Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Power Project EP. 239 - Is Bodybuilding a Bad Idea?

Episode Date: August 26, 2019

Today Mark Bell and Nsima Inyang recall some of the most difficult times during their bodybuilding show days and debate whether or not bodybuilding is a bad idea. ➢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

yeah let's talk about some stuff okay mm-hmm yep oh yeah I'm serious oh you're laughing now but you won't be laughing pal when I get done with this all right well what you got on your mind I don't know it's not a big deal I was kidding oh you're serious uh no I wanted to say congratulations to my homies at Newey. They started a company called Keto Cookie, and they have been making and baking their cookies themselves and having their family do it, and they've been sending us products for a long time.

And they're formerly known as Keto Cookie, and they changed the name because people were coming to them saying, like, hey, what's a healthy cookie to eat? And they would say, well, our Keto Cookie is good. And the people are like, I'm not on a keto diet. So people were getting confused, and so that's why they changed the name. And then also they're trying to get the cookie into more people's hands. into more people's hands. Kids, you know, like so adults giving a kid a keto cookie. Kids like, you know, no way. I'm not going to eat a diet cookie, right? And so anyway,

they've been working hard, but it's cool. They're out of their mom's kitchen. They were cooking in their mom's kitchen and having the whole family scoop the cookie dough and cook it and everything, which I think is cool. I think that's great. Like bootstrapping it that way. That's really cool. But then they started to raise some money. They're able to raise some money and now they have a full kitchen. They're able to cook as many cookies as they need because that was another hard thing for them is to try to keep up with the demand. I'll be a hundred percent transparent. I don't like all their flavors sorry guys but they had a snickerdoodle one

that's actually really really good and they got a couple other flavors so if you get a chance check them out it's NUI and they're just guys that have been working hard they're guys that my brother and I

have known for a long time and we actually had a really cool meeting with them one day. And I said, hey, meet me at Bulletproof Coffee. I said, I have another meeting there. And so it would be great to meet up with you guys. And they were really in for a real treat because I was meeting with Ron Penna from Quest Nutrition. And, man, these guys just got hit with all kinds of – you know how Ron is, right? Yep.

So these guys got hit with all kinds of cool information. But congrats to them. They're doing some cool stuff. And then they sent me some information yesterday that just absolutely floored me. I mean when sometimes a friend will text me, I'll kind of like check their Instagram and look at stuff. And so that's how I was kind of made more aware of the direction they're going with their cookies and stuff like that. But I thought it was super cool. He's like, hey, did you hear the news?

And it was about Quest. Do you guys know about this? No. I just pulled it up. Yeah. Quest Nutrition has been sold to Simply Good Foods Co. Right. Simply Good Foods Co., which is basically they carry Atkins meals, Atkins diet, Atkins bars, the

drinks, all that kind of stuff, which plays to a much older crowd. But that's a gigantic company, and they sold it for about an estimated $1 billion. So congrats to our boys over at Quest. Congrats to Ron Penna to start a new chapter. And everybody else involved. Tom Bilyeu, obviously, is involved in that as well. And Ron's partner, Michael,

what's his name on there? I'm sorry. I'll find it. I forget. Sorry, Michael. Anyway, I've met all of them before. Great people. Like I've had just such,

I've had nothing but good things to say about Quest Nutrition. We love their bars. We eat them. We're highly addicted to them, so we've got to be careful that we don't eat all of them all the time. Mike Osborne. Mike Osborne. So anyway, congratulations to them.

I love seeing that kind of stuff because it levels up everything in the fitness industry. And it's cool. I mean, who knows? Maybe Chris Duffin's company or maybe Matt Wenning's company, not that I know that they want to sell it, but maybe they sell it to a big company like Rogue. And maybe they are able to cash out and make a good amount of money and then go off and do another project. And I think that when things like this happen, it just opens the doors. I mean, we saw it with Primal Kitchen, with Mark Sisson's brand, and we're seeing it more and more. And that article in particular talks about how popular protein bars are. And we're getting into some advertising on the show.

And right off the bat, we have two companies that have protein bars, you know, coming to us, Perfect Keto and Quest. And look, there's room for everybody. Like the Perfect Keto bar, maybe somebody doesn't want the grams of fat because they're not on a keto diet. And so maybe they want the Quest bar. But maybe somebody who's on a keto diet is like, well, I need more fat, and I don't know if the Quest bar is going to kick me out of ketosis, so I'm going to go with the collagen Perfect bar. Just different things for different

people right and there's plenty of room there's room for success for everybody and when i met yesterday with the mind pump guys we talked a lot about that and we talked about collabing with them and doing some stuff with them and i think it'd be great i think a lot of times people want to like you know keep it themselves try to keep everything themselves but really the truth is um if we were to interview dorian yates um the mind pump fans would say i can't wait until you have dorian yates on your show like because they you know they it's not that they don't like us it's just that maybe they're more fans of mind pump yeah you know and and I've heard people say it, uh, about us when it comes to some of the guests that Joe Rogan's had on. And sometimes we're like, Oh, I can't wait for

him to be on your show. And so it's not, it's not hate towards any one thing. It's just that there's a lot of room for a lot of us to be successful. And that's how this show is able to be successful. And all the other shows are able to, uh, gain some momentum as well. Anyway, we're going to dive into some cool stuff today, talking about some body building, talking about whether it's worth it to go that deep because a body building show,

you've got to have a lot of restriction. But before we do that, it is Free Shirt Friday. And you know what happens on Free Shirt Friday. Andrew, start the music. So for everybody that's listening, it's not getting an amazing show right now. No discussion of cameras, and Seema is more jacked than me. So Mark and Seema are just disrobing, I'll say.

They're barebacking it. Throwing on this, what do we call it, olive drab slingshot, free shirt, Friday shirt. Oh my gosh. Very militant. I feel like I could jump out of an airplane. Andrew, you called this olive drab? Is that actually the technical

color? Yeah, it is. It's a military color. I don't know if that's the color of this though. But yeah, it is now. You made it be. You made it so. Yeah, heard it if that's the color of this, though. It is now. You made it be. You made it so. Heard it here first on the podcast. A muddy green, that's what I'd call it. Muddy green. I like it.

Just changed it. Brings out the color of your eyes. Yeah, actually. Kind of. I don't think I ever looked at your eyes before. I've been looking at those pecs the whole time and those shoulders. Fantasizing. Dreaming. Kind of. I don't think I ever looked at your eyes before. I've been looking at those pecs the whole time and those shoulders. Yeah. They're just around.

Fantasizing. Dreaming. Thinking about possibilities. All right. Calm down, Mark. Not today. Save that for another day. I got to go.

I got to take a cold shower. So what's been going on? What's on your mind over there, Natty Professor? With the bodybuilding stuff? Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. So, yeah. So this was something i was thinking about the other day because bodybuilding is awesome like the work you have to do to get on stage right the commitment you have to have um the any athlete that's able to do that gets a stage successfully it's it's no matter if you win

like yeah you want to win but if even if you don't, it's a great accomplishment in and of itself because not everybody takes that step to do that. But what I've noticed is that a lot of people, especially when you see everyone competing, whether it be natural or not, people just like want to head there. So a new lifter, right, will see people on the bodybuilding stage and stage to say hey in a year or maybe two years i want to step on stage they don't have any dieting experience maybe they start working out more seriously but um there are a lot of consequences like there are a lot of positive but there are a lot of negative consequences to getting that lean uh that i don't think is spoken about that much i i agree 100 hundred percent. And it's like, when, when somebody, even when somebody gets in a powerlifting, I'm always like, oh man, like they

probably don't know the whole story here. Like there's some real pitfalls to kind of fall into, especially for some of the people that want to get big, you know, it's like, okay, well we can get big, but let's, um, let's at least have some health in the equation. Because once you become unhealthy, if you start to negatively impact your sleep, then it's going to negatively impact your lifts, and you're going to go backwards, and you're not going to get the progress that you're looking for. So sometimes when it comes to power lifting, some people fall down that rabbit hole. But we see it a lot with bodybuilding because bodybuilding, there's no, bodybuilding reminds me of like jumping up onto something.

You can't like jump up onto this table slowly. You'll get killed. You know, like you'll fuck up your shins, right? You'll like fall. And bodybuilding kind of seems that way. Like if you don't jump with as much force as you possibly can into it, you're not going to really look or turn into anything. So it's like you better put your best foot forward and you better really work your ass off for it. I think what gets to be hard is it's like you have to be locked in, right? You got to get

yourself locked into a good diet, some good strategy in terms of cardio, some good strategies in terms of your eating and some good strategy in terms of your, some good strategies in terms of your eating and some good strategy in terms of your actual lifting. And that's pretty easy to do like on a Monday. It's pretty easy to do on like a Wednesday here and there. It's pretty easy to do sporadically in your training. Like I think everyone's probably pretty good with it that likes to work out. And they have these days where they feel on fire and they might have these days where they feel lean. You know, we all kind of have a day where we feel a little leaner we got days where we feel a little softer right but as a bodybuilder you don't have time for those discrepancies it's like you have to be on point all the time so the only way that you're going to look like anything

on stage is to get locked in and then to have a lot of consistency and this is where you start to get really you can get screwed up. Yeah. Because, you know, five days in probably isn't so bad, but five weeks in, now you're starting to be really deprived of stuff. You have taken your caloric intake down. Your energy output is high. And you start to turn into a zombie.

