Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Power Project EP. 203 - Andres Vargas

Episode Date: April 23, 2019

Andres Vargas is a strength and nutrition coach and the owner of The Strength Cave, an online fitness coaching company. He holds a Master's degree in Exercise Science and is currently studying for a PhD in Sport and Exercise Science. His goal is to blend science and real world application in order to provide the best information and service possible to readers and clients. ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Find the Podcast on all platforms: ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YQE02jPOboQrltVoAD8bp ➢Listen on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

why are people having fun outside too much laughing going on outside what's going on we're trying to work this is not that type of environment to be having fun yeah no we're not supposed to be doing that i i hope the microphones can't pick that up but there's a bunch of people outside the room right now that are just cackling like crazy. Isn't the laughing is prohibited sign? Uncontrollably. It should be up. Maybe it's not working. I need to go deal with these women. Go jujitsu

them. Choke them out. Yeah every single one of them. We don't have HR here so there will be no problem. We'll be fine. That should be alright. That's gray area alrighty what's happening Mark I don't know

you tell me wow we got another handsome gentleman to your left I did it again I got the left and right correct

oh you're talking about me yeah yeah you said handsome so I didn't know no it's you buddy yeah it's all you I thought you were talking about that guy way over there in the red shirt no we don't like to talk too

much about you have to have hair to be handsome oh i'm lacking you've got hair it's just not on your head it's not anywhere actually i'm i'm like a naked mole rat oh oh i think i said too much change subject yeah back to your hair yeah i thought we're supposed to stop fapping. How are we supposed to stop after getting that information? Yeah. Anyway, yeah, we're joined today here by, and you've been to the gym before. I have been to the gym. Last year, I think May of last year, I was here. We used the gym.

I was on the podcast with Lane and Holly, his partner. Yep. And once again again just an amazing gym i feel like i gained 20 strength just being here so yeah it's the trend in the air i was gonna say yeah oh is that what it is yeah that gatorade actually has a lot of shit in it i can't claim natty anymore. No. No, absolutely not. It's good to have you back here, Andres. And I'm excited to kind of dive into some of this stuff.

And when we had Lane on last time, we didn't get to talk about it too much because we were just kind of skimming over more general stuff. But I'd like to dive into this. In high school, it used to be a lot bigger, right? So tell us a little bit about that. Okay. So just kind of growing up, I was always kind of a bigger kid. I was athletic, I guess, in the sense that I played basketball with my buddies and I rode my bikes around. I got to say that that fat picture is better than any fat picture that I have. I would say. I really wish I had like a high res photo, but that was like 2006, maybe 2007.

So, you know, cameras weren't as good. The belly button is easily the size of a donut. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we were like out on the lake doing some water jet skiing stuff. And my uncle snapped that pic. And at the time I hated him for it. And then 10 years later I was like, Oh sweet. Yeah. Cool pick. But, um, yeah. So in high school,

well, growing up, like I said, I was kind of just a bigger kid, not for lack of physical activity, but more so just diet was awful. Um, I was really picky and I won most of those battles between me and my parents between, you know, like what do you mean by that? You were picky, picky with what? Uh, picky in the sense that I did not like vegetables. I did not like quote unquote healthy foods. I liked fast food. I liked, um, you know, high fat, high carb meals, uh, was big on hamburgers.

I was like my favorite food growing up, pizza, chicken wings, things like that. And so I just ate too much. And that caught up with me by the time I was in high school, was not in good enough shape to like make the basketball team. So I stopped playing basketball, started playing more video games, ballooned up, I think in that pick and maybe for a while after that, I was a little bit North of 300 pounds. Um, and I'm not very tall. I'm only five, eight, maybe on a great day. So, um, you know, that was a lot of weight to carry around. And so, um, yeah, one day I woke up and, um, well, there was a series of events. Like i couldn't get a date to homecoming nobody wanted to date me in general let's back up for a second uh because i think that this is really important

you're saying you're picky with your food yeah and um there's people that are listening to this right now that still haven't turned the corner on food yet yeah and there's people that are going to listen to this podcast they haven't turned turned the corner yet. And what I mean by that is you get to a certain point with food where what you take in makes you feel so good that it's not worth taking in bad stuff. You get to a point where you're like, yeah, that's appetizing, but the entire thought process behind what that food will do to me is no longer desirable. Now, and Seema and I, or Andrew's been on a good path lately. We may still want to have ice cream and we may still have it. And we may still have pizza and some of these things,

but the cost of having that versus the cost of continuing on our plan makes it less appetizing. So we still want it. It's still tastes really good. It's still something that we're after. But I think what happens with a lot of people is they're flipped the opposite way. They're in such a bad way. They're so used to these foods that are highly palatable, going to like In-N-Out Burger and having the fries and the shake and everything else. When you eat foods like that, it's not appetizing to just eat some steak, or it's not appetizing to have just an egg omelet,

or it's not appetizing to have whatever your version of health is. It's not appetizing to eat any of these things. Vegetables certainly have virtually no taste. In fact, you could take a couple Doritos, take a handful of Doritos, eat a handful of Doritos and have the most expensive steak cooked by the best chef in the world and taste the steak immediately after eating the Doritos. And you're not going to taste anything. So I think what happens to a lot of people is where you were at, where, yeah, you could eat healthier foods and you weren't going to die from it.

Right. But you don't want it because it's not appetizing. It doesn't sound good. And a lot of people are, a lot of people have their leftovers in their fridge and they're like, ah, it's probably going bad. It's not appetizing to me right now because i just stopped at mcdonald's and got a big mac and i think this happens to a lot of people how how were you able to figure out a way to sort of break that cycle yeah um that those are all really good points i think

if i could just say one thing on that i think that there's like a bit of, like obviously mouth pleasure is a big thing for people. And, um, can I get a, and I think that, um, like with, with training, well, the first time you go in and train, it's, it doesn't feel good and it doesn't feel as good as when you're just sitting on the couch watching TV or whatever it is that you like to do. And then over time you, you acquire a taste for it and then it becomes pleasurable. It's almost the same way I feel like with food. Like the first time you try vegetables or something that is out of the norm,

it doesn't taste good, it doesn't feel good. And then you kind of get past this like barrier of entry and then eventually you start acquiring a taste for those foods and you get used to it. And then you start to actually crave those foods and you've noticed how it makes you feel in the long run. And then, you know, I think that, that people need to realize that it's going to kind of suck at first. Um, I think a lot of people just want like an easy thing that there's no work involved and it's like, oh, I just flipped a switch and everything was better.

But I don't really think it's that way. How did I do it? I think like what I was going to get into was that a lot of things happened where I kind of realized that what I was doing wasn't going to lead to where I wanted to be. You know, I wasn't getting any attention from the ladies for one, Um, you know, I wasn't getting any attention from the ladies for one, uh, for two, um, you know, diabetes and things like that run in my family. And kind of, I just had the realization one day that if I keep doing things the way I'm doing them now, you know, I'm going to be really unhealthy. It's, it's, I'm not going to have like a very happy life for what I want, you know, what I am going to find to be maybe pleasurable in life or happy in life. Um, and I wish I could say that, you know, like I had these amazing tips to give out as to how I did it, but honestly, I woke up one day and I told myself, you're changing your

habits today, starting today. And it's just gonna, you're just going to do it. Not to say that I hadn't tried to do that before I had, you know, many times, but for some reason I could, my convictions were just so strong that day that it just started this cascade. And as I built momentum, it got easier. Yeah. Were there days that I was, you know, really craving foods and maybe there was, were there days that I slipped up and did have foods that were quote unquote bad for you? Yeah. But, um, you know, I, I think it was just more of a, let me, let me build some healthy habits. Let me build some momentum with this stuff. And then I saw the results and then, you know, they just became easier and easier as I saw those results and saw how I felt compared to the way I felt before. With building, you know, with building discipline, I always say that like things have to start out at least a little bit easy. So this conversion over into you saying, you know, I want to have new habits. You know, it starts with a discipline and over a period of time it gets ingrained into the system and becomes a habit and it's like more

concrete and a habit is certainly something that gets to be, it gets to be hard to disrupt just like the habit of eating bad, the habit of eating good. How were you able just to get started? Like, because I think some people that come from where you came from, they're thinking, man, like, I don't want to eat tuna. I don't want to eat chicken breast. You know, did you did you find foods that you still enjoy? Did you find foods that you still liked? Yep. Yeah. So it wasn't like I went from eating nothing but fast food to eating like a bodybuilding diet.

My diet still wasn't maybe the best. But what I think I like to tell people is that I was so far on one end of the spectrum as far as nutrition goes that even the smallest change was going to make a difference. And that's what I tell people if they're like maybe where I was is that just find like a couple of things you can change that are not so hard for you to change and that you can tolerate. So for me, I still liked chewy bars at the time. I would eat chewy bars. I thought those were like really healthy because I saw. Chocolate chip, right? Yeah.

Well, you know what it was is I kind of looked around. I looked at my friends and what they ate. And I thought, OK, these kids who are playing soccer and on the basketball team, they eat chewy bars. I should eat chewy bars. So I ate chewy bars. Um, I just, I basically said, you know what, you can live without fast food so much. So why don't you just cut out most of the fast food? Um, you can still eat some of those home cooked meals that your mom makes and whatnot makes and whatnot. But why don't we just cut out some fast food? And the big thing I also did, I used to drink nothing but soda. Water didn't touch my lips or any other drink, basically.

And so first I switched to like Powerade, I think, and then slowly replaced some of that with water little by little. So instead of having, you know, eight cups of Powerade, I had four cups of Powerade and then four cups of water. Um, and so, you know, obviously you can see that all these little changes just meant that calories were a lot lower. And so I started to lose some weight and then, you know, once that got normal, I was able to then go to tier number two and make a few more changes and

get those to be normal. And then just kind of kept going from there. Yeah. How hard was it, you know, growing up in a Latin home, you know, if you don't finish your plate, you're kind of in trouble, right? Or it's all, it's, you're kind of, you're being rude. So how did the family receive this? You know, so my dad was born and raised in Mexico and then he came to the United States back in the seventies. And then my mom was born and raised in the United States. So, um, you know, she, since my mom was the one making the food, um, you know, it, it wasn't quite as, as much maybe as somebody who's both parents come from come from Mexico or Latin America, where that is the norm. Like you got to finish all your food. What we put on the plate is like what you got to eat

kind of thing. I think that she was really, my mom was really concerned about me and my health. My brother, who was older than me or was older than me, I'm sorry. Um, he was also quite obese and he was having health problems and he was really struggling to lose weight. Um, and so she saw how it affected him and she was really scared for me cause I was heading down those same sort of path. Um, and so when I brought up that I wanted to do all these changes, my mom was actually really on board and she really did everything she could to help me as far as making me separate meals for dinner, if that's what I needed or, you know, and my dad, you know, in his own way was also very supportive of that. Cause I think at the end of the day, they were just, you know, they could see that

maybe, you know, it's not so important to have those customs if it's going to affect health. So, um, but totally when I would go to like the family outings and I was the one not eating the rice and beans and the, you know, uh, high fat meals. There was a bit of like, oh, are you okay? Like, you need to eat? You're getting so skinny. You know, things like that. Trying to put the weight back on me. And I'm like, nah, I'm good.

