Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 62 - Layne Norton

Episode Date: May 31, 2018

Dr. Layne Norton is a bodybuilding/figure/physique coach, who claimed his pro card at the age of 24, and is a professional powerlifter who set the raw squat record in 2015 IPF World Championships of 668lbs/303kg at 93kg. Layne obtained his PhD in Nutritional Sciences at the University of Illinois in 2010. Rewatch the live stream: https://youtu.be/pLvhJrvGbqk ➢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

so uh where did you guys uh start out at like because you uh it took you a couple hours to get here today where'd you go san jose so because that's where the meat is yeah so we're staying there because that dan greens which is what mountain view right that's the area i think yeah we're in sunnyvale which is about 10-15 minutes from there so maybe you decide to do a meat all the way uh on the other side of the planet here uh because holly and i travel so much that that was the only one that fit the time frame that we actually had available and uh it was you know we don't mind traveling but it was more about the the time period and less about you know distance because what fed is it what federation us apl oh okay cool yeah and she's never competed before never competed in power

lifting yeah is she relatively strong yeah i mean this she won't, she won't hear this till it comes out. So I think she'll probably end up, you know, she's, she's about 65, 66 kilos. And I told her don't diet for your first meet. Yeah. Andres is coaching her. Hey, everybody hear that? Don't diet for your first meet. Are we going? Yeah. Yeah. No, I was just going to call him out on it. Like she's going, she's actually hearing it right now in the, uh, in the store. Yeah. She might be hearing it right now in the, uh, in the store.

She might be hearing it right now. Oh really? Live on, sorry honey. Live on YouTube. It's a good thing. It's a good thing we got all the shit talking now before the, before the podcast started. It's a good thing you didn't say anything too negative.

That's right. No, but I mean, you know, everybody, the first time they, they do a meet, they go,

oh, well I can get the next weight class down. And she actually was pretty okay with, cause at 63, she would feel pretty crappy. Yeah. Because she's pretty darn lean at 63. She's pretty darn lean at 66.

But I think she'll probably, you know, end up squatting somewhere in the high twos. Mm-hmm. Benching 160s to 170. Nice. And deadlifting over 300. So, you know, for her first meet, she'll, you know, that'll be over a 700-pound total, which is really respectable for a race. How is she liking powerlifting so far?

Does she like it? She really enjoys the technical aspects of it. You know, she likes... She was a sprinter growing up, and she was actually very successful. She went to the Junior World Games. Have you ever raced her before? No.

I like to keep my ego intact. Yeah, blow out your hamstring. Have you ever raced there before? No, I like to keep my ego intact. Blow out your hamstring. Yeah. Yeah. No, you know, I, I know I'm good at a few things, science and lifting things in a straight line. Uh, but you know, she kind of, she has done very well in a physique competition. She won a PNBA, which is the, like the natural Olympia and natural universe. And she won a two-time world champion there. Um, like pretty much just decided to do it one day. And within, within less than a year, she was a world champion. Um, but she doesn't, she likes the training that goes into that, but doesn't like the competition day. She doesn't like, you know, getting all the makeup on

and getting hair done. And then only just to kind of stand there on stage. There's no like actual performance, you know? So she likes the idea of actual doing something athletic on the day of the meet. See, and I like that. I like just putting on high heels and a skimpy little outfit. Yeah, of course. And getting all the makeup on and getting all tanned, but I don't like the training for it. Yeah.

Who doesn't? Who doesn't want to look good with nothing, nothing involved. But, uh, no, she's enjoyed it. It's just been, she's kind of gotten that the real powerlifting experience where she's experiencing some of those soft tissue injuries. And, you know, the hard part of powerlifting is, you know, she, she kind of looked at it as she has a very high work capacity and she will crush people in the gym in terms of like training very intensively. And she kind of looked at me and she said, well, you're just doing one rep

or two reps or three reps, but she's finding out now is like to get yourself to the point where you can do that, like requires a lot of energy and focus. Yeah. And also to keep yourself intact. It's almost like there's a conditioning associated to strength too. Yeah. And also keeping yourself just intact, you know, like she's had some hip flexor issues and some lower back issues and just keeping yourself intact, uh, you know, that requires, you know, an hour of rehab and prehab work every single day. And it sucks. Like I I'm talking about now coming back from my back injury. Cause I've been working with, uh, Dr. Stu McGill and Brian Carroll, as well as Andres. Your back injury was, uh, like catastrophic, right? catastrophic right i mean it was a this is a huge deal it well it was it incapacitated me for for a few days now the injury itself actually isn't that

bad it's you know and mcgill said he's like you know your back is actually well it's it's the location where it is the bulge disc where it is you know um when a bulge disc, I like that word bulge. Yeah, me too. Of course. Um, when a, when a bulge disc flares, it basically locks you up, you know, and what he was described because I didn't have any radiating pain. I didn't have anything like that. It was just all localized in my lower back, but when it was flared up, I, you know, um, what had happened was I kind of tweaked it around Thanksgiving a little bit on a deadlift. And then I definitely re-aggravated on a pause squat about three weeks later. And then the next day I had my kids and I was kind of like picking them up and putting them down and picking them up and putting them down. And by that night, I couldn't even hardly move. And I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of night and I got halfway around the bed and Holly had to come get me. Cause I just, I could not move. Like I, she had to help me like the