And you start to come, you start to become a person that has that you lose a lot of stuff like even just like empathy for some reason your body doesn't even have any fucking room for empathy which is lame right doesn't make any sense but you really don't care about other people um you're not affectionate if you're with a significant other like you don't want to show them any love for some i don't know it makes you like grumpy you're trying to be like super focused because you got it's it's so hard to really explain and the people that are listening right now that have been locked into it they know but our question is is is it a good idea to start with not just some bodybuilding exercise i think we can

all agree that bodybuilding is fantastic. Adding more protein to your diet, having some complex carbohydrates in your diet, probably a good idea. Keeping your fat in some sort of moderation so that you can train good, recover well from your workouts, get a good pump when you're in the gym because if you don't have any carbs, you're going to be kind of flat. So a lot of the bodybuilding principles, I think we can all agree, maybe doing some cardio here and there, we can all agree the bodybuilding principles are probably the number

one place to start when it comes to lifting. However, being a bodybuilder, that's what we're questioning today. Like, would that be a good place to start? And man, I don't know because the actual bodybuilding routine to actually get into the bodybuilding routine and to get on stage is one thing, but then coming out of it is another thing. And I think from a mental standpoint, uh, it could be disastrous, especially for somebody. I think that a lot of times people think that just women really struggle with like uh you know this quote unquote feeling of being fat or or being heavy it's like you know guys really struggle with this as well and you know we here at slingshot we're designing you know shorts and we're messing around

with shirts and doing some some of our own cut and sew stuff and what a company like lululemon has done so brilliantly with men and women's clothing clothing is the clothing feels good it feels comfortable it accentuates like your good spots and doesn't draw any attention to anything uh that might not be working out so great for you so for me if i gain any fat it's kind of like in my lower back and i've had shorts before that like you know hug the muffin top you know and i fucking it drives me crazy because I'm like, man, okay, I have more fat there than maybe I want, but I'm not fat, and I'm like, that's making me feel fat. And so they have shorts that have kind of a wider band on them that fit you better.

Even the shorts that we make are like that, has a wider or taller waistband. It's not going to pinch into your side. It's like, dude, I got like four pounds of fat on me. Like, give me, give me some goddamn slack here. Right. But kind of the point is, is that you can get so caught up in that and seeing just the negative stuff that you have, seeing the little extra baggage that you have and maybe doing a body building show could really send your mind into a crazy tailspin. Yeah, it can definitely amplify that. And when you were saying the body image issues that a lot of people think mainly women have it, I think just as many men have it.

They just don't talk about it as much or it's not reported as much. But when you get that lean, right? I feel like I want people to understand that. I've done a bunch of shows. Mark's done shows. We don't think bodybuilding is like, like bad inherently, you know, we're not saying you shouldn't do bodybuilding. But I think it is really important that any type of athlete that

wants to get into it knows exactly what they're getting into. You know, first off the relationships part that you talked about, right? You know, I always make sure to tell especially first time individuals that are stepping on stage. If you have a partner, talk to your partner and let them know, hey, as I start to get leaner, you may notice me getting grumpier. You may notice that I'm going to I'm going to try to work to make this work. But you may notice that I may get a little bit distant. I may not be as, you know, like, you know, touchy feely or whatever. All those things are going to happen for some people.

They don't. For me, they did for a lot of people. I know they did. Um, but you got to let them know because a lot of relationships have been ruined because of someone stepping onto a bodybuilding stage. And that's the last thing you want to get ruined because you want to get on stage and get shredded. Right? So if your partner goes into this understanding what you're about to do and understanding the things that are about to happen to you then when it happens they know it's not because you hate them or because you don't like them it's because of what you're physically going through with your hormones and all of that stuff um and the body image stuff is huge man like when we had when we had nick right here uh you know it was really well not actually the body image stuff the food stuff um when he mentioned

the bulimia thing and the binging and all that and the binging i was like dang i had that deep of a problem because i like i did that same thing i would there'd be times in my prep where maybe i'd binge or even post-prep man this is like okay post-prep i've gained a little bit of body fat i feel okay there have been times post-prep where i ate a lot of food just like because i just felt like i needed to eat a lot of food that felt kind of guilty about it like shit and then when i did some cardio and a really really hard workout i was like okay i'm just not gonna let this happen that often but that is bulimia man like that's a form of bulimia that's not good so and and that wasn't happening prior to all of these shows and stuff i was just concentrating on getting big make being fit but but it can get to you. And then also

the way I saw my body after getting that lean 225 to 229 single digit body fat, right? Shredded. Then having to put body fat back on because you need to put body fat on to be healthy. And thinking that myself when I was like 255 or whatever, I still had visible abs, And thinking that myself when I was like 255 or whatever, I still had visible abs, but thinking I'm kind of fat. That's ridiculous. You're fat in comparison. In comparison, yeah. To what you were on stage, you're fat.

Exactly. That's in your head. Like it's just, it's there. And a lot of it's probably also just hydration too. It's just, it's water weight. You're eating more food. Everything's just kind of holding on. also have a rebound right so like you're gonna weigh you know someone that is uh let's say someone that's 200 pounds if you're gonna do a bodybuilding show it's it's highly possible that you're gonna be like 170 and maybe even i don't know like maybe even lighter it

could be even lighter yeah and and that's going to make you look the best and not only make you look the best, but make you look the biggest. So even if your arm size comes down considerably, just because it's more defined, you're going to look awesome. Think about some of the leanest guys and girls that you see on Instagram and stuff. Sometimes they look, Brooke Enns comes to mind. Brooke Enns is not a big person yeah she's not she's not heavy she's not a heavy person she's not small she's not tiny framed or anything either but she's fucking jacked and when you see her on instagram see her doing a rope climb it was like steroids but then you have her here and and she's next to us and she's training with us and she's an

amazing athlete. And so people could still say whatever they want. They could still judge it whatever way they want. But you look at her, you're like, she's not really. Rich Froning, same way. Rich Froning in a CrossFit workout after he's done some burpees and push-ups and stuff, he looks like a Mr. Olympia competitor. He doesn't normally look like that. Now he's got a pump going and he's super lean. And so you're going to think, uh, you're going to think that

some of these athletes are on stuff and maybe some of them are, but the point is, is that you're going to look the best being the absolute leanest that you can be. That means you have to pull off a lot of body fat. And when you pull off a lot of body fat, body fat. And when you pull off a lot of body fat, the only thing to happen after that is to put body fat back on. Like your body is just going to, you're not going to even, even yourself who's leaner than your average person by a long shot, uh, your body fat percentage is probably, um, you know, 50 or 70% better than your average American, right? Like it's way in the other direction. You're single digit and a lot of people are 15 or 20 percent, right? And so for those people, you know, if they had a shift or they lost some weight and they felt

better maybe, you know, in a t-shirt versus, you you know feeling better in a big puffy like hoodie or whatever like to cover up whatever they got going on they're not going to notice as much when they fluctuate a little bit and body weight whereas someone that gets way down you're gonna be so critical of just a five pound swing one one way yeah and even to sometimes you could lose a bunch of weight and get shredded and be like man i'm small and then now you got another you know yeah you're like man i lost too much muscle like i don't look good for this i've had a lot of friends that competed and and even for myself when i competed i i always felt i felt like i had enough calories in there so like i didn't even you know honey rambod who helped me my calories didn't even like

really just they didn't keep diving down the whole time he got me to a certain level and then he had me do like a little extra cardio so there's a little bit more output but i was still eating like 3 500 calories you know i was you know maybe on a lower day maybe 3 000 or so but like it was still pretty high. And I still felt all the same things that you're talking about. The other thing is the amount of time it takes. Bodybuilding takes a lot of time. Now, maybe if you're a seasoned bodybuilder, maybe you can figure out ways for it to take less time.

But I never posed before, so there's a lot of posing that had to go on. You don't have to worry about this, but I had to worry about tanning. Yeah. It makes a difference, too. If you have a little bit of a base, like you need a base. You can't just go and put the tanning stuff on. That helps, but you need to actually have a base with your tan. So posing, tanning, that can take a lot of time.

In addition to that, you have your actual training, your actual lifting sessions. It's not uncommon for bodybuilders to do double days. Sometimes it's cardio and lifting and sometimes it's doubled up on the lifting. So we're talking about, you know, it's probably 10 hours a week that you're in the gym, you know, maybe, maybe more, maybe 12, you got two hours, five, six days a week. Right. So it's like, man, a lot of times going into this. And so that's, I think why you get short with your significant other because you're like, I don't have like, I can't fit you in. You're not,

you don't fit into the time. Like I got to eat. And then, you know, you, you put your food away and then it's like two hours later, you got to eat again. And it's like, man, it's just a never, oh, I forgot about the food prep. How much time that takes. That takes as much time as the gym probably and all the eating. It's just like, it's an endless cycle, man. There's a lot that goes into it. Yeah.

