? And that will just allow you to have that extra caloric burn. That'll also help you out when it comes to your physicality. Because in a seat, your hip flexors are stuck like this for eight hours. No idea what you're talking about. You don't?

No, I'm joking. Okay, you're joking. Yeah, no. I got the tightest everything. Right. And people, one of the biggest problems that people have is like, I have lower back pain and they can't they can't go into hip extension right because they're always like this for hours on end i am fucking answer i love you bro right so again this is just one of those easy life hacks that can allow

you to just have an overall healthier life you just get a desk riser burn more calories it'll it'll make one of the biggest differences for any of you who are stuck at a desk job anybody yeah it was funny like um i remember i think mark you pointed this out when like i first like started working with you like i would always be shaking my leg and you're like uh-oh we got a fidget or like you said something like that and then eventually like since i i started like burning more fat off my body, I noticed I stopped doing it as much. I'm like, well, I wonder if my body just naturally was like, hey, dude, we got to work off some of this fat or like, who knows what it actually was. But like, yeah, I noticed that lately, like, I don't do it nowhere near as much as I did. Maybe I'm just getting like less anxious.

Maybe that's part of it. But I was thinking, you know, I wonder if it has something to do with like my body composition and my body saying, oh, we actually we're good where we're at. We don't need to burn off any extra. Yeah, that definitely comes down quite a bit when you start to transform your body a bit. You know, I mean, there's just so many things that people can do when it comes to their nutrition, but I really hope that they pass the torch off to other people, you know, the people that are in their lives and people that are, whether it's a wife or their children or just people in their family.

I hope that people continue to communicate with people on how important it is. I mean, and we know that we, we've kind of beat it to death here. We talk about it constantly, but we just think it's, it's just really, really important. And for somebody that has a child that's not overweight, but they still have junk food in the house, you still have to be in recognition that that junk food is not serving them well. For them to have it here and there, sure. I don't have recognition that that junk food is not serving them well. For them to have it here and there, sure, I don't have any problem with that. I think that's great. And we should all enjoy ourselves and enjoy food and cocktails and whatever else can we

kind of run into that we can figure out reasonable ways to manage. But it's got to be reasonable. You have to find reasonable ways to manage all these foods. And I totally understand the idea of people. It's not good to demonize foods. It's not good to demonize sugar. You know, when people talk about it, like, oh, let's not, you know, let's not say this is bad for you. You can't have McDonald's or whatever.

But I feel like we shouldn't be naive to the fact that that doesn't, it may serve you mentally in terms of feeding a craving, which can be beneficial within reason, but we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that this is nutritionally healthy for us. Like I'll, I'll, I'll eat Ben and Jerry's, but at the end of the day, I know that this, this isn't actually good for my body, right'm very aware of that it doesn't mean i'm i'm crying as i'm eating the ben and jerry's and i'm like i'm like oh i'm gonna get that no but i'm very aware that this is not good for me and i think that people like within the flexible dieting community there's trying to like shun that idea like oh man no don't demonize foods

you should understand though that that's not good right eat it but no yeah the uh over the weekend we tried like we just randomly picked up it's it was like a general so's cauliflower something something along with like the same flavoring chicken garden place no no no i wish fucking chinese fucking tea garden is amazing. If you're in Elk Grove, hit up Teagarden. Trying to get a sponsorship from them. I love how we go from... I know. Our mind drifts every time. Yeah. Let me find the name real quick.

We got stuck on Chinese food not too long ago again. I think it's time for us to obliterate a bunch of Chinese food. Let's just go to a Chinese buffet. I have a place. We have to hammer it. Fuck, where did it go uh pierre von der berg was like i love the podcast but i can't listen to it unless i'm close to my next meal and i'm like yeah i know we're the worst but anyway pierre vonderberg thank you very much my friend yeah uh and dude you can pronounce names very well too

i'm african brother i know but i'm saying like there's a lot of letters in some of those names right yeah but like you're super like i don't know dude but I'm saying, like, there's a lot of letters in some of those names, right? Yeah, but, like, you're super, like, I don't know, dude. Like, when I seen you, like, on your, like, TikToks, like, live ones, I was like, fuck, how did he get that? Like, that's a tough one. I'm doing simple names. I can't. Anyways, so we made this. It's, like, one of those, like, almost, like, already cooked, ready-to-go meals.

But, like, I looked at the macros, and'm like this is actually like not bad like it was a lot of protein not very much fat and the calories were decent cool let's eat it uh we ate that and then i had cereal after and i'm like yeah we're good like you know i'm not like eating too much the next day i like had a hangover like i felt like shit it was strange because like i was full of substance but there was like nothing there you know like it just i felt like shit and i was just like this is weird i got a headache the whole day like i just i yeah dude it was odd and i'm like okay so that that meal while in the moment yeah it was enjoyable but like it did nothing for me you know like maybe had a lot of weird ingredients your body's not used to yeah and probably just a shit ton of sodium like like i i salt everything so on top of it probably having a lot of sodium i put more salt because

i like the taste yeah but like it wasn't like pink himalayan salt right it was like msg or something like the good stuff right and you know i'm like yeah it just it how does it help how does it hurt and that hurt hurt a lot what about people talking about um i've seen some people on my tiktok saying um like all that diet seems miserable uh the omad yeah and then i also hear people saying i hear people and this is aboutAD, this is about intermittent fasting when I've done just kind of regular intermittent fasting and when I've done carnivore and even when I've done keto. And I think they bring up a halfway decent point about how if you are, so if you're consistently

and constantly doing things that you really don't want to do and you're not interested in them and you don't enjoy them, then yeah, that would make you miserable. But when you're leaning into things that you feel are in your best interest and that, and you kind of enjoy them, like I, I actually really don't think about not eating. I think about,

I think about the excitement that I'm going to have tonight when I get to go all in on a meal. Joe Rogan had someone on his podcast recently talking about psychedelics and the excitement that I'm going to have tonight when I get to go all in on a meal. Yeah. Um, Joe Rogan had someone on his podcast recently talking about psychedelics and this is a little off topic, but it's to kind of wrap your brain around a reinterpretation. So my interpretation of this OMAD diet is that, man,

