Mark Bell's Power Project - He Lost 50+ Pounds in 1 Year With These Habits - Adam Knapp || MBPP Ep. 994

Episode Date: October 10, 2023

In Episode 994, Adam Knapp, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about Adam's simple and effect approach to weight loss and how the habits he built allowed him to lose over 50lbs. Follow Country Butcher on IG: https://www.instagram.com/country.butcher/ Visit Country Butcher's website: https://www.countrybutcherca.com/     Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below! ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!   ➢https://drinkag1.com/powerproject Receive a year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 & 5 Travel Packs!   ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   ➢ https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off Mind Bullet!   ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box   ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM   ➢ https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes!   ➢ https://vuori.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori!   ➢ https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep!   ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel!   ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

I was never really thin. I'd always... You're what, 6'2", 6'3"? 6'3". I was over 200. I'd started going to the doctor after I'd turned 30. They'd done some labs. I've had high blood pressure for some time. I was on multiple medications for that. All the reasons kind of lined up and I just decided to go for it. And the most logical way I could think of was just counting calories. I went online, found like a calorie calculator, figured out what like maintenance calories would be the best estimate for me. How did you even know that that was like

the right way to go? It seemed like the only sure thing. You know, it's science. Like I just need to eat less to some degree. Step one, like I'm fat. I'd like to not be. And then, you know, you kind of get a little more detailed as you go. Is your wife sad that you lost some of the, like, did you lose too much chub for her? I don't think so. I think she's always been, like, polite. You know. All right. Let's just dive right into some of this hillbilly stuff. I think it's kind of fascinating, but I would never do it myself because it sounds dangerous.

I saw you probably maybe like two years ago, I think at one of the Joe Rogan shows. Yep. And you said that you just got done hunting a bear. Yeah. That sounds pretty intense. What kind of bear and where were you at? I was a black bear, and I was up in Siskiyou County, so almost Oregon border.

And you were hunting the bear with a bow? Yeah. That sounds pretty gangster. Do you have like a gun just in case some shit goes down with a bow yeah that sounds pretty gangster um do you uh have like a gun just in case some shit goes down with a bear i didn't then no generally black bears are gonna run away from you okay you hope but a grizzly bear is different yeah no i wouldn't i'd have a big gun for that do you ever would you want to hunt a grizzly bear um not enough probably to pay the money to go do it yeah but if it was offered to me i would definitely go how'd you get into hunting

just kind of grew up with it um my best friend growing up at a ranch and has a ton of pigs on it and deer and that's just what we did you guys ever hunt i've never been hunting no i haven't you should just practice shooting a bow but that's about it yeah shot a bow a couple times pretty bad at it shot a gun a couple times pretty bad at it yeah same now it's uh it's funny like to me it's more rare to know people that don't hunt i mean most most people I associate around everyone hunt. Wow. And if you get to a certain age and like haven't killed a buck, you're like the 40-year-old virgin. It's like embarrassing.

You don't want to tell anybody. You're like, who is this guy? He's not really a full man yet. Yeah. So there's like a hunting community out here in Sacramento, California? Yeah, I think where I am for sure. It's a little more rural, not far from here, but, uh, I think there's definitely a big movement of, you know, more people getting into hunting, even people that live in urban areas. Why do you think that is? Joe Rogan. Okay. Yep. Okay. How do you feel about that?

I think it's good. I mean, it's, it's it's uh it's funny like you can totally tell the person that started hunting because of joe roger are they all decked out in kuyu actually and they're all like jacked black rifle coffee t-shirt um you know like take an alpha brain left and right i don't have like the most expensive gear right yeah we didn't it's all brand new we didn't grow up hunting and talking about like have you guys ever tried elk meat it makes you run faster but you know whatever gets people into it i think it's it's one of those things um you know i kind of steal this from steve vernella i guess too but uh you got to have people that are interested in it that vote otherwise it goes away especially in california are you guys um like are any hunters worried about

like the overpopulation of it because i know uh sorry i don't know but i have heard that you have to like apply for certain tags to be able to hunt certain animals has there been like an issue where it's like holy shit like yeah it's two seasons in a row where i didn't get selected oh yeah there's i mean there's tags out there that you'll have 20 years of applying for and never get. Oh damn. Like what? Well, I have 14 years of applying for a California elk tag and I'll probably never draw it in

my life. But yeah, no, that, that is part of it. What do you got to do? Go to a different state? Yeah. Even all Western states are you know really good units are just getting harder and harder to get a tag for um and it is because more people are hunting i think it's just also there's more people in general um another big

one too is a lot of the tag quotas are based off of populations of wild game um so if you have reintroduction of wolves uh uh, protection of mountain lions, other predators, you get less animals, which means less availability to go hunting. Have you noticed a big difference, uh, in your hunting, um, when you were heavier? Cause I think you were coming off of losing what, like 60 pounds, 70 pounds? Uh, close to it. Well, about 75. Damn. Yeah. No, I hunted Idaho last year chubby, and it was difficult. And even chubby, I'm mentally tough enough to get to the top of the mountain. But the difference is on a multiple-day hunt, you get there and back, and can you get up and do it again the next day?

You're just sore, and you're trying to get that strength up the next day. Lower back pump. That only true chubby people understand. Yeah. Chins pumped. Calves pumped. So that was a motivator. But yeah, I hunted Idaho again this year.

75 pounds lighter. And I mean, I could sprint the same mountain. That would have killed me last year. So everything feels better. What's your favorite thing to hunt? So I actually've i went elk hunting for the first time this year i've deer hunted my entire life i just never had the time or the money uh to go elk hunting and it was an archery hunt and it was the most fun i've ever had uh even without i didn't get one huge yeah i was there was bulls everywhere screaming I was under 40 yards a bunch

of times and I really want I didn't want to kill a little one I don't need the meat um so I was looking for a big mature one and I could have killed elk but um yeah I just didn't quite get the perfect shot on the one I wanted but it was the most fun I've ever had. What do you think led you to gain some of that weight in the first place? I was never really thin. I'd always... You're what, 6'2", 6'3"? 6'3". I was over 200 in high school. Always just the same kind of little bit chubby, kind of a little bit chubby bigger guy but with some extra on top um and this time around well i guess the question is what i gained the weight i think it's just time i think it was like you put on a few pounds every year you don't notice and when you're not stepping on the scale for a long

period of time you jump on you don't remember what the last number was, and I finally hit like 260 and fresh off that difficult hunt. There's a chubby one. Other than hunting, were you exercising? Not really. I think one of the things more recently that had a little bit of extra weight gain was I have a physical job. was I have a physical job, but as our business has grown, I've done a little more office, a little more desk sitting. And with that, you know, still eating the same,

but just not doing the work. I think that kind of ticked up the weight gain a little bit. Yeah, tell us a little bit about your business. How long have you had that for? Yeah, so it's a country butcher, pretty small butcher shop retail. Um, we do a lot of ranch butchering for people that raise cattle or hogs or sheep. Um, we have a retail store outside of Marysville, but prior to that, I was in a couple of different slaughterhouses. So it's, it's always been a physical job until recently. I got good employees now.