Would you guys say that that's like all part of it, like being short with your significant other. Like there's been times where like I want to get to bed to go train the next day. But I'm like, I can't be a jerk right now. Like I can't just look at, you know, my girl's side of the family and be like, I got to go because I got to go train in the morning. Like how hard is that? morning like how like how hard is that that like you know like in comparison to like everything else like you kind of almost letting go of like who you are right to become this other mutant or entity whatever you want to call it yeah personally when when i was going through that

um i had to like from after my very first prep like the the few years before, I was like, OK, going into this one, I have to work to make things work well. So like in the second prep, when I got that lean again and leaner, I had to be I had to be cognizant and be like, OK, I may feel this way right now, but I literally cannot act the way I feel. I can't like you. You have to you have to be because you have to put like even though everything like first off, everything you're doing currently is putting yourself first in terms of your meals, your training, your sleep, all of that. You're putting yourself first. But that there has to be a time where, OK, I got to help this person out, too, because they're having to deal with my shitty ass. Right. So I need to try and make it a little bit easy on them.

So I don't think that that has to be a part of it. If you you're cognizant of it in the beginning, like, you know where you're headed, you know where your mind might be heading, you know, where every like how bad you may be feeling. And you're like, OK, it's going to take work for me to be the same person I am now when I'm heavier, when I'm much leaner so it's just like preparing even more you got to prepare for it yeah like yeah like i don't think it has to be a part of it but if you don't know what's about to happen right and you just get there then you won't even be thinking about it you'll just be pissed and then one day you're like why am i pissed like oh shit i've been doing all this to my my girlfriend or boyfriend god that sucks you know and and we've seen you know this kind of stuff happen time and time again too when somebody gets into something new and they start having a hobby that's that's different than like bodybuilding is like very specific. Like going to the gym is like one thing. Right. But then entering into bodybuilding is different. So for a woman that starts to enter figure or fitness, who usually helps those people? to enter figure or fitness, who usually helps those people?

A lot of times it's guys, right? And then who do we have admiration for? We have admiration for people that do things that we want to excel in. And so sometimes you'll see a leap. You'll see somebody will go, start going with another person because they they entered this whole new thing and they and as andrew's pointing out they end up kind of changing like it's kind of common sense that if you uh bodybuild that maybe there would be a possibility that you would like somebody that is into like bodybuilding or into fitness more is in you know somebody that's uh leaner or share some of the same, you know, they, they're

walking around with Tupperware, right? Like that might be an attraction to you. So you do have to be really paying attention to what you're doing. And I, you know, I haven't been around bodybuilding a lot, so I don't know, you know, exactly what happens at bodybuilding, but I have been to a lot of our trade shows and stuff and you see you know uh these people that had it's it's kind of sad to see but you see people who've had kind of um uh somebody that they've been in a relationship with somebody outside the fitness industry and then the next time you see them at a show they're with somebody that's in the fitness industry and you're like oh you know you're kind of like and look man that happens everywhere it

happens with police officers firemen anyone that gets caught up in their job and anyone that starts to hang around other people for long periods sometimes that shit just happens but it's all stuff to just pay attention to it's all stuff to just know because what a shitty way for a relationship to end just because you wanted to you know roll the dice and see how lean you could get and now you're kind of like all sudden attracted somebody else or so you know it can it can lead you down a weird path and so i think in sema's point i think is uh just hitting the nail on the head like just be aware of like what's going on. Just be aware of your mind, your mindset,

how you're going to feel going through it. And some people are listening to this right now and they're probably like, well, just don't deprive yourself so much. And there's, bodybuilding doesn't really make a lot of sense. It's not as logical as we would like, as we'd like it to be.

It's a competitive starvation. It's, yeah, it really is. And I think there's been bodybuilders who've said um it's a competition on who can like eat the less eat the least you know who can really and then also punish the crap out of yourself uh in the gym and yeah there's guys that grow into the show and there's kind of the mass monsters and there's kind of the jay cutlers and stuff but like um those guys have been doing it for so long they're super confident they know exactly what they need to get to that next level and that's kind of just it's just a different level but man jay cutler came on our show and he said his greatest like a lot of the times when we have people on the show and we say, hey, have you had any regrets on anything?

People almost always say, no, not really. I can make this mistake, that mistake. It's usually pretty minor. And he's like, I lost like the love of my life. Like I lost my soulmate. And that was a mistake. It's like, do you say it was because of competing? Yeah.

Shoot. Yeah. I thought that was great. Like I thought like, i thought like wow like good on him to just be so honest you know and he's he's in a good healthy relationship now and things are all good for him which is which is awesome but man like you that kind of that's the kind of stuff that can happen now let's kind of flip this around because we're talking a lot of negative oh i want to mention one more thing real quick what the one other thing i would just want people to think about too and understand is that

like um the effects that like the post competition can have on you so we know that like getting lean your hormones are affected drastically test goes down cortisol goes up a lot of things are affected drastically it's not a great place to be so afterwards for me, it took me like six months to start feeling normal again for like my sex drive to come back for, for my intensity in terms of the gym to come back for like all of that to come back and be normal. So it can take a while to get your hormones back in place. And for women, especially to a woman that compete, like, like it's, it's, it's common that they'll either get oligorrhea or amenorrhea which is like um inconsistent periods or no period at all when they get that lean and then they're

like when you come out of it it's not just going to come back and be normal immediately it could like there's some women who's it's taken i think 72 weeks for it to come back and be consistent and then there's also things to remember like it's probably not the the best time if you're thinking of trying to have a kid. You know what I mean? You'll have to think about that too. Like, cause if you want to have a child successfully, then you have to think about, okay, I'm not going to do that during my prep,

but after my prep, I need to give my body a period of time to get healthy so I can potentially, you know, think about that. And the only way to have a child successfully is through the butt. Through the butt. You got to go through the back. So just maybe some women don't know that, but it's i'm not a doctor that's how it's done we're just

we're just here to educate i have two kids so i've you know i must have figured yeah she already she already hates me oh man we were in the break room so uh an employee here we were talking about video games of course and then he's like but i you know i got my fiance to play you know games with me it's like oh that that only works a little bit he's like yeah my fiance already thinks i'm an asshole and we just all start laughing and she goes you can't bench your way out of this argument it's like oh my god that just that just reminded me of all that when you said that she hated you he's like oh my fiance thinks i'm such an asshole because all i do is talk about my bench she uh she's learned to ignore me pretty good you know really yeah she just what's funny is like she used to like pretend to like be in like my jokes and stuff oh you know when we

were first like dating and then now she i can't get her to laugh at anything and uh you know she like pretended to like wrestling and all of a sudden it's all just a farce man now now i'm in for it she got you yeah she got me she's like oh i love stone cold i love the undertaker this is great and then yeah just hooked her talons into me, and now I'm screwed. Here we are fucking 20 years later. The same woman over and over and over every day. Oh, my God. I just want to put her in a wood chipper.

I mean, it's not really, you know, it's anyway. She doesn't listen to this anyway, so it doesn't matter. That's the even funny part. I have no street cred at home. None. I go places and people are like, oh my gosh, Mark Bell. People get all excited and they want to take a picture. I get no love.

I remember we filmed it. Quinn is worse. Quinn is even meaner. Yeah. I was going to say, I remember we filmed a Hustlemania and I think the title was, my wife doesn't watch my videos and it was funny because like uh what oh we had like okay do the sign off andy and she's like uh oh yeah she had no idea what any of it was he's like strength she's like strength is and like she said something way off it was so funny strength is the plan yeah

something like that exactly yeah yeah like the strength is within you yeah came up with her her own uh own saying as i was doing uh the bodybuilding show and as i got you know i had a pretty short uh prep for it i was probably you know and andy is amazing because like we went to malibu. We had this vacation plan. We were going to be there for a month. We were going to invite some friends and family and have a good time, enjoy some food, enjoy some drinks. And we had this kind of planned out. And then because I'm a monster, I turned it into like all business and lifting.

Like I turned everything into business and lifting and it was like we podcasted from there um with uh like you know mike o'hearn and thomas de lauer and stan efforting and like i had a new person over like every day and then i was just like uh bodybuilding in the morning with uh o'hearn you know going to the gym at four but not coming back until like nine because i would go to the gym and train and then you know venice is kind of set up nice where you can actually have good healthy meals uh kind of close by to the gym and stuff so i'd walk there and then i'd like uber back and she was just like she never saw me you know and she's like this is the worst vacation ever it's like 30 days me, you know, and she's like, this is the worst vacation ever. It's like 30 days of it, you know, 30 days. You know, when you look at it, like doesn't really seem and I couldn't really I wasn't

very like portable, like I couldn't really go anywhere without a lot of thought. Like we needed to bring like a meal, like we need to have a prepped meal. They say you're not portable. Yeah, I'm not portable, not pliable, not flexible on anything. I can't I can't audible to anything else. The restaurants that you go to, thankfully we're in Los Angeles. So Los Angeles is a city where you can kind of get whatever you want. It's one of the biggest cities in the world.

