Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 153 - Chris "Boar" Bell

Episode Date: December 8, 2018

Joining us today is director of everyone's favorite fitness documentary Bigger STronger Faster, Chris Bell. Chris is Mark Bell's big brother and along with their oldest brother, Mike Maddog Bell, Chris had a huge influence on Mark and got him into lifting, specifically, Powerlifting. Chris has also directed A leaf of Faith, Trophy Kids and Prescription Thugs, all of which can be seen on Netflix. ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: 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 Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

Are we just going to hop right into it? Yeah. Crank up that diesel. Who? Mm-hmm. Shaq Diesel? Crank up that diesel. It used to be on John Riggins' Washington Redskins.

It was an old NFL video. I know. NFL films. That video was amazing. Did you end up watching that run? It's that 99-yard run the guy had the other day? I haven't seen it yet. I got to watch it. It's that 99-yard run the guy had the other day? I haven't seen it yet.

I gotta watch it. It's so great. The guy just, he killed everybody. He just, he stiff-armed the same guy twice in the same run. And then that same guy almost came back and got him, but he couldn't quite catch up to him. But it was awesome. That's really getting shunned. Anyway, everybody, welcome to Mark Bell's Power Project.

And I got my boy over here, Andrew Zaragoza. Hey. As our podcast engineer. And got my brother to my left over here, Christopher Boer Bell, director of Bigger, Stronger, Faster, Prescription Thugs, Billy Jones. Trophy Kids. Trophy Kids. Trophy Kids. And A Leaf of Faith, which just came out on Netflix. Oh, my God.

And at the end of May, came out on Netflix. So if you haven't seen it, check it out this weekend. It's awesome. You'll love it. Yeah. And then, what was the thing you wanted to talk about running for president? Yeah, I was figuring George Bush, our president, he passed away. And so. Get someone in there.

Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, we need somebody. We got to sub somebody in there. I think somebody's, I think that he's a former president, I think. Oh, wait, he's not. He's not the current. Yeah, he's not the reigning. Oh, he's not still in there?

I don't think so. He was pretty old. Who's in there now? I have no idea what's going on. I don't read the paper or anything or watch the news, so... You just play video games? I'm not into politics. I just play video games like Super Smash Brothers, which just came out today, which I'm excited to try.

Is that how you got so fat in the first place? Video games? Well, you can't get fat playing video games. You get fat playing video games. You get fat playing video games and then eating crappy food a lot. Did you? I don't know. There could be some science showing that video games make you fat. Well, not just

by itself, though. It couldn't. You never know. Well, I mean, just sitting down. Video games and fasting, you could do pretty good like that. Probably get, like, you turn soupy, right? But don't you turn, doesn't your metabolism slow down like if you're not moving? Yeah, but what if you eat get like, you turn soupy, right? But don't you turn, doesn't your metabolism slow down like if you're not moving?

Yeah, but what if you eat a mushroom, you turn double size, right? You get super jacked. Who was telling us about mushrooms the other day? Oh, man.

Somebody was telling us about mushrooms. Everybody's been talking about mushrooms lately. Yeah, everybody just wants to get high. Psilocybin mushrooms. Yeah.

Yeah, like a lot of people are using all these things as like therapies now, like psilocybin mushrooms and MDMA and all these drugs. Yeah, it's supposed to go on the ballot, right? Like to see if it can be like for medical use. Ketamine. Yeah.

It seems like there are actually all these drugs that we just said no to, right? It's almost like just say yes. Crazy. The drugs that are all illegal are being used now for therapies and the drugs that are legal that are like prescribed by doctors are driving people crazy, you know, making people nuts. So I think it makes sense. Like we, we always talk about in this podcast, how like nothing gets you to the place that we end up in other than like actually lifting weights.

You know, this, this, this feeling that we have from, uh, you know, feeling like we hit a wall at rep number five, but still pumping out 10 reps. There's not, you can't really duplicate that anywhere else except, except for, and through something physical. But some of these drugs kind of get you to these different spots that you otherwise can't reach naturally either, you know? So whether it's kratom or marijuana or just some alcohol or whatever, it's like, there's a huge reason on why people take them and why people do them. And yeah, maybe they should be used for medical purposes. interest in our favorite drug, testosterone. Hey now. I think that, well, you know, with a growing interest in mushrooms and these other things that can help with mental disorders.

Do something useful with your drugs, kids. Yeah. I used to say that to my college roommate all the time because he used to sell drugs. So, you know, Coke and heroin and everything. And at USC, it was crazy. And I would say, why don't you do something constructive with your drugs? You should get on the juice. But he never did.

Yeah, at least you get some giant biceps from it. Yeah, he went out in a blaze of glory. Big bench. Ended up passing away. Yeah, if I could take something that would make me feel like that 225-pound bench yesterday, I'd probably be an addict. Yeah. That shit felt great. 225-pound bench. Congratulations, buddy. Thank be an addict. Yeah. Yeah. That shit felt great. 225 pound bench.

Congratulations, buddy. Thank you. Thanks to both of you. Yeah. That was pretty cool having both of you guys there. It was awesome to see that. And then, um. You missed it twice.

Yeah. Yeah. You missed it. You missed it twice. And then, you know, like we kind of have there, there's, we kind of have some unwritten laws here at super training gym and you are, you're allowed to miss it more than once, you know, so you miss something and then can you take it again? Yeah, sure, you can take it again. But a lot of times that's difficult because a lot of times you, you know, already put out a pretty good effort for the first one and you're too fatigued.

But for you, it kind of looked like the weight flew over your face. I was like, ah, you know, he didn't, it wasn't like he strained against it for five seconds and then missed it. I was like, it, you know, he didn't, it wasn't like he strained against it for five seconds and then missed it. I was like, it was over pretty quick. And so maybe if he can realign himself and press a little differently, maybe it will look a little different. I actually think it was my fault because I'm terrible at liftoffs, as you know. I lifted off twice and he missed it. And then you lifted off and he got it. Yeah, the magical liftoff.

Yeah. It could have been your junk in his face that made him get it. Oh, he loves the smell of my balls. Yeah, I think it could have been your junk in his face that made him get it. Oh, he loves the smell of my balls. Yeah, I think it could have been that. It's like the testosterone goes airborne at that point. So when I, you know, one, take a deep breath, I'm actually just taking

in all the airborne testosterone. I did notice that when I lifted off to him, his mouth was really wide open. I did notice that. Just hoping for just the slightest drip of sweat. So after you got that from somewhere. From anywhere, the body parts, I don't, it didn't matter. After you nailed that weight,

you had a smile from ear to ear, so it had to feel good. It felt, well, so the whole thing, so I, somebody had made a, they made like a instrumental of the Super Training 06 theme music. Oh yeah. It's fucking amazing.

Oh, that's incredible i get so i get so pumped listening to that so the whole drive from home to the gym is just on repeat and i'm envisioning everything going it's happening in my head you know so like in my head i hit that i hit that bench like at least 20 times already by time let's talk about that video that video is amazing of him playing the piano yeah he plays a piano and then he starts bringing in the choir and he starts bringing the guitar it's really good i mean like people i thought after a while like a muppet was going to come in there and start playing the drums or something like what's so weird is i never even knew that existed until

a couple weeks ago because i was trying to actually find the song on on youtube or something i forget what i was looking up. Something with you guys. And then I came across that. And I was like, this song is amazing. I don't think I've ever seen it either. But somebody commented from our staff saying it was like an awesome video or something. And I was like, man, I don't remember ever seeing that.

But maybe I did. I don't know. Maybe somebody. But you've heard it now. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. Well, everybody loves that song. And everyone's always asking, like, where's that song come from?

How do I get that song? And I never let anybody know. But the song came from you. Yeah, I don't think you know where it came from. I know where it came from, but I'm dying with that. Yeah, no, we can't tell people where it came from. So he just made it up on his own. That's fucking, I mean, a true musician, right?

He was humming in the shower. That's all he was doing in the shower? Mm-hmm. Probably had our videos in the background. Well, actually, that song is very inspirational. I'm not going to tell them.

I'm just saying, when I heard that, and it starts out with that bell, like, dong, you know, and it goes into the music, it just reminded me

of, you know, like Rocky. It reminded me of like, hey, this is so uplifting. Not just another bump in the neighborhood. This is really cool. And then I cut some video clips

that looked really cool of you lifting to it. And then you were like, that's our theme song. Like, that's it. You know, so I thought that to me, to be able to contribute anything

to Super Training is always awesome. You know, to be able to be a part of it is great. Oh, yeah. There it goes. Yeah, it's called super training 06 intro theme on youtube yeah this this guy's so dope you guys can hear that pretty good right yeah okay yeah

so anyway i'm i'm listening to this the whole way to the gym and i'm envisioning myself hitting that lift and it in my head i hit it like i hitting that lift and in my head I hit it like I said 20 times but in my head it went straight up it didn't go too far over my face it didn't go too far down so when that happened I didn't know what to do so first time went too far up second time went too far down so when Mark handed off I corrected it right in the middle, and that's when I was able to get it. You know what the best part about this video is?

Look at the guy's arms. He's kind of jacked. He's got some triceps going on. Yeah, he's got some triceps and some eyes going on. Yeah, he's pretty jacked. We've got to use this for a motivational video clip. Yeah. As soon as I heard this version of it, I was like, I don't know if it's actually better, but it's kind of like it's so different that it makes it, it brings it into a different realm, right? People that are listening right now are like so getting fired up right now.

Like, how do I find this? Yeah, well, I'll figure out exact like link to it and stuff. That's Super Training 06 intro. Yeah, you can just search Super Training 06 theme music, I think, or intro theme. It keeps showing the different things that are coming. It says guitar, lead guitar, secondary piano, brass section, strings, choir, bass. It's actually a pretty good video. It's a really good video.

Anywho, it is December 7th, and we're starting to get towards the end of 2018, and we're starting to get towards the end of uh 2018 and uh we're starting to get towards my 42nd birthday where we're going to be celebrating 30 years of lifting that iron you know it's kind of amazing i was thinking about this today because i posted about it and i said we're celebrating 30 years of lifting because i'm celebrating 30 years of lifting also basically but i started when i was like 16 and you're from the bottom now you're here yeah well remember i had my my knee surgeries when i was 16 never lifted a weight in my doctor strace yeah and then i started fishkill new york i started lifting and and you were pulled into it within a couple of weeks like it wasn't very long before we're like hey yeah you know you're

what are you guys doing down there hey you idiot you idiot. You should try this. What? Remember, Mad Dog got a Marcy weightlifting set. Oh, yeah. That was a long. So I was probably younger than 12 then. Well, you were only like 10, I think. And he got this Marcy weightlifting set. And Marcy was just the brand. I don't know how it was named after a chick.

But it was a brand of lifting equipment. It was like a universal machine. It had everything on it. You could do. Bench on one side, leg extension on the other type deal. Yeah. Yeah. But it was like a universal, it was actually a pretty well-made for the time home, you know, little home gym. And I remember our dad took some two by fours and he was just, he was so creative and inventive all the time. He took some two by fours and he took some sheet rock and he made like a little wall around it.

And we had our own gym. Like he built it in our basement out of nothing. And then we moved houses. And when we moved houses, our dad was cool enough to say, you know what, I want to have a business for my, you know, I want to have an office for my business in our house. But the other side of it is going to be the weight room for the kids. Yeah, it was our gym.