I'm fine. It's pretty interesting because you can make a better choice almost no matter where you go to eat. I think a lot of times people think Mexican food automatically unhealthy. And, you know, like you go to eat. So I think a lot of times people think Mexican food automatically unhealthy. And, you know, like you go to a restaurant there, you might cook things in oils and things like that. You don't have a lot of control over that. But what you do have control over is, you know, if you get a burrito, the burrito maybe doesn't have to have a sour cream, guacamole and cheese on it. Like maybe you can just pick one of those things.

Maybe you can like double up on the chicken and maybe you end up with a meal that's, uh, now maybe, maybe not the most optimal thing still for your particular diet or whatever, but a much wiser choice than, uh, you know, getting all the extra calories in from all the other stuff. Right. Yeah, for sure., for sure. I think I still make those decisions today. You know, if I go to Chipotle, for instance, I'm not going to get cheese and guac and sour cream and double steak. And, you know, I'm going to pick, you know, maybe one of those. Obviously, the meat's going to be there, but maybe I'll pick the cheese. Yeah, they say pick your poison.

In this case, pick a poison. Right. Just pick one. Yeah. And, you know, there's those people out there that can go there and their metabolism's crazy or they're just super, super athletes or something like that, or they have high NEAT. And so they're just fidgeting all day and they got, they got the ability to go and get the double wrap burrito with literally everything double stuffed in there and they're fine.

I got one this past week. Yeah. A double wrap burrito. Nice everything double stuffed in there and they're fine i got one this past week yeah a double wrap burrito nice double double chicken protein yeah well you're trying you're trying to get on a gain train yeah exactly but i am always fidgety so maybe i don't know maybe i just burn it off you probably do yeah but what's funny is because like um started changed it but um when you're talking about how you were a super picky eater i was the exact same way. I ate nothing but like hamburgers, pizza, and you couldn't have anything healthy in front of me. I wouldn't eat it.

But I just ate much less. I don't know if that had something to do with me being super skinny. But that was the case for me too. Like I could not eat anything healthy. My parents would get so frustrated with me. It was just like Cheerios and like McDonald's. That's like all I grew up on. I kind of personally feel that the calling

comes from like your stomach. Like once you get accustomed to these things, what are your thoughts on it? What do you mean exactly by that? Well, I think like when you feed your body junk, I mean, it just depends on what you're feeding your body. But I think that your stomach is the one that's kind of like calling for it. Almost if you were to picture like if you were to throw a bunch

of candy out to a bunch of little kids they'd all have their hands up you know i think your stomach uh in some weird way is like calling for this junk food to be in your system and obviously there's some attachment to the way the taste is and the mouth feel as you mentioned and it's like hey do you want you know some chopped up chicken breast or do you want to have macaroni and cheese? And you're like mac and cheese, and you're literally not hungry for the chicken breast. You'd rather go to bed without any food.

Yeah, I think you're onto something there, maybe in the sense like if you want to go really scientific or deep, well, maybe not that scientific but um like your gut microbiota you're right right and they get they get accustomed to the foods that you eat and that changes and it can change pretty quickly but if all you're eating is mac and cheese and and you know uh double cheeseburgers um they're they're they're wanting that that's what they're kind of calling for kind of like you said yeah i definitely think that that Yeah, I think that you're also just, you're taste buds. You know, you're like, you just get, you get so

familiar with these foods, you get so familiar with these types of foods that it's just not it's not appetizing to try anything else. And I think what you said about fast food is really smart and, you know, let's just make sure people are understanding what we're talking about. Like, there's

there's, fast food is people argue so much about what's good and what's bad. Let's just say that fast food, it's pretty bad. Like there's not a lot of good things about fast food, no matter what diet you're on, in my opinion. However, what you're saying is like by just cutting out fast food, it's not that you were doing anything magical to the diet, but you were reducing calories. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you can get into an argument about all the other things like additives and stuff like that, but from a pure, you know, maybe health and weight loss standpoint, calories make a big difference. If you're over fat,

you're probably not going to be as healthy as if you were, you know, just a normal body weight for the most part. So, yeah, I think, you know, even if it's not cutting fast food out completely, but let's say all you do is eat all three or four of your meals fast food a day. What if you just start with one not being fast food? Like make one at home meal and chances are it's going to be lower in calories or, you know, lower in additives and all that kind of stuff than what you get from a fast food restaurant. I think it's really cool how you're mentioning how you didn't just go cold turkey

off of everything. You made really small changes that you were able to maintain over time because maybe if you did go cold turkey and start eating super clean, you wouldn't be able to maintain that. And now I'm more curious about your nutrition evolution over time. So you went from drinking all sodas to power weight to water. How did that continue to progress? Did you pick up, I know you practice flexible dieting.

When did you start picking that up later on? Did you find out about that sooner or did you find out about that later after you lost a bunch of weight? So what happened is after I lost the weight, we had a family friend who was trying to be a professional wrestler at the time. Him and his brother kind of took me under their wing and kind of taught me some old school bodybuilding bro diet ways and training ways as well. So from that evolution, I guess, or I kind of evolved into eating like a bro diet, like chicken breast and, you know, broccoli and white rice sometimes or brown rice, depending on the time of the day or whatever the case may be.

And, you know, of course, at the time, I just thought that, oh, man, this is the way this is. This is a perfect diet. And over time, as I started studying nutrition and kinesiology in school, and as I started getting more into it, I found a guy named Lane Norton. It's a really not known guy, but I found him. And he started talking about flexible dieting, how you can kind of eat what you want. It's just about portions and about macros and all that kind of stuff. And at the time I thought he was crazy. I was like, this guy is out of his mind. You got to eat these foods. But, you know, eventually I saw the logic and eventually I, you know, saw the science. And so I got into flexible dieting and i i think what happened also is then i got kind of too far the other way um in thinking that like oh man because i'm still a fat kid at

heart so i thought man i can eat all this junk food and i can you know if it fits you know if it fits your macros man um and then and i got to the sort of that end of the spectrum, then you kind of open up another door and you're like, oh, wait, there's this other side. And so I started thinking about actually what's more healthy, what's better for your gut, what's better for maybe, you know, overall performance and things like that. And so now I think I've kind of landed somewhere in the middle as far as I still will include like quote unquote bad foods if there's the occasion to do it, like a family gathering or something or anniversary dinner or something like that. Of course, that's kind of enjoyable just to have a meal with friends and family. But for the most part, I'm very big on getting the veggies in, getting the whole nutritious foods in. bad foods that they can eat and then kind of just sort of educate them on or maybe prompt them to

kind of pay attention to how those foods make them feel and then tell them it's still up to you, but you make that decision as to whether you feel like you want to put that in your body and have the consequences if there are any. I like what you're saying with that, because if you take it away from somebody that they immediately let, like a little kid, you know, a little kid takes the toy away from another little kid and the kid freaks out.

But if the kid takes away a toy from another little kid, but there's another toy right there, it's all good. You know, so you're still leaving them with an option. Hey, you could still go towards that. That's perfectly fine,

but pay attention to it. You know, let me know could still go towards that. That's perfectly fine, but pay attention to it. Let me know how it makes you feel. And a lot of times a few weeks go by and a few months go by, people get more consistent. They're more into their workout and they want to see results a little faster. They'll probably kick it to the side on their own. Yeah. That's one of the Jedi mind tricks I've picked up is that eventually they kind of end up doing with what is best for them anyways because they like if you prompt somebody to kind of just pay attention chances are they just haven't been paying attention most of the time and so um when they start paying attention now this doesn't happen every time but maybe nine

times out of ten they're like oh man know, I had that chocolate donut last night. And this morning I just feel puffy and I don't feel like I want to train. And I went, I, I didn't, I wasn't as strong in the gym and, and, you know, maybe it's placebo, but maybe not, you know, and if it is placebo then, or nocebo in that effect, um, it's, it's still real to them. Right. So, um, yeah, nine times out of 10, I find that they're like, yeah, I'm just going to throw that away and have something a little bit more nutritious. One thing, one thing I like too, is, uh, just to overeat, you know, so you said you made this small change towards a healthier foods. Um, and we know that like, if you just

gorge yourself on food, like your weight loss probably won't happen, right? However, I think that when you go from being a bigger person and you're trying to be smaller, you're trying to lose weight. I think sometimes it makes sense just to have at it, just to eat. So that way you feel comfortable. Over a period of time, you can worry about like, okay, I'm going to start to restrict. But what I see most people doing, um, you said you had made the conscious decision of like, I'm going to ingrain new habits and I'm going to change my life. And I see a lot of people, they have that conversation with themselves, but they're like, okay, Monday I'm doing cardio. I'm getting to the gym at five in the morning and I'm not going to eat any carbs. And I'm, they throw so many things at themselves at one time. And I really

like that. You're saying like, you just baby stepped it along. Just kind of one step at a time. You know, you mentioned that you went too far the other way as far as your flexible dieting was concerned, right? So what do you think people that pick up flexible dieting are getting wrong? Because even I did that back in the day.