And so you can tell them if they're going to cook some fish for you, you can tell them no oil. And they really pay attention because there's a lot of health health conscious people there i think here in sacramento they're like yeah fuck you yeah yeah there's gonna be no oil on it dude and then you get a whole plate full of oil but uh luckily in uh in la it's a little bit more that way but even just like going to a movie or we want to go to the Santa Monica pier I want to walk around with the kids and like I could kind of do that stuff and I I did I did my best but I'm just not there like I just mentally just and again I wasn't super calorically deprived so it's not like I'm an asshole 24 7 but I'm just thinking about other stuff I I got this goal. People see me on YouTube forever.

They've seen me power lift. No one's ever seen me bodybuild before. So my goal with the bodybuilding show was for people to go, oh, okay, he's doing bodybuilding. Kind of seems like a little bit of like a stunt. Seems like a YouTube thing. And then as they saw the weeks go by, I wanted them to kind of eat their words and be like oh like he's okay he's actually going to do a bodybuilding show like that's fucking cool and that was the goal and hopefully that was the the result of it but i just wanted to kind of take it as far as i could

and because of that man yeah you get your mind in some compromising positions man yeah it gets to be weird yeah no you like the thing is like even alberto nunez mentioned like you you brought it in that show like you had glutes you had hamstrings alberto nunez mentioned, you brought it in that show. You had glutes, you had hamstrings. Alberto Nunez. No one gets leaner than that guy. No, nobody does get as lean as he does. He's an absolute freak. Alberto Nunez gave me an amazing compliment.

He said, nobody goes over the middle harder than Mark Smelly Bell. He's like Jerry Rice or something. He said like that. And I was like, damn. I'm like, oh, shit. I'm like, you're comparing me to Jerry Rice. He's a big football fan. Yeah.

I'm like, I don't deserve to be compared to Jerry Rice, but I'll take it, man. I'll take it. Yeah. But would you guys say that the like bodybuilding culture, that's the first thing that everyone gets exposed to, though? You know, when I started lifting, I think, yeah, it wasn't necessarily bodybuilding culture it's just i had a gym but like the first like i think real like fitness culture i was influenced by was bodybuilding culture like yeah it for me it was yeah pumping iron right that's like what everyone said well at least in my age like they say like that's the thing that like that's when i decided

i was gonna you know start in the gym and getting jacked well we we know some athletes you know in power lifting that that that have some thickness to them you know that they they have a look it's very clear that they it's very clear that they train um but it's not an it's not an aesthetic look that automatically jumps out at you as like i want to be built like that guy. You know, it's, you know, this is like about like beauty and aesthetics and things that very clearly look kind of nice to people. Like even a little kid could, like if somebody's real muscular,

even like a little kid is kind of like, oh, that's different. Like they recognize something's up. And even our superheroes, like why are our superheroes all fat? Or even when they make these action figures, they're all jacked, right? And it's because that is, I don't know where or why, but it's somewhere in the human DNA that that is more appealing. That's like a look that people are going for. And so I think striving towards it and knowing what it takes to get there

can actually be a very healthy thing too. It can. It can be a great thing. Yeah. If you can go through that fire and come out on the other side, I have taken a lot from those bodybuilding shows and those preps it's made a like made a big positive difference and given me a lot of good experience you know but looking at it now you know thinking about it i don't like i don't have a fire to step back on stage you know

right i just don't feel like i need to do that um and i wonder let me ask you this you know how people like can you think you can be a bodybuilder without stepping on stage? Personally, I do think so. I would say that it'd be very hard. Um, if you haven't been around other bodybuilders and you really don't have much bodybuilding experience that if you never stepped on a stage or never put yourself through that, and maybe the only way to put yourself through that much tension is to actually maybe do a bodybuilding show or maybe to at least train or be around somebody that did some of that.

Because I don't think you'd really understand like it's, you know, this is, this is not something that could, you can't do it 70% for 10 years, you know? Now at 70% for 10 years, you will make progress, But you need to, at some point, buckle down and turn that percentage into, you got to be like 90, 95. It's hard for anybody to be like 100, right? But you really have to really concentrate and really buckle down. So without like a photo shoot, without a bodybuilding show, without something, you know, a transformation challenge, without something, you know, someone really throwing down the gauntlet and saying,

hey man, like this is what you gotta do. I think it'd be hard. But having said that, if you have done a bodybuilding show, yes, I think that you can kind of forever use that information and use that to kind of lean back on and so for me uh people ask me all the time if i'm going to compete again and i you know at first i was kind of like oh i don't think i'll compete ever again and now i'm more like well you know maybe i'll just you know maybe like 45 like if things start to go a little sideways with me, maybe I'll re-up it. Maybe 45 and maybe 50.

You know, maybe I'll try to do it a couple times to reinstall that kind of software into my body again and say, look, this is how hard you went. Like, remember how this shit felt? Like, this is how hard you're going, dude. And like, this is going to get you back in shape again. So one thing I loved about the bodybuilding show is that um i've been in better shape ever since i did it yeah so that's really cool what i think is cool about you and a lot of people don't know this you're a lot leaner and look a lot better than even these uh these videos that we were playing here oh yeah you're quite a bit leaner and i don think you've – this is where people need to get, and this is what you can get from not necessarily just bodybuilding, but this is what you can get from going really hard.

go so hard find something that will allow you to cruise at a good comfortable speed for a long period of time where you're able to continue to make progress and then you're like you know what this isn't even really that hard that's where people need to get to that's like what i'm so excited about yeah when we talk about on this show and what i'm hoping i can get people to is let's start to take some of this crap out of your diet and let's start to put some good effort into our training. And then yes, that part will be hard because it's life altering. Let's work on getting a little bit better sleep. Let's work on these things. But once we install some of this stuff and once you start to implement some of this stuff, it will feel better than doing anything different. Anytime you try to do something different, you want to eat some

nachos or burrito or something that won't feel good to you. And it won't appeal to you because it keeps pulling you away from the goal. And without it being all that difficult and without abstaining from stuff too much and without having uh depriving yourself of stuff too much you'll say what i just said and you'll say man like i'm still making progress but this ain't that bad like on scale of one to ten it's like a seven in terms of effort or six yeah over time the more discipline you have and the stronger that you get the ease like how hard is your diet on a scale of one and ten? No, it's not difficult at all. Like literally I, it's not difficult for me to maintain it.

Is there a one point in a day or one point in the week where you're like, you get a little, maybe you get a little soft in terms of your mindset of like, I'm eating this way. When you say soft in terms of like, just kind of like letting it go and saying like i'm just going to kind of eat whatever i want for today or tonight or whatever well like yeah like cravings if not even not really cravings but it's more so like if i do want to go out to a restaurant with my

girlfriend or something like if we want to go out and eat somewhere okay it's not because i was craving it though it's just because hey let's let's go out and eat somewhere that's so let's get some great barbecue or something it's nice it's different but it's just because hey let's let's go out and eat somewhere that's so let's get some great barbecue or something it's it's nice it's different but it's not because i'm really craving that i don't get cravings like that nearly as much as i used to um but it's just like like a want for something rather than a craving for something you know this is this is in my best interest to kick it with my girlfriend and and just to go to this place and enjoy that and enjoy this time together yeah enjoy yeah enjoy some different food with her that like isn't on the diet but what i was going to say was like i think like when what you said about that i never

really even thought about this the lane set to which i went and that lanes to which you went with bodybuilding and the diet and like the deprivation, everything that we're doing right now in terms of fasting and all this stuff pales in comparison in terms of difficulty and in terms of weight, like the way it feels versus that. So like, even though I'm not always comparing it to that, maybe it's because I've done that, that maybe this type of lifestyle is so easy. That's not, I'm not saying that you need to do that. Yeah. But the way that you eat would be very difficult for someone else to implement if they've never really tried a diet yeah yeah do like okay you're gonna fast 20 hours a day you know and you're gonna do that six days a week

i've actually shortened my fasting window just a bit on most days now it's like 16 because um see yeah no andrew how many fucking times this happened to us on the show just breaks my heart over and over i know all of a sudden the truth gets released remember we thought it was natural then you mentioned what vitamin C creatine monohydrate fish oil and he just throws it at us like that

then he just continues on with his sentence no it makes it easier you and Jose Canseco who's Jose Canseco I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I know I should know this because that name's familiar, but... He hit a lot of home runs.

He hit a lot of home runs. Oh, he's one of those Mark McGuire kind of guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the blue ball. Mark McGuire is... Baseball. I'm joking, Smokey. Mark McGuire is a good comparison because they were teammates.

Yeah. He's the first 40-40 man. 40 home runs, 40 stolen bases. Juiced out of his mind, he's the one that let the cat out of the bag on everybody. When I was a kid, my first baseball bat was like a McGuire baseball bat when I first started playing baseball because Mark McGuire was the guy to me. Now all this is starting. He's my influence.