I get to really buckle down and I get to eat a lot and I really enjoy that. And yes, uh, it gets to be a little annoying. Like right now it's kind of annoying because we're, you know, it's later on in the day and I haven't eaten yet and I probably won't get a chance to eat for another like four or five hours. So it kind of sucks, but I I'm not starving. I'm not on a deserted island, you know, but Joe Rogan had a guy talking about psychedelics the other day and he said how

veterans are using psychedelics for PTSD. And this guy through taking psychedelics, he recognized that his PTSD was a blessing rather than a curse. It's like, holy fuck, the same information that normally getting input into his brain about his PTSD, which would freak him out when he's driving and when he's doing this and that,

and it would really upset him and it would scare him and he'd cry and he'd be super upset. Now he views it as a blessing because he said, this is my body's way of remembering my friends. It's like, holy shit, man. You know,

like, so that's, that's through the use of psychedelics, right? But like, there has been a lot of other people in life who have redefined the way that they think about stuff without the use of drugs, without the aid of drugs. And I think that we all have an opportunity to kind of do that. that. If you're 50 pounds overweight and you've been overweight most of your adult life and you're just fucking sick of it, you're tired of it, you don't want to be in that position anymore, is it more miserable to stay the same and or continue to gain weight? Or is it more miserable to embark on something that might be challenging, that might end up serving you well, that might end up changing your life forever, that you may end up grabbing a hold of your health. It's kind of up to you on what's going to, you know, I cannot tell you what you're going to be interested in and what you're

going to enjoy, but I can tell you there's a lot of options. You don't have to do, you could scroll past me. You don't have to do OMAD. You don't have to do carnivore. There's a lot of different opportunities for you to find something that I think, in this case, if you really love food, it should be higher than once a day for most. But something that will make you the least amount, it will cause you the least amount of misery, you know, with like nurses and doctors, they say they're trying to cause no harm. You know, they're trying to make sure they don't like, don't fuck the person up any more than they already are. Right. That's kind of like a principle.

And I think with your diet, you know, try to find the diet that's going to cause you the least amount of angst, the diet that's going to cause you the least amount of misery. It doesn't have to be miserable in the end, but probably to get started, it's going to be a change and you're going to have to stop eating Kit Kats and peanut butter cups and ice cream and pizza and those things. So because of that, yeah,

it's going to feel like a wild change and it might feel a little bit miserable, but like I'm saying, it could be rather than it being miserable. It could be a blessing, you know, gosh, there's,

there's so much I won't even talk about here. First off, let me just mention, like I love, I have loved the evidence-based fitness community for, for a long time. Like I, you know, I worked with Alberto Nunez in 2015 and 3DMJ, all evidence-based stuff. And I looked, I read a lot of stuff from Lane Norton and Lyle McDonald or whatever, read all that shit.

And it's cool. I get it. And I used to be, I feel like there are a lot of these individuals within that realm that are focused on it because it's based off of the research and the evidence i get it it's dope it's great um that are just so close-minded and it when i when i when i hear them talk at times i'm just like bro could you shut the fuck up like honestly could you just could you just chill it for a second and this this is the reason why you know for example studies show that more even proteins during protein feedings during the day increase your muscle protein

synthesis which can be a little bit better for muscle growth over time cool i get it um but at the same time if someone chooses to have two feedings during the end of their day let's say two different meals do you really think that it's going to make that much of a difference in terms of the overall muscle that they're going to gain through the next few years? Let's say they're trying to lose weight or whatever they're trying to gain, but do you think it's going to make that big of a difference? Probably not. More so for an individual that's trying to get some control over their food, their response to hunger, two scenarios. Number one, I'm hungry. Okay, let me have my little meal real quick. Right. And I used to get frustrated when I felt hungry. I mean, you definitely do. Yeah. Hangry. Like, right. You used to get hangry. I can't remember the last time I was actually hangry or the last time that my feeling of hunger actually had an effect on my mood, on my mood. of hunger actually had an effect on my mood, on my mood. And that's because of the habit of fasting that I started doing a few years ago. I was able to literally give myself the repetitions of feeling

hungry, not reaching for food, feeling hungry, not reaching, feeling hungry, not reaching. Whereas now when I feel it, I'm like, I'm gonna eat later. I'm gonna be good. I'll be fine. Like you're not, what would you rather have? Would you rather like for the rest of your life? And you don't have to use fasting for this, by the way, I'm not saying that, but I'm saying I've seen this happen for a lot of people and for myself, but for the rest of your life, always have to respond to that feeling of hunger and have it affect the way you're feeling, how you act with other people during your day or have it not affect you at all. and you just have the freedom to eat when you want what you want like what what's better control or non-control right and that's why like again evidence-based practitioners when they look at the idea

or look at fasting whatever like the research says like no shut the fuck up like i don't care i care what the research says i do care but that doesn't need to rule the actions you take just because it goes against the grain of research get your thumb at your ass i'm sorry i think it's definitely like i think control is probably the number one thing and it's something that we talked about i think on some of the first podcasts that we've ever done together as a group we talked a bunch about control and we talked about it in jujitsu and in sports. Michael Jordan used to talk about how he felt he could control the game. He can control the ball. He can control the guy.

He said, I was a puppet master. I could control the guy that's guarding me. He can move them out of the way. That kind of stuff because of the skill set that he had. You can start to develop a stronger skill set with your food. You can move certain foods out of your way. They don't have to be part of everything all the time. I think that that would be a great place to start. Do you need to envision your life without these delicious foods forever?

No, I don't think there's any reason for that. What about taking a Jim Wendler approach to it, where Wendler was like, I'm going to lose, you know, one pound a month. Like shit, man. Like if you're 50 pounds overweight and you lose one pound a month, you'll be down 12 pounds by the end of the year. Like that's going to have a significant impact that you're going to look different. You'll look better and so forth down the road and you'll get to your goal at some point. Um, but you're also by doing that, you're not pulling against what you're used to so much. You're not changing everything. You're not, you know, for you to, um,

have jumped into jujitsu or for me to have jumped into bodybuilding, it wasn't too crazy of a leap. We've been doing different sports our whole life. We've been interested in these different things. So it wasn't too, too wild for us to get into. And you just take your time to, you try to get into it and you try to, let me, let me see what this is all about.

It took me like, it took me like two months. It took me like right up until the show. I didn't even really know how to get a pump all that. Well, I kind of knew I sort of knew. Cause you know from lifting for years but I didn't really know how to do like a bodybuilding workout which in the end I just learned that it didn't matter that much but I didn't I didn't really know how to flex certain muscles like I could get pumps

before but I couldn't flex certain muscles a certain way to get the muscle really engorged with blood. So it's all, anything that you're doing, anything that's going to be new, it's going to be a learning process. There's kind of, you need to baby step your way in. But these are all things that you don't really, you're not going to see scientific studies on this side of things. You're not going to see scientific studies that are, I mean, we'll occasionally see stuff where they talk about the importance of sleep and they talk about how it can be related to cravings, how it can be related to your blood sugar. And a lot of that information is really useful and really helpful.