So in our basement, you had to like walk through our dad's office basically to get to the gym side of it is going to be the weight room for the kids. Yeah, it's our gym. So in our basement, you had to walk through our dad's office basically to get to the gym kind of, or you just walk down the stairs and the gym was right there. But it was perfect because we had a place to train every single day. And we actually, I say in Bigger, Stronger, Faster, that instead of the Hulkamania workout set, we got a squat rack for Christmas. That's actually a true story. Yeah. Squat rack and 310 pounds or whatever it was the weight olympic weight set our parents are really like you know i i we give credit to my dad a lot but both my parents both of our parents are uh like really and truly amazing and it kind of boggles your mind when you start to think about people that

live their life like for other people and they really they really i mean they still do it today yeah i mean you can't really they embrace they embrace it so hard it's and i don't i don't even think it's anything they think about it's not just us though it's like the people at their church yeah you know um our parents they're just kind of like that i'm actually actually so proud of, especially mom, because she's had so many difficult times in her life. So many things that she's gone through. But to see her go on that ketogenic diet and lose 75 pounds and all the things that she's been, you know, she's been feeling better. She's been acting a lot happier.

And to see her go into church and explain to people that she's on a keto diet. Or on carbs. Yeah. She explains to people like, hey, a keto diet. Or on carbs. Yeah. She explains to people like, hey, I'm doing what my son tells me to do. And by that, I mean you, because you're kind of right next door helping her out. And I just think she's going to get a lot better from being in this position that she's in. Well, she's in a lot better position now than she was before. And we talk about this endlessly on this podcast.

Just try it. Just, you know, if you're overwhelmed, just make it simple. Just try to be better than you were last week. Yeah. It's pretty easy, right? You know, if you're having a hard time figuring out your sleep and you only sleep four hours a night, work on sleeping four hours and 15 minutes. I was stupid in the beginning of this whole thing. Cause I, I kind of thought I kind of stupid.

I kind of thought I knew it all. And I remember I, even, um, when we interviewed Stan efforting the rhino said, well, what if you don't like sleep? He's you have to learn to like it. And I'm like, but I think, I always think I'm missing something. He's like, you're missing way more being awake and being out of it than you're ever missing by getting some more sleep. And I thought that was a great answer to my question. Fatigue makes cowards. Fat fatigue makes cowards of us all. I mean, that's something to always remember. So if you're tired, you're not going to make the right decision.

If you're tired, you're kind of also just like worn down. Every day has the ability to kind of break it down as it is, just because there's a lot of shit to get done every day. And if you're really tired or fatigued, you're going to keep choosing the easy road like ah you know we're gonna okay i'm i don't need to go to the gym today i went yesterday and you can talk yourself out of stuff really quick and it sounds really logical when you're tired like i think i might be getting sick like i don't feel so good i'm not gonna bother it's easy to and

you're like oh man i'm you know screw it i'll have some pizza tonight like not a big deal it's it's easy to get that conversation cranking in your head and then also sorry go ahead no i was gonna say like even the things like if you do muster up the energy to go to the gym or to work on that project or like you know like oh shoot i do have ot like i'm gonna work on that you're not at your fullest potential like you're you're not you're barely even there how bad does it feel to be empty like you go to do something and you get like coffee or you're trying to get fired up and you're like i need something for this workout but you're actually truly just sleep deprived yeah also sometimes i'll get up at four thinking it's like

the cool thing to do and uh i'm exhausted by 10 you know that's that's no good yeah you know um just just to get up just to say oh i got up at four today yeah you gotta get up, just to say, oh, I got up at 4 today. Yeah, you got to get to sleep. And I tell people all the time, set your alarm to go to bed. Don't set your alarm to wake up necessarily. Like have enough rest that you just wake up naturally. Actually, every iPhone now, which is millions and millions of people have one, has a thing called bedtime on it. I don't know if people are aware of the new operating system,

but it has a thing called bedtime where it sets an alarm for you to go to bed and it tells you when to wake up. Get your ass to bed, baby. So it actually is a double alarm, which is kind of amazing. Yeah, and it's great because, like, let's say you want to get up at 5 or whatever. You can, like, I'll show you right now, but you set the dial for how many hours you want to sleep. So, like, Mark, you can see this. Yeah, I can see it.

Yeah, so it's like i want eight hours that means i have to go to bed or after yeah i have to be in bed by 9 30 just does the math for you i mean we could all do it ourselves but it's nice to have this but it's pretty eye-opening like let's just say like somebody who doesn't wake up early and like okay i want to wake up at 6 30 a.m it's not too early but it's you know it's early-ish and it'll tell you like oh you have to be in bed by 10 30 to get eight hours of sleep. And you see that and you're like, that's not hard at all. Yeah. And then it just sort of trains you to do it, right? And I think that's something that we learned from Lane Norton was that our habits make our behaviors, right? Like he always harps on that

and just the habit of getting to bed is going to help you in the gym. It's going to help you in your work. It's going to help you in your work. It's going to help you everywhere. Well, it neurologically changes your brain. Like your brain forms different patterns. Like physically, like you can take your brain out, look at it, change your mind to do something to like wake up early, look at it again, and it will look different. I'd have to say it made the biggest difference in my transformation from being a fat ass to like where I'm at now was uh figuring out the sleep component obviously food is a huge uh deal but I think without the proper sleep like Mark said

you don't make the right decisions and then you just keep failing over and over when I was getting ready for my bodybuilding show I took I took one day off the entire time the rest of the time it was either cardio uh or training happened every single day and or the both of them happened every, every single day. I took one day off. I slept in on one day, just one day. And I was like getting in good shape and I was leaning out and I was like, Hey, this is, you know, this is cool.

And I got to a point where it started to get a little harder to see the improvements every day. Well, this one day that I took off, when I came back in the gym the next day, uh, I was so much leaner, you know, I just, I felt stronger. It increased everything. This is one day, the entire time I was pretty sleep deprived, to be honest, because all the meal prep and all the different things I had to try to be on top of, you know, I was probably sleeping six or seven hours a day instead of the, you know, normal recommended eight hours and waking up at, you know, three to be at, or waking up at two 45,

getting a meal in and getting the goals Venice, uh, at four o'clock to train with O'Hearn. It was, uh, it was killing me, you know, because I just wasn't getting sleep. And so once I had that one day of sleep and I actually weighed myself that morning uh when I got up now I was uh sleep longer so you get dehydrated in your sleep I lost like five pounds like five pounds more than I previously did and that actually that actually taught me a good lesson I was like man okay it doesn't matter how much shit I got going on I really actually need to sleep and from the time I was in Malibu to the time I got back here, I worked on sleep. I worked on sleeping a lot more and you can see the transformation

happen. Nothing else really changed. I did do a little bit extra cardio, but everything else was pretty much the same. When I got back here to Sacramento, I was like, I need that sleep. That's going to be the key component. And it was, it's crazy to see how your body transformed during that time too. And then, um, I, you know, I talked to a couple of people who made me really proud about you doing that was that we had some of the best bodybuilders that we know at gold's gym saying like your brother nailed it. We don't see anybody go that hard. That's, you know, from outside this sport, usually you don't see anybody take it, take it to that level of conditioning and stuff like that. So that was really cool to hear from people that we really look up to and we

admire. Um, so I, I like, you know, the fact that you, you went all out, you know, you didn't, you didn't like skimp on anything. And, uh, it was a great experience overall. I think. It's respect, you know, it's respect for the sport and all the people that we know, all the people that we know that been on magazine covers and, you know, from Mike Ryan to Michael Hearn to, uh, you know, it's respect for the sport and all the people that we know, all the people that we know that been on magazine covers and, you know, from Mike Ryan to Michael Hearn to, uh, you know, Jay Cutler, Jay Cutler, Dorian Yates. These are, these are huge idols of ours. Mike Menser, you know, the Menser brothers, like we, we love, we love, we love bodybuilding.

I just happen to never be like, I never went to a bodybuilding show and I never actually practiced true bodybuilding before, before I did this. So I just didn't have any experience with it, but you and I have been fans of it. Obviously I've always been a huge fan of Arnold. I've been a gigantic fan of bodybuilding forever, but I would always say, well, I don't want to be a bodybuilder because why? Cause I was fat and I didn't know how to get out of it. I didn't know how to fix the problem, but now that know you know i've learned a lot and i've educated myself i'm like oh that you know i still know how much harder it would be to get to the from the shape i'm in now to a bodybuilding show would be brutal but the transformation you made from at least i know how to do it the transformation you made from even like six months ago to where you are now is similar to the transformation that I made going from where I was before to that bodybuilding show.

The same thing. So you would be able to do it without any problem. It's just hard. Yeah, it's just, I mean, it takes a real concentrated effort. It doesn't happen kind of like by accident, you know. You have to be on top of your sleep. You got to be on top of your food prep. You got to be on top of your training.

You got to be on top of your cardio. But nobody to be on top of your food prep. You got to be on top of your training. You got to be on top of your cardio. But nobody knows how to get in better shape than bodybuilders. I mean, just make numbers. They've been doing it forever. They've been doing it forever. And the bodybuilding style diet works for every sport that there is. I mean, it's universal. Working on having more muscle mass, I mean, works for every sport as well.

Working on having more muscle mass works for every sport as well, although some athletes might want to do some other movements than just what bodybuilders do. You wouldn't really have to change too much, maybe add a little fat into your caloric intake because bodybuilders don't usually eat that much fat. But performance-wise, having some of those carbohydrates in there and getting in a lot of good sources of protein, you're pretty much all set in terms of being able to build a lot of muscle.

How did you feel going through all that stuff? Like, did you get tired? Did we, you know, obviously we're doing a lot of work. I felt amazing. I felt really good. The only time I really felt, um, different was two days prior to the contest and two days after the contest. Um, different was two days prior to the contest and two days after the contest. Um, actually maybe more like two or three days after the contest. I just felt like, I felt like part of me like just left. Cause like I I've never, I've never had really, I've never had depression. I've never, I've never felt like not doing anything. I mean, there's times in a day where I sure I sit down and I'm like, whew, that was a barn burner of a day.

And I sit down and I I watch TV for a little bit or something, but I'm still like it's a form of entertainment. Right. There's very it's very rare for me to be like, I don't want to do anything. Hey, you want to do this? Hey, you want to do that? Nope, nope, nope. Like I didn't want to do anything. And we went from Sacramento to Bodega Bay. I went with Andy. And I was like, oh, this is going to be fun because I'm going to eat whatever I want. But we're going to go on walks. Maybe we'll go on some runs.

I didn't want to do shit. Like we went on a few walks. I was like, babe, I don't know. I don't know what's going on with me, but I'm a little bitch. But my soul is gone. And other people that have been on bodybuilding diets can relate. That actually happens. It feels like your spirit floated away from you or something.