You know what I mean? I was like, I can make this fit. I can make this full pint of Ben and Jerry's fit. Let's do it. Right. But I then realized it didn't make me feel good. I was, I was, my shits were gurgling and it was not good. So, um, what do you think people are getting wrong about when they pick up flexible dieting? Cause it's definitely marketed like, you know, a diet where you could eat anything as long as it fits um well i think that that for a lot of people that amount of freedom is or like that amount of power almost it's like it gets to their head almost and it's kind of like if you buy a brand new sports car and then you think like i

could just tear it up i'm gonna you know get on the highway and just go as fast as i can and then they pick up a bunch of speeding tickets and then they're like, oh, maybe it's not the best idea to do that. You know, maybe I need to pick my spots of when I'm going to, you know, let loose on this. Maybe I'll take it to the track instead, you know, from time to time. So I think maybe, you know, and I guess there are some people out there who still can go hog wild all the time with their diet. And maybe they don't maybe they don't feel it now and maybe they'll feel it one day or maybe they just won't ever feel it but i think what they're getting maybe wrong is just that um you know it's almost like they've ignored principles for tactics so that the tactic of flexible dieting or counting your macros doesn't trump the principles

of nutrition. And I see that a lot actually, even with training or anything is people get hung up on like a particular tactic or a particular trend and they kind of ignore like, okay, but does that make sense from like, you know, a physiological standpoint or, you know, a scientific basis? Does it, does it really make sense as being good for the long term? So I guess that's what I would say as the answer to your question. Yeah. I think, you know, one thing that, you know, eating a bunch of ice cream or something like that might do is it might take away the fact that you could have otherwise had something more nutritious. So in my opinion, it ends up being kind of like a double negative rather than just being negative on its own, you know,

rather than it just being maybe a food that you maybe shouldn't have eaten. It's also the fact that you could have eaten something more optimal to get you more towards your goal. The important thing to keep in mind, though, is that you need to have some sort of balance so that you can continue onward. So the flexible dieters versus the keto people, a lot of keto people will say, oh, you know, and this is kind of traditional keto. Every three days or once a week, depending on the protocol, you go very, very low carb. And sometimes it would be after a period of doing a few weeks of low carb to get yourself into ketosis. And they would say, you know, Saturday, Sunday, one of those days, just eat whatever you want. And then it kind of switched over into, you know, eating whatever you want for a whole day that might be too excessive. So maybe you want to, you know,

only eat some junk food towards the end of your night or something, the last two meals or something like that. What flexible dieting is saying is saying a very similar thing. The ketogenic crowd is reducing calories by just eating less carbohydrates. So they're doing the same thing that the flexible dieting people are doing on a daily basis. They may not track it. They may not be paying attention to it. But just because you didn't count it doesn't mean it does not still counting. There's still a count. There's still a calorie count. There's still a certain amount of energy that you're consuming. And with flexible dieting, the person may say, I'm just going to cheat a little bit every day. I'm going to end the night with a couple cookies or some chewies or during my workout today,

I'm going to have some Skittles or when I go see that movie, I'm going to eat the popcorn and maybe get something else, but I'm going to track it and I'm still going to make sure because cheating on flexible dieting, the only way to really truly cheat on it would be to over consume your calorie amount. That's kind of the only way you can do it. The only way to cheat on a ketogenic diet would be to eat carbs. And so in both cases, they're trying to allow some room for error. They're trying to allow some room for cheating.

It's just that the cheating on flexible dieting is spread out throughout the week. And it's, uh, it's probably most likely going to be, uh, maybe less, uh, less of what the keto person does who diets the whole week, but it's the same thing in a lot of ways. It definitely is. And I think like you just mentioned keto versus flexible dieting. Like, keto versus flexible dieting like i mean even say keto versus like paleo versus whole 30 or versus vegan versus carnivore i think that at the end of the day um they all share very common like base principles in that like we got to get enough calories in to sustain life we got to get certain nutrients in to sustain life. And there's obviously an energy balance going on here. So if you're trying to increase body weight, we're going to consume more. And if you're trying to decrease body weight, we're going to consume less than what

you burn. And then what's layered on top of it that makes it keto or that makes it this particular diet is just sort of like a strategy that blankets it, that allows for people, some people to do it easier versus other people. So, you know, for maybe somebody who's keto, you know, they don't like high carbohydrate foods, they like higher fat foods or they like, you know, you know, whatever the case may be there, it's easier for them to do keto. And so they've just sort of self-selected for the thing that's easier for them to sustain. Same thing with paleo, I guess, the same thing with flexible dieting for some people, it's easier for them to just be able to think of it, like you said, where I can have like one little treat a day,

as opposed to maybe waiting weeks before I have a treat, you know. And I think it just comes down to individual nature, individual preferences with that stuff. I think your lifestyle, your environment would play into it too. Like what kind of job do you have? You know, because like the job that you have, it may be wise for you to do some intermittent fasting, you know. But maybe you have a manual labor job where fasting doesn't feel great. And you're like, you know what, man, at lunchtime, I could really use some food. That would be great to get some fuel so I can continue working after.

Or maybe you have the opposite opinion. Maybe you're like, I'm too tired after I have lunch, so I'm just not going to eat. But I think the environment matters a lot too. And one thing with flexible dieting, which is normally the case, but I suppose you could set it up whatever way you'd like, is it's usually a little bit lower fat because you're trying to attack the overall amount of calories. And one of the ways that we end up with a lot of calories is through fat. And another way that we end up with a lot of calories is a combination of fat and carbohydrates together. They just taste really good. So you end up eating too much. For myself personally, it's always been easier to eat more fat. So it's always made a lower carb diet easy. I don't have any problem with carbs.

I like carbs. I still eat them. I'm not on a ketogenic style diet. I'm on kind of a low or moderate carb diet. I think the most amount of carbs I might get in a day might be 100 or 150. And I feel really good this way. But the reason why I eat this way is because it's super easy for me to do. I feel like I'm in some of the best shape of my life, not as lean as I was on the bodybuilding stage, but this is effortless compared to what I poured into that bodybuilding show, which included a lot of cardio and it also included a higher carb amount and lower fat. So for me, this has always been easier. What have you found to be kind of easy for you? So it's changed. And so I think it's probably changed for you too,

right? I mean, you have done keto, you have done carnivore, you have now you're doing maybe like a low to moderate and maybe in the past when you were like super, a lot heavier, I'm sure, like, I don't really know, but what was your diet like then? Was it high carb? Oh, I ate everything. Yeah. So it's, you've, you've sort of adapted your, your, your nutrition to like what works for you and what your needs are. Same thing for me. Um, for a long time, I was like on a light, a lot higher carbs because it's what I enjoyed eating. And, um, it was maybe easier for me to kind of do that. Um, nowadays, um, you know, I'm somewhere, well, right now I've been sort of

trying to drop some fat, so I'm kind of in a calorie deficit. So my carbs are lower as a result. You had to get ready for the show. I had to, cause, uh, actually I was pushing 200 pounds again and I was not comfortable. So I thought, Oh shoot, I'm going to be going on this road trip. Uh, and I'm going to be, well, actually I have a client in Seattle. oh shoot, I'm going to be going on this road trip. Uh, and I'm going to be, well, actually I have a client in Seattle. That's where I'm going after this. But, um, I was like, I can't go to this bodybuilding show looking like this. So I dropped some LVs, but, uh, for me, I'd say I'm more like on the moderate carb side. Um, I try to keep my fats at a good level because I think that for me personally, I feel better with my fats on a

little bit higher from out of, you know, hormonally things look a little better. Joints feel a little bit better. Um, and training feels easier a little bit when I'm a little bit higher in fat. Um, but you know, like I, I'm not an anti fat guy. I'm not an anti carb guy. I'm not an anti keto guy. I'm not anti anything. I have clients with doing all kinds of things right now. It's just. That's not fancy enough. You're off the team. Darn it.

We've got to end the podcast. All right. Bye guys. That's not attractive enough for the people listening. They're like, wait, what? The guys are kind of in the middle of everything. I like to say it's like I'm a professional fence sitter when it comes to all this stuff. Oh yeah.

I'm with you. No, no. I'm with you too. I'm with you. I'm with that. That sounds good good clients clients will come to me and be like what do you think about this i'm like it's not bad i mean that might work you know uh but what i do is i just basically guide them to what i initially think would work better for them and then i modify it because i'm not just somebody who's like no you got to do it that way because it's what I thought was going to work first. And I don't want to be wrong. I'm wrong a lot. So,

you know, and, and, you know, I think that's important for people to also understand is they might try keto and it might not work and they shouldn't feel like a failure because it didn't work for them. I think they should just be, just take it as data. Like, okay, this didn't work right now. Let's switch things up and see what we can find that works. But so for me, I don't do a hardcore intermittent fasting. I think I usually fast like a 12 hours and 12 hours with eating just because personally, that's what works for me right now. I don't feel like I need to eat in the morning. That's when I'm doing a lot of my work and I'll have my meal before I go train. And then my wife and I will sort of eat dinner a little later than most people, maybe

like seven or eight o'clock. But if you don't fast for 18 hours exactly, you're cheating yourself. I know. I know. But well, here's an interesting point. So I've modified that part of my diet for the last, say, week because I was going to be on this road trip. And I thought to myself, I don't want to waste time stopping and getting breakfast when I'm trying to get somewhere on this road trip. So I'm just going to fast until I get to the first point where I need to get gas. And then I'll just, you know, because now I'm saving time. Was I a little bit hungry? Did I feel my stomach kind of, you know, uh, hurting a little

bit. Yeah. But I, I mean, I think that's another thing is people, people don't, aren't comfortable with that feeling. They don't know what it's like to actually have an empty stomach. And so, um, so yeah, I, I've been fasting maybe like 16 hours, um, and I feel fine. And I just trained this morning fasted and I didn't have any performance decrements this time. Maybe next time I will, but, uh, a lot of things work. It's just finding, it's finding, it's literally just finding the one that works for you. And, and it doesn't have to be one way or the other, depending on what somebody else says. Do you still track super often or do you track like every few days?

Well, since right now I'm sort of in a deficit, I've been a lot more consistent with tracking pretty, pretty good, but I mean, still like an app or something like that. Yeah, I use an app. And, you know, sometimes I get the opportunity to weigh things. I'm on a road trip right now, so I can't. So I'm just trying to using my, what I think portion sizes are. Um, and so far so good. I've lost, still continue to lose a little bit of weight on this road trip. Um, but I also kind of built it in a way where I'm, I'm comfortable with my weight loss, maybe even stalling while I'm in this, on this trip, because I can't control a lot of things. You said something that's awesome. I really liked that you said that as a coach, you mess up a lot. A lot of people won't face that. A lot of people won't admit that. And I've taught people how to deadlift and squat and bench, and I'll give them a suggestion. forces them to lift a little bit less weight because maybe they're reckless or whatever. But sometimes I say something that's just not working and I watch them lift and I'm like,

oh shit, that didn't work. And as a coach, that's really important that you recognize that and say, okay, well, we got to audible back out of this and maybe let's try to align some of the things that the person can do and maybe even the things the person believes in. Because if somebody doesn't believe that a low carb diet is going to work for them, maybe

that's too much resistance right off the bat. And maybe they say, I can't go without eating carbs. And you're like, no, no, no, this is the way, you know, and you try to force them to do it. You want people to do it and you want people to not only be able to do it, you want them to do it. And you want people to not only be able to do it, you want them to be able to have success with it. The only way we're going to have success is if you can do it for a period of time. The only way we're going to be able to do it for a period of time is if it's at least somewhat easy. Yeah. I think for me, I'm a big data guy, I guess. I'm a big on-

A nerd. Yeah. I'm kind of a nerd. I went and got a master's degree and started a PhD and all that stuff because I like the science and all that. But sometimes all I really need is just data back from them as to how they're feeling on the diet or feeling on a training program. And you're right. program. And you're right. There's times where a lot of times I'll come to people with a couple of choices and it's up to them which one they want to make where I'll say, here's what I think might be most optimal. But I understand if you feel like that's not, if you can't do that right now, if you can't make that leap. So here's a smaller jump that we can make so ultimately it's up to you i want you to decide which one you feel most comfortable with um and we'll go with that and um you know and and one thing i tell my clients up front is listen you're you're a new client um i don't know

you 100 yet i don't have a lot of data on what works for you even though i do my best to ask them for you know training programs that do my best to ask them for, you know, training programs that they've been doing and what, you know, everything that they've been doing leading up to wanting to hire me. But I still tell them, listen, I'm going to get some things wrong. We're going to change things over time. And I want you to just understand that it's going to be sort of a process at first. And then eventually I feel like we'll get to a point where I know you pretty well and I can make decisions and we'll be wrong a lot less often. But for now, what I tell them is just trust the process. Please just trust the process. Yeah.