But let's not rule out the fact that information that is really, really simple and easy to comply to, that stuff is fantastic as well. It can be really, really simple sometimes. Something as, you have a hard time with food, let's examine your meal frequency. Let's just have you, like, people want to blame the food pyramid and people want to blame as many different things as they can. But if you follow the food pyramid, you'd probably be in pretty good shape. No one actually follows anything. They don't have, you need to have some kind of rules and those rules will help you to have control. If you ate bread every day, I don't think any one of the three of us thinks that bread is going to quote unquote make you fat. Nope.

If you ate cheese every day, I don't think any one of the three of us would think cheese is going to make you fat. If you were to eat pizza every day, if you were to have ice cream every day, like none of these things actually make you fat. It's you have to kind of understand that it's going to be the abundance of these things. Then you have to apply it to yourself though because can ice cream make you fat fuck yeah it can it can make you really fat it can make you really fat if if if you're someone that has a hard time with control some people don't even like like my wife doesn't really like ice cream that much so she can have like she likes it she'll like ice cream that much. So she can have like, she likes it. She'll have like two spoonfuls of it.

She'll be like, oh, it's pretty good. Yeah. And she'll walk away from it. What? I know she's an alien. She can actually do that with anything. She can do that with any food. Yeah.

Yeah. She's, you know, people are just different, but you need to, you need to know yourself and then you need to know the information that you're taking in. If you like carbohydrates and you feel like you don't even want to examine what that would look like to not eat carbs, you don't have to have a diet that doesn't have any carbs in it. But you might need to look into how much refined, processed carbohydrates you're eating, because maybe that's something that's leading you to overeat. carbohydrates you're eating because maybe that's something that's leading you to overeat no i was just gonna say like i i again i mentioned earlier but i'm i'm that way with cereal i'm like i'm just gonna have a bowl i'm gonna have another bowl yeah and i'll get to three and i'm like fuck i did it again i think i'm gonna go for another one like i just i get

to a point where i'm like, I already had this much. Like, and I, I think that's like a terrible mindset. Like, Oh, like I messed up on, I fell off the wagon.

So the rest of the day is ruined. But when I get that far in, I'm like, I'm just going to keep going until I get sick. So that way I'm tired of this shit. And that's not the best thing to do. I have a lot of room to like, you know,

I can do that, but that's where it goes for me. So I have to be extremely careful with cereal. Ice cream, I'm cool. I can, yeah, I make my own ice cream. You probably just look at it now sometimes and you're like, it's just not worth it. Yeah, absolutely. I'm not going to eat the one bowl because I know it's going to be five bowls. Yeah. It's going to be a whole box. You want to say something else? I'm just going to say that, but that's my Ben and Jerry's. like that's i'd rather go to that than ice cream because i know i can make ice cream better for me yeah

you know i i there okay there's a few things that well we'll talk about it on another podcast but yeah you guys have watched the mandalorian you saw that little alien you would like the mandalorian you said that before i just no you would like it star wars were you about to say trek i have to make sure i say the right one because i don't want to get flamed by the live viewers yeah yeah the fucking live chat's going crazy right now even if you don't like star wars, you would like the Mandalorian. I know. I know that you would like it. I know that you would dig it.

It's fun. Yes. So I watched the first episode where our boy Tate Fletcher gets killed. Yeah. And I watched it because of that. I wanted to see him. And then I was like, that was cool. But I don't know.

I'm in a weird spot right now where literally everything is boring. It sucks. It must be that low fat. It could be. No, I'm messing with your life. It absolutely could be that. It could be like his new jackness. You know, he's jacked, right?

So like now, like nothing's fucking exciting to him. He's like, I'm fucking yoked. That's so strange. I'm like cleaning the mirrors all the time now. Like maybe that's because like I see myself. Your TV is always off so you can see your own reflection. Yeah. You're just mirroring yourself to the TV.

Oh, God. But OK. So for all the live viewers who have probably seen The Mandalorian because y'all are dope. Nobody cares. Yeah. Remember the guy who's like, this is the way? Absolutely. or dope and nobody cares yeah um there's remember the guy who's like this is the way absolutely right i think that we need to like whenever we have like we talk about different nutritional approaches for some reason certain people will listen to what we say right and they'll they'll be like we're saying this is the way right that like we're like it's a way it is a way like this is a way of doing said things. And I feel like if we can all understand that there are so many different ways to get to a specific destination, like there, there's so many different diets.

There's so many different workouts. We had Doug Brignoli on. Okay. He has movements that he loves. And then you see the comments and people are like, this is the way this is like, guys, guys, this is a way. There's so many people who have achieved the same thing that Doug has doing different movements. Right. So you got to understand we're talking about all this and we're just kind of trying to show you guys different ways of doing something. Might some of those ways go and start contrast to what we see in studies.

Yeah. But for some reason, it manages to work and manages to work really well for people. So just, just, just kind of shift the mindset a little bit and just understand that you can try it. It's a way, if it doesn't work for you for a certain period of time, get rid of it and try another way that we talk about. You also have Doug Brignoli, right? And then you also have Mike O'Hearn, right? And like, uh, training with Mike and hearing him describe stuff. So I think that people would think, oh, like, you know, compared to Doug Brignoli or compared to some of these exercise scientists, Mike wouldn't know anything. And it's like, no, you're making a huge mistake. Mike may or may not. I don't even I have never even really talked to him about these specifics because we realize how,

uh, marginal it is. It doesn't really matter. It doesn't, it doesn't matter that when you test your quads, that they may only be activated 30% when you squat it. What are, what are we trying to figure out?

We're trying to figure out what's going to lend itself to allow you to grow big quads. Squats can be very helpful. What if we're to find out that doing a goblet squat on a slant board activates the quads more? Well, let's just hypothetically just say that it's 60%. Charles Poliquin was all about that too, by the way. Right. Slant board squats. Yeah. Say that doing a goblet squat activates the quad 60% more. Just hypothetical. What if both parties are right?

Because what if you can get some really good exercise done in some really great ways without overloading the spine, without crushing yourself, without making yourself three inches shorter by doing the goblet squat. And you can get great mobility from it, great range of motion from it. And what if the benefit of doing an actual squat is the very benefit or the very thing that Doug Bregnoli was maybe preaching against a bit, hey, you don't really need to do that exercise because you probably need to load it up with too much weight to get the results that you want. But if we can load the thing up, if we can load this stick that's made for us to lift with a bunch of wheels on it, and we could put two plates on there, three plates on there, maybe four plates on there,

well, that is going to have tremendous benefits on our entire body. And what if we're like, yeah, okay, it's only 30%, but it's 30% of 600 pounds as opposed to 60% of a 72 pound kettlebell. You kind of see like where I'm getting at here. And I know like Doug would, would have, you know, things explaining against that. But I think both sides have great points. And I think that we should gather information from anywhere that we can and everywhere that we can. But I am going to always, me personally, and maybe it's a fault of mine, I am going to always lean towards the Michael Hearns.