It's crazy. Do you think it was because the show was done and there was nothing left to do? Or do you think it was so taxing and exhausting that when you got to the end, you were just dead? Yeah, I think it might be a little bit of a combination of of the two like you just empty out the tank you know um but it happens like when i finish a movie you think like it's going to be so satisfying whatever but then it's over and you're

like oh it's it's like the end it's like i can't work on it anymore yeah can't fix anything else it wasn't too much of that because like i i don't whatever that thing is i i don't have a lot of that because i don't i try not to i try not to give a shit up too much about you know like any one thing so as as cool as it was to like be that ripped and stuff i don't really care about being lean so therefore i i do care obviously i try to keep my body in the best shape that i can but i also i'm not so attached to that like one thing like if I'm attached to anything, it's like being a dad or being a husband. Like those are the things that I, that I need to be attached to. Those are the things I really need to like, you know, dial in.

So I, I just try my best not to like make it all crazy in my head. But I think in this case, it was just like the fact that it took everything out of me mentally and physically, uh, because it was a like i've said before a full court press every single day uh you had to have the meals prepped every single time you had to be you know three or four meals ahead every single day and it was just it was a giant pain in the ass so what's stressful you know the the big question now is uh for 2019 coming up 2019 what's next what you have anything uh anything coming up that um you know like that that you want to try or want to do or just playing it by ear right now 2019 you know every day is so much fun for me like it

we have a great time here at slingshot super training gym and i set little goals every day try to do do more shit and uh you know i for next year i i mean yeah i'd like to bench over 500 pounds at 220 hopefully i can go do that in a meet um i don't know when i'm not gonna i'm not gonna force it um it seems like could be, it could be okay to try it around February, but that might be a little early. It might be a little bit of stretch. So I'm going to have to wait until like March or April. But, um, yeah, that's, I mean, that's just those goals, the goals in the weight room are, are important to me because, um, those are things that I can, those are things that I can really see. You know, those are things that

I can really feel. You know, if I'm a better dad or better husband, it's like kind of hard to like, it's hard to really evaluate that. You know, I guess that I have to ask my family around, you know, but. And they'll say no. Yeah, they'll say no. Just to say it. Yeah, they'll kick you off the team. Yeah. The stuff in the gym is important. It keeps me on track with everything else. And so that's one of the goals. 500-pound bench at 220. Boom. That'd be great.

I did 505 at 245 for a double at one time. And I benched 551 at 242. So this will be a new challenge. In Bigger, Stronger, Faster, I did 501 at 198, but I cheated because it was a bench shirt. Oh. There's a bench shirt, me. You son of a bitch. So my birthday is coming up, and we're dropping some gangster wraps on that day.

Gangster knee wraps and gangster flex wrist wraps, 22 inch and a 36 inch. Yeah. And, uh, both of those are IPF approved, USAPL approved, USPA approved, LMNOP approved, approved for every federation that there is. Uh, the one with the flex tab, the gangster flex wrap, you're going to want to check that thing out. You can just work it down a little bit better. Those things are amazing.

Cause I tried them for the first time yesterday. I was trying to figure out what the difference is, but then when I locked them down and I lock in so tight, it just feels great. And then what's nice, well, what's nice about it is you lock it down really tight, but then in between sets,

you can just easily peel it back and not cut off your circulation, but you can make them, you know, as tight and hard as you want to basically, uh, so you just risk doesn't move at all, which is just great. You can make them kill your whole face as we like to say. And so my birthday's coming up. It's December 10th. We already said we got the 30, you know,

30 years of lifting and all that stuff going on. So that'll be really fun and really excited about that. And, um, and then unfortunately December 14th is the day that our oldest brother, mad dog passed away. I've talked about that. And, um, and then unfortunately, December 14th is the day that our oldest brother, Mad Dog passed away. I've talked about it a million times on here. I've talked about it a lot on YouTube, um, almost every single year without fail around that time. I always talk about it. Um, and we've made a video this year, um, where Chris and I filmed some stuff already. Uh, Chris Griffin and our crew filmed it and, uh, film filmed our parents as well. Uh, talking about, you know, Mike's life

and his death and, you know, kind of where we're at after. And, um, you know, it's for us, it's, well, for me, I'll speak for myself, I guess, uh, for me, um, it's therapy to, to talk about it and to communicate and say, Hey, look, these are some problems, um, it's therapy to, to talk about it and to communicate and say, Hey, look, these are some problems that are in the world. Uh, my brother was addicted to drugs. He was addicted to alcohol. Um, he was also bipolar and here's my experience with it. Uh, hopefully, you know, hopefully someone gives a shit and hopefully it helps somebody else. Hopefully it's helped millions of people. Yeah. Just telling his story and having his story be in Bigger, Stronger, Faster and in Prescription Thugs. I just think it helps so many people because I've actually, I get the feedback, you know, like I made the movie.

So on the, you know, Instagram and Facebook and all the social media stuff for the movies, people just want even bigger, stronger, faster before mad dog passed. Everybody was asking, well, how's mad dog doing? Nobody, nobody, um, was concerned about you.

They cared about you. Yeah. They thought like, oh man, smelly is awesome. Like he just went and kicked ass. But what about mad dog? Is he okay?

Like I'm, I'm worried about him, you know? And so I think that his story was so relatable to so many people, which just goes to show you like people identify more with the guy who's struggling than they do with the guy that's winning. Yeah. No, I mean, you always, I mean, you, you know, you watch a fight, you watch a Rocky, you know, the guy that's like struggling, the guy that's the underdog. You're not sure if he's going to make it out. Okay. And, um, with Mike, I mean, you know, his his situation was definitely like that. I think people liked him and people had empathy towards him.

And they're like, man, I could because everybody knows somebody like that. Everyone's got a cousin or a uncle or a friend that's in this weird spot. You can't figure out why they can't pull themselves out of it. And then when you sat there and actually thought about it a little bit more, you're like, oh my God, like maybe they have, if you're not super close to them, you probably thought about it this way. And you're like, oh my God, that person might just need some help. Yeah. And it's hard because, um, when I was, you know, all messed up doing what I was doing, nobody reached out and said like, Hey, you're messed up or hey, you need help. And now that I think is a problem. Like nobody is, I guess, ready to tell you, but I understand it because I'm in the same position a lot of times.

It's not that much different than getting fat. I mean, no one wants to tell you that you're fat, but you're fucking fat. Yeah. But you don't hear it. Hey, you know, aunt so-and-so, you're too fat. You know, you got to lose some weight, you know, but I mean, you're worried when you talk to gotta you gotta lose some weight you know but but i mean you're you're worried when you talk to someone like that you're worried about what they're going to say and we talk about that a lot here too where uh you know perception is reality but

also reality is that i think that if i go to you and confront you about drugs or alcohol that you're going to react this way so that's my interpretation of it already as if it already happened, but I'm concerned and worried and maybe sad and maybe scared to say something to you that I'd never even said to you yet. And that's how I like a lot of anxiety builds up. Well, yeah. And 85% of the stuff that you think is going to happen, never happens, they say, or something like that. So it's like you build up this story in your head that's probably not going to go that way. I always thought when I told or when, you know, our parents found out, it's like, oh, man, I'm going to be dead. You know, like they're going to be so mad and they're going to be so upset with me.

And it was nothing like that at all. It was just all love. It was like, well, we love you. We want to help you. You know, and you and Andy were very instrumental in that. And I know it was hard because I wasn't straight. I wasn't straight. I wasn't straight in the head.

I wasn't normal. And so it was difficult to deal with me or get me into rehab. And I understand all that. But I was greeted with love, not with rejection. So not everybody gets that either. And that's another really hard thing, but that's what's so great about AA and the program around AA is you walk into a room of total strangers and there's problems with AA. Like there's very rigid rules and things that could be

probably changed and different because it's been around since 1933. But when you go in there, you're just greeted with love and people ask you for your phone number and they want to call you every day to make sure that you're not out drinking and make sure that you're okay. And that kind of support, you can't really buy. And I remember when I was going to AA, a lot of people said to me, man, I wish I was getting sober. It sounds like you're learning all this stuff about yourself. You're having a great time. I never get to talk to anybody about my problems. And so for me, it was a great enlightening experience. That's really helped with a lot of things. And like,

now that I haven't been going, I have to admit, I haven't gone to an AA meeting in probably like three years, but I actually feel lately that I want to go back and not because I'm having any sort of troubles or I'm going through anything, I realized what's more important is reaching out and helping other people. And so like, I just want to go back and be like, Hey man, I'm fine. And I'm over here in the corner. And if you need help, you know, come see me. And I think that just, um, reaching out to people and helping people, it always holds you accountable. And it always actually helps you usually more than it helps the other people being of service. Yeah. You're still in development of, of working on all those things. So I usually more than it helps the other people being of service.

Yeah. You're still in development of, of working on all those things. So I don't think it's the end of the world that you're not in AA because that's what you'd be doing. If you were there, you'd be working on yourself, which you are every day anyway. Yeah. But one of the most important things that ever happened actually came from you. Cause, uh, you were saying to me, it wasn't that long ago. You were like, hey, calm down. Don't worry about things so much. You're still healing. I was like, wow. I didn't know I was still healing after all this time.

You're like, yeah, yeah. You went through a lot of shit. You're still healing. It's still... Yeah. It's not... It sucks to say, but it's like starting over in a way. It's like not an open and shut case.

Okay, so you fixed this problem. You got your lifting back on schedule. You got your sleep back on schedule did you get your career back on schedule yet not really not the way you want to did you get your you know uh whatever your uh love life back in order not really not the way you want to you have your relationships with your friends not yet you know like the way that i want to so there's a lot of things about it so many of those things were on hold and you got the kind of use it or lose it type thing going on where is like if as healthy as i feel i feel really good and as healthy as you feel if we're wiped out for like 60 days we're in we're in a hospital bed guess what we got to do

start over we gotta fucking start over got to learn how to walk you know we've been walking since we were like two and so i've been walking for 40 years and now just because i get wiped out for 60 days i now have to like reevaluate how i'm going to take this next step right this is the same this is the same thing except for you're on the shelf for longer than 60 days yeah you're on the shelf for a than 60 days. Yeah. You're on the shelf for a while, right? Trying to figure out things and trying to, you'd make a little headway and then you'd have a setback and make a little headway and have a setback. When you go to something like rehab, it's interesting.

Cause I went for 90 days. That's what they, they usually say, you know, you should go for 90 days is the research just points to like 90 to 120 days being sort of the sweet spot where people tend to not relapse as much and, and things like that. But the numbers still aren't really great for people that get out of, you know, addiction. And the thing is like, I'm not out of addiction because like, you're never like, that's, I guess that's probably why the relapse rate is so high is because you're never really out of it. There's not really a term where they say, Hey, if you

stay sober for three years, you're out. Like, you know, it's a good, a good rule for everybody. where they say, hey, if you stay sober for three years, you're out. You know what's a good rule for everybody? No one is. Yeah. No one's free of addiction. No one's free of addiction grabbing a hold of you, whether it's you start to develop a little too much of a problem with coffee or marijuana or cigarettes or booze.

It can get more and more serious, but I think we should all be conscious of like, Hey, you know, we're, you know, it's a banana peel away from that. Yeah. And I think it's, it's more important for,

for anyone who quote unquote doesn't have an addiction to understand that. Yeah. Literally everybody has the addiction. And then, cause I just felt like when somebody admits that, like, you know, like,

Oh yeah, I had a stint with this drug or whatever, blah, blah, blah. Then society kind of looks at them differently. It's like, no, we're literally all the same fucking thing. Don't look down upon somebody who has the balls to admit it, though.