Anyway. He's my baseball bat. Dude, everyone would, like, you know how we talked about Mike Tyson? Like, everybody was, like, so amped up and anticipated like you just when jose canseco went up everybody held their breath because you're like oh my god he's gonna hit like he's gonna hit the ball from oakland all the way to sacramento like that's what you expect he was jacked and he would like you know they had wiggle the bat around and like his forearms would go all crazy and like just him in his stance is like hamstring you can see his hamstrings like through his pants and shit.

He's all jacked like a monster. So wait, wait. Okay. Since I like I recognize his name, but I don't know. Oh, I cannot wait. Mark McGuire. Why was it? He is like, was he as famous as Mark McGuire?

Not really. He was. He was actually a little bit before Mark McGuire. Mark McGuire got really famous because he got in that home run battle with Sammy Sosa. And they kept going back and forth and back and forth. And that was a huge thing. And then that was like just a, that was like that steroid era, you know? And then Bonds came along and smashed everybody's records.

Let me explain this 20 hour thing though. So I brought it, I brought it to eight because I want to like eat my last meal a little bit like a few hours oh that's right you're saying yeah you wanted to yeah i don't want some space between your last meal and sleep yeah so that's the main reason it feels great like i feel so much better when i'm going to sleep and when i'm waking up i think it's actually made a considerable difference do you track your you like do you have any wearables that can track your like heart rate and stuff like that? I do. The Apple Watch does, but I've stopped wearing it when I sleep.

I haven't worn it when I sleep for a few months. So what's supposed to happen is your resting heart rate, which I could be fucking all this up. I don't know. I don't even know why I'm mentioning it. But I think your resting heart rate will be lower, which I think helps you get better rest and helps you get into deeper sleep. Yeah. The further away that you eat from your sleep that, you know, there's so much conflicting evidence. I mean, I've heard so many different people say so many different things.

I've heard a couple of people say carbohydrates can help get you to bed. Yeah. I've heard other people say carbohydrates can kind of wake you up in the middle of the night, you know, and sometimes make you hungry. I guess it really just depends on the person. But for me, and this might be a problem for a lot of people listening to the show, the only time that I want to eat like a shit ton of calories and the only time I want to just kind of, you know, binge or eat unnecessarily, like I'll have eaten dinner and, you know, it's five o'clock or it's six o'clock and I got a fridge full of food, you know, and all I'm doing is hang with my wife. We're going to maybe watch a TV show.

And so what am I going to do? I'm going to do nothing and consume calories for really no reason. I'm not doing anything. I'm not going to like, you know, maybe I'll go for like a walk or something, but I'm not really doing much. So it doesn't really make sense to sit there and just eat all the time. But a lot of times that's what I do because you just want something to do. You want something to eat. And usually it's something healthy.

But just because it's something healthy doesn't mean that it's still not a pointless act. You know, I don't think you should be really eating in front of a screen. I don't think it's a great idea. I don't think it's a good practice. And I'll still do it right so if you have trouble like that the one of the greatest things that you can do is just you have a time that you set that you agree not eating past it's hard yeah it might be the hardest thing that you ever implement but it's worth it it can make a big difference you could you could chop out a lot of unnecessary extra energy that you ever implement, but it's worth it. It can make a big difference. You could, you could chop out a lot of unnecessary extra energy that you're eating just to go to bed. That's a, no, that's honestly a great thing to do. And that's one of, I think a really good

habit to try and break eating out of boredom. I used to eat out of boredom too. Like it used to be something like, I'm so bored. Yeah. Like you're not doing anything. Maybe you're watching something or you're just chilling. You're like, hmm, that actually sounds kind of good right now. Let me go grab that. You know, you grab something, you grab something else. You just start eating and sooner or later it just adds up. You have to kind of ask yourself, like, does it actually amplify the experience? And it's easy to say now that it doesn't amplify the experience, right?

But it's hard in that moment to kind of talk yourself out of it. But when you go and see a movie, go to the movie theater, and all you drink is water, when you leave the movie theater is when you're going to be the most excited about the decision that you made. You're going to be like, you know what? I didn't really – you're going to feel the entire time like I don't like popcorn, so it works out good for me. But a lot of people love popcorn and they love going to the movies and enjoying the popcorn. But for most people, when you start making decisions like that to have a once in a lifetime thing going on, like you get to enjoy a couple of drinks or enjoy a meal or something with somebody that maybe you otherwise

wouldn't normally get a chance to hang out with or you're in a city or a town and they got this kind of like special thing. That's when I think it's like you don't want to make that a habit, have an excuse every single week. It's the 4th of July. It's, you know, I'm hanging out with Rob Bailey. It's this thing, you know. Sorry, the muscle. Just throwing you under the bus there, buddy.

But you're fat. We need to still work on it. Right, buddy? We're getting you down there. He's under 300 pounds. So we're making progress. We've got him down about 17 pounds now. But you don't want to use those excuses all the time.

But if they're kind of legitimate, where it's like you're at this cool restaurant, they got this cool thing that you never tried before, that might be a time to try it. And maybe a way to be less fat about it is to maybe share it with somebody. And yeah, again, having control over that and not feeling guilty of it. What was Nick Beer's girlfriend's name again? Ariana. Ariana. Right.

Nick, right. Nick, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not Nick. Oh, yeah. Nick, right. Not Nick Bear. OK, let's get that right.

They have the same. Yeah. So, yeah. And like Ariana was saying, I think it's pretty good that I didn't even catch that either. I think that's a pretty big deal to like, you know, get control over it to a point where like you can go out, you can have these things without actually feeling guilty about it, you know, because feeling guilty about eating something, that's not a good, that's not a good habit or feeling to have either. You know what I mean? So how, like, let's say, let's say you're currently fat,

right? Let's say you're, let's say you're, let's say that you are 270. You have an extra 30 pounds of fat on you, right? Yeah. And you know, I give you a plan and you're following it, but like you want to give into something. How would you maybe not, how would you, how would you approach that? How would you maybe like, uh, do something outside the diet? Maybe you feel like binging. Maybe you feel like you just, you have this urge, you have something that you just want to eat. you feel like you just you have this urge you have something that you just want to eat yeah would you just go would you just say okay look uh i'm gonna make a deal with myself i'm just gonna go enjoy this but then for the next you know four or five days i need to

get back on and be consistent again this is where the tools in the toolbox comes in because like for example like if it's at that point for me i would fast for most of the day and then it's like let's say i wanted to get korean barbecue or something i'd go and enjoy that meal because korean barbecue it's going to be difficult for me to get in 5 000 calories in that single meal right especially if i fasted all day so i could still enjoy that i could still probably not have you know ate an insane amount where it's really going to affect me negatively. Go next day, go back, get on what I want to do. Um, but that, that's why it's good to have that type of tool because even nowadays I'll, I'll do that. Like I'll fast for most of my day and then I'll go have a big meal. But that big meal isn't any just massive surplus

and it's one meal, you know, it's different than, okay, you're eating, you're going through your day, you're on your plan. Then you, you you you like you just you choose to like binge or whatever and then that just messes everything up because now you're eating all this massive amount of food in a what 12 14 hour period so that's just something you can utilize because like there are going to be times where you need to kind of you need to have a a fun meal that's not on your diet plan or that's not on your your whatever you're setting up. And that'll just help you feel better. But if you can do you can still do that and still make progress. Let's maybe even just not even look at it. And again, you don't want to use this as like a

crutch or use this as a thing that allows you to cheat all the time. But let's just view it as a surplus of energy. And then let's figure out what to do with that energy. So what you're saying is like for you, your remedy is to maybe just not eat as much for the entire day. Right. Um, let's say that for the latter half of the day, you just went haywire and you ate, you ate a lot. Right. So I think this is where people can really get themselves in a compromising spot because you know it's saturday and they kind of binged and now they're kind of upset with themselves they really went off the deep end ate some pizza they had some cookie dough and they finished the night off with a thing of ben and jerry's you know and they kind of just really messed up maybe had some drinks or something like

that now it's sunday morning for, when I do something like that, I kind of struggle the next day. So what I would suggest in this kind of scenario is probably the best thing to do would be to see if you could fast on Sunday, but it might be hard. You might be struggling. You might be thinking about like pancakes

because you just had all that sugar. Sugar gets sugar. The more sugar that you have it's a cycle uh-huh and uh doesn't matter how strong you are doesn't matter your mindset doesn't matter you could have the best intentions that is a circle that's going to happen in your body and your body's going to be like hey like we're getting a dip you know we're dipping back down our blood glucose levels are like you know low or normalish again and you should like refill on that shit again. And so you'll get that urge again. And so there's a bunch of things you can do to combat it,

but you shouldn't necessarily go to the gym and be like, I'm going to hammer the fuck out of myself to get rid of all this energy, this extra calories that I have. The reason for that is, is that overtraining can cause overeating is is that over training can cause overeating yeah under sleeping can cause overeating a night of drinking can throw off your sleep right so it's like let's kind of start to think about some of this stuff so you might want to think about that cheat day or that cheat meal or that cheat weekend that started to kind of unfold because you're like, I'll start on Monday. You might want to start to try to put some logical thought around how are you going to mitigate that the best that you possibly can. And maybe a good answer would be that I'm going to kind of prep going into it because I know it's my girlfriend, my wife's birthday.