I'm going to always lean towards those men and those women that are actually doing it on a consistent basis. The amount of people that he's reached, the amount of people he's communicated with, I don't really care about your degrees. I don't really care about, the science can be important and it can be helpful. I mean, there's no reason, there's absolutely no reason for us to side up one way or the other. I'm just saying for me personally, probably because I'm a meathead, I tend to be overly influenced by the kind of meathead mentality. And even sometimes what people would consider to be bro science, you know, I, I don't even, I don't even really find bro science to be wrong.

It kind of reminds me of when people say functional movement. I'm like, what's, I'm like, what's a functional, show me a movement that's not functional. Like, oh, like a, you know, tricep kickback or something. That's not going to equate to you being better on the mat or something. And it's like, it's not why I'm doing a tricep kickback, you idiot. I'm doing it like to get a pump in my tricep, you know, doing it to build up a bigger muscle because a bigger muscle can potentially be a stronger muscle. Or maybe you're doing it to kind of reconfigure and work the tendons and ligaments and have them be strong. So there's just, it's ridiculous to me when it comes to nutrition science, how people want to consistently stick all the nutrition science stuff right in your face.

And you're like, my personal belief on it is that we do not need and i know people get upset but i don't i don't think that we need any nutritionist to tell us that a lot of the foods that have been invented and created in the last 100 200 years are not great for us and that we should lean towards eating whole foods i i don't i think they should be out of work, really, truthfully. But they have a job because these damn foods are addicting and we've tried them in the first place and we know how good they taste. And so we keep ending up at Chinese food, Ben and Jerry's, and cereal. Yeah, you just got to have, what is it, a Diet Coke after sugar.

It wipes it right out. It cancels it out, right? That's how it goes. sugar so it wipes it right out it cancels it out right that's how it goes uh he brought up doug brignoli and like dude i am finding a lot of success with his movements and his his training philosophy and i i love it i'm having a just a hell of a time in the gym um but one of the comments on one of the videos that we put up was, um, Doug Brignoli's talking about science and you guys are talking about just bro science. And a part of me,

like I couldn't formulate how I wanted to respond, but I wanted to be like, well, well, yeah, I'd rather it be bro science. Like some of the, we bros.

Yeah. But also like, who do, who do I want to look like? Yeah. I want to, I mean, Doug Brignoli is an amazing,

she looks amazing. If I can look like him at his, fuck at any age yeah i'm gonna be he's doing it yeah he's out there doing it but you know you brought up michael hearn and it's like yeah do you like like i want to be like those guys you know like the the bodybuilders because they have that shit figured out and they didn't go to school for any of it right or some of them i guess you know like lane norton did go to school and he's fucking jacked. He's jacked and strong. And he's smart. But like a lot of the bro science is what really got everybody here.

And I mean, they got the title bro science because it's, it was just a bunch of bros talking about how they got jacked and it works. And it's also just like, it's not boring. That's why I'm like, yeah, I'd rather be a bro science fucking expert.

Look, Jay Cutler was doing really well before he ever met honey. Right. Yep. He was, what was he doing? He's figuring out his own. Yeah.

Went to the gym. Guys like John Cena, uh, guys like myself, just like going to the gym when you're young and SEMA, same thing. Just, just trying to just figuring it out i don't really

remember having like uh what i was when i started power lifting we had a team uh and we had someone that kind of would give us some of the workouts and stuff but like i didn't even really follow those half the time i just i just would lift And I was like, I learned quickly that like the form and technique was a big attribute. And so, um, by being around other power lifters, it wasn't so much about having programming laid out for me, but it was also more about like,

okay, one of the first things that I learned was that the, the weight on the bar dictates the reps and or the reps that you're asked to do can dictate the weight that you put on the bar. And the repetitions should always look similar. Your last rep should look a lot like your first rep. And not only that, the last rep of your last set should look like the first rep of your first set that i don't i don't remember seeing like a study on that per se but that fucking helped a lot and that's and i've done that the rest of my the rest of my lifting career no matter what uh lift i was trying to do and i

still lift that way the top lifters andre milanichev i've heard this from ed cohen and you see a lot of like the top lifters talk about this shouldn't be failing things especially in the gym like you see a lot of videos of people going for attempts failing this is highly controversial right now about like going to failure and so like the the going to failure on like bicep curls tricep pushdowns or whatever. Cool. Sometimes. Because if you go to failure too often, it's going to first like, you're going to fatigue that muscle group too much.

And then your next sets, you can't do nearly what you were doing before. So overall your volume in that session's cut, but especially with compound movements, like you shouldn't be going for loads that you're not sure that you can move. Going to failure on a machine, going to failure on incline dumbbell press is way different than going to

failure on a bench, squat, deadlift, clean and jerk overhead press, bent on a row. Yeah. Yeah. And this is the thing when you're young,

like you, you want to, you want to test, you want to figure out how strong you are, but if you can, if you can build within your mind that, that the the the concept of when i do my compound movements i am not going to touch a weight that i'm not pretty sure i'm going to be able to come out of the hole with if it's a squat or lift off

the ground if it's a deadlift not going to do it right andre malanichev i think didn't he say that um what was it like like for your first few years of training, you should build a base of volume and you shouldn't go over 70%? Or was that somebody else? You shouldn't worry about three reps or less in your first, I forgot how many years. Three years. Three years. Your first three years. Yeah.

And we heard a similar message from Wendler who was saying not only do some of the novice people he works with, but some of the veteran people that he works with, and even some of the more advanced people he works with, everyone does really, really well in like a 60 to 70% range. Now, there could be reasons to go outside of that here and there, of course, but I would say the bulk of your training should probably be somewhat within those percentages. And then they go and they hit PRs at meets, right? And again, there's a lot of different training styles, but I think that that's a very smart way to go about things along with giving a lot of longevity. But this is the thing, when Wendler's talking about that, okay, people are going to 70%, but there is a lot of different types of accessories that are surrounded around

these movements to help the lifter get stronger over time they're not touching 95 loads or 90 loads almost ever until they hit the platform right and and that sounds crazy to some power lifters but it's very possible to do in your opinion what like why not go for those what what does what's what's the negative of going for those bigger weights too often and and training too much volume and those kinds of things too often? So let's first talk about intensity. Intensity being that percentage that we're talking about. That percentage of your one rep mass. Has nothing to do with our music that we're cranking?

Or headbutt in the bar? No. No, it doesn't. Yeah. Let's say that like, you know, let's say you could squat 500 pounds, right? let's say you could squat 500 pounds, right? If you're often in training like every few weeks or every week you're hitting like 470, 480, et cetera, for your CNS, that is very fatiguing.