What do you believe that the end goal for, let's say that it's not a competition bodybuilder or something like that, the end goal for an individual trying to lose weight looks like in terms of their nutrition, because I've found, and I've seen that a lot of people that, you know, they track every day and they're good at tracking their macros. Some people to a certain extent tracking every day makes them anxious. You know, it's, it's just, it's, it's like, Oh my God, I don't want to see the scale again. And what does that look like for them? So I think that for most people, the prospect of having to track and weigh everything for the rest of their life is too much. So my goal most of the time is if I have to start them out, and most of them do start start out tracking and they may not start out weighing. I'll at least give them a guide on how to estimate portion sizes and track that. And then it still works out to be almost the same because let's say they're sort of

underestimating their portion sizes and they start, let's say their goal is to lose weight. They're still overestimating their portion sizes at first. And let's say they're not losing weight or maybe they even put on a little bit of weight. It's really an easy fix. I just tell them, okay, just decrease the portion sizes a little bit. And then that gets them going in the right direction. Ultimately, what I like to do is ask people like in your ideal world, I want you to picture yourself one year from now with your ideal physique and your ideal lifestyle when it comes to, you know, your nutrition and all that. And let me know what that looks like. Um, so that way we can work towards that. Um, and for most people,

they want sort of like sort of a hybrid where they can, they can track sometimes to keep themselves accountable, but most of the time they're able to just sort of intuitively eat a little bit and keep those portion sizes under control. Um, and then, you know, kind of maintain what they were able to achieve, you know, with the weight loss, say, um, that's, that's usually what people want is they want to get back to like a sort of an, an easier way of living as opposed to all the structure. I really like some of the stuff you're saying about, you know, how you're handling your clients, because I think you're, you're doing a great job, but even just, even just hearing it and not seeing you perform it, but you're allowing them to educate themselves. You're giving them

options to saying, Hey, look, you know, you can try this or this. And we're going to make changes as we go through. As you make those changes, I'm sure you're kind of explaining what's going on and why. Okay, you know, we did this and we were wrong, right? And you gained three pounds. So we're going to switch over to doing this now. And then also by having them track, they're going to educate themselves. Maybe, you know, I forget, I forget some stuff.

I forget that, you know, I used to look at like labels and I had to learn like how many grams of sugar were in milk. There's a couple of people listening right now going, what? There's sugar in milk. They're like dumping it down the drain. Um, you know, you've kind of forget and you forget you forget, you know, all the different, you have to, you have to read and look at everything. You know, it's really important in the beginning that you try to be as tight on that as you

possibly can and that you're really, really paying attention. But if people aren't, if they don't further their education, then it's going to be hard for them to kind of do what you're mentioning, which is you should be able to live your life the way that you want. There'll be some restrictions here and there. You should be able to live your life the way that you want, but you should also be able to know how to do that on your own. Yeah. I guess what I like to get people to do, because I feel like I had to do that for myself. I had to one day sit down and ask myself what I want my nutrition and like lifestyle to be like with all of this stuff. And that's kind of how I picked it up. Cause I was like, okay, I guess I never

really had thought about it for myself. Like, am I comfortable with tracking diligently and weighing everything for life? And I kind of wasn't. And I was like, well, you know, I'm going to fluctuate and wait or whatever, but hopefully I stick with it. I want to get to a point where I can stick within a certain range and have the habits and have the education, like you're saying, to keep myself within that range and not have it be such a crazy ordeal all the time. But ultimately, I, you know, I think some people, some people want to hire a coach because they feel like I, they really resonate with a certain method that that person sort of

is ingrained in. Um, you know, like that's the keto guy or, you know, that's the flexible dieting guy or that's the daily undulating periodization guy or whatever. And then they get kind of caught up in that. Yeah, I know how to do all those things. But I feel like when people hire me, they're hiring me sort of as just like, yeah, I'm a coach, but I'm guiding them to where they naturally want to go anyways. I think deep down, I think you've mentioned this before. I don't know if it was with Andy Galpin or something. I think it was one of those guests where people already kind of know what they need to do. They just need somebody to reassure them that that's what they should be doing. sounds really interesting that sounds like something i could do but but should i be doing that and they'll hire a coach and that coach will be like yeah i think that'd be a good strategy for you let's let's let's try it out let's let's just let's act and let's let's see what happens

you know i think it's really awesome first off that you have the experience of going from north of 300 pounds it's not you're jacked you're strong you know you you it's like no standing next to you guys oh yeah but like on sema's on anabolic steroids gosh people will believe you you know that right oh wait you're not anyway you went from here and you like you just you had an amazing transformation now for a lot of coaches that let's just say that they've been fit their whole life. What are they maybe missing when they have to work with an individual that is trying to make a massive transformation like that? Because working with someone who's been an athlete, right, and they want to do a show or they want to do a meet, it's very different from working with an individual that is very, very heavy and they have a lot of things going on. What are they missing? is very, very heavy and they have a lot of things going on. What are they missing? Well, I think that it's possible that at first that they're missing that sort of, that knowledge of what it feels like and that knowledge of, you know, maybe they've always been athletic, so they don't know what it's like to, you know, have to be so caught up in what

they eat because they're afraid they're going to gain weight and, you know, they to be so caught up in what they eat because they're afraid they're going to gain weight and, you know, they're afraid of going out in public or whatever, being laughed at. That's not to say that every coach that's never been fat doesn't have a compassion or sort of empathy for that and can understand. I mean, that's also not to say that they don't eventually learn that because I think that working with people that have, you know, over time, they gain that experience of being able to know what that feels like then, because their clients are giving them that feedback of, you know, this is how I'm feeling. And they're like, oh, okay, well, that, you know, that's knowledge for me. I think I'm just lucky, I guess, that that knowledge was just already, they already have that knowledge because I experienced it myself. And I can, I have a unique

understanding of when people come to me and they say, this is how I'm feeling. And I can tell them, you know what, I remember feeling that exact same way. And this is how I dealt with it. And, you know, a lot of times as a coach, I'm just as much sort of like an ear, you know, a shoulder to cry on or an ear for them to talk to that I can just listen to what, and sometimes it's not even about, you know, sometimes they're not even asking for advice. They just want to tell you because nobody else will hear them and nobody else will understand them. Um, so maybe that, that would be something that it's possible that a coach who's never been in my position would be missing. Yeah. We had a Tyler Cartwright on our podcast, uh, AKA keto gains. I don't know if that's still his name on Instagram, but, uh, Tyler was he was up over 500 pounds. And, you know, I've been big, but I was like big and fat, you know, kind of some of it was for powerlifting and some of which I just lost control and got heavier than I wanted to and had a hard time really reining it back in.

Because after every powerlifting meet, I'd always lose some weight and I'd always get in like a little bit better shape, even though I was still like puffy. Uh, but at a certain point I just got fatter and fatter and fatter and wasn't necessarily getting stronger. Um, so I didn't maybe experience some of the same things that, especially like at such a young age, that's got to be super, uh, hurtful. And that's gotta, that's gotta really, really suck. Uh, luckily for Luckily for me, I didn't get heavy at such a young age. I was already married and stuff. So I already had a significant other, which makes a huge difference. But something that Tyler shared with us was like, you mentioned, what does it look like when you set somebody up this way? It's absolutely mind-boggling. Almost as if you were never exposed to bodybuilding

and you got to watch how Jay Cutler ate and trained, you would be like, oh my God, what is this all about? This is absolutely insane. Well, the flip side is true of people that end up getting that heavy. You had no idea how severe, I'll just say addiction for lack of a better word, how severe the addiction is and the emotion of being drawn to those foods is. It's easy to sit here and play like armchair quarterback and be like, oh my God, these people are so fat and lazy. I can't believe it.

What are they doing to themselves? Why are they doing this? There's so much information out there nowadays. But these people, they have slid into some bad habits we all slide into bad habits and they're continually uh going downhill maybe some of them um maybe they recognize that at some point they can't figure out a way to turn it around they're they're they love this food too much and it's too much of a habit. What Tyler shared with us was like how much of like a setup it was for him to eat this way. And for him to even say it now sounded crazy. Cause you're like, wow, like you, you went through a lot of trouble

to eat like that, but he didn't want to go through that trouble. He was just addicted to the food, uh, very much the same way. Um, you know, someone might beat the hell out of somebody for drugs or something like that, or rob a store to get money for drugs or alcohol. And it's really, it's insanely sad. And I wish people were more compassionate towards it. I wish they understood it. I do think that, you know, for some people that are 40, 50 pounds overweight, that are making excuses that are like, oh, I can't lose. I don't have a good gym in my, like those people deserve to be kicked in the ass. But some of these people that they, they spun out of control, they don't have a good understanding on, on kind of how they should go about doing it. Uh, people need to understand

this is like a, it's just a real illness. You know, it's somebody that has a mental illness or it's as real as somebody not being born with a leg. I mean, it's a very serious thing and it's very hard to get someone headed in the right direction. What I want to say is that it's not like I don't still struggle at times to make good decisions all the time. I mean, it's still kind of it's a discipline. Like I have to tell myself to make the right decisions when it comes to my nutrition. It's not necessarily easy. Right. It's not. And it's gotten easier, of course. It's gotten easier to make that decision. And I think there was a period of time where when you don't see any results anymore, like you're just in a maintenance phase,

it becomes so easy to fall back into bad habits because there's nothing sort of extrinsically motivating you anymore. It's all intrinsic and that can, you know, depending on what's going on in your life, you know, that motivation or that discipline can fade. that motivation or that discipline can fade. Um, and, you know, I think that for me being, being that I was so young, like I just didn't know any other way. Um, there was some convenience there just because, um, you know, living at home, you're still getting home cooked meals and stuff. And I think what it was is like, I just didn't know how to monitor myself um i would i would i'd never was not full basically if i didn't if i wasn't full i'd go back and eat more and um that you know and fast food just tasted so much better to me than than any other food um i haven't had like i don't

know would you would you consider Chipotle fast food? I don't. Nah. Nah. That's safe enough. Yeah, that's in the safety zone. Yeah, I think, you know, snacks, fast food, some of those things can really, you know, get it, getting to that stage of being overweight and maybe, you know, some insight that you might have that maybe another coach doesn't because you went through it. You can understand, you know, somebody, uh, raiding their pantry in the middle of the night.