It's so-and-so's birthday party. And I know that I'm going to eat like an asshole that day. And you can kind of plan accordingly, kind of going into it. And then maybe you can plan accordingly coming back out of it. Yeah. And it sounds like a lot of planning and it sounds like being like super neurotic. But I think that if you're heavy and you struggled with your diet before, I think you have to think about this that much. You don't have to be depressed about it. You don't have to be sad about it.

You don't have to be mad about it because you're one way, you're one meal away from being back on your plan. And so what I would suggest, let's say you had that weekend and you went a little nutty Monday morning comes, don't bother with trying to fast. Um, don't bother with, you know, try and fasted cardio. Don't bother with any to fast um don't bother with you know trying fasted cardio don't bother with any of that stuff have a full day of eating but eat nutritious foods that are actually on the plan and eat as much as you'd like yeah tuesday you can get your shit back together you can get stuff back under control but if you try to always fast your way in and fast your way out of things, you could end up going haywire two or three days later again. So really track your behavior. So if you

start trying to do intermittent fasting and you fast for three days and you do an 18-hour fast on each day, that's really cool. You. You fasted Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Now we need to look at is what is your behavior going to look like on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, because I am going to guess, and I'm going to assume if you had trouble with your diet before, like I have that you're going to fuck up and you're going to,

you're, you're automatically going to go back to eating whatever amount of calories were left on the table guaranteed. And that's why you weigh the same as you did this time last year. And that's why you get on the scale and you see the same fucking weight every time because your body is going to say, dude, you weigh 240 pounds. Don't forget. Hey, you weigh 240. Hey, you didn't eat today. Hey, you didn't eat. It's over and over and over and over again. And then you have to figure out, even if you fasted, how do I consume less overall energy than I normally do? And it's really, really hard for people because it has a fucking stranglehold on you so you have to figure out a way eventually to eat less food yeah yeah no that that's i like what you mentioned there because like you know let's say it's not just a day or it's not just a meal but it ends up being a whole weekend a tactic that some people use it's it's called the borrowing principle but the thing about the borrowing principle is that it's a very easy thing to fall into and just be like, oh, I can do that.

And this is what it is. You probably already know what I'm going to mention. Let's say you do eat in a massive surplus for three days. Well, okay, you eat in a massive surplus for three days. The next few days, maybe four days, you eat much less than you typically do. And what will happen is if you're someone who tracks it, you could track it so that your weekly intake still averages out to be the same. Let's give an example. Let's try to use easy math here. 200 grams of carbs for seven days. If you're

someone who eats 200 grams of carbs every single week, that's 1400 grams of carbohydrates. Or you could eat a hundred grams of carbs for five days and then eat the remaining 900 grams of carbs, so 450 grams of carbohydrates for the two days. That's still 1400, right? So you still ate the same amount of food. And that's what I'm talking about here. So some people do utilize that. But the thing is, some people, they use that in a bad way where they're like, okay, I can fall off and I can eat some shit for the next two days because all I have to do is just eat a small amount of food. And that can be done in a smart way, but especially if you're new to dieting, you don't want to do that too often because it applies to too big of a crutch. I do like what you mentioned that, like, okay, if you do mess up for the weekend or whatever, just be normal.

Try and get back to a normal for the next few days because I think that that's a much healthier way to do it where it doesn't cause like disorder type eating where oh god okay I'm going to starve myself for these next few days but then once you're you know you're feeling super hungry so you go right back and you eat a lot again then you feel guilty and you starve yourself for the next few days do a little bit of the opposite of what you would think you know and and think about the foods that you enjoy that are healthy like let's let's say you really love oranges yeah let's say you really you enjoy certain vegetables let's say you enjoy certain meats like or you enjoy like cheese or whatever the thing is that has uh that provides some value to your the nutrients that you need in a given day go ahead and like eat up on that a little bit yeah maybe eat maybe eat a

little bit more maybe like uh i like heavy cream you know so it's like heavy cream is giving me a surplus of energy heavy cream tastes good i might put it in like a protein shake and it's like that is sending a signal to my brain that we're like not treating ourselves like shit i'm not depriving myself a bunch of stuff because there's so much damn flavor to it you know so i'm still delivering something kind of fun for myself or even like the snack that I have at night, which is yogurt and slingshot protein. I'm still giving myself like a quote-unquote treat. It still feels good. And when I want to tighten shit back up, I'll start to cut those things back out again.

The borrowing method sounds like you're taking out a personal loan. It pretty much is kind of like that. But the thing is, is that can be done in a super healthy way. You know what I mean? It's not like I do that every now and then too, but it doesn't, it's not something that like, I'm like, I have a craving, so I have to do this. It's like, okay, I want to have this meal with this person or whatever. So I'm going to, you know, fast and eat this much.

And then I'll just, you know, eat a little bit less the next day. It's not that big of a deal. It doesn't cause any mental stress, but it's when it starts to cause stress that's an issue yeah i just feel like it would take a lot of discipline because you know like the uh the um comparison to a personal loan it's like you promise you're gonna pay it you know pay more than you're supposed to you promise you're paid on time and then you look back and it's like oh shit i went and took out more like Like, my bad. Yeah, so. It might just be.

It's tactics. It's tools, man. Calories on credit. Calories on credit. Yeah, it might just be a little easier, you know, just to, you know, figure out a way. Like, I like what he said. It's just 100 carbs versus 200 carbs is not a crazy difference. So it's like maybe you pulled out some rice out of a meal each day, and then now you have that built up for the weekend.

You could also, and this is kind of falls into the definition of bulimia in some way, is you can go eye for an eye a little bit with some of it. Sometimes I think it can be okay. Let's say the weekend, uh, you like to train outside. You like to do conditioning. You like to do stuff that maybe costs you more, uh, than your average stuff. And so maybe for that reason, maybe, uh, Saturday and Sunday night, you allow yourself to kind of eat, eat something that you really want, something that you've been craving, you know, but again, it's like, it depends on how you want to look, how lean do you want to get, you know, how far do you want to take it? Because the more that you're going to mess up on Saturday, Sunday, the more that you'd have to put in to the week. And then

that might cause you again to go haywire. It might cause you again to like kind of go really off plan but i also think that i know we call it a cheat and we have fun with it and we laugh about it stuff but like even thinking of thinking of it about thinking about it as cheating is probably pretty negative yeah you know it's like uh it's probably i mean i i hear people now they'll say you know for my cheat i had a quest pizza or for my cheat i had um and it's usually like a lot of times it's probably, I mean, I hear people now they'll say, you know, for my cheat, I had a quest pizza or for my cheat I had. Um, and it's usually like a lot of times it's pretty minor. You're like, wow, that was your John Romano yesterday. He said, um, my cheat is sushi. He's like, I go, you know, on, on Friday night I go with my wife to sushi and he's like, I probably eat like a cup

and a half or two cups of rice in that one meal. And like, that's my cheat. And he's, he said he's like, I probably eat like a cup and a half or two cups of rice in that one meal. And like that's my cheat. And he said he was having like rolls and stuff too. So there's a lot of fat calories kind of in there. So it's a giant surplus of calories. But I liked what he said there. It was like his cheat is like pretty damn tame. It's pretty moderate.

But there's really probably no reason to look at it as a cheat. You can maybe just have a little bit different dialogue for it and just say, I'm just going to eat more on that day. That's the thing. Like we've beat this, this, this idea down, but I really think we need to figure out something else to call that. Because whenever I have these meals out, I don't think it's not cheating at all. Like it's nothing close to cheating. It's not negative. It's really, really good for me. And it's not, it's not a bad thing at all, but I feel like, you know, especially when someone's new to this whole

like weight loss thing or fat loss, right. And they're on their journey. If they continue to look at it as a cheat and they really feel like they're cheating, that's bad. That's a really bad thing for them to feel. I mean, think about like this thing about other things that you might like kind of starve yourself away from or fast yourself away from. Let's say you just fasted away from interacting with people for a few days. Let's say you just wanted to, I don't know, just unplug, right? And then would you consider it a cheat to go and get in conversation with somebody? Probably not, really, right? It's because your mind is sometimes recognizing like,

okay, isolation can be a great thing, but for how long? Like people can't be isolated for very long. You can't really do that for very long. Most people can't. Yeah. It's the biggest form of punishment. The greatest form of punishment is to put people in a cell by themselves with no one else and with no son and no interaction, anything else like that's the worst thing that we do that we could do to somebody, right?

That's somebody that murdered somebody, raped somebody or whatever. Some crazy shit happened, right? And that's what they do. They put them in solitary confinement and they're completely by themselves. And we can recognize that isolation is probably kind of positive for a little bit but then we also need to be like social so depriving yourself of any food is probably great for depriving yourself of all food might not be a bad idea but to do it all the time like eating is super important yeah uh being excited being excited about eating is actually very important.