Yeah, right. And, you know, when I got addicted to drugs, it's because I had a double hip replacement surgery at 35 years old, which is very, very rare. Most people don't have that. Like, I had a genetic problem. It caused me a lot of mental ang genetic problem it caused me a lot of uh mental anguish it caused me a lot of physical anguish it caused me a lot of pain and you know

are you kind of allowed to say that you know in aaa do they like do they do they want you to evaluate how you got to where you got to are you allowed to say like hey my hips kind of got me here or or you're not a lot you're not allowed to blame it on anything no you can't really blame it on anything you're not not supposed to but what i what i'm not even trying to blame it on something what i'm saying is a lot of people would say to me well i would never get addicted you know after we were after i was we were on rogan talking about prescription thugs and a lot of people wrote in the comments of rogan like this guy's just weak you know he got addicted to drugs and i'm like you wrote in the comments of Rogan, like, this guy's just weak.

You know, he got addicted to drugs, and I'm like, you son of a bitch, sons of bitches. If you had any idea of, like, what I went through and the amount of times I said the same thing that you're saying, that I know that it's those people that are gonna get bit by it, and I hate to even say it because I hate to put the curse on them, but the people that say I would never get addicted to drugs are the people that are me. That's me. That's what I hate to put the curse on them. But the people that say I would never get addicted to drugs are the people that are me. That's me. That's what I used to say. I would

never go down that path that Mad Dog went down. That's ridiculous. You had a weightlifting belt that said steroids suck and you made a movie about steroids. Yeah, it can happen to anyone, right? Things can happen. And I didn't make the movie because I wanted to take steroids. I made the movie because you want more people to take steroids. I made the movie because it was- You want more people to take steroids. I know. A lot of people, that's the number one comment I get is, hey- Hey, thanks, man. Thanks, bro.

My girlfriend, she understands now. The movie was great for me and my wife, man. Thank you. Appreciate it. My mom really- Good icebreaker, man. Thanks. My mom really gets it now.

But then you also got the opposite side of it where a lot of people said well i'll never take steroids after watching that movie and it's funny because you can show the same movie to two different people they'll give you two different uh stories but i think the people that didn't want to use steroids were looking at stories more like mad dogs going well you could win a power lifting competition but you could also you, kind of like have your life spiral out of control too, because there's a lot of other factors to it. So I think people weighed, you know, the, the stories in their head and figured out, you know, what they thought about it. But we got, I got a lot of those comments from people like, Hey, thanks a lot. You know, and that wasn't really the

intention. The intention was to share a very unique story about an American family with a very American problem, you know, which was steroids. Yeah. Well, and Mike had, you know, multiple problems. He had problems with all different kinds of drugs and, um, his story is complicated, you know, and I think a lot of people, you know, I think what, uh, dad said in this video, uh, that people will see coming up is he basically said, eventually you wear out your welcome. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter if you are my buddy. It doesn't matter if you are my mom.

That's true. It doesn't matter if you're my brother. It doesn't matter if you're my son. You will eventually, your welcome will be worn out. You can't live here until you're 55 years old. It doesn't work that way or whatever the issue is. Right. And so that's what I think that's what a lot of people don't really see is that they might think like, well, shit, man, like, where's this guy's family? Like, how come the family's not helping? Or they might think, why doesn't the guy have the

mental strength? Well, if you had the mental strength to stop, then you would stop. But it's not even mental strength. You're addicted to something, which you're kind of getting overridden by this addiction. That's why it's an addiction in the first place. It's almost like you don't have a choice anymore. And I think with Mike, I think he didn't have a choice that he was bipolar. However, he took a lot of drugs and that made everything a lot worse and he should have, you know, never gotten into that situation in the first place. That's such an easy thing to say. He had a mindset and a lifestyle or he, he wanted to, uh, be better. He wanted to like, he wanted to take the world by storm. And because of that, he kind of partied like a rock star a

little bit. Right. Yeah. And, and what a lot of people don't know is that once you take pills, prescription painkillers, like opioids, and you take them for more than two months, you get addicted to them very quickly. Yeah. Maybe even more like a week or two. Yeah. It will ever actually, um, I think it's like 70% of 10 day prescriptions turned in a drug, you know, it's like 70% of 10-day prescriptions turn into drug. It's like 7 out of 10 turn into something crazy number like that. You can look it up. It's huge. There's a big percentage of people that will get just a 10-day prescription,

and they will turn into a drug addict. That's very, very common in our country. A lot of people want to think that it's weakness, but it's not weakness because once you get addicted, you really have no choice in the matter. You really have no choice of whether or not to go to the medicine cabinet. You just become pre-programmed. And to break that, you have to admit that you're pre-programmed and you can't live without

it and you have a problem. But the problem is you feel like, well, man, I was in so much pain without it. I need it. Now, for the people that aren't in pain and they just like the party yeah maybe it's a little bit more of their fault but the same rules apply once they get addicted it's really not their fault anymore yeah it's it's not like you can blame it on the pill because it's very relatable to food i think you know it's like obviously the person like continues to get fatter and fatter and they should they should knock off. They should come to some sort of realization. They should start moving more and eating less.

We know all these things, but they really can't. Their taste buds are changed. They know what these amazing foods taste like. And for them to go back and try something different is hard for them. And also they become a fat storing machine. Your body becomes very efficient at storing fat. Yeah. And every time you do something, it just tries to make you store more fat.

Yeah. At what point when you were in rehab and stuff, did you realize that diet played a huge part in like trying to stay away from drugs? It was interesting because I didn't. Okay. So when I went to rehab, I went to, uh, first I went to a detox center that was up here in near Sacramento that Mark and Andy sent me to, uh, cause they had a friend that had gone through it and, uh, she recommended this place and that place was actually great to just like detox and get off everything medically and whatever. But then I was transferred to a cliffside Malibu. And, uh,

when I was at cliffside Malibu, they had really good food there and everything. So for the first, you know, 11 days, I ate like a King, I ate whatever I wanted. And I was like, oh, this is great. And I was having like, you know, frosted flakes for breakfast. And I was just eating every kind of cereal you can imagine. Cause they had every flavor lined up in the morning, but they also had like eggs and bacon and this other stuff. Right. But then I got shipped off to Claire foundation because Cliffside was actually comping me because I made the movie and I had interviewed the owner of Cliffside, Richard Tate, who had helped me tremendously in my life. And he was nice enough to say, hey, man, just come to our place. We'll take care of you.

And this is a really expensive rehab, right? One of the most expensive in the country. So I got hooked up. rehab, right? One of the most expensive in the country. So I got hooked up and, um, I'm very fortunate in that way. Cause I don't know where I would have went, but because they couldn't afford to keep me anymore after 11 days, I had to go to this place, Claire foundation for like 20 days, and then come back to cliff side when they could accommodate me. Right. So for the 20 days, I went to Claire foundation, the food there was like second day food from like all the local grocery stores. They would like donate all the leftover cakes and from like all the local grocery stores.

They would like donate all the leftover cakes and cookies and all the things like that. And the bulk of our food was like, you'd get some sort of like meat, some sort of pasta, some vegetables, and then you'd get like all these cakes and things for desserts. Right. And everything was pretty bad for you, except for like whatever the main meat dish was. So they said, well, what's wrong? Aren't you going to eat? gonna eat and i'm like i can't eat this i'm allergic to carbs and they were like what you need to get a note from you like you can't be allergic to carbs and i'm like yeah i'm allergic to all this stuff because i just knew that that was a mess and none of it

looked good either so i was like oh this looks so bad so i basically started a war on carbs because it's something that I'd done so long ago, but I didn't do it for the purpose at all of, you know, mental clarity or, or thinking like, oh, this will help me with my addiction. I did it because like the food was so gross that I wanted to find a way out. You know, I was trying to work my way around the system. So they told me how to get a doctor's note in order to be allergic to carbs. And I got a doctor's note that said to be allergic to carbs. And I got a doctor's note that said I was allergic to gluten, that I needed to be gluten-free. So I couldn't

eat any of the breads or any of the whatever. So what they decided to do was like, we'll just double you up on meat. That's, that's okay. We can, we can accommodate that. So they doubled me up on meat and, uh, and I just ate meat and vegetables the whole time for 20 days that I was in Claire foundation and I started losing weight. So when I came out of Claire foundation, I was, you know, I went in at like, I don't know, two 50 or something. I came out at, you know, two 30, two 30 or something. And then when I went back to cliff side, since I had all these clean foods, I just for, I would forego the breakfast cereals and all the crap. And I would eat like chicken and, and fish and, you know, whatever is way before I, I really got into like carnivore lifestyle, but I was eating kind of like lean meats.

And then I would have some fruits and I would have some, you know, some vegetables or whatever like that. And I lost even more weight. And I remember when I left rehab, I was like 217. So I had like lost a lot of weight and I was feeling a lot better, but I still never really made the connection because I went off of that for like about a year and just because I was out of rehab. So it was like the only thing I have left in my life is food. Now, the only thing I can celebrate with or, you know, have fun with this is food that or so I thought I think that's stupid now that I even thought that. food that, or so I thought, I think that's stupid now that I even thought that, but I, you know, I had that in my mind that like, okay, I can have whatever I want now. Cause I'm out of rehab and I can't have drugs or alcohol. So I might as well eat myself to death, which was just a duck, not to death, but like, you know, just eat whatever I want. And I got really fat again.

And that's when, uh, one time I came up here, I trained with Mark. I couldn't bend down the deadlift, the bar, you know, I couldn't, I couldn't, you know, I trained with Mark. I couldn't bend down to deadlift the bar. You know, I couldn't, I couldn't, you know, I was just too fat again. And I just couldn't move good, didn't feel good. And Mark and I went to Makuni, which is a sushi place up here. And I said, you know, I'm just too fat. I'm not going to get the rice. And he's like, you know what, man, I'm not going to get the rice either. Forget it.

Like, and we toasted a piece of sushi. I think one of us said like, here's the war on carbs, right? As it sort of just happened, like here's the war on carbs. We said, we're going to do it until like the Olympia. Yeah. It was like, it was like a month and a half, two months away or something. We're like, man, that's pretty long stretch to go no carbs. And we did it. Yeah. And, and actually I kept going, I kept going for a while. And I remember I called you one time and I said, Hey, war on carbs. We're still going. Right. And you're like, Oh no, I stopped going for a while, and I remember I called you one time, and I said, hey, War on Carbs, we're still going, right? You're like, oh, no, I stopped like 15 days ago.

And so I was like, you did? I kept going. Well, that's why the book, too, like, you know, in the War on Carbs, I explain to people, like, just go for as long as you can. Like, who cares about these, like, quote, unquote, refeeds? You need to get glycogen. It's like, oh, a bunch of bullshit. Just go as long as you can. If you can go five days, that's cool.