You might be like, shit, man, how many times have I done that. Um, I used to have a hard time sleeping and, uh, so I'd, I'd wake up and I would think I was hungry, but I probably really, you know, I wasn't like truly like hungry. Uh, certainly it wasn't going to die if I missed a meal, that's for sure. And yeah, I would end up eating and like, what are you going to eat at that hour? You know, two in the morning or one of them, or, you know, you're not going to, I'm not going to fire up the, yeah, you're not going to eat a bunch of egg whites, you know, you're going to eat like cereal or ice cream or some BS like that. And there's a lot of people that are really, really stuck in that cycle.

Did you get kind of caught in these kind of habits of just sitting in front of the TV, plowing through some ice cream or ordering pizza? Did you get kind of stuck into some of these habits and if so how did you get yourself out of them so um i think that when i was younger i didn't really have like a huge sweet tooth compared to like a savory just an insane craving for savory food so for me like i got into playing video games and my favorite thing to do is just get the chips you know if they're you know i would try my best to convince my parents to get pizza for dinner. That way I could have a piece of pizza, play some video games, go back in between the breaks, get another piece of pizza. Just keep doing that.

Do you have a camera at Andrew's house? Oh, shoot. I mean, seriously, dude, like identical twins. Yeah. That's all I did. I was just super setting like thumb exercises with. Andrew's like, what's your last name again? Yeah, I know.

It's a little scary here. It's like, wait a second. You're actually from West Sacramento. Oh, shit. And that's kind of like, that's how I preferred to eat. My mom will always kind of like joke with people when she's talking about me that like I ate like a chipmunk almost. Like I would eat, I would save half of it and then just keep coming back for more over and over again like the whole day that's how I just

ate I just a complete grazing the whole day um and so that's that's that was tough for me to break and I and I think I still I'll share that how did I get back up to like 200 pounds recently? Because I was allowing myself to have little mindless snacks and little mindless handfuls of things and thinking that I was tracking it, but I wasn't. I was basically underestimating everything that I was putting in my mouth. And so one day I just said, Noah, you're snacking too much. Stop doing that. You're going to stop. And for the first five days, my stomach was screaming at me to have a snack. And I told myself, you're not going to do it. You're not going. And if you're going, if you eat something, it's going to be tracked and it's going to be a full meal. And when you're cooking your food, one other thing I would do is as I was cooking, I was like snacking on something because I was hungry and you're eating, you're smelling the food and it's getting to you. And so I thought all along that I was like eating like 2,400 calories and come to find out, I said, you know what, you're going on 2,000

calories. You're not going to snack. You're going to track everything. And come to find out, I think I was eating like well north of 3, 3000 calories because I lost a ton of weight really quickly. And, uh, I had to kind of actually increase my calories a little bit cause I was losing weight too fast. Um, so yeah, that was, that, that was the hardest one is the snacking for me. Um, and like I just shared, it's still tough for me. It's still something I battle. It's great that you have the It's still something I battle. It's great that you have the tools though. Now I have the tools.

Yeah, you have the tools. So, you know, anytime, you know, I feel that way now. Like if I gain weight, I can go and revert back to, like you said, gathering data. I can go back to what I feel has worked best for me or depending on where I'm at or what I want to do, uh, what's the most comfortable or what's going to get me the results, the fastest I can kind of weigh out all those options and say, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to do this for a few weeks and I can just pick, you know, I, I don't stay on any one diet and, um, all through doing all the way from 330 down to like 260, I would change things up here and there. I wasn't always on a real strict keto diet. It was pretty much a low carb diet the entire time, but I took breaks. I took weeks off. I took not weeks off of like just not having a plan at all because that would be too reckless and it would set me back too far. I still had restrictions,

but I'm like, let me kind of switch over to doing this for a little bit it's just going to be a little easier this shit's getting too hard and what's the rush i'm not in any sort of rush you know so yeah that's a good one you just said is what's the rush is and that's something that i was hard on myself on in the beginning um is that i thought that everything was like a race. Like I gotta, I gotta get this strong by this point, or I gotta lose this much weight by this point. And as soon as I lifted that restriction on things, it got so much easier for me because I was able to then listen to my body when, and truly listen, like not just, you know,

that annoying voice in your head that wants comfort, but truly listen to the signals of, yeah, I'm seeing some serious performance decrements here. Um, maybe it's time for like a maintenance week. Let me, let me, let me just bring my calories back up to maintenance or maybe even a slight surplus for a week. And let me, let me see if that levels out things. And then if it did, okay, now we can go back to it if we want the deficit or whatever I was doing. Um, and if it didn't, okay, let's go another week and let's see if that helps. Um, and because I feel like when you put these like time restrictions on it, then you start making bad decisions because you're putting this pressure on yourself. And it's kind of like,

like a basketball player can hit a hundred shots in a row when they're practicing, but then you put this restriction on them. They've got five seconds to go, and now they've got to rush the shot, and they miss. And I feel like that's kind of what happens sometimes when people are making their decisions. You mentioned that your motivation initially when you were dropping weight, like you were seeing new body parts, you were getting stronger. Now that you've reached a good body composition and you're in shape by all means, what is it that motivates you to train? I just love it.

I love training now. I still give myself little motivations like, let me try this new exercise and get good at this and get stronger at this. For a while, it was powerlifting because I was decent at it. And I was like, I want to get really strong and compete. And at the time, there wasn't so many monsters out there when I was competing. So I had a thought that I could go to nationals and do well. And that's really not the case anymore for me. What what the hell's happened with power? Oh my gosh,

we need weaker people in this sport. That's why I got into coaching because I thought, well, I could live up my dreams through other people. Uh, cause I can't do it. Um, but you know, um, I constantly, I love to learn. So I feel like being in the gym and, you know, like physical movement is just another way for me to learn, like, what my body can do. You know, learn what's possible in terms of human movement. Learn, like, little interesting, like, if I change the way, the angle of this exercise, how does that affect, you know, how do I get more sore from that? Do I get more gains from that? Does my shoulder start to hurt from that? So that way I can like pass that on to, to, to clients. Um, you know,

so like one thing I've been doing, uh, like today in the gym, um, I'm not, I wasn't trying to deadlift super heavy, but what I like to do right now is see how I can make deadlifting. Can I, can I maintain a high level of strength output and still make it aerobic? And by that, what I do is I'll sort of, it's not CrossFit. I'm not like, I'm not sprinting each time. I'm not going to RPE 10 on every set, but I'll hit like a set of three to five at RPE seven. And then let's see if I can get on the air bike and maintain a certain wattage for a minute and then go back and do it again. And can let's see if I can get on the air bike and maintain a certain wattage for a minute

and then go back and do it again. And can I, can I sustain these reps over time? Um, and when, when do I break down? And I feel like I almost get like a hybrid thing cause I'm getting some cardiovascular work in there, but I don't think it's really affecting my strength too much because I'm not, I'm not like doing 10 minutes of cardio. I'm just doing a minute and the pace is kind of, kind of up there, but it's enough for me to, I'm big on recovery. So I got to recover between sets. And so I, I just think that's like a little challenge I can put on myself instead of just sitting there between sets and catching my breath. What, something else I can do? What, How can I push the envelope a little bit?

So that like, let me ask you this, the evolution of your exercise over time, right? When you first started, I don't know how you lost all the weight. What did that progression look like until you found lifting and then power lifting and then what you're doing now? So when I first started losing weight, it was again, one of those things monkey see monkey do. So I saw all the skinny kids, all the good, good looking kids were like playing soccer and running. I couldn't run yet cause I was way out of shape, but I got on the elliptical and I just went for an hour and I'd go for an hour every day. Uh, and then eventually I graduated to running on the treadmill and that worked for a really long time. It got me down. I went from 300 to a hundred and a little bit less than 180

in like, like less than six months or something like that. Yeah. And then I looked at myself in the mirror and I was like, well, you're skinny, but like, you look kind of weird because there's no muscle definition. And, um, like you're kind of a, like my bone structure is a little bit, I got like my dad's shoulders, but I got my mom's height. So I, I feel like I was like, ah, this kind of looks weird. Your shoulders are like sticking out weird. I was being really critical of myself, but again, my family friend who was trying to be a pro wrestler, I saw him and he looked like a Greek God. And I was like, man, that's what I want to look like. So I was like, how do you, how do you get like that, man? And, um, he showed me bodybuilding. So then I stopped doing cardio altogether and just started lifting weights, um, and gain some

muscle quickly as everybody does at first. And then that leveled off. And then I was like, okay, what's another challenge? What, once that was over power lifting, I want to get strong. I don't want to just look like I can lift weights. I want to lift weights. Um, so, uh, that's what I did from there. Then I wasn't, I wasn't too good with biomechanics at the time. So I hurt my back like a lot of people have in their life. And so I couldn't really do the powerlifting the way I wanted anymore. And so now I've gotten to a point where I'm sort of back in the middle, like a pendulum swings one way or the other, and then it comes back to the middle. I like seeing what my body can do.

Like I said, I like to explore different avenues. I know, like, you like to explore different avenues. I know like you're into jujitsu. One thing I've told a lot of people is I'd like to get into something like that because I feel like I'm at a place with lifting where I'm pretty decent at it. It doesn't feel like I'm not a beginner anymore. I'm not the best in the world either, but I want to be like a beginner at something again, something physical. Like I want to be humbled because I feel like I can pick up an exercise and maybe I don't do it perfectly, but I have some body awareness and I can pretty well replicate what I see. But with something like that or, or any other physical thing, like, you know,

I want to be able to feel like, man, I don't know'm doing um and uh yeah i feel like that would be cool it's super important to take breaks and to try different things you know you're you're having an evolution in your uh training an evolution with your diet i noticed for myself as i was losing weight, you know, I was like, the goal is to lose weight. And like, I knew I was sacrificing other things to lose weight, just as I knew I was sacrificing things to gain as much strength as possible. So I was always pretty comfortable with the fact that, okay, well, this is just for a period of time. I think sometimes people get a little carried away with that. So you want to be careful with that. Like if you've already lost 30 pounds, you shouldn't be beating yourself up.

I hear so many people, they'll say, oh, man, you know, I lost 30 pounds, but I've been stuck for like the last four weeks. You're like, come on, dude. Like, you know, you lost 30 pounds. Like that's awesome. And also, we're not trying to lose 50 pounds just to only gain it back. So this 30 pounds that you lost, that's great. Hopefully we keep it off forever.

And it's not going to be easy. It's going to be hard. You're going to get stuck from time to time. But like you said, maybe it's an opportunity or a chance to say, you know what, next three, four days, when I go on vacation next week, I'm just going to forget about it. And I don't even care if I gain a couple pounds. Not a big deal. When I come back, I'll get more strict and I'll get back on it.