Our website's real old. Well, perhaps some of the answers to dropping some weight were right in front of you. How did you change your diet? So I hit kind of a – there was a bunch of different reasons I guess to start with of why I finally decided to lose weight. And I started going to the doctor after I turned 30. They had done some labs. I have – I've had high blood pressure for some time. I was on multiple medications for that.

High cholesterol, kind of a weird liver enzyme number. Now since you were 30? yeah pretty much okay okay and so i was i'm 35 now so i was 34 and turning 35 isn't old but it's getting to the point where like you know the next big one's 40 and where do you want to be so that was a big piece of it um I'd had some back problems I'd bulged a disc in my back which I imagine not packing around a bunch of extra weight would feel good um the hunting was hard my kids are getting older I want to keep up with them had a new one on the way so all the thing all the reasons kind of lined up and I just decided to go for it and the most logical way I could think of was just counting calories so like like when you say counting calories, did you like start weighing your food and counting macros or was it something a bit more general? It was pretty basic. So I just, uh,

went online and found like a calorie calculator, um, figured out what like maintenance calories would be best estimate for me. then it subtracted a shitload from that and what website did you use because they're people like get so into the weeds but what did you look up because you said just any it was like the first one on google i fucking love it yeah guys the precision nutrition one their calculator is really dope but like i think this is awesome because it kind of just shows that like some people like oh i don't need to use the right calculator. Well, you just pulled up the first one on Google.

I think if you're doing it and you're not losing weight, you got the wrong number. And that's all the time we got. He said it all right there. Then I had an app that I downloaded. I was doing it all pen and paper for a while. And then we were in Texas and I didn't have my pen and my paper, so I downloaded some app and just kind of tracked everything through that. Did you learn some stuff by writing it down and by being diligent?

Yeah, I learned I'd never really thought about food before. It was funny, I was talking to your brother, and he had a metric that was exactly what I came up with. So I knew protein was important. I knew I didn't want to lose whatever muscle I had. So the number I came up with was for every 10 calories a food has, it should have about a gram of protein. Perfect.

And so I thought anything that's more protein than that, that's what you're eating. If it's less than that and you want to eat it, go for it. But you know this is a snack. This isn't, you know, so I was just kind of ran with those two ideas. Right. I mean, I lifted six days a week. I was on the treadmill, full incline, just at a mile a day.

If you were snacking, were you more conscious of maybe how much of that you had or did you just kind of tell yourself like dude you can't really have any of that because you don't know how to control it even when you are writing it down i just found quest chips and went crazy okay yeah yeah those i mean like just protein and calorie wise it's you're almost eating chicken they're awesome you know those not just Quest chips, but like the Quest Reese's. What is the Quest bar that's like the hero bar? Hero bars are unbelievable. Have you had the Quest hero bars?

No. So you just stuck with the chips? I got the Quest protein bars too. I mean, I had like full Quest days, a couple days there where I just like got home it's like dude you just like shit a brick yeah i probably need some regular food here yeah like a week later you know one of the funnest things to do is like make yourself like a sick ass protein shake with whole milk right maybe put a little bit of carnation malted milk in there and then

have like some quest chocolate bars or whatever with it like you know you're still getting in all the protein but now you're just having a little bit of a party yeah you're having a little bit of fun with it yeah no it uh yeah no if did it take a lot of extra time no nice uh like did you put it yes i mean it sounds like you bought a bunch of quest stuff and that was some of your prep uh yeah i just just went to Walmart and bought a bunch of Quest stuff. I do understand, like, so I own the business. The gym's right down the street. I'd hit a point in the day randomly and just go get a workout in.

Yeah, you don't want to butcher shop. You got all the meat you want. Yeah, for most people, that's challenging. It's hard to get up early. And with a physical job, it'd be hard to do it afterwards. But you do have a wife and kids and you with a physical job it'd be hard to do it afterwards um so you do have wife and kids and yeah you are a business owner like you're yeah you still have to do a lot of stuff in a day yeah what i found with the treadmill we have one at the house and like i would walk in the door

drop my stuff and just get it over with just before i did anything and if you didn't do that if i sat down and thought about doing it for a while it just got harder um but i i was doing one mile full incline first time i did it took like 20 minutes i mean just fast walk um and then by the end i was doing it with before this hunt that i went on with 50 pounds of plates in a backpack for a mile as fast as i could and then i would drop the pack and do another one where i could almost run the whole mile. Is your wife sad that you lost some of it? Like, did you lose too much chub for her? I don't think so.

I think she's always been, like, polite. You know, she was probably purposely okay. She was probably like, yeah, this is a good thing. But she's awesome. So we just had our third kid. Congratulations. So what was really helpful for me was that she was supportive, not just in her words, but she got on board with the same thing too.

So she actually lost about 40 pounds while growing a baby. Wow. While pregnant? Well, I'm sorry. It might have been 25, but then after baby. Wow. While pregnant? Well, I'm sorry. It might have been 25, but then after baby. Wow. She was riding her, she was on her Peloton the day before having the baby. What?

Yeah. So she's, so it's been a mutual and we're both pretty pumped on just getting in better shape. So wait, do you have like a normal treadmill or do you also use the Peloton? Is it a Peloton bike she has? It's a Peloton bike, yeah. Okay. I'm not a fan. It just takes too long.

Okay. I get mentally bored before I get tired. So like that full-inclined treadmill, just you can crank out some calories. Yeah. How fast are you going? So by the end, I can do a mile full-inclined now in probably 12-something, which is— Oh, you're going, what, like five miles? Maybe almost five or six miles an hour?

Yeah, and it does not sound impressive. No, that's a lot. It's like a 12-minute mile, but I haven't run a flat ground mile. But that incline makes it so hard. 15% or 20% or something? I think it's 15%. That's a lot, yeah. So for me, it was just seeing where it was and how hard it was

as long as it's going the right direction. Are there any other tools that you got for the house to make it easier? Because that's one thing that we talk about is just trying to keep things around you. Have stuff around, like these grippers and everything. That encourage movement. So is there anything else, or was it the treadmill? Not really. I did pretty much lifted weights during the day at the gym,

knock out a little cardio when I got home, and that was the exercise. I didn't do much else. We're leaving out the fact that you took growth hormones. Tons of performance enhancing drugs. We're just going to leave that out of the story. Pretty much everything I could find. How did the lifting go? That was a joke, guys.

Someone's going to believe. If I'm what a guy on steroids looks like. Yeah, we've got to rethink it, right? When it comes to lifting, did you have somebody kind of lead you through some of that, or do you have a background with some lifting? I've always kind of like half-ass lifted weights on and off my entire life. So I knew enough. But no, I just kind of went in and I learned a lot. This is probably the longest and most serious I've

lifted um so I learned a lot along the way of what works doesn't work um I learned in a massive calorie deficit stop trying to lift more than you did just I took some time to just accept that yeah I mean I've been six days a week in the gym and just watching my bench, like go down. What about your general, what about like also your general motivation, like during the day? Like, did you notice that like, Hey, maybe I pumped the brakes on the calories a little too much. I had a couple of days. Um, there was some, so what I was actually doing too, is I wasn't limiting myself to a certain amount of calories per day, I was going by the week. Smart. And so what I was trying to do was bank up enough calorie deficit during the week

to have a pretty good meal and some beers and stuff on the weekend. Okay. Light beer or real beer? I did switch to light beer. That was a big one. Is it just a calorie difference? Oh, yeah. I was drinking the beer I liked.