A lot of people will find that they hit that percentage of their max during that week. The next few days, they kind of feel a little bit run down. They don't have a drive for training. They feel a little bit weaker. And you can kind of adapt yourself to moving more intensity over time. But a lot of times it kind of shoots you in the foot because you're just getting so beat up and like, it's not, it doesn't lead to you being able to have longevity, especially like before meat. Right.

So a lot of lifters, like they'll train far away from that like maybe again max being 500 pounds maybe they'll work with at most during their meat prep or whatever with 450 450 for like a triple right um and then they'll go and express their one rep max skill on the platform but it's it's it's just too fatiguing for a lot of people and i don't think a lot of people realize that because they see so many other people on instagram on social always going for these really really slow hard squat reps or heavy singles on deadlifts and it looks dope it looks super cool um but it's just like it i personally don't think it's worth it i think it's like literally like pulling you down you know um it's uh it's more weight around your

waist every single time you do that you know uh ron penna has talked about uh when you're sleep deprived um how for every hour that you're for every hour that you become sleep deprived, it's like throwing a brick in a backpack that you have to wear around all day. And when you lift heavy, you can kind of view it as being the same thing. That's cool. Okay. You lifted heavy. Your body's like, great. Well, we'll respond to that. Uh, you know what? Um, we saw the 500 pound deadlift that you did. Congratulations. That was fantastic. We're going to get right to it. But then three days later you do 500 again and your body's like, yo, I thought I told you like I was going to get around to that, but like we haven't even really done it yet. And you keep

throwing more bricks in the backpack, more bricks, more bricks. And you're just, all your function, your sleep gets compromised. Your eating might get compromised. Your general thought process, like everything starts to get compromised. So we're not thinking about things for, I do understand the idea of like, yeah, I'm just going to fucking throw down today. Like I get it. Like I have always loved doing that. But it's important that when you do that, that you say, where am I going to be at in three days from now? Where am I going to be at a week from now? Where am I going to be at in three weeks

from now and three months from now? What are the consequences of doing, am I doing this the right way? Like just asking yourself, am I doing it the right way? Okay. Actually, it seems like the 500 is really stacking up on itself. And now I really do feel kind of worn down. I do feel worn out after doing it for six weeks. Cause if you're young, you might be able to do it for a while. I've been doing it for six weeks straight, but I'm not really noticing much improvement.

And that's when we'll see the comments online. People are like, yo, am I deadlift stuck at 500 pounds? I've been doing it every week for two months. Touch it that often. Yo. And you're like,

dude, you're a savage. Like that's fantastic that you're able to do that every week. and you're able to get in the gym like that and do that. But man, if we just go down to you doing 400 for maybe two weeks, I bet that 500 will fly off the ground or might end up with a new PR if we can just pull, figure out a way to pull back. But much like we've talked about before with the nutrition, your training can pull against you too. Like if your nutrition is too tight, if you're too tied in with your nutrition, you could have so many rules to your nutrition and you could think that so many different things make you fat that you're kind of perpetually getting kind of worn down by your diet because you don't have enough nutrients

in your diet. It's not nourishing you. You're missing something in your diet. And we see this with people that under eat and we see this with people that overeat because sometimes when you're overeating, you might be eating highly processed foods that don't have much nutrient density to them. They don't have a lot of micronutrients. They might be even missing certain macronutrients that you might need like protein, like in a thing of Chex Mix, there's not going to be a lot of micronutrients. They might be even missing certain macronutrients

that you might need, like protein. Like in a thing of Chex Mix, there's not going to be a lot of protein in there. It's just going to be mainly carbohydrates. So these are all things that over time they pull on you and pull on you and pull on you. And we see so many people are like, man, I'm not, like I was hoping I would be a little leaner by now. I was hoping I'd be a little bit further along. And it's like, well, you keep kind of overtraining and you keep missing your sleep and you keep, you're not self-sabotaging yourself every single night with bad food because you're depressed necessarily, because you hate yourself necessarily, or because you think you're, you just can't figure out diet. you're, uh, you just can't figure out diet. It's probably most like, I mean, there's a bunch of reasons on why these things can happen, but most likely it's probably a physical situation that's pulling you down. That's dragging you down that you're not even paying attention to.

So if you just tweak that a little bit, I mean, my brother and I, we were training today and I said, how pulled back has our training been in the last couple of weeks? And he's like, he's like, it's been great. He's like, I feel, I feel awesome. I said, if people saw these full workouts, I don't think they would know what to think. Cause sometimes I might just go backwards and forward with the sled, do a little shoulder stuff and boom, I'm out.

And that's again, where people bring up the PEDs are like, well, it's, you know, but it's like, again, I've been doing, doing this stuff for a really long time. But my point here is just that when you can get yourself to a certain level, when you know how to manage your stress, you know how to manage your overall output every single day, this stuff gets to be a whole lot simpler. But if you are trying to lift heavy all the time, or if you're trying to do anything too great at any one time, it doesn't start out with trying to be great. Don't even try to be great. Just work on being consistent. Consistency will lead you to being good. And then eventually other people will tell you that you're ripped or other people will tell you that you're great. That's going to be the judge, but you keep your head down, just like we said, or just like Jim Wendler said on the show,

head down step by step. You keep walking. Someone's like, dude, what are you doing different? You look amazing. You're like, huh?

What are you talking to me? You're like, you barely even know. Cause you've been spending all your time, uh, you know, working, but working in an optimal and reasonable way.

If there was anything that I could suggest to people, as far as the biggest mindset for biggest mindset there's a few things but one thing that's gonna make the whole process of transforming your body or any your body an easier thing it's to focus on your performance and whatever it is that you're doing in the gym or jujitsu or running or whatever it is focus on getting better as far as your performance is concerned, moving more volume, getting stronger over time, obviously being patient with that, and then focus on your nutrition.

Stop focusing on your body and stop focusing on your body fat. Obviously, this is something that we do need to pay attention to, and it's a very tough ask. What I'm asking you guys to do is very difficult not to focus on how your body's looking right now. But the thing is, the reason why I say that is if you're focused on your performance, et cetera, in the gym, you're obviously going to start doing things that you're more interested in.

You're obviously going to be focusing on your training and everything's going to yield there. But the thing is, is that focusing on your training and your nutrition and having that be your focus outside of your rushing your body as far as losing body fat or rushing your body as far as gaining muscle is that by improving in this realm of nutrition and training, your body's going to come. It's going to come. At the end of the day, it's going to take years. It's going to take time, but it's going to come. By focusing on your performance and your nutrition, right? Those are two things that are very tangible that you can learn more about, that you can improve about over time, mobility, flexibility, strength, muscle, et cetera. Those things are going to yield the biggest difference

for the long run for the rest of your life because at a certain point like you're not going to be all focused on your body because it's going to be there but the thing that's going to always continue changing is the way you train right like like at this point for me i'm not focused on my body i'm always just focused on what can i what kind of different stimulus can I get in the gym? What can I different type of thing? Can I improve at that? Maybe it's a weakness in the gym.