If you can go 30, that's great. But, you know, go 10 days and then go five days and then go four days and then go 20 days, right? Like, why not? You can allow some cheats in there and you can mix things up. And it's not the, you know, like we say all the time, it's not the be all end all diet. It's not. There's no magic to it. There is no magic pill, but what is magical about it is that you're, you can eat foods that

most people that get themselves into a bad position with their weight actually like a lot of people like steak. A lot of people like burgers. A lot of people like those kinds of things that you can eat on a ketogenic diet. So I feel like it, it actually is pretty helpful to us fat guys who like to eat like that. You know, I do think there is some magic in, in, uh, in ketogenic diets. I think there's some magic in like, just after a period of time, you start to, you have no choice. You know, if you're, if you're fat and you're not in a shape that you want to be in, or you're not in a place that you want to be in your life, or you're addicted to drugs or alcohol, any of these things, you have to ultimately replace bad habits with good. And how do you end up doing that? You know, and the only, the only way to do

it is to have a nice replacement for it. And so a nice replacement for eating ice cream is to have an omelet that has sausage and cheese and right. Like you want these things that really pop with a lot of flavor. I mean, how does the omelet that has, you know, ham, cheese, sausage, a meat lovers omelet, how does that not have the same pop and flavors as ice cream? It does. Yeah. Right. It doesn't taste the same. I understand one sweet and one's not, but it's very like savory. Like that's going to get you through. So if you can cook up a bunch of bacon at the end of the night, because you're, you know, you just want a snack on something that could be an option for you.

I think what's interesting is a lot of people, they'll keep going like eat real food. You have to eat real food and this and that. But we got our mom started by sending her like keto cheesecakes and keto pecan pies and keto ice cream and say, Hey mom, why don't you just try this? Right. And that's what got her into ketogenic dieting. And then she said, I no longer want these things. I'd like to eat real food. Right. So you can start somebody out. You can start this any way possible. Yeah. You can start with exercise. You don't even have to start with any changes to your diet at all. You can start with exercise.

And after you start exercising for a while, you're like, damn, I'd like to see some results from these exercises I'm doing all the time. And the only way that you're going to do that is to try to figure out how to shed a couple LBs. The funny thing is about training and people go, oh, you just need to train. You need to move more, right? I have moved my entire life. There has not been one time, even when I was in rehab, even when in my deepest, darkest days, I would get up at least twice a week and hit Gold's Gym and go do something heavy. You know, like to go lift hard. A lot of people are fat and they're in the gym all the time. When I tore my tricep.

Super training gym is a great example. Training gym is a great example. Yeah. When I tore my tricep, I weighed about 230 pounds. And that day when I tore my tricep, I benched like 455 raw in the gym. Right? I was strong. And then I went and blew out my tricep.

And it was like game over. Right? But that's, you know, it's, I forgot what I was going to say. But anyway. Well, you need to have control. You know, you need to you need to have control. You know, you need to be able to have control over, uh, over your life. You don't just let life happen to you. Don't let life, uh, just fricking run you over.

You have to have some sort of control. And those of you that are in the gym that don't have the body that you want, you need to start to figure out, okay, well, what are some habits that I can have? And what are some thoughts I can have that are directed towards my goal? Because anyone can have a six pack of abs. I know there's like people kind of debate that, like, look, man, if we strip us all down, like we're all, we're all quote unquote lean because we're all muscle. And yeah, like one person might have more muscle than the next, but if you get down to, if you're 200 pounds and you get down to, uh, 190 pounds, you're going to look a little bit more muscular. When you get down to 180 pounds, you look a little bit more muscular. You might have to weigh one 50 to be like, you know, who,

for whatever person, uh, we're talking about, they might have to really, uh, scale everything down. But if you don't gain control and you don't have the ability to replace your shitty habits with good ones, or if you don't even see the, uh, the light from the good ones, then you don't really stand much of a chance. You know, sometimes I'll recommend to somebody on like Instagram or something might say, Hey man, I got these really sharp, uh, food cravings at night. Like, what do I do? I'll say, go for a walk. sharp uh food cravings at night like what do i do i'll say go for a walk and you might be thinking man going for a walk like okay well you asked me what to do you asked me what to do and that and that will help it's something different to do what if what if you just what if you just realize that you are a total puss what if you just realize look i I'm a failure. Like I'm failing at this. Like, why don't you, why don't you, uh, freaking, you know, dig deep, dig deep in yourself and say, look, man, I'm just not going to, I'm not going to live this way anymore. I don't want to be like everybody else. I want to be different. And to be different, you're going to have to make some sacrifices.

And going for a walk is a great idea. Another simple thing is eat some more protein. Because like I told you, we were talking about this the other day, protein leveraging, right? Like every animal on the planet has a protein requirement that they have to hit. And if they don't hit that, they will keep eating. And they will keep eating other things also until they're full, right? So their body's always hunting down protein. So on average, the American male gets how much protein do you think the average American male gets a day?

80 grams. 102, so close. And most people weigh a lot more than that, right? So in order to maintain protein. Most people weigh more than 102 pounds, yes. Protein muscle synthesis. Some kids in elementary school at this point. So in order to, you know.

Well, imagine what our kids are eating protein-wise too in accordance to their body. Well, and the kids are way lower. Yeah, kids are way lower. And with a lot of fructose is also from all the fruit juice. And then the average woman eats about 80 grams a day. And that's just not enough in order to satiate them. Almost everybody needs to double. Yeah, everybody basically needs to double. Yeah.

Everybody basically needs to double their protein. Not everybody, but all the, yeah. All the people that aren't doing this already. Yeah. And, and also by doubling your protein doesn't mean like double your protein and double your fat and double your carbs. It just means literally double the protein. So if you're not, if you're not eating like at least one gram per pound of body weight, you're going to be hungrier than if you do.

Right. And what you tend to consume when you're hungry are refined carbohydrates and these other things that are crappy for you. So if you protein leverage yourself by getting yourself up to a nice protein number, it's just going to help a lot of people not be hungry. And you can stack that early in the day. You know, you can, you can set yourself up for success by throwing in more protein in the beginning of the day. And I know a lot of people are concerned about mTOR and anti-aging and all these things, but you know, it's, if you're old, I think maybe you should consider that.

But for right now, I think get your protein in and be in shape, you know? And you got things like hard boiled eggs, cottage cheese, yogurt, uh, cheese sticks, um, just protein powder. These are all things that are portable that are easy to carry around. Um, it, it just, it can make, it can make everything really easy. You can have a couple, uh, cooked up either chicken, uh, breasts or chicken thighs, or some hamburger patties or something like that. You can have all these things kind of prepped all the time where you're not, you don't even have to be hungry. The great thing about eating real food instead of a protein powder is the thermic effect that food has, especially protein. So when you eat protein, it's going to burn like 25% of itself,

basically. So when you're eating protein. So when you eat protein, it's going to burn like 25% of itself, basically. So when you're eating protein. Let them chew it and digest it. It takes a lot to digest it. Whereas like a whey protein powder, it doesn't really take a lot for your body to digest it. It's kind of interesting because of the thermic effect of food. I never really knew. Like, I don't, I wonder why they don't adjust it for the fact that it burns some of itself. Well, Lane Norton has talked about that a lot about how, you know, proteins, it's not, it doesn't even have four calories, really. I think Mark Sisson says that we shouldn't even count protein into our calories because it's like,

it doesn't really matter because it's just used to build muscle. It's not used for energy unless you were eating nothing else and you were like dying. And so he's like, I wouldn't even factor that in. He doesn't even factor it into his diet, which is kind of interesting. Well, some people do the same thing with fiber, right? They don't factor fiber into their actual diet,

into their actual calories, right? Yeah, and a lot of people don't factor in even vegetables because they're like, ah, it doesn't make that much of a difference and they're probably right. If you're getting really strict and doing a bodybuilding show or something, you probably want to factor in as many things as you can, but, you know. Yeah, I never, I didn't, you know, I didn't count any calories. I just, I did weigh, I did

weigh some of my food, but it was more like, for me, it was more like, just don't eat a lot of fat, eat a lot of protein. And I, my carbs were low anyway, you know, so have you ever been able to count calories? Have you ever done that kind of thing? I have, I I've, I've written it down and, and, you know, charted it and like all that stuff. I don't think either one of us are wired that way. No, I just think it's a waste of time, personally. But, however, I will say if it's working for you, don't abandon it because I said so. If it works, it works.

You know, the proof is in, you know, what has worked for you. If it's truly working for you and you're happy with where you're at, then I would keep on keeping on. But, uh, I never, I never found it. I found it to be a waste of time. And what's the same thing with like journaling your workouts. I know people that they can go back and look, you know, 10 years ago what they did. And, uh, we don't have any of that stuff. I never really did much of that either. And that's, you know, for some people, it really works well. And I think it's just finding out what works for you. Right. I think in the beginning to give people who have never tried any certain type of diet to just to have an idea of like, oh, what does X amount of teaspoons looks like or what like a cup of this actually looks like. Or it may be good in the beginning to like write down everything. And if you have a friend like Mark or myself, you know, that knows what they're talking about a little bit, you can bring it to that friend and say, hey, what is this?

How does this look to you? Am I eating all the right foods? Yeah, I do agree. And I think, you know, it teaches you to like read food labels and look at stuff like Andrew dumped in like five or six ounces of heavy whipping cream one day. He was like, man, I love that heavy whipping cream. And he told me how much he had. I was like, oh, my God. I'm like, that's like some some great that's some really wild i don't even know how many grams of fat that is because

heavy whipping cream is measured by like a tablespoon yeah so i'm like holy shit i was making a protein shake and i was like you know i want to fill up half of the eight ounces with heavy cream because it's going to taste so good and oh boy was my stomach so mad at me that seems like it's going to be pretty brutal. I painted the bathroom. It was really bad. Oh my God. You know, the worst pain I've ever had.

This is crazy. On a keto diet, when I was doing keto, in the very beginning, I was like, oh, bulletproof coffee. This is amazing. I love the taste of it. I thought it was great. Oh no. It actually helped me stay on path for like a long time. But I'm like, well, if one tablespoon of brain octane is good,

how about two tablespoons of brain octane oil and some butter in there? And I did that, and I went to the emergency room, and it was brutal. I mean, it was the worst. Talk about a poop story. Yeah, I mean, it was a constipation story it was like at my stomach was so grizzled from it like i couldn't do anything and um i actually would the only thing that helped was going in the shower because i was had cold sweats really bad i was really nauseous but i couldn't throw up and i couldn't poop nothing i was just

dying and um went to the emergency room. All they did is give me Xanax and Zofran and sent me home. Wow. But it worked. Just real quick, just because I saw it. Um, one of the listeners on the live chat said that they actually cut a cocaine addiction just by going to the gym and working on their diet. That's amazing. Yeah. I think a lot of times people can do that. They can, uh, they can get rid of a lot of things by just sort of clearing their head and going to the gym. What Mark was talking about, when I said I stopped going to AA, what I did was I replaced it with working out. I told the guy who owns the place, Richard, I said, Hey Richard, uh, you know, I'm not really getting a lot out of the meetings anymore, but what I get a lot out of is if I can go to Gold's gym where all my friends are that know that I'm in rehab and I can go there and I can see them and reunite with them and tell them that I'm okay. And I can sort of be in that zone. I feel so much

better. And so for, he let me, instead of the meetings go to goals. Oh, that's cool. And so like nobody else really knew it was kind of a thing, you know, like between me, but he saw that it was something that you cared about. Yeah. It was like, it was him. And also the other counselors were like, yeah, you're, you're good, man. Like you, they, they had, I had special treatment, you know, because, well, because I think they just knew that they, they sort of knew my circumstances and they knew that I was dying to get out of there and finish prescription thugs i was still making my movie i was halfway through making it when i got in there so they knew i wanted to get the hell out and go do something with myself yeah

it's a little bit of a different case than a lot of other people so when someone enters rehab or someone's like if somebody comes to you or whatever, does that conversation ever come up as far as like a diet and exercise? Every time now. Oh, cool. Okay. Now everything is, so I get people hitting me up like crazy on Instagram about Kratom and they say, I need to know more about Kratom. I got to, and they just, they put all of their faith. This is finally the answer.