What Tom Bilyeu said when we had him on our podcast is he said he's trying to figure out why the French fries work. Why do they work? They do. They work. You eat them or whatever your food is, pizza, ice cream, whatever it is, it actually works it actually fills in like you have this empty thing inside where that you need filled up and you're like i'm gonna

eat a donut and you know how i mean i don't know how pumped would we be if we said fuck it let's go get a box of donuts like we would be happy we'd be laughing we'd eat the donuts and we'd probably be hysterical we'd be laughing our asses off, right? We'd be all excited about it. It actually does a lot of those things for us. So you're going to have to mix in. You got to mix in all these ingredients. If you want to be successful, you're going to have to mix in the quote unquote bad, the quote unquote cheats, the sugar, the different things that kind of gets you a high that way and you're gonna have to mix in the miserableness of uh not eating and sometimes being like ah i wish i could just eat everything

that's at this mexican restaurant yeah i can't you know you're gonna have to do all of it man no that's that what you just mentioned there's really awesome comparison because like even being too social is sometimes not the greatest thing like then you then you're like going out all the time and yeah it could it could be really really bad so i really like that comparison if we could just look at food in the exact same way right that's perfect yeah that i've never thought about that before but we just need to look at food in that in that that way yeah not eating is actually very healthy um eating eating even have something healthy causes inflammation but does that mean we don't eat

every like it doesn't make any sense like we need the nutrition we need the nutrients um so you really have to think about like i know we promote fasting a lot but i also want to you know promote the dangers of it it be, it can be kind of a, it could be tough. Just pay attention to your behavior, uh, several days later, because that's actually the most important thing. What you did that day is not that important because one day is not going to really make a big difference. So if you fasted for 24 hours, that's cool. But if two or three days later you ate everything under the sun, unfortunately you kind of completely screwed up that whole point of that fast for that day.

And so those are all things to be conscious of and aware of. Back to kind of the specifics of like the bodybuilding thing, there's a bunch of things the bodybuilding thing did for me that were super positive. And one was just to show me that there's a next level, you know? And it's kind of nice when you work out with somebody and let's say I'm working out

with Nseem and I'm like, damn, man, okay. He's fucking, he's bringing it. Like, shit, okay. This is the way he trains. Or we train with Michael O'Hearn. We're all hyped up, right? And we had a great workout.

And you get amped up from that and you realize, okay, someone else is showing you kind of their level, right? And sometimes that happens just because you get in like friendly competition and stuff. But there's nothing cooler than showing yourself that you have another level. You get into training. It took me a little bit to get the feel of it because I didn't even really know how to get a good pump in all the different muscles. Like I kind of understood how to get like an arm pump, kind of understood how to get a good pump in all the different muscles. Like I kind of understood how to get like an arm pump. I kind of understood how to get a chest pump.

But then like the lats and like a hamstring, like some parts I never really felt. I never really messed around with flexing my hamstrings or specifically flexing my – I never did bodybuilding. I never flexed my calf or some of these things. So I had to kind of learn that. But once I learned it and once I, you know, was warmed up for a workout, it was like I was going a lot harder admittedly than I am right now. But it's kind of nice to know that you do have that next level. And it's a really, really cool feeling. And then in terms of the nutrition and in terms of just kind of the entire thing that it takes to do bodybuilding,

I showed myself another level. And that's something that you can be super proud of. And I also think it's good to go through different time periods of your life where you're, yeah, you're pushing in this one thing, you're pushing on this one thing, you're pushing on it so hard, but it's also probably not realistic to do that all the time. So it's good to know you have another level, you have another place you can go to,

but I don't know if it makes sense to like kind of always live in that spot. Yeah, no, like it's funny when I was getting lean, it's cool when you see different parts of your body that you've never seen that deeply. Like you see lines in your legs that you've never seen before. It's encouraging.

Yeah, it is, it is. And the fact that like you can, just knowing that you can take your physique there, I think is something that's really empowering and really awesome about bodybuilding. One thing like you said though, is that you can't stick there all the time. You know, there are those people that compete like multiple shows every single year and they never really have a time where they can bulk or gain new muscle. So like you want to be able to have times where you're in a surplus, where you have some body fat on and you're gaining. And then again, when you want to compete again, you have times where you're getting ready for show. It just has to be a

good balance there. And I think like what we're saying with the food, like, you know, it's great to be locked in. It's great to feel really good about your diet. And it's great to have this regimen and routine that you've stuck to for a long time. And it's also okay to, like, let it go here and there. It's okay to just say, you know what, I'm not going to really. Maybe you're a person that likes to weigh stuff and track stuff. And maybe you just take a couple days off of that. Maybe you don't. Maybe you just don't do that.

You're not going to. If you already have some of the things in place to have discipline with what you're eating, you know, you don't need to worry. You're not going to probably gain like 10 pounds of body fat or anything. You're probably not going to gain really anything. So, you know, it's, it's, there's a time and place for all of it. There's time and place to train really heavy. There's a time and place to train with, uh, you know, really short rest intervals. There's time and place to train with, you know, really short rest intervals or time and place to kind of mix mix in just a wide variety of things and feel good about all of it. Yeah. Damn, dude, you're looking jacked in that video. It's crazy. I think this is probably, you know, and that's another thing to kind of keep in mind, like what happens after a bodybuilding show to a lot of people, a lot of times they look better. You know, sometimes there's that rebound that we've talked about where somebody,

you know, they gain 30 pounds or 40 pounds. And from a mental standpoint, it's, you know, really hard for them to overcome and stuff. But sometimes people just get a healthy amount of calories in their body. And they're like, shit, man, like the show should be today. You know, you look awesome right be today you know you look you look awesome right here you know and so yeah it's not a lot of shit right there what you got andrew no i was just gonna ask about like uh being okay with um so you're getting lean and stuff and i mean this is kind of a bad example because what you just said but uh like letting go

of the strength right like uh people kind of have a hard because what you just said, but like letting go of the strength, right? Like people kind of have a hard time. They want to get bigger, but then, oh, shoot, like I can't bench the same amount of weight or I can't do this and that. And then they kind of want to then they become unsure of what they want to do. So it's like how hard is it to like really fully commit and let go of, again, like I said earlier, like this other person. There's, there's different strengths, you know, there's a lot of different forms of strength and in SEMA, you know, this, you know, doing a bodybuilding show. Yeah. You'll lose weight,

start to lose some strength, but then you start to gain other things. Like you, you're going to gain the ability to move your body around better. So for you, I mean, you're already pretty good at pull move your body around better so for you i mean you're already pretty good at pull-ups i've seen you do like weighted pull-ups and stuff but when you're in bodybuilding mode how much easier are those pull-ups oh so much easier so much easier because you're banging out 12 reps and you're squeezing them and you're doing it right yeah it's less weight to have to move around so like not everything gets weaker but yeah definitely like my bench gets weaker my squat all my power lifts got a little bit weaker in terms of the absolute amount

of weight I could push. But again, it was understanding going in with that expectation for that to happen to an extent. You know, if you don't know that you're going to get like quite a bit weaker and not feel as strong under heavy loads, okay, it might hit you a little bit more, but like you're losing body fat around certain areas like your hips bit more, but like you're losing body fat around certain areas, like your hips, you know, when you're squatting down into the hole, that hip fat is nice. You don't have that hip fat when you're lean, right? So you feel kind of

fragile. So yeah, I would say that that was one aspect of it that like it did hit me a little bit because there would be movements that I would want to push a little bit heavier and I just physically couldn't. But I knew that going in. I knew that going in. And even right now with jujitsu and lifting, I went into jujitsu understanding that, okay, I might drop a few pounds. I'm not going to be as strong as I was when I was focusing on powerlifting when I was 260. But I can still be pretty strong with like quite a few things while still being able to do this, this thing. So I went in understanding what I was going to get myself into.

Yeah. I was talking to some of the fighters yesterday at CSA and one of the guys was saying he can deadlift around 405. It's probably, I mean, the guy's probably a buck 70 or something, but 60, I mean, he's not a, not a heavy guy um but he's one of the better fighters they have up there and he was saying how you know a lot of times people will ask him like as he's gotten leaner you know is he losing some strength or even going into a fight you know will he lose some strength because he has to do like a weight cut and he's like i'll lose like a tiny bit of strength in terms of maybe being able to like pick up a certain weight or, or something like that. But he's like, I'm so much more fit. I can, I can move better. I can move faster. And he was kind of mimicking, like throwing punches.

He's like, I have a lot more snap. And he's like, I had the snap in this pop right here on these movements and in these drills, because I pull back on some of the lifting. And so some strength coaches would be like, no, you can't pull. This is a guy who's had 50 fights or so. I mean, he knows what's going on. He knows how to play the game. So he knows what's going to work well for him. But what I thought was interesting is like he's 100% right.

Look, he's taking out energy because he's eating less food. What can he afford to give up? He can't stop his drills. He can't stop the MMA stuff. He can't stop striking. He can't stop wrestling. He can't stop practicing jujitsu. It makes absolutely no sense to get rid of any of that stuff.