And by improving at that thing, my body changes in a certain way. I wasn't even focused on trying to change it. Right. So figure out a way to do something in the gym that you're interested in, that you actually like doing, that you actually like improving and learning about. Cause then that, that, that's going going to just your body's going to come and you think performance doesn't matter remember what jim wendler said he said uh you're uh you know versus looking at your body versus performance he's like if you don't think performance matters ask the last girl you slept with. That's right. Like, ba-doom, shh.

That's pretty good. Yeah. So I'm remembering. Or for the woman in the audience, the last man you slept with. Whatever. We can't say that. You can't say that. I don't think we can.

You got to delete. Maybe rewind. Cancel? We're live and we have over 100 people watching, so I'm stoked. Yeah, so thank you, everybody that's on the live feed right now hopefully you don't cancel us but i'm remembering it was a suggestion i don't think it was like yeah i think we're okay but i'm remembering where some of this uh off-air conversation was when we were coming up with like you know a couple of different um podcast topic ideas but i was saying that i you know because i need stuff to measure how on my body weight is we'll

just say like i need the scale to tell me like oh should i overate or i underate but when you had pointed out like we'll just focus on the performance did you perform well then you probably didn't eat enough or you know if you performed well then you got enough nutrition your balance and stuff but you're right dude as soon as i see some of the definition coming in i'm like okay we're gonna keep going down this road but then i have a bad training session like no no i'll be fine i'll be fine and then it's like no okay i gotta go the other way and i'm like oh the definition's gone like no no we gotta go back we gotta go back so it's like yeah fine line yeah it's it's back. So it's like, yeah. It's a fine line, yeah. It's, yeah, it's not stressful.

It's a little stressful. That's not the right word, though. Challenging. Challenging, yeah, definitely challenging to accept like, okay, I'm not going to be shredded, you know, by this date or whatever. But if I just hold here, I hodl, as we would say in crypto world. In crypto, yes. But if I just hold here, I hodl, as we would say in the crypto world. In crypto, yes.

If I hodl for a little bit, then, yeah, my body comp will change at 185, which is an insane thought. Like, I never would have thought I'd be able to do that. But it is really freaking hard when you haven't had it for a long enough time to, like, you know, be like, yeah, that was cool. Because I'll hear people say, like say like oh abs aren't everything it's like but if you've had them for a very long time they're probably not everything but when you've only had for a short period of time you put a lot of emphasis on it a lot of weight this is okay this is i don't want to make this comparison but it'll make sense and nothing else another metaphor isn't coming to my mind um when it comes to like, you know, people becoming millionaires, right? And creating a business or learning about something and starting to make a lot of money.

That usually takes a lot of years, takes a lot of trial and error, takes a lot of ups and downs and failing. And then finally you get to that point of money and wealth. Right now, as far as your body's concerned, you're at a point of money and wealth. Not literally money and wealth, but like as far as your body's concerned. you're at a point of money and wealth, not, not literally money and wealth, but like, as far as your body's concerned, but, but, but, but what did it take? Like you had a lot of stages where you didn't have abs. You had a lot of stages where you didn't look the best. I had a lot of stages where I didn't have abs, where I didn't, wasn't shredded. And I stayed there for, I was there for a while, just focusing on training, getting stronger. That's it. And then slowly over for, I was there for a while, just focusing on training, getting stronger.

That's it. And then slowly over time, I got myself to a point where this is the norm, but this was not the norm in the beginning. It took a lot of patience. It took a lot of not focusing on the body and focusing on the training and focusing on the nutrition and habits to get here. I think for me personally, if I was to ever focus on, if I ever focused on making money to get to where I'm at now, I would never have made it.

So I think, I also think that there's a misconceptions about making lots of money. I don't think you need to make nearly as much as people think. I think people throw out the millionaire thing quite a bit. And almost anything that you're working towards or anything that you're working for, you will always realize how different it is once you get there. So what I mean by that is like I did the math one time and I was like, it's $23.50 or whatever., I did the math one time and I was like, it's 2350 or whatever.

They make it, I forget what the math is exactly. You got to make 2,350 bucks a day, uh, you know, to equal approximately a million dollars or whatever. And when I started to work my way towards that, I was like, well, wait a second. Like, you know, generating a million dollars in sales doesn't make me a millionaire necessarily. Like what would make me a millionaire? Like is, you know, uh,

if the company's profits are a million dollars, does that make me a millionaire? Like, not really. Cause you know, having a million dollars in the bank, you know, okay,

now we can probably say, but my point being is like, as you start to become a Brazilian jujitsu black belt or any of these things, or as someone starts to get jacked or have abs or any of these things, they still realize, man, there's many, many levels to all this. And then you also recognize it doesn't really matter that much. It mattered to you, which is cool because it's nice to have goals. It's nice to have, uh, it's nice to have things to look forward to.

When you have a goal, you can kind of think about that quite often and you can say, that'll be really, really nice when I'm able to kind of get to that. But once you do get to that thing, it's really rare that anyone's really, truly pumped about it or really, truly all that satisfied. You're only as happy as you make up your mind to be you know so you're not going to be any happier um i've been happy throughout almost all of my life like i've been just i've been very fortunate i have a great family um and man i can think back to the power lifting days and I can think back to some of the fun stuff that I ate during those times and the fun times that I've had with people. But that wasn't more fun than right now.

And right now isn't more fun than back then. Like back then was great because there was like a lot of unknowns. It's like, I don't know if I have enough gas in my car to get to the fucking gym today. You know, you guys heard my wife kind of talking a little bit about my history. But like, you know, there was times where I didn't have a license. I didn't have insurance. I didn't have a car and I'd still figure out a way to drive. Like, just like, I don't know, just stupid shit where I just wasn't on top of things. I had bad credit, all these things, but I was never like, all right, I need to invent something something so i don't have bad credit anymore or i need to

make something so that i can uh be really really wealthy and then kind of similar stuff with the physique stuff i wasn't like all right i'm done with power lifting now it's time to be ripped or it's time to get abs it was more like well let me start to take off a couple layers here kind of see what happens with that i'll tell you know defat myself a bunch and then now over the last couple years it's been like okay this is kind of neat let me see if i can be in kind of bodybuilding shape without it feeling like i'm killing myself and it's just they're just fun goals it's not going to make any difference uh no one's going to care i barely care you know if i if i have striated glutes uh just randomly for no reason like

no one's gonna care or i probably won't even say anything just i don't know just work towards it just to give myself something to do absolutely absolutely that's why i think um that's why i think powerlifting though is a really good thing for someone who does want to transform their body because, um, it gives them a, it gives them a sport goal to focus on while improving in the gym. Cause I can totally understand how, how bodybuilding ends up being a tough training process for people because bodybuilding is literally body building.