The six-pack had 1,300 calories. There's some people that switch to just light beer. That's the only change that they make, and they lose six, eight pounds. Yeah. That's my keep-it-off strategy is just stop doing that. You don't have to stop beer. Totally. Just go with the light beer.

Casey Sharp. Totally. Power Project family, if you're trying to increase your muscle mass, if you're trying to lose body fat, if you're trying to stick to a nutrition plan, if you're trying to get fit, pretty much if there's anything you're trying to do for your health, we know that sleep is the biggest determining factor to help you get from point A to point B. That's why we've been sleeping on 8C mattresses for probably more than two years now. And the main reason is the technology behind the Pod Pro. Now the Pod Pro is like the Tesla of beds. It will change its temperature

based off of how you're sleeping during the night. And if you have a partner that's sleeping on the other side, they can have their own temperature settings. We all sleep hot here and I used to wake up in a puddle of my own sweat. That. That doesn't happen anymore because of the Eight Sleep mattress, and I've been getting the best sleep of my life. Now, if you don't want to replace your mattress, you can just get the Pod Pro cover, and you can put that over your current mattress to get all the benefits of Eight Sleep.

But if you also need to replace your old nasty mattress, you can get the Pod Pro cover and the Eight Sleep mattress. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, you guys got to head over to eightsleep.com slash powerproject, and you guys will automatically receive $150 off of your order. Again, eightsleep.com slash power project links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. So I would come out of Sunday, generally, you know, a bigger eating day, like full calories. And I realized, you know, especially when I had

extra weight on me on a Monday after that, I really didn't need to eat that much. I felt fine. I mean, I'd come out of Mondays with like 800 calories and hit the gym and do everything. By Tuesday, maybe a little hungrier, you know, and so as that week progressed and it was like a longer time at that lower calorie,

I'd start getting hungrier and hungrier and kind of roll into the weekend, have a big old feast and then start over. And it really worked good for me just that weekly. And it's like, if you want to have a good weekend, that shit starts Monday and you got to, you have like a little safe you can stuff calories into all week long. And then you crack that thing on Saturday. Or sometimes it could be a birthday or a celebration or something. Yeah. Just all the, you know, the parties on Wednesday, so you save for that instead of the Saturday or Sunday that you do, right? And it's like if you, for some reason, go hog wild on a Thursday, your weekend just got a little shittier.

So I think as long as like – it's simple in theory. I think the execution can be hard. But in theory, I mean, here's the numbers and here's how it works. I calculated and put on my calendar in December what I was going to weigh at the first day of every month all the way down to like 185. And outside of the very last number, I was within a few pounds. So it was 10 pounds a month. Did you get on the scale every day? Multiple times.

I was obsessed. Yeah. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And they're actually like, you know, we can say whatever we want about like research. But that is an element of weight loss that seems to be good is that people know how much they weigh. They weigh themselves frequently. Yeah. Well, that was I think I wouldn't have crept up so high had I been.

I'm not weighing myself a bunch of times a day now, but if I'm 185 and a week later I'm 190 and then you see 193, it's like, okay, something's happening here. I guess if you're lifting super hard or something, there's some reason you can think of, but if you're not, you know what that is. I think that frequent weighing is important because a lot of times it's just water. So the more in contact you are with that scale, the more that you can see like, oh, well, that's I drank a lot of water last night or I ate and drank a lot yesterday. So, I mean, you could have big swing being six foot three, eight or ten pounds sometimes could happen.

And I just kind of tried to like squint at an average. But it's – Oh, go ahead. Did you pay attention to anything else other than scale? Like were you looking at like clothes or doing anything like that? Yeah. I wasn't paying attention until all of a sudden it was like – I mean, you have a belt that you're on the last notch on. And like this one, I was like holes drilled to get it smaller.

But, you know, when clothes don't fit because you're getting fat, it sucks. When clothes don't fit because you're losing weight and you wear fat, it's pretty enjoyable. Why don't they make pants that actually fit? Like when you're gaining weight, that's what you're saying. You're like, I don't understand, man. Like why don't they make pants that actually fit like when you're gaining weight that's what you're that's what you're saying you're like

I don't understand man like why don't they make clothes this shirt doesn't fit these pants don't fit this is ridiculous more guys should just wear stretchy pants

like the girls do that's right you know what I mean you got more room yeah so I've had to go buy all new jeans

new shirts and it was you know it's expensive and all that but it's you know it's still a reward. I went from a 38 to a, I could wear a 30.

Yo. Yo. That's wild. Yeah. Damn. I wasn't even aware like that you were on, it was kind of neat. Like I wasn't even aware you were on a weight loss journey.

I actually didn't even think of you as being fat because I just – you're 6'3 and somebody holding 250, 260. I wasn't like, oh, there's Adam, the big fat guy or anything. I didn't – I never thought of you that way. that way and i saw you with a with a with a with a uh picture of uh i think maybe announcing that you're having a baby or maybe it was uh after your child was born um you had a picture on instagram and i was like i was just kept looking at i was like what the f i'm like holy shit i'm like is he like training for something or running or like some sort of uh like hunting thing that he's uh prepping for or something like that so i was like blown away by it i was like holy shit yeah a lot of people have asked me like are you okay yes i did this on purpose hey bro can

i take you to lunch yeah buy you a sandwich yeah so uh no it's it's been it's one of those things and i think I was – Are you okay? But they weren't asking you if you were okay before. Yeah. No, no. Which is funny. I'm better now.

Well, I mean I was on high blood pressure medicine like I said and had high cholesterol and all that stuff. Have you gotten your blood checked since and have you seen some improvements? I don't have – no blood pressure – there's no blood pressure medicine. Cholesterol is perfect. And so it was just all it was, was blood pressure. Just for people to understand blood pressure is like a really, it's not something to really mess around with. Like, I think people's cholesterol can go a little this way, that way. And you want to start to pay attention to all these health markers but blood pressure is it can be a really devastating one it can creep up on people and then that's how people end up with

like things like strokes and all kinds of stuff so if your blood pressure is high especially like there are a lot of power lifters their blood pressure can get really high that is something that you want to avoid as much as possible yeah well and the kind of double-edged sword too was one of those medications. I didn't know it, but it actually lowers your metabolism quite a bit. It's slowing your heart rate, a little anti-anxiety effect. So I think, you know, that obviously isn't going to help you not gain weight. Right. Is there anything that you guys like, I don't know if you mentioned if you guys were eating very differently before, but is there anything you guys just don't purchase anymore that maybe you used to get a lot?