And you know what? I give them right back. No, it's not. The answer is you need a, you need to go on a low carb diet of some sort. You can pick a keto diet. You can pick a low carb Atkins diet. You can pick a carnivore diet, but you need to do one of these diets because you need to cut the grains and the sugars that are causing you to get for that addiction. Right? The other thing that I think is a good idea to cut, which a lot of people don't know is dairy. Dairy is an opioid. Like it works like an opioid in the body to where

we crave it again. Right. So like eating, if we go to a five guys, right, I'll still do it. I'll I'm guilty of it. I just went to five guys and I got the cheese last night. We went to in and out, we got double, uh, flying Dutchman and I got the cheese for the most part though, unless I go to those two places, like I, I pretty much cut cut the cheese no pun intended hey he's been waiting all day to say that pretty much cut the cheese out and um and for the most part cut out dairy except for once in a while when the cold brew is a little too bitter you know throw a little half and half in there but just you know a little bit like less than i than i used to but a lot of these same foods will drive us to go back to the refrigerator right and so we want to avoid that. So no idea. It's not like cheese will drive you

to take opioids, but cheese will drive you to eat more cheese. Well, and so like ketchup, I mean, like if you, if you, if you start mixing tastes, that's gonna, that's gonna give you cravings. You need to have, you need to have foods that don't have a lot of ingredients. That's why I think two, three, maybe four ingredients at the most, like not anything over that. We talked about dopamine fasting the other day. And I think where, where you basically just shut everything off electronic in your life and you just be with yourself and you don't stimulate dopamine in your brain at all. And I think a carnivore diet is great like that. As far as like stripping everything out of your diet for like maybe just a week, just to see that you can do it.

Just to know. People are a bunch of weak ass bitches, so they won't even try it for a day. Just try, just try. I'm telling you, just try some of this shit that we talk about in this podcast. Just try it for one day. Just, just get a feel for it. I tried it for two weeks because we were making a movie. Yeah. And you had, you know, you brought Dr. Baker up here and I, you know, every time Just get a feel for it. I tried it for two weeks because we were making a movie.

Yeah. And you brought Dr. Baker up here. And every time you do something for the movie, I want to make sure that we're giving it justice. We're doing the right thing. So I was like, well, I'm just going to go on his diet for the two weeks before. Here we are 11 months later, and I'm still on his diet. Still doing it. Yeah.

Switching over to carnivore diet was the first thing that actually made me like feel better as far as my back. It was the first thing that where I was like, this is drastically different, but it was the first time I had ever, well, I did a ketogenic diet diet a while back, but I was not in pain. So to do that after being in pain,

it was the first thing that made me feel better. So I'm like, and it was the first time that made me feel better. So I'm like, and it was the first time that I had completely cut out all like bullshit carbs. I was like, oh, this is, man, this is kind of awesome. But then I kind of got burnt out and started doing a vertical diet, which still continued the same like a progression. But I think that's totally fine, right? You're doing what? You're switching diets. You're not going from like a diet back to the standard american diet right now you're going from one sort of technique to another technique that has been proven you know by a lot of people you know uh stan's vertical diet look at look at stan look at brian look at

half door look at these people getting stronger getting leaner now that he's got countless you know it also is like a detox you know like you don't have to do something forever you know so like you can just view it as like i'm and i don't mean like you know detoxification really but you're just uh abstaining from eating some of those other foods for a while maybe your body heals your gut heals who knows what the hell happens but it's a great option for you and the same thing is true with carbohydrates everyone should at some point have a point where they lower their carbohydrate intake a little bit if they've struggled with their diets in the past, because you want to try to hit that reset button here and there. Did you guys ever chase numbers as far as losing weight?

Oh yeah. Yeah. How much you want to weigh? Yeah. I always thought that was important. I actually thought that was important. Weighing yourself every day, I think it's crucial. And a lot of people say, don't do it, don't do it. I think it's a bunch of bullshit. I actually thought that was important. Weighing yourself every day, I think it's crucial. And a lot of people say, don't do it, don't do it. I think it's a bunch of bullshit. I think you should weigh yourself every day. You should make yourself accountable. If you want to weigh less, then weigh less. Make the effort to weigh less. But as far as setting up

a goal that's maybe a little bit too far out of reach, if you set a number on it and then you don't hit it, then it could lead to... I'll give you an example. Last time I was up here, I was like 185.'m like oh i need to get i need to get to like below 181 that's where like i could compete at that level if i wanted and be like 181 there's no way to sell this you can't sell this stuff softly like there's people that are listening to this right now and the summer just came and it just went right and they had another summer where they couldn't

take their shirt off next year is going to be another summer for you where you can't take your shirt off and the year after that unless you start to make some changes and there's there's just no i can't sell it to you as like oh yeah you kind of kind of do this and do that no you can't if if you want to have the body that you want you want to feel proud of the body that you have and someone's like hey we got a pool party you're like okay fuck yeah you know you're excited you're actually kind someone's like, Hey, we got a pool party. And you're like, okay, fuck. Yeah. You know, you're excited. You're actually kind of excited. Like this is going to be great. It feels completely different.

The first year I take my shirt off and I don't feel fat, you know? Yeah. It feels completely different if you're. But that takes, that takes a lot of effort. It's hard. That's not, that's not easy, but it also doesn't mean you can't do it. It just means that you're going to have to put a really concentrated effort towards that. And you might have to do some stuff that you've never done before. You might have to dig a little

deeper than you ever have before. So it might just be healthier to say, like, just continue getting healthy and go ahead and keep jumping on the scale, but don't have any crazy expectation then. Well, in terms of, in terms of dropping, in terms of actually dropping weight and you, you know, you weigh 330, the first conversation that you have is, is like, okay, I'm fat. I need to lose some weight. And some weight is just five pounds, 10 pounds. You take it a couple of pounds at a time, but you also have this goal. You know what? It'd be great if I weighed under 300 pounds, it'd be great if I weighed 270 or so, like for me with powerlifting, it was easy to kind of pick the weight classes and drop down. But I also kissed some of those other weights goodbye. When I was 330 and started to lose weight, I was like, I will never weigh that much ever again in my life.

And then I got down to about, you know, 300 and I was like, okay, well, I'm going to compete in the, in this weight class for a while. So I competed at 308 and I didn't, I didn't venture back up out of that. And I, I stayed around there for a while and I went to 290 and 270. And as I started losing, losing more weight, I started to say, okay, I'm not going to weigh 300 again. And then I would be, let's say I was down to like 270 and I'd say, I'm not going to be 290 again. I didn't say 280 because I know 270 and 28 are too close to each other.

So I kept the relationship further and further away because I didn't want it to be, you know, if I had a couple of bad days, I didn't want to be like back up over that weight and be depressed about it. So I kept the distance was about 20 pounds away. And I was like, I'll never weigh that again. I'll never weigh that again. I'll never weigh that again. I think it's, uh, you know, like you were asking if, uh, if I had a number and I said, I wanted to get down to like 181 cause I thought that was important. But when I came back up here, I was like 195 yesterday or something. Right.

And I'm like, man, I gained like 10 pounds since I, since I left here, but I think I look a lot better and I'm a lot stronger, you know? So it's like, while I say I care, I know that I'm not eating anything that's making me fat. So I'm just assuming that most of this is a positive weight gain, you know, but then also what's funny is, um, when I travel, I seem to like gain weight too. So then when I weighed myself this morning, yesterday, obviously I was with Mark all day. So you're mainly fast all day. That's what I did. And then I, we ate once at night and then I weighed myself again this morning and I was I was right back back down to like one you know 189 yeah pretty close to where I was when I came back up

here yeah so it's really only a couple pounds gained but like I think they were good pounds so I'm not too worried about it anymore yeah I was just thinking uh like from the perspective somebody who wasn't a world record holding power lifter or somebody who isn't going for big bigger ish numbers now like somebody who is that person that can't take their shirt off who's maybe just barely starting and they're they're hearing this and they're just like okay yeah i am x amount of weight and by this time i want to be this weight i just i don't know i just i feel like i don't want to set someone up to to like set them up for failure you know what i mean yeah there's no other way to do it they and

they might need to fail. They might need to fall flat on their face. So like if they say, you know, I want to weigh this by like January, like that's actually a good thing, but I mean, they should,

people should understand like you're not going to lose 30 pounds every month. You know, like there might, if you're really big, you might lose 10, 20, 30 pounds in a month. And it's possible to lose pretty big amounts of weight,

but that's not going to hold up forever. Um, I think it's good to attach some time to it because otherwise, um, you know, you should have some goals. Like for me, I'd always look at like holidays and stuff and I'd say, okay, Thanksgiving's around this time. Actually this year, I wanted to weigh a two 35 cause I knew at some point at Thanksgiving, somebody was going to make something and I was going to eat something out of the ordinary. And I did that. I worked on it two weeks ahead of time to kind of make sure that I was there. So it's like these little things, you're going to have to start to say, okay, by this time, I mean, you can use your relatives as like a weapon and say, okay, I'm going to see everybody, you know, even today, today is the

freaking eighth. You still got time. You're going to see your relatives coming up. You got a handful of days in front of you. You can still drop a couple LBs and someone can say, Hey man, you're doing something different and say, yeah, actually, you know what? I, I really want to make a big difference this year. I want to make a big change. I, I started this diet and I started this exercise program. And then someone's going to be like, fuck yeah, man, that's great. I hope it works out for you. Well, a lot of times what will happen is, well, what are you doing? I want to know.

I want to get involved. Now you have a relative or a friend who's getting involved with you and it makes it that much easier to talk about with people. They might doubt you and say, oh, you've been talking about that for years and say, well, I'll see you next year, you know. Yeah. We'll see. Kind of. And have that be, you know, have that be another goal that you're not gonna, it's hard. It is hard. It is really hard. It is really hard to truly change, uh, who, who you are, the, the bad habits that you have, the, the way that you appear. Um, it's, it is really,

really hard. I mean, who, how many people are in your circle do you know who have really truly changed or they just look and act and they are the same pretty much every time you see them they're the same they don't look any different that's most of the people when you go into your but yeah yeah but you're right but every a lot of people are exercising like especially all the people in our circle, they look the same all the time. Yeah. And you're like, like, look at Stan Efferding.