You are now focused on making your biceps bigger, your chest bigger, and you're so body focused, right? It's like, how can we figure out, how can we figure out a way to utilize bodybuilding, to utilize powerlifting, um, and just set our goals in there and improve in there so that we can, the byproduct of the body, like we don't really worry about that right and i was thinking about this because you know competing in a bodybuilding show isn't okay it's it's great i did a lot of bodybuilding shows i work with people who do bodybuilding shows it's great but it can yield to a lot of short-term mentalities as far as you're transforming your body is concerned yeah because like you know you cut for a show for like 20 weeks, whatever, and now you bulk,

but you want to get lean again as soon as possible. So you don't give yourself that much time to gain muscle and you just cut again the next year and your body isn't really changing that much over time, right? If you have to cut all the time getting so lean, right? And then it can also lead you to trying to hold on to a body that you have no reason to hold on to. That's so lean and you don't feel good and your performances in the crapper. It's like it's like, what can we do that that can allow us to just focus on what we're doing in there without bad habits as far as our body's concerned? Right. So I think for some people people it is literally enjoying the process of training

in the gym and finding something else that you'd like. I found jujitsu and lifting like those things work really well for me and their performance based. And it doesn't, I don't focus on my body with all those things. I just want to move better through walking around. I want to feel good all the time. And those things help me feel really good. I think you got to figure out what those things are for you. I think money and your body are very similar in a lot of ways. I think, you know, focusing singularly on money can be a mistake, especially in the beginning. Your money, though, can work for you just like your body can work for you. If you treat your body properly and you have the proper training and you build up your body the right way and you have a good amount of

muscle mass and you have less body fat on you. Now your body, you know, your body's going to be burning calories for you. Your body's going to be working for you. When you run into people that are wealthy, they may say stuff where you're like, man,

that's like it. What they're saying sounds so frustrating to you where you're like, man, that's like it, what they're saying sounds so frustrating to you. Like, cause here I am working for every paycheck and I got to trade my, my time for every dollar that I make. And if I don't, if I literally don't show up to work, I don't get paid, but somebody that's already making money or somebody that has made maybe some financial sacrifices in other areas to invest in something, or they had an invention or they had, you know, something that can make money, they may talk about making money while they sleep. Whereas the same thing could be happening for the person that's, you know, now 10% body fat, their body is going to be burning

calories all the time, more calories than someone that would be a similar body weight that had a higher body fat percentage. So the correlations are very similar. And when it comes to people working towards wanting to be successful or wanting to be entrepreneurs or wanting to make a lot of money, If your focus is again, and the same thing as in SEMA mentioned, if it's on performance, I think you can't go wrong. Now,

performance could be made up in many different ways. You could be a high level performer on Tik TOK and you can make money. You've got a high level performer on YouTube and you can be a high level performer on Tik TOK and you can make money. You've got a high level performer on YouTube and you can be a high level gamer. It could be in whatever particular thing that you, that you find, find interesting. Or another way of doing it is just to provide value.

How do you provide value to people? And then how do you scale that? Well, you can create a product and then you can sell it. What if you don't, what if you feel like you can't necessarily create a product? What you can sell it. What if you don't, what if you feel like you can't necessarily create a product? What if you're like, well, I don't know, I'm not really an inventor. But what if there's just products that you really enjoy, that you really like, that have helped you get to a certain spot or get to a certain place? Are there things,

I mean, you could just keep running down the list of things, but if you're thinking about not making money, but how you can serve people, this would be great for everybody to know about this product because it's going to be that much, that much more beneficial to them. You're just always trying to think, how do I add value? What are some other ways I can create opportunities in the workplace I'm already in? And even beyond that, kind of lastly, finishing on that, anyone that has a job, it's always wise to just look for potential other options. You should always be looking for this. Look for potential other options for multiple revenue streams, but always like, it doesn't not going to hurt you to make an extra five grand at the end of the year.

It's going to be helpful. I like that comparison of like muscle and money. Money isn't like muscle is money because like, you know, the more muscle you have, I hate to say this, like, and it's not like you're getting away with things, but the more you can spend time eating maybe things that aren't most optimal for you.

And it's actually, it's a very interesting thing because whenever, people probably ask you this all the time or say this to you, you must be on a really rough diet, right? Do you get that a lot? Oh, yeah. it's miserable they think they think what i do is miserable yeah like i always get this from people they're like oh you must be so strict with what you eat or you you must be like your nutrition must be and my like i do eat whole foods or whatever but like i don't feel like i'm on a diet ever ever ever. It's like, it doesn't feel that way. I'm on a diet. Yeah. Like even a day where I eat a meal, I don't feel miserable or whatever.

It's like, it's like, I think that when you're, when you don't have nutritional habits in check and let's say you're not eating a lot of whole foods, let's say you're drinking soda, liquid calories, et cetera. You don't realize how bad you feel until you start actually eating well and feeling better and then when you do revert back to that you're like oh whoa this was how i was navigating the world for so long like this is like i didn't feel like total crap really like what's awful like andrew you mentioned your food hangover man if like like there was a time i think a few weeks ago when i actually had like a soda and i was so tired after like i was like so like it knocked me

down in terms of like how much energy i had for the next few hours i was like oh so this is that shit feels have either one of you guys ever drank like all day drank like alcohol yeah hell no you see i know people who do that you ever like you know gone out on like a boat at like noon drank and then like went to a party like you ever do ever do that in your life nah i know people who have no but nah man absolutely multiple occasions yeah so i did this with my in-laws when we went to New Orleans. I thought I was going to fucking die. It was like impossible. It was by far the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life.

Sorry. I did do that in Vegas with my ex once. Yeah. When we went to Vegas, they're like, fuck it. I felt like shit. Yeah. It felt awful, right? Yeah.

Yeah. I was just kind of eating whatever and drinking whatever. And, um, usually like once a year or so I'll have about, I'll have a week where I take off of like a diet where I, I literally just try not to think too much about the food I'm eating. There's usually some rules surrounding it somewhere along the lines. Cause if I don't have any rules, I might gain 50 pounds in a week. I don't know.