Like you mentioned the normal beer. Any other type of changes within that? I stopped drinking like orange juice a lot. Okay. Not putting down like cups of milk. You know, I would sit down with dinner and have like a glass or two of milk every night and it's just stuff I'd never thought of once you dive and that's where I think I'm not counting calories anymore but the time that I spent doing it you learn so much that you just automatically know certain things yeah and that's I think what's going to help me hopefully

to you know maintain it but I never sat down and thought about how many calories is this meal and then looked at like what you just drank with the meal. I think it's such a valuable lesson because I think that when we get together, when we have like gatherings, there's always like chips out. There's always like some sort of calories out. There's some sort of food out. And you just start getting in conversation with somebody and you're like dipping your chip in something

and you're chewing on this and chewing on that you're not really paying attention uh you could have very easily just went through like 300 calories before uh the barbecue is done and before whatever a meal is that you're about to eat so i think uh one of the greatest practices that people can mess with is to simply just write stuff down yeah for a couple of days and try to be honest with yourself on kind of a normal eating pattern. And then look at it and you'll be like, you'll probably eat a lot more calories than you ever really thought. And little changes too.

Like we found like a keto bread that's 35 calories a slice. Do you know the brand? I don't know. It just says keto on the front. Keto bread. They have it at Costco. It's like, I mean, a normal slice of bread is like 110 or 120.

So if you're eating a sandwich and you still want a sandwich, you can still have the sandwich minus that difference of a lot of calories. These foods are just becoming more and more available. You look at the grocery store.

Go to like a 7-Eleven or convenience store and you look at all the drinks they have. They have a lot of Gatorade. They have a lot of Monster Energy drinks. A lot of them have a lot of calories in them. But now there's options to where they don't have calories in them or they have much lower calories. And the whole entire grocery store, if you're actually paying attention, the whole entire grocery store is turning that way. Everything from your yogurt, your cottage cheese to your bread, there's even like reduced

calorie peanut butter. You know, you've got that PB2, which gives you like a peanut butter flavor that everybody loves, but it gives you like, I don know like 40 or something less calories it's like 50 yeah 50 yeah it's awesome yeah yep um no it's we just kind of found some things that work stop buying the bs um the hard thing for us is at the time with we have three kids now but two young kids it's like the goldfish crackers the all the snack food and you're starving it's like i just you open up the door and have to stare at it and they're still gonna eat it and my kid has like a resting eight pack and just smashes all the food you can see and yeah yeah so

that was uh that was kind of the joke uh my wife and i talked about was like why you're getting fit my son's kind of getting to be older and like i want to be able to kick this kid's ass for as long as possible yeah you know i gotta keep in competition how old is he he's six he can do push he can do pull-ups he can do push-ups he's a monster wow that's cool have you um have any of the diet uh change for the whole house too like have you guys just maybe been a little bit more conscious with, uh, you know, how much the kids are eating or any of that kind of thing? Not so much yet with them. I mean, they're both young and skinny and, um, we don't feed them too much garbage anyways. Um, I mean, they eat the goldfish and the cookies and stuff. You guys usually have dinner together type thing? Yeah.

Through the diet, we kind of like, they would have their dinner, but my wife and I were just kind of like fend for ourselves. You know, there's nothing that, well, we did some of each, I guess. We would cook, you know, like a big dish with chicken and some stuff and divide it. And I'd take some for lunch, but, um, she has kind of her way and she doesn't, she doesn't really like some of the things that I like. So my wife will sometimes try some stuff that I make and she's like, well, I don't know why she's like surprised when she tries something that it's like, not to her liking, liking but i'm like i made it for me yeah

so being that you guys are the uh the butchers did you have to change your cuts of meats as you were coming down in weight or did you stick to the same same things that you liked before no so um i switched basically and it was again just from the calorie number um from eating stuff like ribeyes to more like New York's and Top Sirlines. Okay. Just that the fat is where all the calories are. So as I could just kind of look at which steak am I going to eat, that answered the question.

Yeah, New York strip is very lean, especially like I think when you look up the calories of a New York strip, I think it is kind of including that chunk of fat. And if somebody wanted to cut out more fat or more calories, they could just choose how much of that they're going to eat. I was cutting that off and I would use that to kind of like grease the pan. Oh, nice. And then cook the lean steak and eat it. I like that move. It goes good.

In your opinion, what's the best cut of red meat for your money? of red meat for your money? You asked me this one before. I'll probably have a different answer. Maybe top three. We have one in the case now, which is called Terrace Major or Petit Tender. It's a lean cut of meat. It's like a rotator cuff.

Right? You probably know it from where it is on a human i can tell you where it is on beef yeah but uh yeah we're eating rotator cuff but it's i almost brought you some i should have this is gonna help people's rotator cuff by the way you can skip the tommy john surgery just eat some rotator cuff of a cow but it's it's it's a lean cut and it's tender and it's kind of almost like a tri-tip. And it's affordable. And so we've been selling quite a bit of that and eating a lot of it.

It's popular in restaurants a lot of times if you see like a steak bite. Yeah. That'll be the cut that they're using. They have it at Bud's in Dixon. You ever been to Bud's? No. Oh, man. That's totally up your alley.

Really? Yeah. You would love it. Let's try that out. Yeah, so that's a petite tender. Yeah, so those are really good for the price. There's not a lot of beef that's cheap these days, though. Tri-tip is pretty good, but yeah, it does get, yeah, you're right.

They all get pretty pricey. I'm thinking like New York strip is amazing. Those are expensive, too. Yeah, I mean, that They all get pretty pricey. I'm thinking like New York strip is amazing. Those are expensive too. Yeah. I mean, that would be a good one. And then we talked last time about chuck eye steak. It's a hard one to find. Like Costco will have it a lot.

Similar to a ribeye but cheaper. If you're doing – oh, the other thing that I fell in love with cooking-wise through this diet was Instapot. Oh, yeah. Anything you throw in an Instapot is pretty good. Tell me, how do you use it? Because I have an instapot, but I literally have never used it. I just use the air fryer. So what do you do?

So what I was doing was taking it good. I'm getting excited over here. When I was at extreme, you know, most bang for my buck calories, I was doing a lot of chicken breasts. I couldn't stand another chicken breast. And so what I was doing was throwing them in the Instapot and they'll shred. And I was adding like canned jalapenos, onion, all of that, and then a little bit of like a green. So you almost make like a shredded chicken chili verde. What liquid do you put in there? Just water? i just dumped the jalapeno juice in it just so everyone

knows you don't even need any liquid in there yeah you don't know you don't need any liquid in there you can just cook with nothing but it doesn't really make any sense but yeah it'll come out really good yeah so i was making a lot of like you know with you kind of start searching for some flavor on a diet after a while too and so i need to text my girlfriend and pull the oxtail out of the freezer that'll be incredible or like uh lamb works really good chicken works really good beef kind of always turns into like a stew sort of thing it can get a little stringy yeah yeah yeah depending what'll get stringy beef sometimes sometimes. It can. Okay. Yeah.

But it's so, and like, I mean, if you wanted pulled pork and you were going to spend 10 hours on a smoker, it's going to be better. Or you can throw it in an instant pot for like half an hour and eat it for dinner. So I was just dumping stuff in the instant pot. Yeah, truly a birdie. But that chicken one was a real staple for us. Excited. Yeah.