Stan Efferding kind of always looks better somehow. Yeah. How is it possible? I mean, he's jacked out of his mind, right? He's he's, he looks great. Michael Hearn is always like a better version of himself, right? Like he, he sometimes he's bigger, sometimes he's leaner, sometimes he's this or he's that. He's always dialed in kind of, yeah, he's always dialed in. And also that's a healthy thing for you to understand. If you're somebody that's, if you're somebody

that's trying to lose weight, that you're going to fluctuate, you're going to go back up again, you're going to wait, you know, two 30, and then you're going to wait two 40, and then you're going to wait, you know, two 25, and then you're going to wait two 35, and you're going to weigh, you know, 225 and then you're going to weigh 235 and you're going to go up and down and up and down. And some of that's just like lack of discipline. And some of that is just like, you just, it's going to be hard because you have to learn over a period of time to eventually eat a lot less food. Yeah. And, and when it's like, sometimes we'll eat a lot of less, a lot less food and our metabolism slows down, right? And then you need to know like, okay, I'm at too much of a calorie deficit and I need

to eat some more food and come back up, right? So there's both sides of the coin there. Like I did a keto diet. I wasn't eating enough protein and I got too, like I got kind of skinny fat, you know, because I wasn't eating enough calories and enough protein and I was wearing myself down on cardio and I was sort of catabolizing myself. And I was in a catabolic state, not an anabolic state. And so you have to be able to recognize those things as well. But as you go through all this stuff, you really learn so much about your body. I don't think I knew anything about, I wasn't in touch or in tune with my weight or my body or how it fluctuated. And now I'm just

so in tune with it that it feels good that I feel like I know what I'm doing. I feel like if I gain a little, you know, gain a little chub or something, I know how to get right rid of it. Or if I get a little, you know, a little too light, I know how to get rid of, you know, to get back up to where I need to be. I don't know how you work it out, but like I weigh myself multiple times a day. Like I usually weigh myself twice a day. I weigh myself just about every morning and I weigh myself just about every night. Very rarely am I like impacted by weighing myself though.

I'm never like, you know, if I didn't lose the weight that I wanted, I'm not surprised by it because like I did, I know I didn't do the stuff necessary to like have to have the result. And I think people are just, they're getting on the scale and they're like, oh, like I gained two pounds. Oh, maybe it's just water. No, maybe it's just that you don't have your shit together.

Like, it's not easy. It's hard. It's difficult because you're trying to change these habits that have been locked in. You've been locked into these habits for a long time. And you have to treat yourself differently. It's the only way you're ever going to get past it is you have to look in the mirror and say, okay, the thing that I need to get past is right there in front of me. It's me.

I need to get past myself. I need to get over it myself. Same thing with drug addiction. Same thing with food addiction. Same thing with being fat. Same thing with being too skinny. Same thing with the negative self Same thing with being fat. Same thing with being too skinny. Same thing with the negative self-talk that you give yourself,

the negative reinforcement we give ourselves every single day. You're going to have to figure out, okay, dumbass, stop saying this negative shit about yourself all the time and start to have some positive narrative towards, I'm going to start to make changes. Here's how I'm going to start to do things. stop complaining about things that just are the way they are there's no re like aa sucks man what's your other option dickhead yeah who cares let's go it's what you have so it's so you know get used to a bunch of losers there there's you know they don't, they don't understand. Guess what? You're a loser too

because you're there. My coach doesn't understand me. That's why I never played or what, right? Like, you hear these things. It's like,

man, that's, that's some, that's crazy talk. You're talking like a fucking crazy person right now. And people need

to straighten up and they need to get stronger. They need to get tougher with themselves. I think a lot of people are just, are guilty of that. Like,

I'm guilty of that sometimes. I'm guilty of it. That's how I'm able to talk about it. You start blaming somebody and then you're like, wait a second, I'm actually blaming myself like right now, because I'm involved with this project too. And I'm trying to throw the blame on that guy because he's involved. And I want people to think he's the guy messing it up, but really the person messing it up is me or I'm part of the mess up too. And so by being accountable to things, I think that's really important to stay accountable to everything that you do or set out to do. Yeah. And try, don't just sit there and say,

oh yeah, A doesn't work or I'm not like them or I'm not this or I'm not that. It's like, well, you haven't even tried. The biggest problem in our society is not, is people not trying stuff and people criticizing things that they've never tried. Yeah. I talk about this all the time with the carnivore diet, because you have people like Rhonda Patrick, who wrote a 30 page takedown of the carnivore diet, refused to be in our movie. And it's like, you know, it's like she never tried it. She never even tried keto.

So I'm like, well, how do you know? You know, like how do you really know until you've done it yourself? Yeah. And, you know, it's like you can write a 30 page, you could write a 300 page takedown and I'm not going to read it until you do the diet. We had a Rosemary Bell checked in. Hey! She said she lost 75 pounds, but she's still not going to take her shirt off in public. Well, thank you, Rosemary.

That was funny. It's great. It just always makes me mad when people want to try to tell you, you know, don't do something, but they have never, ever tried it at all. They don't know if it works. They never put up any points on the scoreboard. Yeah. So it's like, how are you going to tell me that this is bad for me when there's nothing, there's nothing to really say that it's bad for me and there's nothing to really hone in on that could be hurtful? So I just don't get it.

You got to try stuff. You got to experiment. And you, like, for now, I'm messing around with a bunch of fasting. And I'm learning a lot, you know, like I'm weighing myself and, and, you know, uh, sometimes it's really actually crazy because of the fast, you end up losing a lot of water weight. And so you're like, man, my body weight fluctuates a couple extra pounds more than normal. And it's really crazy to see. But also, uh, there's been a few nights now where I've eaten too much. There's been a couple of nights where I'm like, man, I made myself so hungry that I kind of fell back into the same trap.

Not that I ate, I didn't eat anything that was off the plan, but I ate like three or four dinners, like in a row, I just, I just crushed a ton of food and that's not really a problem. It's just something for me to be aware of. Now I'm like, okay, well, let's see'm like okay well let's see if we can let's see if we can fast and and and try it again and let's see if we can gain a little bit more control and then let's try it again so like last night was better than the night before uh the first two two days i tried it actually worked out pretty good because i got to actually eat a little earlier

which was nice because then i was able to i was able to kind of stretch the food over a long period of time and I wasn't like ravaging the food. But if you're not trying stuff and you're not trying to make changes, then I just think people that are like that, that aren't trying and not putting in an effort, I just think you're destined to be a loser. I don't think you have what it takes because winners are, winners are made. They're not born. And you just must be a born loser. If you're not willing to try, you got to put in some sort of effort. And I see people all the time, you know, I, I've helped people with diets and stuff. And then you see them again and they didn't lose any weight. And it's like, I'm not expecting you to all of a sudden be like, oh yeah, I'm just going

to, you know, I'm not expecting you to do that, but I'm expecting you to not give up on yourself. Yeah. That's not too much to ask. Don't give up on yourself. And the hard part is somebody that helps a lot of people. A lot of the people that I help are going to get sober or get leaner, right? Those are the things that I know enough about to help people with.

Sober and leaner. Yeah. Other people won't, you know? And just because the people won't, you can't give up on the people that will. And that's hard because you're trying to help everybody, but you know, like sometimes people aren't going to do it and you feel like you're wasting your time. But in general, I always say, just try to help everybody, you know, as much as you can.

And if people don't do it, it's just disappointing, you know, but, um, all we can do is keep encouraging them because it's, it's not worth it to give up on the people that will do it. You know, if, if you continue to try, you will eventually get there because it, it will start to feel better to do the right thing than to do the wrong thing. The wrong thing, it won't feel good. Eating that donut won't feel good. Missing that workout won't feel good. It will suck.

And it will eat at you. You're like, I shouldn't have done that. It's not acceptable for me. I got new standards. What am I doing? I shouldn't have done that. And then you can start to rationalize stuff too because you can say, hey, you know what? Well, screw it.

It was my birthday and I felt like having some peanut butter cups. Right. You see, you can you can justify some stuff, but you can also justify anything. So you got to be kind of careful that you don't fall into that trap. But you have to just keep trying. You just have to keep trying to put in that effort every day. You keep waking up. You keep getting your exercise in. You keep trying to eat good for yourself. You try to nourish yourself.

Why don't you treat yourself the way you would treat your, uh, your mother? Why don't you treat yourself the way you treat someone that you really love? Someone you really admire, someone you really care about. You're willing to care about them, but then you throw it away by not caring about yourself. And I think it's a, it's a horrible thing because you, you see all these people and it's like, man, these are fantastic people. I just, I wish they would, because you and I know, like, we don't, there's, there's a, we have a lot of life experiences and we've, we've been a lot of places and met a lot of cool people, but there's actually really, we don't, we don't have some sort of crazy genetic thing about us that, you know, makes us superior in any sort of way.

Not at all, really. No, you got nothing. I mean, you're short. I'm ugly. Yeah. Not even Trent. I think we have genetics for strength. I think we have some pretty good.

Yeah, there's some stuff locked in there. You know, we have some pretty good genetics for strength, but also, like, look at all the arthritis I have. And I was born, you know, I've had it since I was young, you know, young. So. You got shitty hips. I got a shitty brain. We're screwed with every blessing. There comes a curse, right? So you can't be great at everything. And some people, some people are, and we hate them. But, uh, for the most part, you know, if you have one gift, you got another, uh, another thing that's holding you back or another thing that could possibly hold you back. And it's just like, don't let those things hold you back.

Figure out ways around them. I'm still figuring out ways around pain. I'm still working that out. And I've been finding a lot of answers. I think there's a lot of answers out there. You just got to keep searching and keep hunting and you will eventually find the answers that you're looking for. Tim was on the live chat.

He was asking how your hips are doing. My hips feel great because they're fake. They're both titanium. So the hips actually feel really good. Uh, the, uh, problem is I, because I have arthritis, the joints that aren't fixed, that's what it really hurts. So my lower back hurts, my knees hurt, my ankles hurt, my shoulder hurts, my elbow hurts, you know, so all that kind of stuff is banged up and it gets achy. But I use things like kratom. I do a carnivore diet, which is very autoimmune friendly. It will help your any sort of autoimmune condition, I believe. And take more Riva curcumin, which is another anti-inflammatory, uh, you know, supplement. And that's a special kind of curcumin that, uh, has been shown in

studies to reduce inflammation. Who knows how well it actually works. I don't feel anything from it. I feel a lot from Kratom. Um, and I also get a lot out of the diet. I think those are the two most important things. And you move a lot. I move a lot out of the diet. I think those are the two most important. And you move a lot. I move a lot. And the other thing that I do that's great, I think is, um, I'm lucky enough to have a hot tub in my community here where I live and I hop into the hot tub, you know, pretty much every day because I see Mark doing it every day. And I know how he's always like, oh man, I feel great. And so by utilizing all these things that I see you doing,

I just kind of pick up on them. And I say, you know what? I can just walk over to the hot tub every day. It's not in my house, but it's a good reason to do a 10-minute walk. It's a great example of evaluating what's something that you can do. What's something that you can do that you know someone that's around you that's successful at it? What's something that you can adopt? Maybe you can't afford to spend five days in a row in the gym and work out for three hours, but maybe there's some other attribute about that person that you

could adopt. Maybe just the simple act of them getting to the gym every day at a certain time, maybe you can start to develop a schedule. I think the 10 minute walk has been amazing because, uh, low hanging fruit too. Yeah. It's not, it's not hard. So when I, before the 10 minute walk, right, I used to park my car. I even have a handicap placard so I can park my car wherever I want, but I would park the very closest to anything, you know, like anywhere I went, I just parked the closest. Cause that was, you know, now I just park wherever and I walked to the place. I, you know, instead of, I used to, you know, get in my car and just drive everywhere, even if it was really close. And now I just walk everywhere. You know, even if something is a good five minute drive,

I'll still walk. And it might take me 30 minutes to get there and 30 minutes to get back. But to me, that's amazing. That's that's like, wow, this is, you know, if I don't have the time, obviously I don't do that. But for the most part, I feel like walking, especially because of what I do, making films. There's so many times when I could take an hour out right now, you know, put my headphones on, put some music on, just walk and think. Makes your brain go crazy. Yeah. And for those of you that have children, go for a walk with your kids.