You just have to make sure that you don't end up sliding downhill too much. But when I was losing weight a couple times, I got kind of like stringy and I wasn't as jacked. And I'm like, eh, this, this is not a, this is not a good look either, you know? And so I had to switch things up. Um, are you a proponent of the scale? So yes and no, it depends. I, I like it as a tool because it's one way that we can gauge progress, but I usually like to have backups to that because sometimes the scale lies as to what's going on, you know, overall. Um, so what I, when I, I, what I ask people is how do they feel about

the scale personally for them? Some people are really freaked out by it. And so people get really bad anxiety about getting on the scale. Um, and I just kind of tailor it to that. And if they're not, um, a proponent of, I mean, if they're really freaked out by the scale and they don't want to do it, um, I don't force them to do it. I say, okay, um, we'll, we'll, we'll do instead is why don't we take some, some measurements of your waist and your chest and all that kind of stuff. And that'll be a good way for us to see. Another one is okay. How your clothes fitting, you know, are they getting looser? They're getting tighter. They're staying the same. Um, and, uh, You know, are they getting looser? Are they getting tighter? Are they staying the same?

And, you know, if they have the ability to go do like an in-body, like there's a lot of places now where you can like supplement shops even that have an in-body that you can use for free. Obviously, they want you to buy their supplements, but maybe you can get by by just buying like a protein bar each time. You know, that's a good way where it's technically, it's also taking your weight, but then it's taking body fat percentages and stuff. So you're, you're seeing a little bit more information. Um, so yes and no, it, I, I use the scale personally cause it's a good way for me to gauge things, but it's not the only thing I use. If, you know, there's probably some 16, 17 year old kid listening, that's really, really heavy. And he's like, okay, well you ran and lost a bunch of weight. Should I do that? What way can I, what's the best way I can go about this so that

my next eight years will be as beneficial as possible? Um, let's see. I, I remember distinctly feeling that when, after I started lifting weights that I wish that I would have started with lifting weights. Um, I think that lifting weights is probably an easier thing to get into at first, in my opinion, um, because well, okay. There's so many, there's so many things to consider there. But in a perfect world, yeah, I think lifting weights would be the easiest thing to do. Because if you're a heavy guy or a heavy gal, you're probably going to be decently strong already. Because you've got body mass to throw things around. So that creates a little bit of self- you know, self-efficacy,

self-esteem around the exercise. So like if you're stronger than all your friends and you're kind of like able to show off there a little bit, like you want to come back to the gym, you want to do that. You know, also you're building a little bit of muscle while you're losing that weight. So maybe by the time you get down to your goal weight, you're feeling, you know, a lot better about yourself than maybe I did when I thought I was kind of too stringy, like, like Mark said. Um, but I also wouldn't discount the, um, value in some cardiovascular work because I think that, you know, being more aerobic just helps you recover better. Being more aerobic is, I mean, not to mention all the heart benefits, all the health benefits of cardiovascular disease. So to somebody who might be wondering what they should do, my advice is find out which one you feel like you can stick to for the long haul, maybe for now, and do that.

for the long haul, maybe for now, and do that. So I don't want to tell you that you have to go get a $50 gym membership to lift weights. Literally, if all you can afford to do is just go for a walk every day, just start with that. Just start with the easiest thing that you can implement and stick to. Yeah, because if you really don't enjoy it very much, then you're going to use excuses, right? You're not going to do it.

You're going to be like, ah, you know, lifting made me really sore or, you know, I don't have time to go today. I got to drive 20 minutes to the gym. Like, you'll just start to throw every excuse. And if you have something that you can do that's, you know, take the word easy out of it and just say simple. You know, you got something that's pretty simple. It doesn't have a lot of barriers associated with it because everything can be hard for someone who's just starting. So you got something that's pretty simple

that you can do at least pretty frequently, a couple times a week, then that would be probably the best place to get started. Exactly. Yeah. What, you know, how much of an impact is the actual, I know you do a lot of stuff with people for their, for their lifting as well. How much of an impact is the actual training, uh, have on people as far as, as far as like, uh,

well, obviously for strength that you have to train pretty much. Right. Yeah. But, uh, right yeah but uh for body composition purposes um so i think that um it probably doesn't make as big a difference as people think it does i think that when you get into the camps of like is exercise or diet most important and they're both important i think sometimes people overestimate maybe how much like what the caloric burn is of a workout, unless, you know, unless you're doing like, you know, continuously working for two hours, like that's going to be a lot of calories. But if you're doing a standard, you know, um, weight session where you're, you know, you're doing maybe three sets of 10 of five to eight different exercises with one minute of rest between sets, um, there's a lot of downtime there.

And so you might end up only burning like 150 to 200 calories or something like that during above what you would have just burned anyways. And so like, and I think that's like a weird habit people get into is like, oh man, I worked out. I earned this big meal. I earned this cheap meal or I earned this big, you know, double, double. Like, let me show you what you actually earned yeah like jerry's you earned like this little portion of you actually um and you know and it's also actually exacerbated a little bit by like wearable fitness trackers

like i see i think you have an apple watch over there i think it overestimates sometimes like what your caloric burn is when you're in a workout but um you know i think it does i think it is helpful i just think that um i don't want people to over overstate the importance as far as calories burned goes but then there's more there's more that goes into that like if you're going to lift weights you're going to preserve muscle as long as you're, you know, lifting. You're not getting hurt. You're not, you're eating enough protein and things like that. And that makes a difference body composition wise because there's a difference between losing weight and losing fat, right?

So I think the training helps a lot on that side of things as far as you can kind of dictate whether you're going to lose weight versus losing fat, depending on what you're doing with your training, a lot better. Yeah, maybe all of us, maybe every single person kind of has abs, but covered up by the food that we're eating and not necessarily the lack of training, right? Yeah, I mean, it's way easier, I think, and I think that I'll explain why in a second, but it's easier to create a caloric deficit through caloric restriction as opposed to more exercise. And I think the reason for that is a couple of things. One, our brain is very good at creating homeostasis. And so when you're doing extra exercise, it starts sending all the hormones to get you. Hey man, you got to eat.

You got to eat. And if that doesn't work, it actually starts telling you to just move less as far as like fidgeting, as far as walking around. So you, as people lose weight, they might start to realize like, or if they pay attention, they'll start to think, oh, like, like getting up to go do that thing feels like I have, like, I need to muster up more energy to do that. Because your brain's literally saying like, listen, man, we're done with this weight loss stuff. You need to just like chill out. And so that's one reason.

Number two is like, if you're killing yourself in the gym every day, eventually something's gonna break, you know, like you're gonna get injured or you're gonna be so sore, you're just not gonna be able to muster up enough muster up enough dedication to go back or something like that. So I think it's those two things. So I think you've got to be careful with how much you rely on exercise for the weight loss. You know, with everything you're saying, it's obvious that you know all the intricate aspects of training and nutrition.

it's obvious that you know all the intricate aspects of like training and nutrition, but your, your mental like approach to coaching and dealing with people is really high level. What are, what are some things that helped you learn? Was it like working with Lane? Was it teachers around you? Was it certain books? Um, probably this podcast. Yeah, man. Probably this podcast. Yeah, man. Just listen to this podcast. I think what I've always, I'm not an amazing athlete. I'm not like, I don't think physically that I was like blessed with the best genes there. But I think I was blessed with an ability to learn, I guess.

I feel like my strength has always been in learning and paying attention and being able to apply things. And so essentially, I feel like everything that you do, everything that you read, whether it's fitness related or not, can be a lesson that you can funnel into coaching. If you're reading a finance book, there's just principles in the finance book that can be applied to coaching. If you're reading a, even a, a fiction book where there's obviously like morals and things to this book that can be applied to coaching sometimes. And so, you know, it was reading, I guess. Um, it was, I, I think it helped me a lot that I went through sort of a formal education just from the, not that I don't think that you have to have a formal education to do this stuff, or I just think that it, it helps you. They,

they're basically organized organizing all this information and, and helping you to come up with, or helping you to develop the tools to like synthesize that information and to, some people can do that without the need for formal education. But I think that's, I, I, I guess I pride myself on the mental part. So thank you very much for that compliment. That means a lot. That's literally what I try to do is I just try to learn and I try to figure out how I can use that tool.

I just try to keep my tool chest like full of tools. Yeah. That's awesome. It sounds like you've done a good job of, um, trying to help people to get to a goal, uh, without doing too much shit that they don't want to do. Yeah. Um, what are some things that you might have to do that you don't want to do. Yeah. What are some things that you might have to do that you don't want to do? What are some things that you had to do to lose weight? What are some things that some of your clients have had to do to lose weight that maybe they don't, maybe they don't always love it? Because I feel like you're finding a pretty good balance between things that you don't want to do and things that you should do. But there's got to be some stuff that you don't want to do sometimes,

right? Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to make it seem like I'm getting people to where they want without making any changes at all. But, you know, there are a lot of, I mean, you're going to have to, you're going to have to, if you're going to lose weight, there's going to be a point where you're going to feel hungry sometimes. You're going to have to restrict yourself in some way, somehow, you know, whether that's cutting out a food group, whether that's counting your calories and deducting some in order to lose weight. Fasting. Or fasting or, you know, whatever, whatever the case may be. I think that that's sort of like the common denominator is we're going to have to take something away at some point and it's going to probably not feel so good

at some point. Um, if it's exercise, um, you know, maybe you're going to have to move in some way. Um, hopefully we can find a way that's tolerable for you as opposed to other ways. Um, but yeah, I mean, if you want to be healthy, uh, in my opinion, you got to do daily movement. You've got to, you know, um, eat a certain way as far as, you know, food profile. And, and if you want to make sure that you're not gaining too much weight, then you're going to have to keep yourself accountable with some sort of restricting property. Where should someone start with their calories? Uh, and, uh, where should someone start with their caloric restriction? Um, that's a good one. So if it's just a straight

beginner, like somebody who has no idea what even calories are, maybe, um, I think just portion control could be an easy way to start just to get a sense of like, how much am I eating on a day-to-day basis? Like I, every time I eat, I'm taking like three, three scoops of rice, like three cups of rice or whatever the case may be. And like two steaks and no veggies or something like that. You know, or every time I, or I'm going back for seconds and thirds and, and just get an objective view. However, that may be of how much you're eating. Um, and then also maybe buy a scale or take some measurements or take some photos, track some data for two weeks. How much am I eating? Whatever measurement tool you use and how is that affecting my body

composition? How is that affecting my weight? Okay. I gained some weight during those two weeks. So that means that if you've gained weight, you have been in a caloric surplus for two weeks and two weeks is probably a good enough time to, for you to not have like weird fluctuations. And you might just want to track average weights from week to week. Um, and so if I gained some weight and my goal is to lose weight, okay, so let's see how I can decrease the amount of food on my plate for now. Or, um, you know, that's, that might work, you know, if they're not eating like super high oil foods and things like that, where there's hidden calories that they can't see. Um, that could be a real simple way for them to just start.