Thank you. Truly. a pot yeah but that chicken one was a real staple for us excited yeah thank you truly and then like a normal guy would like put that on rice or something but i just powered hot chicken yeah so no that's smart though because i fucking hate chicken breast man i'll only chicken thigh yeah yeah well i was counting calories to the point where I was eating like breasts over thighs. Now, I'm probably – Breasts over thighs. I might even – Wow. I'm a thigh man, truly, through and through. I might never eat a chicken breast again.

I'm just trying to think of like the flexibility on that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Walk into that. And now I can't continue the podcast anymore. That's all you can think about how is your body feeling like uh losing the weight and being like in better shape and everything and yeah how's your back and stuff like that um so i had good i had a bulge disc um probably about a year ago it

happened twice where i was i mean debilitated for a couple days um another little piece that kind of had the motivation to drop some pounds. Were you just picking something up? Did it happen? One of them, literally, I was just standing there on ice skates. We were ice skating in Tahoe with my son, and I had ice skated, and I just was standing in the moment, and it was just like someone hit me in the back with a T-bite.

You were standing still? Mm-hmm. Wow. It was brutal so not that it'll never happen again but i think obviously the the odds are lower i mean i can lift now and i'm not worried about it and um i can't remember how the other one happened but uh now my body feels good it's it's like i was saying i mean overall i've lost some strength if you looked at like bench I was never that strong anyways but I mean walking in chubby and not working out I could

bench like 250 and that's probably 235 maybe now a small hit yeah but it's like but 250 at 260 or 235 at 180 I don't I don't feel like I can still put up over 250 bro yeah I don't feel less. I can still put up over 250, bro. I don't feel less strong. Cheeks all filled out. That's like the wrong metric too because when I walked in the gym, I could maybe do one pull-up and probably close to 20 now.

Nice. You invited us over before. Well, me. I didn't even relay the message to anybody but of course you did well he let me finish my sentence he invited us over to move about like to basically unload a truck full of like meat and he's like you guys got to feel how heavy these fucking things are and it's just like a truck full of like uh hard work i don't know like half a cow or something i don't know it was wild looking i was like i don't know if we could move that it was it was quarters of beef but it's kind of it's a

funny one for uh i mean we got like skinny guys at the shop that can do this i saw some of those guys loading around some of that stuff and it was wild i was like one of these guys is a older gentleman i think he might be in his 60s or something but we just thought it'd be hilarious to see a bunch of like jacked guys come and struggle really hard. Just get our asses kicked. It'd just be a shit-talking fest. For us. The organs were super interesting.

Like when I went to your shop and we filmed some steak shake commercial stuff over there. Eating raw liver. Seeing the size of the liver and the heart and all that stuff was just insane. Yeah. Do you cook any of that stuff too or no? No. Okay. Not for cook any of that stuff too or no? No. Okay. Not for you.

I'll eat, I don't mind heart. Liver is just, I'm not a fan. Yeah. Tastes like you're eating chalk or something. How do you cook the heart? I usually, well, I guess I haven't lately, but normally it'd be like breaded and fried. Okay.

Yeah. At your store store you have uh stuff like seasoned like pre-seasoned pre-marinated and stuff and i think that's one of the things that makes your store unique um you have a bunch of different cuts with a bunch of different flavoring on it i think that's amazing because sometimes you don't know what to do with particular types of meat and you have it packaged up just perfectly. Yeah, it's a little bit of a different model, I'd say, than maybe what someone would expect walking into a butcher shop. I mean, the facility is primarily there to cut carcasses.

And so it's not like we're just standing there waiting to cut another steak for the case. So our model in there is basically built for people to load their freezers. It's a lot of vacuum sealed and frozen bundles and packages where you can come in and customize. And there it is. Chowing down. Customize and build out what you want. But we're not a place where people come like one day a week for a steak. People come up and they'll buy 100 pounds of meat

and see you next month they might even have like a pre-order or something in right yeah and we have and we have you know tons of customers that drive up from sacramento yeah all over the place and they just come once a month load up and see you next month um that's awesome there's one customer that's hilarious. The guy that runs our retail, Zach, they'll come in and they'll just hand him like X amount of money and walk across the street to the bar. They don't tell him what they want.

They just trust him. And so he'll just build them like this amazing giant package of stuff that he thinks they'll like, and they come back and pick it up and leave and come back the next month. You really can't go wrong with meat though. Look into my eyes. Now I know that you want to be looking better. You want to be going,

walking the streets, being like, damn, I look and feel good. Cause then everyone's going to be looking at you. That's why we've partnered with Viore clothing. So you can stop wearing your ripped up tank and your long shorts and step your athleisure game up.

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Oh, Andrew, where can they step their game up? Absolutely. You guys got to head over to Viori.com slash Power Project. That's V-U-O-R-I.com slash Power Project, and you'll automatically receive 20% off your order. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. How did you get into this? I think maybe earlier in the gym, you might've mentioned that you worked at like a slaughterhouse or something like that too. Yeah. So I had a good one. So I actually have a geology degree. And while I was in school, I had a roommate that worked at the university, has a meat processing facility.

And I'd always hunted. I just wanted in so bad and I needed a job. So I just kept showing up out there. They said they wouldn't hire me because I had the wrong degree, but they couldn't really stop me from volunteering. And so I went out there and volunteered and asked for a job, and they said no. And so I came back the next day and just kind of told them, eventually you're going to start paying me for this. And eventually they did, and they hired me.

What is the major, by the way? Like animal science or something agriculture. Gotcha. But by the time I'd graduated, I'd gotten pretty good at the work. And my joke was I could either be like the dumbest geologist or a smart butcher. So by the time I'd graduated, the guy that had run the facility forever had retired. Yeah. And so I actually got the job running it and ran that for a few years.

Wow. Got offered a job running a new slaughterhouse that was built, ran that for a few years and then had the opportunity to buy our business now. And here we are. So it seems like it's I mean, it seems like in terms like keeping the meat fresh and all. I mean, it seems like there's a lot of a lot of things to learn and a lot to just kind of figure out as you were going along yeah i guess so um it's kind of nice like i i always joke too my buddy is a lawyer and he'll like let papers pile up and stuff um you know it's like it's not a it's it's not a job that allows you to procrastinate you know you get some you get stuff in and there's a a it's it's not a job that allows you to procrastinate no you know you get some you get stuff in and there's a clock and if i was someone that could like put this off till

tomorrow i totally would you know but you can't it's it's right now um so just it seems pretty straightforward and obvious yeah keep it cold and fast like i remember seeing you guys like cutting up the meat and stuff i don't know know how you understand what to discard and what to – where does some of that go? You don't just throw it out in the garbage, right? It's got to go to a – So it goes to a rendering facility, and they produce byproducts, and I think they make a lot of cosmetics and stuff with it.

So it all goes somewhere. Yeah, it's super fascinating watching you guys just slice shit up. I'm like, how do they know what's a good piece and what's a bad piece? Just over and over and over again of doing it. A lot of trial and error, a lot of complaining from customers, and then you start to nail it down. We've got a good process of not letting people touch anything important until they're good enough to know what they're doing.