You want to find out what's going on in their life, especially if they're a little bit older, if they're like older than like seven or so. Man, you go on a walk with them. Well, it's amazing. Their little brain's going to light up and you're not going to hear the end of it. It's like we go with like Jake or Quinn and we'd be walking and they won't say anything for the first five minutes. It's just kind of silent. You're like, oh, these kids aren't going to say anything. And then they just start pouring out all sorts of stuff.

Hey, you know this, you know that. I went on a walk with Jake last night and with dad. And then when, you know, me and dad were talking the whole time and then Jake didn't say anything. He's just kind of listening. And it's actually a good, all good stuff for him to listen in on it was perfect but when we uh when the walk stopped um we were just about to go inside and jake was like hey dad he's like you know i uh i'm really starting to like lifting like we're doing it in pe and i was like cool okay, well, what do you want to do? What do you want to do about it?

He's like, I don't know. And I said, well, do you want me to bring you to super training on the weekends? He's like, that'd be cool. I was like, all right, sounds good. Meanwhile, you're freaking out on the inside probably. Yeah, no, I'm like Rocky Montage, boom. Play the super training anthem right there. You know what's amazing about Jake? Natty Anthem.

Jake was always tall and skinny, but now he's starting to fill out. Like, he's starting to get, like, huge. Well, he knows about the powers of a flannel, too. That makes you look thick, you know? Makes you look like a lumberjack. But his legs and stuff, like, got... His butt?

Yeah, he has smelly ass now, which is great. Smelly ass? Yeah. Yeah, he's got smelly ass. So smelly... People used to try to avoid that.. Yeah. Yeah, he's got smelly ass. So smelly, people used to try to avoid that. Now it's in. It's called bubble butt.

It makes sense. You got a bubble butt all going up. I got to show you a picture I just took of him in front of the navigator. And his, you can't even see the navigator.

His butt is so big. Yeah, it's in the middle of his back for some reason. Makes no sense. Starts at his traps and ends at his calves. Yeah. My mama gave me this ass.

I know. Know what I'm saying? She's listening in, I think. Oh, yeah. Well, she should be proud. Yeah. Shake what your mama gave you, they say. She's always proud. She's always fired up.

Mm-hmm. She is. All right. Well, I think we're going to bring this one in, reel her on in. What's something that you want to share with people about your big bro mad dog that is not me i'm only like figuratively bigger than you but i'm not your big bro you know i was talking about this before and i said the only thing that's really sad about mad dog is uh i wish that he had gotten to see what you put together here it's fantastic

it's amazing it's like to me it, it's, uh, I I'm, I think I'm more proud of you than I'm ever proud of myself. Cause it's hard to be proud of yourself. You know, like, ah, I'm really proud of myself on the back for, you know, whatever I did. So to me, um, I think mad dogs joy for things were like, he really liked to see us succeed, which was really cool. So, you know, I wish he would have saw that. But what I'd like everybody to know is that we talk a lot about Mad Dog and we talk a lot about his problems,

but he was a guy that just loved everybody. You know, he really, really did. He was very, like, he was very, like, loving. Yeah, he was a big teddy bear. And he was really sensitive. Insanely sensitive. Tough guy, but sensitive. One time The Undertaker got on TV and he goes,

I hate everyone. And Mad Dog's like, he stole my gimmick. He stole my line. And I'm like, he doesn't really feel like that. He thought that he felt like that. But that was like the tough guy Mad Dog, the wrestler Mad Dog inside of him saying like, yeah, that's how I feel. But he actually loved everybody.

He actually always went out of his way to like hug people. He always went out of his way to say hi to people. And he was just always really in general, nice to people. And I think that's a quality that no matter, you know, like, yeah, he had his problems, he had his issues, but for the most part, everybody that knew him loved him, especially people would worry about him. They'd be concerned, but all the guys that were in OVW wrestling back in the day, all the guys that were in UPW wrestling back in the day, they really, you know, appreciated having him around and saw him as a

positive to be around, you know, for the most part. Yeah. I remember, um, I don't remember like where I was with school or whatever, but like, I think I might've been like in Albany or something. And I came home and I went to a bar and, uh, you were there and Mike was there. We were all there at the same time. Um, I didn't know. I didn't know Mike was there. And I saw you earlier in the night. And I was hanging out with some of my friends. And somebody came up to me like, yeah, I just. They're like, oh, I didn't know you were here.

And I was like, yeah, I was like, my brother's here too. And they're like, oh, yeah, I saw him. I saw him earlier. And then someone else is like, yeah, yeah i was like my brother's here too and like oh yeah i saw him i saw him earlier and uh and then someone else is like yeah yeah i saw i saw your brother uh i saw your brother mike too and i was like mike's here i was like no mike's not here i was like i think i think it's just chris i was like i think i saw chris and then all of a sudden i hear fight and i just see somebody's legs going up in the air. I'm like, what the hell's going on? Somebody gets launched from the dance floor onto this table

and they just get like massacred. They just get killed. And I was like, yep, I guess Mike's still here. Yeah, he's there. And it was great too because Mike's like friends worked at this bar and I don't know. That was a revenge story. I don't know.

Oh, yeah, that was the guy that kicked him in the ribs when he was kicking somebody else out and he ended up spending the holiday and the end of Christmas in like the ER. He had a punctured lung. Yeah. Some guy kicked him when he was bouncing, kicked him in the stomach

and he had a punctured lung and had to. Yeah. I remember we had to revisit him in the hospital. Yeah. So something that happened was, this is like straight out of a movie. I think his friend. Leibold. His friend, Jeff Leibold, went up to somebody and he said, he said, hey, I think I know you.

Like, I think I ran into you the other night. Were you at the, were you at the brass rail? And the guy was like, yup. And then Jeff just took a step to the side and Mike just pounded the ever long shit out of the guy. Jeff took a step to the side and shook his head. Yes. Yeah. Signal like, yeah, it's a guy, you know?

And then Mad Dog just came over and pummeled him. He's like, hey, yeah. He's like, just, he like tried to like, you know, drop a line as if he, they were like buds. Like, hey, I saw you the other night, man. I think, you know, I think you were partying next to me or something. The guy's like, oh yeah, I was there. I think he might have suplexed the guy through the table. He suplexed him.

Yeah. He gave him a, a gave him a belly to back suplex. Yeah. Just grabbed him and just suped him. Like a collegiate wrestling, yeah. Brock Lesnar suplexed City. Right on the table. Guy got killed. So I never had the pleasure of meeting Mad Dog.

So if you guys can, through through yourselves what's a characteristic that the other has that basically came straight from mad dog oh no i don't know let me see if i had to say um a characteristic maybe even just a habit a thing um i don't know I think Mark's kind of like opposite of a lot of it. Yeah. But I guess we all have like a little bit of a temper. Like we all get like kind of like frustrated easily at things. So I think all three of us kind of like have that. It's easy to get like frustrated.

But one of the things actually that Mark definitely has, I've come to it now because it's a good trait, leadership. Mad Dog was always the captain of the football team. Like I was never a leader, even though I direct movies. I was never like really like a leader as far as like a group leader. I was always kind of off on my own, leading my own army of myself and a couple other weirdos that follow me. But Mark was, Mark's a leader here for all of you guys. He's a leader on the business front.

He's a leader in the fitness community. He's kind of a leader at everything that he puts his mind to. And I think that Mike is the same way where he would lead everything. He was always the captain of the football team. If he worked at a bar, he was the head of security. If he worked at a restaurant, he was the head chef. Didn't matter what it was, he was always at the front and center and the leader of everything he did wow hey now hey the only thing i can think of that you have that's the same of him same as him

as addiction that's it well that's more of a curse than it is uh something that's good i guess i actually don't think it is yeah it actually led to a lot of good things it's the best thing that ever happened to me the the thing um i mean not the best thing but the it's it's i i'm thankful for going through it because i think that there's so many other people that can identify with it and that i can help by having gone through it i can't help anybody if i never went through it i mean the other characteristic that you have that's similar to him is like, I think, I don't know, he, he did it maybe a little less than you. Cause you're like the mayor of gold gym. Like everybody knows you there, but like, I don't know about you, but like I run into people that Mike wrestled with, or he, they, he met him one time and they just go nuts about him. Like, man, I, I, you know i remember and i'm i'm just i'm not as

personable that way i mean if somebody meets me for the first time yeah i'm gonna try to take time with them as her fan or whatever but like that's like that's that's actually not easy for me i don't even like i don't like doing that i'd rather just not talk to anybody yeah but i just saw like two people come into the gym i i think you have it too yeah kind of like don't think you have it as well no i gotta but that i'm saying what i'm saying is i have to do like you gotta work at it i have yeah like i have to kind of be like okay i gotta go do that like it's like my job you know yeah but it also um i enjoy it i do love it i love the interaction but it's a it's a little bit of a fight for me to like, I have to consciously go do it. And that kind of makes sense.

You were always a little bit quieter. And like, what's funny is, um, as much as you're a leader too, people like people would meet mad dog and they'd say, he's so outgoing, blah, blah. And then they'll meet you and they'll be like, man, Mark is not like, he's so kind of like down to earth and chill. I thought he was going to be all fired up when I meet him. Like you're not, you know, like in a seminar, you'll be pumped and you'll be telling people like all these full bore things.

And then in real life, you're just more, uh, you know, down to earth and mellow where me and mad dog, where we get all excited when we all fired up and we're telling people stuff and, um, you're just more calm, you know? So I think that that's, that's interesting too, you know, more reserved. You guys would never shut up. So I couldn't get a word in edgewise anyway so i just learned to shut up yeah just keep shut up flyer to the radar don't ever let don't ever have anybody have any real expectations of me do you remember this line don't let your

brothers overrun your conversations that's that from i know i know rosie bigger stronger faster amazing some good editing on that too you know know, Rosie actually just sent me a picture from bigger, stronger, faster. And it's amazing. I had to show it to you right now. Yeah, I've seen how fat we all are. You saw it? I don't know if I saw that one in particular. But there's a picture of, like, all of us at, like, Mad Dog's wedding or something, too.

She sent this. That's grotesquely fat. She sent that picture, and she said, we were fatsy watsies fat so she sent that picture and she said we were fatty watsies what is a fancy watsy we were fatty watsies and bsf yikes lol and it's great to see her i mean look at she's lost so much weight since that picture you have to post that on your family's so fat what alright gangster wraps are dropping gangster flex wrist wraps

and gangster knee wraps dropping December 10th make sure you go check out markbellslingshot.com make sure you check out markbellslingshot.com to buy all that stuff. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.

Later.