And if they have a sense of calories, you can do the same thing. The principle is the same. It's just how specific you're getting. So you can track calories by weighing things out or tracking them on a MyFitnessPal or something, taking your weight. And if you gained weight, same thing applies. You just ate too many calories and let's cut back a little bit. Again, I just want to point out for people that are actually like, you you know really kind of hunker down and pay attention and want to lose weight just try not to do everything all at once yeah because it just it just makes it too difficult

and i know that you uh you probably feel like you're mentally strong you probably feel like you're mentally tough and some people maybe feel otherwise about themselves. But even if you're a former football player or collegiate wrestler, just take it one step at a time. Track the calories and then get used to the food. And then if you want, the following weeks, reduce the calories a little bit. But if you reduce the calories by a thousand and you start exercising right away, it's just, it's not that you can't do it. I'm not, I'm not going to be the person that's going to tell you that you can't do something because we've seen people do all kinds

of miraculous things, but you just really, um, you're just making it more difficult than it's necessary. So if you're adding in exercise, you haven't really exercised before and you're also reducing calories, uh, probably just a small tweak, small tweak will get you the results you're looking for for now. Yeah, I think I'd like to stress that it's not necessarily about big sweeping changes. Like I feel like a good analogy might be like to turn a battleship. Like you can't just turn it around on a whim like it takes. Yeah, like in Hot Shots. Anybody see that?

Are you guys too young? Hot Shots part two. Yeah, it's going over my head damn it i don't know he uh so his first or second one the second one his uh cap blows off and they're on a they're on an aircraft carrier and he goes he goes oh my god my hat blew off he's like we got to swing this bad boy around and pick that up right and like that will send us off course for weeks so what i like anyway i think one thing that's important is let's say you've been i don't know let's say you're in your 30s and you're trying to lose some weight your habits have built momentum for 30 years you're gonna it's gonna take some time to slow that momentum down to get things going in a different direction. You can't just pivot and go the other direction. And I think that pivot for a lot of people, like you're saying is when they just, they go on a thousand calorie diet and

they start going and doing a bunch of cardio or whatever in the gym and they burn themselves out and crash and burn and then end up gaining all the weight they lost back and they, and then some. and then they end up gaining all the weight they lost back and then some. So what I'd like to stress is just make a small but meaningful change. If it's the way I just said with the portion control, that's one way. Another way could just be the way that I did it was like find one habit you can change about your eating. Like if you're eating fast food all the time, let's go with one meal not being fast food or something like that. And the same thing again, just track the data.

Did that make a change? Did that make a meaningful impact on your goal? If not, okay, let's try something else. And just keep trying things until you find that combination that's feeling like the sweet spot for you. You know, on that idea of habits, when you mentioned that you, you know, you went up to 200 pounds, found out you were snacking and those snacks were making you in a, like a 600 calorie surplus. That's a new habit where you don't snack as much. Same with me. Like I don't snack at all anymore. Um, it happened more gradually, but it's just, it doesn't do well for me. Like I talked about granola bars. I used to eat a whole box of those.

I love that shit, man. But, um, you picked up this habit later on, even after you had that knowledge. So are there any other habits that you picked up a little bit later that you think a lot of people could benefit from? And are there any like baseline habits do you think would like benefit people in general? Like don't snack. Yeah. Yeah. I think snacking now that I've realized when I, when I came to the realization that I was doing it, I think that, um, that's like a, that's, I think snacking, now that I've realized, when I came to the realization that I was doing it, I think that that's like a, that's I think one that a lot of people do and they don't realize it. You know, yeah, chewy bars. Yeah, I remember we had Jay Cutler on the podcast and he said that he ate, you know, he didn't have any problem, you know, sucking it up and eat eight times a day. And he did it for a really long period of time.

And I was like, oh my God, eight times a day. And he did it for a really long period of time. And I was like, oh my God, eight times a day. And I think I just looked it up one time and you know, you can find whatever you want on the internet, whatever you're looking for. But I saw some information that said the average American eats like 13 times a day. I was like, well, they got all these people got Jay Cutler beat all the hell. So I think there was a study that came out that was saying that people underestimate their caloric intake by upwards of like 50% or something like that. That might be a lot of snacking, right? Because they think like, oh, I just had like a little bite of that. Or like, you know, for me, what it was is I would like eat a lot of my wife's food that she didn't finish. Or I would just have a bite of my wife's food that she didn't finish, or I would just have a bite of hers

or something like that. Or she'd be having a snack and, you know, bless her. She's, she's the kind of person that can eat anything and whenever she wants. And she's still the same size ever since she was, you know, uh, 16 years old or whatever. But, um, so I got overconfident in my ability to keep myself accountable and, you know, have those snacks and track them accurately. And I thought, nah, I'm, I'm a coach. You know, I do this for a living. I, I, I'm, I'm not going to fall prey to those things, but I did. So, you know, it was humbling. So that's one thing like just, just accountability on that side of things. Um, you know, another habit that people can have, you know, one thing that I forced myself to do is, you know, get a certain base amount of movement in my day, whether it's just by going and like taking my dogs on a walk, um, whether it's forcing myself to not, you know, being that I can work from home. One thing that I realized I was doing was just

sort of like sitting or laying while I did my work too much, like all the time, like it was comfortable. So I started forcing myself to take these little, at least if I've been working for an hour or straight, take, I took five minutes to just sort of like maybe stretch or get into like a squat position or go for a little five minute walk or something like that. Um, because those little things add up, you know, um, and that'll help you to make sure that you're not, you know, just sedentary all day. Um, you know, and that's something I tell people that are like, uh, have a office job is would your boss kill you if you got up every like five minutes, an hour, and just did something walking stretching getting into a squat stuff like that those are two big ones i think some some daily movement and

just accountability on the intake if you're still really dying and you want something to snack on you know you can try to lean towards something that's uh got more protein in it you know it's it's obviously it's not going to taste nearly as good as, uh, some sort of packaged food, but hard boiled egg, um, mozzarella stick, uh, just a piece of cheese or, uh, even like a protein shake, you know, some of these things, uh, I've suggested to people and they've had a lot of success with maybe some cottage cheese or something like that. Um, I've even recommended to people, uh, you know, have a protein shake before you go shopping, you know, have a protein shake before you go to a restaurant that you always know is slow because you're going to get there. They're going to put the bread on the table and you're starving. And you're just

thinking like you had a long day at work, maybe at a long week at work and you're just kind of stressed. Now you're with the family. You want to enjoy your willpower is going to dwindle down. You're starving, quote unquote, starving. And so just having just a little, a little something can, uh, in that case can help a lot. But I agree a hundred percent too, about what you were saying about like eating while you're cooking. It's like, how many of us are guilty of that oh man like you're always just grabbing and you're not you're not even thinking you're like in a frenzy because you smell the food you're all excited it's like watching the sharks get their chum on shark week right like you can't help it think of what you're like when you're gonna feed your dog say and how like they're going crazy and they're jumping all

that's literally you on the inside except you don't have anybody dictating what you're eating. Yeah. Yeah. You don't have anybody giving you just a little cup of something. Exactly. Um, so yeah, that, that's a good point. Do you find, um, because you work with a lot of different individuals and obviously you practice flexible dieting, are there situations where you've put somebody on like a ketogenic type diet or one of these different diets? Yeah. Um, I've had some, some clients who, um, are like in a medical field, like EMT or nurses where they have to do overnight shifts and things like that. Um, I've found, and the research is there to show that the day after an overnight shift, because of the broken up sleep, they're basically less insulin sensitive. And so their blood sugar control is not very good

for the day after something like that. And so I'll have them practice some intermittent fasting, going into the overnight shift and then coming out of it, I'll have them do like a ketogenic diet maybe for the first day. Um, and then kind of gradually increase their carbs over the next couple of days as they recover from that event. Um, so it's all very sort of specific to things like that. Um, that's, but that's one instance where I'll get into the, to the, to those kinds of things. Um, sometimes I'll get clients who have like an autoimmune disorder. You know, I'm not, we'll start getting into like gluten-free stuff and like dairy-free stuff. And research may or may not be there, but I found a lot of times that these people who have these autoimmune issues have some issues with digestion as well, have some issues with their gut and maybe it's

leaky gut. Maybe it's not, I don't know. Um, but they tend to have these inflammatory responses to some of these things like gluten. They're not gluten intolerant. They're not, you know, they're not, they don't have celiacs,iacs or they're not lactose intolerant, but sometimes removing some of those actually helps them with their symptoms, whether it be like a rheumatoid arthritis or something like that. So sometimes I'll play with those things just on a case by case basis for sure. What you got over there, Andrew? I was just curious which video games you were playing when you were a kid. Oh, man. Definitely Call of Duty was like my favorite.

Call of Duty 4, I think it was. Yeah. Oh, man. Modern Warfare. Okay. I think that's the one I used to play too. Yeah, yeah. Gears of War.

That was a big one. It was a lot of first-person shooters for sure. And then I started getting into like those skyrim and like those you know open world oh that's dangerous yeah gosh yeah anything any massive multiplayer online like i mean it becomes your life right oh yeah well and so like all my friends were we all just we get off of school we go home we get online we're talking to each other through our headsets and we're playing video games with each other so it's just like it's social yeah we we just had uh elliot holson and he was talking about how like everything's becoming virtual reality like you know we're virtually shooting

each other on you know these video games and stuff instead of actually like going out and like you know whacking each other with a stick or something you know my brother was um big into video games with me too so like early on like i like I got started early, I had the Nintendo 64 and then the PlayStation. And so like him and I would play each other and, you know, all the games that they had, Mario Kart and all that crap.

All the good stuff. Yeah. In regards to like what Nsemo was saying about like getting somebody on a different type of diet, you know, you and I were talking about like my back issues also. If I were to follow like a flexible dieting,

you know, method or whatever, but I like, you know, like, oh, but I can mix in this hot sandwich because it fits my macros, but the carbs from the bread make me feel like shit. So because of the inflammation and whatnot. And then, so then does that like mean it doesn't work for me or I just,

I just need to fit better macros, right? Cause like the macros will fit, but that doesn't mean that my body's going to appreciate what I put in it. Yeah. I think there was, there's nothing wrong with the approach. I think that it's,

it's exactly what you said. Like you, you just picked a suboptimal food to fit into your macros for use. And there's a lot of instances where that happens, where like people just find that they, that this food doesn't make them feel good. You know, maybe it's bread, maybe it's cheese, maybe it's whatever. And for whatever reason for them, it creates a reaction. So that's why I go back to saying like you can eat that. You can eat what you want, but pay attention to how it does make you feel.