You brought us some deer, which I've never had, so I'm excited to try that deer. But what other meats do you guys sell outside of just beef? So we don't sell deer. Okay. I can't wait to try it anyway. Yeah. But we sell beef, pork, chicken, lamb, goat sometimes. We sell whole hogs and we can cut and wrap for people.

It's pretty much it. I'm trying to think. We have some like ground bison and stuff like that and like farm-raised ground elk, I believe. So there's some stuff in there, but the majority is beef, pork, chicken. Got it. And then we're known for our smoked products. So smoked sausage, bacon, ham. We do thousands and thousands of pounds of ham and prime rib for the holidays.

The stuff that's smoked does it also get cooked or is smoking it cooking it yeah so i say smoked it's it's smoked and fully cooked um but like bacon you're gonna fry it again anyway sausage you're probably not gonna just pull it out of the package you need it cold you can um i have but uh no so that's the one thing I would say like historically with the facility that I bought it's always been known for its bacon and ham

and there's actually an award for the best bacon, ham and smoked turkey in the state of California that's named after the person that originally started the business that we bought. It's called the Wayne Hall Award.

And we've pretty much never entered and not won that award. Oh, damn. Yeah. So it's still there, still good. There's a lot of other butcher shops that all make really good stuff. Anyone's, you know, it's not like it's better than someone else's, but it's not like it's better than someone else's, but it's not bad. Are things getting a little bit more difficult just to run a butcher shop these days as far as like maybe regulations or the push to like stay away from meat and stuff like that?

Not really. Not in my experience. There's a lot of difficulties within the industry. Not in my experience. There's a lot of difficulties within the industry. You know, there's so much like that's above my head, honestly. But I'd say the biggest one is just like everything else in the world, things are getting more expensive. So when you walk in and you see a price tag on a steak somewhere, there's probably a reason if it's expensive. You know, the market's pretty wild up and down.

a reason if it's expensive. You know, the, the market's pretty wild up and down. Um, everything, the cost of your labor, you know, everything in the equation, just like everything else is getting more expensive. Um, but still there. And the, uh, area that you're in, you're probably get a lot of support, right. From the local people and all that kind of stuff. And then you were mentioning in a gym that you are, you are like part of some boards and some things like that. It's probably to, you know, for agriculture and things like that, right? Oh, yeah. So we try to do any business, you get a lot of requests for donations and things like that. And I think, you know, at some point we had to come up with kind of like a policy or a purpose here. Um, so what we've landed on is, you know, we do as much as

we can locally for kids, school programs for HFFA. Um, and so, you know, it's a good thing to do, but on the flip side too, it's a, you know, it's a lot of people out there eating our product at these events, which in turn, if someone goes to a benefit dinner, has the best tri-tip they've ever had, knows where it came from, it's like, I win too. So it's kind of that win-win. But that's really helped to build our local reputation and do good things, Hopefully. Yeah. You sent over a video of your daughter riding on a sheep. Yeah. Yep. What is this sheep riding all about?

So how do we get involved? Yeah. I don't, I think you might be a little big. Oh shit. So it's like the kid equivalent of like bull riding. It's something for the kids at the rodeo. It's called mutton busting.

It's the first time that either of my kids had done it. I was actually, yeah, let's watch this video. Here we go. Let me pull this up really quick. Bam, bam, bam. I don't know how to sound on, but, you know. Oh, wow. Yeah.

So. The way she kind of bounced off the ground. Yeah. She's tough. But so basically it's like, you know, kid that hangs on the longest wins. Yeah. And my daughter Harper is four years old and she took second place. That's awesome.

That's adorable. We're pretty proud of her. How old is your youngest? Just a couple weeks. A couple weeks, yeah. Wow. I watched me mad for not knowing that exact answer. That's a lot to juggle.

A lot to juggle, three kids, your own business. When you were losing the weight, were there times where that slowed down quite a bit? Or were you able just to continually make progress throughout the whole thing it was pretty steady until i got to like that last five pounds um because i didn't know what like the right number to end on was you know when you start losing weight and you're you don't know if you should weigh 180 or 190 kind of find out when you get there um i'd said 185 just because 75 pounds was a neat number um and so i probably was fine by the time i got to like 190 but i'd said 185 so i had to go that last distance um that last five pounds was took a little longer were there like some days

where you like screwed up and then you were like oh let's get back on track because it's about the calories per week. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There'd be. So I was shooting for. In the beginning, I was going for like twelve, thirteen hundred calories a day. Pretty low. And then there'd randomly be like a six thousand calorie day where I just like completely shit the bed.

Yeah. Whoops. Yeah. It would start with like I'll have'll have, like, a French fry. And then it's, like, two cheeseburgers and beers and, yeah. And was it just because you were extra hungry that day because of? I don't know. It's, like, I wasn't trying to give myself, like, big cheat days.

But sometimes it just wasn't up to me. And so I would just look at that. And, like, the app I had had, like, a little graph. So you'd see, see like a line of like how good you were and then this like terrible day it's like so i would kind of like the next day you know shoot a little lower just trying to chip away at the damage try to try to balance it out a little bit yeah yeah so i hate to sound like a broken record but your sleep quality most likely sucks it's one of the biggest things that we talked about on the podcast so many guests have

come on and talked about how sleep can help you stick to your diet, stick to your workout plan, lose body fat, gain muscle, all the good things that you're trying to do. But it's hard to do because you might be snoring. And if you're snoring, that's why we've partnered with Hostage Tape, which is mouth tape that you can put over your nose, your mouth, when you're asleep, to help you stop snoring and breathe through your nose. But if you haven't been breathing through your nose this whole time while you've been sleeping, it's going to be a little bit difficult to get air through there.

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show notes. How do like how did you stumble upon calories? Like did you watch a video or like because I mean, you said you found a calculator, but how did you even upon calories? Did you watch a video? Because you said you found a calculator, but how did you even know that that was the right way to go? It seemed like the only sure thing. It's science. Like I just need to eat less to some degree. I understand that you've got to burn more calories than you eat to lose weight. I think it's honestly, in my mind, and I don't know anything, but I think that's kind of the basis of every diet. And I think all the other diets where they're telling you what to eat,

it's like a way to almost trick yourself into being in a calorie deficit. If you go on keto and you're in a calorie surplus, you're still going to gain weight. If you're on like the Mediterranean or whatever other things there are, and you're in a surplus, you're still going to gain weight. If you're on like the Mediterranean or whatever other things there are and you're in a surplus, you're still going to gain weight. I think the diet where it tells you what to eat makes it harder to be in a surplus. So mine was I don't really care what I eat. Try to get the protein. Be in a calorie deficit. Yeah, like if we share an idea with someone and say,

hey, if you just eat natural foods, you're going to be fine. They don't really know what to do with that information they need something more precise and even with natural foods they eat a ribeye they eat a potato i mean the calories are going to start to overtake uh what was intended as being a nutrition plan that was going to help someone lose weight yeah well it's uh i have a friend that's kind of like toying with wanting to lose weight and you know he's like i'm just gonna eat celery and then he did eat just celery for the day with like an entire jar of peanut butter yeah it's like i don't think that's good it's like 10 000 calories in a jar of peanut butter but