But, uh, I try to just kind of eat whatever. But what I found is After doing that for like two or three years That even needs To have some rules to it otherwise I feel like crap like I'm like alright

I'll wake up have a breakfast burrito I have a breakfast burrito and then by Like I'll have it at nine or something Like that by like 1130 I'm like falling asleep on the couch like And I feel gross like i feel like all that oil kind of turned in my stomach say you're like always like a weird sweat like coming out but it's oil like seepage yeah anal leakage yeah there you go yeah and it feels awful and that's like

just midday and then i'm like okay well i want to eat this at lunch and then i want to eat this and it's like just doesn't work. So even with that, I had to just have, okay, I'm only going to have one meal. That's going to be like a little off plan. Rest of the time, I'll just eat what I normally eat because this other stuff makes me feel better. Yeah. Yeah.

And this is, this is another thing. Like you, you gotta, when you're trying to make that nutritional change, when you're trying to focus on eating whole foods or whatever, this is why I think it is important that like you are a little bit strict initially because you need to give yourself time to build that nutritional change when you're trying to focus on eating whole foods or whatever. This is why I think it is important that you are a little bit strict initially because you need to give yourself time to build that habit. Because I have heard this so much where people are like, they switch their stuff up. I have such good energy, et cetera, right? And then they kind of inch back into that realm where they have those foods or whatever. But because they haven't built the habit of eating in a certain way, even though they

feel great and they know they feel so great, this other thing is still so appealing that they're, they will sacrifice that feeling of good for the, the, the feeling they get from like the extra alcohol, the extra bad food, all of that, even though they physically don't feel the same as when they were eating

better. So you got to give yourself that time in that zone of eating good so that this is the new normal. So that when you do have those times, when you go back and say you have a day where you drink quite a bit or whatever, you notice how shitty you feel. Right.

And you literally want to get out of that. You don't want to do that again because that, that is the former habit and it takes a while to break that habit. And that's something you've been doing for a minute. Even if you do some good stuff for a little bit,'s still the baseline right and you're you're always trying like even if you're not aware you're always trying to go back to that baseline and and the baseline is always it's continually getting better all the time so yeah it's always going to lead to better things yeah it is strange like um somebody who isn't on a um i'll say a clean food diet when

they do try to eat something healthy and there's like oh that made my stomach hurt i can't can't do that like wait what like hold on but then yeah it's like the flip side of like you know us eating some some shoes that's where i started when i first came out of like power lifting i would eat like pretty much just like meat and stuff like that and like my stomach would just kill me and i was like i need to eat vegetables and like i just it was probably a lot of it had to do with vegetables more so than anything else but like i remember like it would be maybe a week into it or so and i would just you know i would be on the toilet all the time and um i also remember just like just not not feeling great and I remember talking to other people, but I remember talking like Burdick about it.

He's like, this is like detoxifying probably like you're probably like so much junk shit coming out of your body right now that that's probably why it's like. And then also too, I think maybe there's a little bit of a chemical addiction to some of the stuff, you know, some of these foods. And that you start to wean away from that and that makes you maybe not feel so great. Yeah, absolutely. Like, I mean, your gut does change. Like your gut biome does change with the diet that you do, right? So it wouldn't be surprising that like potentially foods that actually are good for you, you don feel so great eating them initially right you know because maybe you're just like not used to digesting that type of stuff often because you don't eat it you mainly eating a lot of processed crap yeah like if you

have like a super heavy high protein meal you know or like there's like over 100 grams of protein that protein bomb will jack you up if you're not used to it. Yeah. I've had some, some awesome breakfast. This is that have had like over a hundred grams of protein and just been like, damn, if I would have tried to eat this like three years ago, I'd probably die.

Like it was just, it'd be way too much. Poop your pants. Yeah. Oh yeah. Something I want to kind of finish with is, uh, you know,

like all three of us were talking about these different delicious foods that we like in terms like ice cream, even something like Chinese food. And Andrew talking about cereal. You notice that none of these things are actually just sugar. So people will say that sugar is an addiction. And I heard Stefan Giene talk about this on Joe Rogan's podcast. I've heard other people mention this before too, but it's just something to really keep in mind. I think it gives you a nice visual. When any one of us or anybody is really craving something,

we hear people all the time saying that we're addicted to sugar. I want people to work on reframing that because that's actually not true. Andrew doesn't reach into his cupboard and grab a bowl of sugar. He doesn't sit down with a spoon and just spoon sugar into his mouth. Actually, that would be quite gross. So we can potentially be addicted to food. I'm not going to bother to get into that argument. I think it's pretty obvious that many people are, that many people do, many people are out of control when they eat.

Let's just kind of leave it there in terms of it being as addicting as cocaine or something like that. I don't have any idea, but it's just a kind of important picture to paint and for people to understand, like we're not actually only addicted to sugar. It's we're addicted to a lot of these refined, highly processed foods that tend to kind of override our ability to understand that we're, that we're getting full and that we had enough. And what I find really amazing about it is why can't we just have some and then be okay with

it like you just tasted it you know like if you're thinking about like you want to go and throw a ball around outside um you throw a baseball around outside or a football around outside or you shoot some hoops with a buddy or any of these things it's like and even lifting weights like you go and you do it and like you're good for at least that, at least, you know, for a while, right? Until you feel that you kind of want to do it again. But something kind of fulfills the need for that. And then it's gone. But when it comes to food, it's like you just shoveled it in your face.

And then there you are, like just literally two seconds later and you, you're shoveling more and more. And it's like, um um i think it goes back to that quote that i maybe shared the other day is that you'll never have enough of what you don't need and so trying to keep that in your brain when you're eating things that you your body does not actually need you could be sitting there all day bro because you'll never have enough what you don't need andrew take us out of here. I will.

Thank you. Did you make it? I think so. Yeah, I think you did. Dude, that sounded like it went, wow. Everyone on the live chat, you guys are freaking incredible. Over 100 of you guys today. Oh, shoot.

So thank you, everybody that's been active in there. Oh, in and out. Let me show you why Kobe is the boss. Oh! You got matumboed by the light stand. McKimbe was a good man. Dikembe. It's Dikembe, not Mikimbe?

Dikembe, yeah. Oh, shoot. It'd be sick if you could say his whole name. It's, you know exactly. Keep talking. Alright, cool. This is gonna be fun, guys. Eatbrightfoods.com Check the links down in the description below and in the podcast show notes, promo code PowerProject25 for 25% off your first order. Please make sure you find the podcast

at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram, at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ and I am on TikTok at TheAndrewZ in SEMA, where you be. Dikembe Mutombo, Mpolondo, Mukamba, Jean-Jacques, Wamutombo. Easy. Yeah, simple. Easy.

Yeah. And SEMA in there on Instagram, YouTube, and SEMA yin yang on TikTok and Twitter, Mark. At Mark Smelly Bell, TikTok, Twitter,

Instagram. Strength is never weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.