Pay attention to the consequences or the physiological effect of what putting that in your body does. And then is there a certain type of diet that you recommend more than others for gaining size? That's a good one. Asking for a friend. Asking for a friend. Myself. I don't think there's a particular diet. I think a lot of times when people have trouble gaining weight, it's like they get full too fast or they just like physically can't put enough food in so and to that that's where i

might limit things that are going to make them too full so like we have to have the protein probably obviously for the for the muscle but i might limit the amount of like bulk veggies that they eat like they're not going to be eating like big salads and things like that because that's just going to make it harder for them to get the calories in i might try to get them to rely on things like you know faster digesting carbohydrates or things like that um getting a shake that has a lot of carbs and fats and stuff in it because it's just easier to digest maybe for them and just not hard to make yeah yeah have you seen anything whether it be like in person or maybe even just like a study where like if I were to have like a certain amount of protein, my body

can handle it a certain way. But if like Enzima has the same amount of protein, he can utilize it way better than my body can. Have you seen anything like that? So like an individual's ability to utilize the break, break down the protein and utilize it? Yeah, exactly. I don't know if I've seen a study on it, but I think that you could probably infer the science as far as like an individual's ability to digest protein. And some people maybe don't release as many enzymes. There's the same concentration of enzymes as another person. And then therefore, there's a lot of undigested food that ends up just passing

through and you're not, you're not actually using it. So there might be something to, you know, maybe in SEMA, you know, one thing I see a lot of people do is they eat super fast. Like they're just scarfing it down.

That's makes it really hard for your, your, your body to digest later on. Like we have teeth for a reason chew things into small bits so that we don't impact you're supposed to chew it almost into a liquid yeah so i tell people um you know 25 bites per lot or 25 chews per bite and it's hard at first it's hard yeah but then it just becomes second nature after a while. So that's something I'll tell somebody who maybe, like, I know that you've kind of struggled with some stomach issues, right? Yeah.

And I'm not going to, I don't know if this is a cure, but things like that, just, you know, paying attention to how well you are chewing that food and getting it ground up. Maybe some digestive enzymes. I don't know if you've tried that, but. I definitely need to. Yeah. Yeah. Some digestive enzymes could help. Yeah. Cool. I think what you mentioned, uh, you know, back to, you know, whether like bread or something like that might be inflammatory, uh, towards, uh, your joints or your back or these things. I think, I think it, a lot of times, obviously, it comes down to the person and how severe maybe they have an allergy to that food

or maybe they've got something that's not agreeing with them. But I think it comes down to dosage. If you had one sandwich once a week, maybe it won't impact you that much. But what does it look like when you eat that sandwich? You might go get a meatball sub that's just freaking gigantic and you, and you're probably in a calorie surplus as well. So maybe it's kind of a combination of like, well, you know, you kind of pigged out. So like your digestive system, your whole body's like, Hey, like that wasn't cool, man. I didn't like the way that you just bombed me with all that food. Whereas if you just had like a bagel

with like a little bit of butter on it or something, maybe it wouldn't be as harmful, you know? So I think that gets to be the tricky part about some of this stuff where, you know, someone has a real true like gluten intolerance and then maybe somebody else just, they're not like completely intolerant to it. It's just that if they get nailed with a big dosage of it in combination with it being excess calories, then maybe it's more insulting to metabolism. It definitely makes a lot of sense because like I've been having the, like the yogurt with the Greek yogurt with like just our protein. Yeah.

Like I had never tried it and it's freaking amazing. So after the first time I had it, I was like, dude, it's go time. And I poured a just ridiculously sized bowl and the whole, like for the next two days, dude, I was like, dude, it's go time. And I poured a just ridiculously sized bowl. And for the next two days, dude, I was just crapping my brains out. I'm like, what's happening?

And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's right. I can't have a gallon of Greek yogurt when I don't have any dairy, period. Yeah, that much lactose at one time. These damn growing pains, man. I think it's a good point. You see a lot of like elimination diets these days. Like a carnivore diet is kind of like an elimination diet. And then some people do it for health reasons maybe.

And then usually what an elimination diet does is it removes it for a while, removes a certain food for a while, and then adds it back in. And then you kind of gauge whether you have a reaction to it now that you've not been exposed to it for a while. But for a lot of people, they just have a reaction to it anyways because they just haven't eaten it for a while. And a lot of times when they, like, let's say it's a food they really enjoy, like bread or something like that,

well, they're likely going to, they're not just going to have like a little cube of bread. They're going to have like a loaf of bread because they haven't had it in six weeks or something. Time to go in. Yeah. Going in hard. Yeah. So you gotta, so what I'll tell people is if I do something, like I mentioned earlier, where I kind of eliminate maybe gluten or something, just to see what it does. I'll tell them when we add it back in, you're likely not going to feel your greatest for the first day or two. And then, but I want to see how you feel like after several days or a week, are you continuing to feel bad or you, or are you not, or are you kind of back to feeling okay again? And then we'll decide from

there whether it's worth still keeping out of their diet or not. Yeah. Um, with the, uh, the thought of like an elimination diet, um, since you are Lane are Lane's coach, what do we got to do to get him on a carnivore diet? Well, I'm his coach for training, not nutrition. No, you got to be like, oh, how does that workout feel? If you feel sore or something like, dude, I think it's extra added carbs. You got to take those out. carbs you got to take those out i'll say that i have learned a lot working with lane he's he's he's good to work with but i've also learned him very well and i've learned that i'm not that that's a battleship that is going very fast and has a lot of momentum on the nutrition side of things and there's really nothing i'm going to be able to do to get him to turn that one around so i just let him do what he's going to do his His strength has come back. It has.

Looking strong. It has. You know, he was patient and he did all the work he needed to do on the rehab side of things. And he, I'm not going to take credit for that because I wasn't the one that. Stuart McGill, right? Stuart McGill helped him out. Brian Carroll. And then at a certain point, you know, they handed him back to me to kind of keep that momentum going. But, yeah, he just competed not too long ago. He made all his lifts, right? He made all nine for nine. He didn't hit PRs.

Can't beat that. But he was in the 600 for squat and deadlift again. And actually was on the high threes for his bench. So he's right there knocking on the door again. And he's like under 200 pounds or something, right? Or was he 220 or something? How much did he weigh? I believe he was like just under 230 or something.

Yeah. That's great. 105 class. Yeah, those are great numbers. Is he normally in a lighter weight class? Normally he's been competing in the 93-kilo class, so 205. And him and I made the decision that maybe being a little bit higher in body fat, have a little bit more weight on him would help him as far as just resiliency to injury.

Maybe he was too lean. And so, so far, so good. No back pain. Um, strength is coming back even so far, you know, it's been tricky because, um, I've tried, I've tried to not rely so much on the competition lifts with him in training, because I think that that might've been part of the problem with. You get attached to the numbers. We just talked to Rich Froning about that. You get attached to like what you're supposed to do in competition and you just blow yourself out all the time. Yeah, I think he got to a point where, so when people start working out, they can touch high intensity and it's not as problematic for like their body and their nervous system. But at a certain point you get to this, like I think in Sa you said the other day that you hit a pr on

your sumo deadlift right like 700 something pounds it was yeah it was 725 but it was like it was easy it's never been that easy but you i what i like that you said is that you like you woke up that day everything just felt good and you decided to go for it see sometimes people will see what's on the the program and they just bullhead their way through it even though they don't feel good and as you get more experienced as you get to like a 700 pound deadlift you got to be a lot more um a lot more cognizant of how you pick your spots and you can't act like you can't just go in the in the gym and hit 700 every day because that's going to break you. And some people kind of lose that, I think.

Going by how you feel is not a great idea when you've been doing something for too long. Yeah. Because you're always going to lie to yourself. Yeah, yeah. And I think that just, how am I trying to say it? I think that when you go to the well, so to speak, when you're experienced, it's like really grinding yourself down as opposed to when you're a beginner, you can't really go to the well the same way. Like your body has sort of a limiter on you. It makes sense.

It's not as much of a stretch. Exactly. Whereas if you're older and you've been doing it a long time, you kind of know full well, hey, you know what? This is like, this is going to test you. When you're newer, you're excited. You're like, this is a great challenge and I'm going to give this a try. And you're pretty positive about it.

You haven't been snapped in half enough times yet. Yeah. I think another one is people start lifting when they're maybe in their late teens or maybe early teens or early 20s. And how stressed, I mean, okay, finals is stressful when you're in college, but is it as stressful as having children and running a business or whatever the case may be?

No. So people kind of lose sight of the fact that as they get older and more experienced, they also have more stress in life and more things to deal with. And you can't just like go crazy in the gym. I've said it before. I haven't laughed in four years. the gym i've said it before i haven't laughed in four years anyway you got any other questions yeah what's the um because you're going towards your phd right now what's the subject of it sports science so um i really like data again um and so one thing I got into with my clients is like, I track metrics, sports science wise. So whether that be HRV training load, um, wellness scores and things

like that. Um, I'm really interested cause I think there's, there's been a big explosion in that stuff with, you know, sports science is now in NFL and NBA and things like that. And they come out with a lot of fancy metrics, a lot of fancy, um, apps or fancy equipment. And, um, I kind of want, I think that sometimes simple is better, uh, with a lot of things. And so my thought is that there might be a lot more value in just doing the simple things. And what I want to do is compare the simple metrics to these fancy things and seeing if we can, like,

is it worth the thousand dollars or not? You know, and, and maybe being able to give recommendations on, you know, when it's appropriate to use that stuff. We talked about that yesterday in the gym because we set up this thing with the chains and we did these flies with the chains.

And, uh, I was like, you know, sometimes when we set up these weird things, sometimes it's not worth it. I was like, but that one is totally worth it. You know, sometimes, uh, setting something up or, you know, putting on like a mask or like whatever it is you got to do for your training or hooking, you know, syncing up your watch to your phone or like just whatever it is, like you're saying, maybe it's like too much of a distraction. Maybe it's not really worth it. Like,

is it really that beneficial to go through this process and to take the time to do it? And you got to be able to judge that and know it for yourself. I think people just are just because we have the ability to do it. They're starting to get obsessed with it. Yeah. Yeah. Doing something just because you can,

doesn't mean you should do it. Yeah. Yeah. Doing something just because you can doesn't mean you should do it. Yeah. Yeah. Where can people find you? So you can find me on Instagram at The Strength Cave. My website, www.thestrengthcave.com. Opened up a YouTube that I'm going to start doing stuff on, but as of right now, there's not much on there, but YouTube is The Strength Cave. Um, so yeah, those three main locations.

And, uh, where are you living these days? Uh, right now I live in Phoenix, Arizona. That's where I was born and raised. I moved to Florida for a little while, but I'm back in Phoenix and cool. Probably going to stay there. All right, man. Thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks guys so much for having me. It was great. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later.