um you know and i think like letting yourself have what you want, just trying to have some control on the quantity. You know, if you want that donut, that's fine. Probably going to be hungry later. And you're going to go to bed hungry. That intuition of zooming out and looking at it as a weekly process, I think is really important because what is a, you know, what is a donut or slice of pizza if however many meals you had for the week, you know, I don't know, let's say you had, I don't know,

like 30 meals or something. If 28 of them are really on point, then the donut and the slice of pizza probably doesn't matter. I think like telling yourself no flat out is really hard. And so I didn't, I wasn't telling myself I couldn't do something. It's just, uh, if you eat that, you're going to have to catch it up later somewhere else. That was it. Yeah. How did you end up, um, able to control your hunger? Cause you went from eating a lot to then, like you said, 12, 1300 calories. It was honestly like

maybe a few days of transitioning. And then I was just pretty much fine. Really? Yeah. I don't know if it's like your stomach is expanded or not, or I don't know what goes into it. But I did notice as I approached kind of the end, as I did get pretty lean,

it's like your paycheck to paycheck on food. I mean, if you eat and you're good, but then you get hungry again and it's like, you're going to die. But when you're fat, you've got pretty much what you need for a while just attached to you. Um, you know, and so like, I think that, and I don't, I didn't do like a keto diet, but I imagine like you kind of get into ketosis from just low calorie. I don't know. But somehow you're just living off your own body. We were talking about that show Alone.

Yeah. Like the guy that won just got like super fat, went in there and took a nap. He slept and he won. Yeah. I mean those people aren't eating enough calories to stay alive. But if they walked into that lean, they wouldn't make it. They had that surplus going in. I had that surplus going in.

How about like the sweet tooth? You mentioned like the Quest stuff and the Quest bars and all the fun foods that they make. But when you give somebody that's not on the same plan or anything and you're like, here, try this. It tastes just like whatever. And they're just like, this is bullshit compared to my actual donut. Did you have to – yeah, how did you switch that over from – I know you said if you want the donut, go ahead and have it. But throughout this process, you had much less of that and more of the Quest stuff. I think I was just so hungry like anything tasted good.

I mean, I went through like there were some Quest flavors I didn't like. I found one I did, and that's pretty much what I ate. Yeah, it was challenging, but I think, I don't know. I don't have a problem putting my head down if I want something. Yeah. And it took an amount of time until I was the one that wanted this. It wasn't someone telling me to do it. It was just off to the races.

There's a bodybuilder, this young guy. His name is Sam Sulek. He's just getting like immensely popular. Andrew, see if you can find a clip. I don't know if he'll have success finding it, but he's talking about like a Wendy's chicken sandwich that he has after his workout. And he makes the point that you're making that many people have made before that there is an overarching calorie equation to this whole thing and people are watching this guy you know eat this wendy's chicken sandwich uh and they're just it's not it's not standard thing that you see a lot of bodybuilders do but this guy's like 21 and he's

just in crazy crazy shape and uh his whole point is like i you know my body can afford this i just got done with a workout um this is just a calorie equation there's not that much calories in here even though i think he had like mayonnaise on there or something but people are like flipping out like the fitness industry can't handle uh that somebody's doing something with um i don't just like a different style a different flair yeah and they're like they want to see this guy you know eating the chicken breasts dry with rice and uh mustard some yeah broccoli and pouring mustard on stuff and it doesn't have you know fitness doesn't have to look that way and getting in shape does not have to look that way i'm not sure if this is it he's talking about a pre-workout i don't know if that's the thing yeah we'll have to we'll find it for like a show or

something anyway yeah this kid's super super yoked and super jacked but he's you know just making your point and there's a lot of people who've been talking about this for a long time lane norton being one of them he's been on joe rogan a bunch of times and there's a lot of other people and i think the message gets confusing sometimes and and what I would say about it is that I think that calories are an overarching theme to pay attention to. However, I do think that sometimes for some people, things get a little bit more complicated. Like if you were 260 for like 10 years, I'm not saying that the calorie equation wouldn't work, but everything might just be a little more tricky. And as Nsema was pointing out, when you pull that many calories from yourself, you may have been exponentially more hungry.

But it sounds like you started out most of your life, doesn't sound like you were fat before, right? Always a little chubby. Yeah, but not like super heavy, right? Yeah, so I think sometimes some people run into some, I guess, other complications that make their metabolism not as well suited as the next person. But in general, if you pull those calories down, you're most likely going to lose some weight. And if you're not losing, as you pointed out in the beginning of the show, then you probably need to consume less.

Yeah, and there's probably different stuff that works for everybody. For me, it was pretty hard to argue with this math. So that's what I'm going to do. I think it's the same with, you know, the exercise side of it too. And I've listened to you guys on the podcast for a while talk about different stuff. And it's like the whole sprint versus deadlift thing that you guys just talking about. But it's like, I don't know, whatever works for you, whatever you're going to continue to do. So some people that might be something else, but if it works, great.

And it's like my buddy Mitch is a CrossFit beast, and it's terrifying. And I tried, and it wasn't for me. More of just like I'll go to the gym and kind of work out hard, but not like that. You've got to make him unload the truck full of meat he shoes horses for a living he's got a physical job then he comes home and crushes the most insane workout you've ever heard of as I got into shape though

I would go work out with him occasionally and I really enjoyed it as like mental exercise you know can you make it but you walk in and he's like eating pre-workout with death metal playing it's like it's pretty intense um but yeah no it's not for me i like it once in a while but for some people like him i mean that's what works for him he doesn't go to the gym and just lift i think there's some really cool aspects to crossfit like one of them just

being the fact that you can get a really great workout in a short period of time. A friend of ours, Jason Kalipa, he's always doing these wild, crazy workouts. And some of them can only take, I mean, there's like a little warm-up phase or whatever, but you can really just demolish yourself in like 10, 12 minutes. He'll do something on like an assault bike, and he might do something with a kettlebell in between, and you're just getting smashed. Yeah, I worked out the first time for like 25 minutes and i don't

think i can walk for five days yeah i mean i don't know how it happened but um but yeah i mean it's just kind of each person find what works for them but at the end of the day i don't think you can you're not going to probably work off a shitty diet at the gym yeah it's really hard to burn a thousand calories and i could eat it in like 30 seconds when you're uh when you're lifting are you um are you following a real specific program or you just kind of because you mentioned you work out with your crossfit friend here and there but when you're working out by yourself are you trying to do something i've kind of just danced around with it i i had like a real, you know, as a guy that doesn't really know anything about it,

I'd do like, you know, chest and triceps one day and back and biceps a day and then something else. And I just did it for so long that I got bored and just would switch up to do something different. As I got a little leaner, I started doing and could do pull-ups. I got really into more, you know, pull-ups, dips, some body weight stuff. And I did learn like some movements from that CrossFit that I really liked. Just I didn't like dreading it for three days before you went and did it.