He can't stop jumping rope. He can't. I mean, he has to keep moving. He has to have his general physical preparedness needs to be high. His specific preparedness needs to be high. And the one place that he can pull something out of would be, you know, hitting heavy deadlifts

because the heavy deadlifts, and some people try to disagree on this, the heavy deadlifts are going to make you slow and not make you slow in terms of how fast you move because being stronger can actually help you move through space faster yeah like hussein bolt demonstrates an immense amount of strength i don't think people understand that when he's doing his 100 meter dash right he's flying and he moves stronger and more powerful than anybody we've ever seen before right but for a fighter or somebody uh even like in jujitsu or somebody

or crossfit if the movement costs them too much for the next few days that's what he's talking about so like if he let's say he did a 405 deadlift and then he had jujitsu he had wrestling he had striking to go over two and three days, after his max effort deadlift, he's going to move around the way that we move around. He's going to move around the way a power lifter moves around. He's going to be taxed. He's going to be slowing down, right? So that's where I think you really have to just pay attention. Like, you know, what's coming next?

What are you doing? And if you love heavy lifting, you don't have to stop heavy lifting. You can continue to lift heavy and you can continue to have strain and struggle. You can continue to do some of those. Uh, like I did some one rep maxes. I pulled close to 600 pounds before the meet came. I benched four or five, uh, or sorry, before the competition came, the bodybuilding show. And it wasn't like those were like impossible for me, but it still gave me that strain and struggle. The same as I felt when I've deadlifted 700, the same as I felt when I benched over 500.

So you could still get those things. It's going to be a little less weight, but it's still going to be fun. It's still going to have that challenge to it. But be cautious that you're not trying to put so much into that because that's not the focus. Focus at that point is to dump body fat. Yeah, that's definitely true. Especially even like right now, like the focus in terms of my lifting is just to, to help me be better on the mats. And I know what I can give. I know what I, I know what I can't do. So it's just that shift, figuring out what's more important more important at the time have you

overdone your lifting a couple times where you went to practice and you're like my hip my knee my back whatever i kind of look at that as a positive honestly like because it's training yeah and and also like when i do that here right or when i lift anywhere before i go to jujitsu it is good because it forces me to utilize better technique on the mat. I'm pretty fatigued. So I'm not able to push my opponent off me with all my, like all my power. Um, I may have to move a little bit slower, but it does force me to use better technique in all my roles, use my energy smartly, and it helps improve that martial art. And like, I think that's actually something that's oddly beneficial about like about this i

don't know any other thing that or maybe other martial arts i don't know i don't know any other thing that you know pre-fatiguing yourself before doing it can actually be very beneficial for it um but i think like for all jiu-jitsu i think there's a lot that's not known about that i think that that is i do think that is like if there is a magic pill i think that there's a lot of magic in that you have to be a little cautious with it because you don't want to go too far and hurt yourself on like a heavy deadlift right but doing some leg presses and doing some lunges before before you deadlift can and i'll use the word help it can help and assist you to use less weight now somebody might think think, oh, it's hurting. You just can't lift as much weight.

But actually it may force you to have better form and technique and it might take your legs away a little bit. And now you might have to try to use your lower back more, but we're still trying to adhere to having good form. So maybe the only way that you can lift that day because you did so much work before that, maybe all you can lift that day is 405 with keeping your back flat and with having your back flat with

having your uh you know your hips down and things like that so it's not like you're going to execute anything regardless of technique you still have the same all the same rules it's just that you probably need to use a little bit less weight until you get used to it yeah yeah yesterday was was a lot of fun you know i got a chance to uh watch um i call him the dream killer gaston i forget his last name but watching him so fighter yeah he's a fighter yeah he's uh mma up at uh at csa in um that's where the uh slingshot record breaker is going to be this year but you, you know, he was practicing. He's practicing some drills with his teammates. They're all fighting September 6th for Strikeforce, and he's rolling. They're working on specific moves, mainly chokes.

And it was fun to watch because they're all, like, allowing each other to do some stuff. They're all allowing each other to do some, you know, some parts of – they're drilling. Yeah. So they're allowing each other to get some stuff they're all allowing each other to do some you know some parts of uh they're drilling yeah so allowing each other to get certain holds and stuff but they're also working very hard yeah this guy's a fucking animal we're watching some videos is this the gaston guy yeah he's absolute savage we'll have him on the podcast he he was excited to be on so we'll we'll get him down here at times the pop on on those kicks just doesn't make any sense. He's been on Joe Rogan's stuff before. A very, very good fighter.

His main thing is the elbow. This guy throws an elbow at you and you're toast. But he went from the rolling, where the effort was 80% maybe, then he went into sparring. And when he went into sparring, he did round after round. I think he probably did about six or eight rounds of sparring and when he went into sparring he did round after round i think he probably did about six or eight rounds of sparring like this where he's hitting them hitting the gloves and he did um he was working on punches and kicks and different things like that and then he immediately went from that which none of it phased him he had no facial expression at all

like he wasn't tired um my friend kirian was like worn the hell out just holding the mitts for him you know holding the gloves for him and then he immediately went from that to like coaching a practice and so like in the you know 45 minutes that josh and i were there we watched him he rolled and it again it wasn't intensely plus this is at the end of the day yeah he's probably already there for 12 hours or 10 hours or whatever. We didn't even see that part. And he just gets off the mat. Boom, he goes right into his striking. And boom, he rolled right into teaching a class.

It was awesome to kind of watch. But the level of fitness that those kind of people need and the accuracy that they need with their nutrition and with their sleep. And it's, it's just another level commitment. And, and me and Josh were actually talking about, you know, fighting is probably the, the ultimate thing where you need, like,

you know, we talk about bodybuilding and how hard bodybuilding can be because of the nutrition aspect. When it comes to fighting, it's like, you better have everything all together. Your, your strength,

your endurance. I mean, there's just so much to work on. You got to worry about someone kicking you in the head. So you can't just go in and shoot on somebody or kneeing you in the head. It's like, man, there's no other sport that could be any more time consuming than that. Fighting is the kind of thing where I look at, I'm like, I want to do it. But I'm like, I'm not going to.

You know what I mean? I may do the martial arts, like the jujitsu is awesome, but it's not like fighting. It's not like you're not getting punched in the face or kicked in the rib. That's different. You know, I don't know, man. I think you would be good at it. I might be good, but I want to get it. Yeah.

I don't think you'd have to. I don't know. Think of it this way. Daniel Cormier, right? Who just fall, he just lost, but Daniel Cormier is like top of the top, right? But he was 245. Yeah. How much do you weigh? Like 245.

Yeah. It's a different 245. I'm not saying that you can fuck with Daniel Cormier. I'm just saying like a lot of heavyweights don't look like that. Yeah. A lot of heavyweights can't move like that. A lot of heavyweights can't move like that a lot of heavyweights you know a lot of heavyweights are talented too i mean there's a lot of guys that are super talented though if francis and ganu oh yeah it's a freak show right like it's a it's a it's a freak show of freak shows but i think that

if you josh and i talked about this yesterday I think that if you were to try it, you're pretty damn competitive. So I think that you would learn the skill sets enough to like, I don't really picture you as a mean person. And I think that a fighter kind of has to have, you know, a little meanness in you. Yeah.

But I think that you have enough competitive spirit to where you could be mean enough to get the job done and on top of that i think that you would just be so fascinated with all the different skill sets that it takes that you would want like george saint pierre i don't think george saint pierre is a mean person but george saint pierre kills people he destroys people and it's because same thing he's fascinated with like the technique of it so he you know had to learn all the different moves and everything but i think i think you love it and we actually taught when we talked to caesar gracie he actually mentioned your coach and he said that he helped him uh i think start one of his first gyms yeah yeah maybe he did i don't have no idea it's pretty cool he actually just won worlds this

week in casio or yesterday masters worlds he went to get him in here for a podcast yeah he went down um an age bracket so the age submitted everybody right i think so yeah went down the age bracket um won all his matches and uh yeah he cut two for it so he killed he killed where's his gym map so people that are listening if anyone's in the area can go check it out yeah so casio has two locations one in carmichael and then the other one in roseville so the roseville school he teaches at but the carmichael school he teaches at more yeah yeah super cool stuff man anything else andrew uh just a uh reminder for a free shirt friday today oh free shirt friday look at that handsome ah it's a really good picture whoever took it that guy's got a big head yeah big old

head pumpkin head yeah it's kind of shaped like that free shirt friday and then also shout out to uh we got some sponsors coming up. Super excited about that. These are good combinations. It's good to collaborate with some of these companies, and it's good to have some strong people behind us. We've got certified Piedmontese coming in hot. So we're going to have some great deals for you guys coming up. We'll announce those in the next few episodes, and then also Perfect Keto has jumped on board as well.

So it's been a long time coming. I think it's great. It provides a lot more opportunity for this podcast to always get better, buy more equipment, get out to some different areas, get out to some different places, travel a little bit more. And it just provides some fun opportunities for us. Plus, we get to enjoy a bunch of free meat and some perfect keto bars and products, right? I cannot wait for that meat, man.

Oh, God. Yep. Yeah, look at this. It makes you so hungry right now. Oh, God. Jackedcows.com. Anyway, strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength.

Catch you all later.