Yeah. Yeah, we were just talking the other day just about push-ups. Yeah, push-ups. And we're discovering all kinds of different movements and stuff. You saw when you walked in today, I was just doing that exercise on the tire there. I was doing like a – it's called a Jefferson curl where you're just trying to get my back to open up and my body to move around better. I try to look at training a little bit more as like movement rather than just the way that I used to do it was to just try to lift as heavy as possible in these like two or three different lifts that I was training for.

And so it feels good. It feels good for me to be able to move better and for me to be able to walk into the gym and just start doing squats and just start doing lunges without pain and stiffness in my back and my knees and so forth. Yeah. and stiffness in my back and my knees and so forth. Yeah. For me too, I mean, and I think for everybody that's kind of starting out, you don't really – you don't know and you don't need to know a whole lot.

I've only been – I'm only a little ways into this, and it's like I've learned a bunch along the way, what works, what doesn't work, what works for me, what other people like that I hate. the way yeah what works what doesn't work what works for me what other people like that i hate um you know and even like in talking to you you left me some really good information you know but at first it's like step one like i'm fat i'd like to not be and then you know you kind of get a little more detailed as you go so yeah you think about like how how'd you learn how to hunt yeah well it's just like it'd be an overwhelming amount of information for someone who doesn't work out out of shape doesn't think about their diet to come and hear like everything you know about it like here's the piece you just do this one little piece for now and then like once that piece is

working you add a little bit you add a little bit, you add a little bit. And yeah, like you said, same with hunting. I find that with my son, like he has a bow and he shoots. And like I'm trying not to get down there and like critique his form. It's like, dude, just launch the arrow. It's fine. Like in the correct direction. But that's about where we're at. Yeah, not a dad.

Yeah. But, you know, it's like all that stuff with archery for him and with hunting, it's like it'll come in time. Yeah, you give him information overload and he won't be able to do much of anything. Yeah, it's going to just mess you up. And I think that's the same with like the exercise and the diet. I mean, just start doing something. You guys talk about that, like, oh, go for a walk. And it doesn't take much.

Any other exercise that you threw in there? It sounds like you're doing quite a bit with the treadmill and the lifting. I've actually kind of been backing off a little bit. You know, I don't want to get out of shape, but, like, I mean, I just kind of got to where I wanted to be pretty quick and now I'm just kind of maintenance I guess so I'm not lifting as often also I haven't you know it's I was out of state on an elk hunt and it's deer season now so I just I got better things to do but for me it's just going to be like I hammered my way down to where I wanted to be and now it's just kind of a casual

don't let it go I mean I don't have a sport I play I'm not like a fitness influencer you hunt and for me it's like as cool as like 25 inch arms would be

that's not helping me you know so i just want to kind of maintain the the no waste kind of stay lean keep my legs going you have a desire to do like what like those crazy kind of hunts that people do like where they're hunting uh i guess it's maybe goats or something oh yeah yeah yeah. Yeah, that's another one where. I mean, those are crazy expensive, I think. But it sounds pretty wild. Sheep hunts are expensive?

Yeah, the ones with like the big ass horns. I don't know what I'm talking about. Like big horn sheep. Oh, okay. There we go. It's like winning the lottery if you draw a tag. Why? There's just so few given out and so many people that want to do it. They're just, they hang out in the weirdest spots.

You're like top of a mountain somewhere. And they can just like chill on like this little ledge yeah wow okay but uh no you can i mean if you said i want to and i'm going to and you had the money you could go do it but it's i mean you're talking i wouldn't even know i bet you i mean tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars just for the opportunity easily 50k or something you get uh like you get like helicoptered in right to a spot sometimes i have no idea yeah there you go those guys yeah those aren't the sheep i was thinking yeah those guys are kind of intimidating yeah those are the guys that ram their heads together fuck you up yeah no there's an and for me that it's it's overwhelming all the hunting i want to do and like

i got to kind of try and balance it a little bit with the business and the wife and my wife's really really cool but um i mean i left for idaho for like a week like two weeks after having a kid there's a lot of yeah there's a lot of uh people listening right now yeah i deal with that she uh she wasn't thrilled but she kind of i mean we're still we're still here so there we go yeah yeah my brother-in-law goes to like a deer camp thing every year he's gone for six days seven days or something like that and uh my sister-in-law is like you're going again this year he's like i go every year so like they he's like you know i'm going like around this time and it's just it's just, it's a thing. It's a hobby. I think when somebody does love something, uh, you know, it can be difficult to support them in that all the time,

especially when you've got three kids. Um, but if you can do it, it means a lot to those people. Right. Yeah. I appreciate her putting up with it. Did any of you, any of your, uh, like hunting buddies give you shit for dropping so much weight? No, they, I think there's like a natural progression you're going to go through if you're kind of a chubby guy with mean friends that says you're going to lose weight. Yeah. And it was exactly like, actually, I think I read it on the internet somewhere. Like this is what people are going to say. So first day I've, you know, no thank you to the like burrito or whatever it was just told everyone like I'm I'm dropping a bunch of weight starting right now and everyone says yeah right and then

as you start to people start saying oh you're gonna how like how low are you trying to go and they say oh you'll be way too skinny at that weight and then it gets to like are you okay but I think like the one thing I think is universal and like I felt it like, I mean, I was a big guy, identified as a big guy. I don't really feel like I'm tall now, but I don't feel like, but I wasn't big and strong. I was just big. But I think most males that are overweight will overestimate what they should weigh

if they were lean. So at 260. That's very, very true. I'd be like, oh, yeah, I'd probably be pretty fit at like 220. In your mind, you're thinking like, I look like Mark at 220. And then you get to 220, you're like, oh, I'm still just kind of a chubby guy. And so there's no bottom number on it. I mean, go till you get where you want to get but i think most people and i have like i said a friend

he's overweight and he wants to lose weight and um ask him what he thinks he should weigh and he said like he's like 300 pounds and uh he said he'd get down to like you know 220 well he's like i don't know probably probably 5'9". And I just asked him, like, well, how much do you think you could bench? He said, oh, I don't think I could bench more than like 185. Right now? Yeah.

And it's like, I hate to break it to you, man, but like you should probably weigh like 160. Because whatever. You should probably bench your own body weight. Well, whatever's making up this mass. Right. If it was muscle, you'd be able to lift some more weight.

That's true. So it's like some guy that's a big guy. This is a guy that cuts up meat all the time. He's looking at stuff from a different perspective, right? He can see your body composition. Well, you get a big guy that thinks he's a big guy. And he is a big guy, but a lot of it's fat. guy that thinks he's a big guy and he is a big guy but it's a lot of it's fat and it's like you should probably be able to do like bench your body weight and you know go lay down and just see

what you got because if you're 260 pounds and you can't bench 200 you probably shouldn't weigh 220 you should probably weigh a lot less um so i think i think it's like pretty common that you know guys overestimate what they should weight lean well thank you so much for your time today and thank you so much for bringing over that meat yeah it's been fun we're excited about it got some deer for dinner congratulations

on the weight loss and congratulations on the little baby hopefully that little baby you don't stick it on the sheep right away give it a couple years to grow a little bit. Yeah. But thanks again, man. Appreciate it.

It was fun hanging out. Thanks, guys. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye. That was good. Thank you.

Cool. Is that decent?