rest of the day. So I had to go get a cortisone shot just because I couldn't even work. Like I was just laying there on the ground. And that's steroids. Does that kick you out of the USA? No, those are catabolic steroids. They're fine with that. But, um, no, I couldn't even move, you know? So, so look, but on a more legitimate uh question do they can an athlete have a cortisone shot and compete yes yes now you could argue about yeah there's the monster going um you can argue about you know isn't that performance enhancing yeah yeah you know and and yes like you know you got guys getting cortisone shots in nfl right before they get out are you going to lift more?

And you can potentially say, yeah, you'll lift a lot more because you're not as in much pain. Right. Right. So, but the rules are it's legal. It's a catabolic steroid. So you're not building muscle with it. You're actually breaking down tissue with it. Right. Inflammation.

But, you know, I had to get that because I couldn't move. And I was looking at it like, and my insurance didn't cover it. It was 600 bucks. So I'm kind of like, I'm kind of a tight ass. So I don't like spending money. No. But I'm like, I couldn't move. And I was looking at it like, and my insurance didn't cover it. It was 600 bucks. So I'm kind of like, I'm a, I'm kind of a tight ass. So I don't like spending money, but I'm like, I can't don't say that about yourself. Right. But I can't, you know, I'm sitting there. Well, if I can't work, you know, $600 is going to go really fast in terms of what I could make just being able to work. So, but you know, in terms of when McGill saw me, and for those of you don't know, Dr. Stu McGill is kind of renowned as like the back guru.

Yeah, what, 30, 40 years? Yeah, and he's published tons of studies and worked with many, many high-level athletes, including, you know, Brian Carroll had a horrific back injury. Like if you read The Gift of Injury, which is Brian and Stu's book they co-wrote, Brian, like in the book, talks about how he was ready to like having suicidal thoughts because he was like this high level power lifter. I think he was the first guy to squat over a thousand at 242. Yeah, probably. I mean, he, he, he did some crazy stuff. He's, I definitely squatted over 1100 too. I mean, he was insanely strong.

And he, and he, I think he squatted over a thousand pounds in competition more times than anybody in the history of powerlifting. Yeah, I wouldn't doubt it. Like 50 times or something. anybody in the history of powerlifting. Yeah. I wouldn't doubt it. Like 50 times or something. So,

but he had like, when they got the, when Stu looked at his MRI, he had multiple disc herniations. He had, he had in plate fractures at every single vertebra. Wow. And he had.

I think he showed me a picture of it. It was just crazy. And he had split his sacrum, you know, like he actually had, he had broken sacrum. He had a broken back, you know? That's crazy. And, um, so he, so his was much worse. And in fact, he went to Stu and was like, I'm,

I'm being upfront with you. I want to compete again. And Stu was like, let's see if we can get you pain free first, you know? And then if that's there and in a year later, Brian was squatting a thousand pounds again. Pain free is something like, it's a key word. You know, I think that as powerlifters, we just were like we should be in pain um we should have discomfort but we shouldn't have a lot of pain and sometimes yeah you're gonna have your knees gonna be inflamed your elbow your shoulder but like it shouldn't be a lot of pain i always try to encourage people that if your pain level is above a three on a scale of one to 10, then start to look into other exercises, start to try to figure out how to rehab or prehab that, that area. Cause you don't want to end up in these situations when you can't, when you can't lift, um, you know, all of us, we like

to joke around about lifting and we like to, you know, have fun while we're lifting and everything, but we don't understand like how much it really means to us oh yeah like it defines you in a lot of ways yeah i mean i'm you know not to i'm glad i have an academic background to fall back on because i still have a little bit of an identity but yeah if you if you're just known for you lift big heavy weights and that's how you make your living too i mean plus you know like in this industry people will forget about you like that like i had six months where i kind of was dealing with a lot of stuff and it was like the how fast things went away. It was incredible, you know, but I mean, I have to have flash people, um, you know, and it's like, I guess you want to kind of show people, uh, what makes you a, an expert in this particular area?

Like what, you know, what's your background type of thing. And I feel it's important to show people those thousand 80 squats and eight 54 bench. And it's important for you to show people that you were, um, second in the world at the, at the biggest powerlifting meet that they have. Yep. The most prestigious powerlifting meet that there is. Yeah. You were second in the world.

And on top of that, you got a PhD and you got a lot of other good things going for you. There's not a lot of people in the industry that are like that. I like this so far. It's really pumping me up here. Well, we'll get to some harder stuff here in a second. Oh, is it going to be harder? Amen. So last time you were, and we'll just go right here.

Last time you were here, from the last time you were here, a lot of things have changed. Yep. So let's talk about that a little bit in whatever manner you want to take the mic and talk about it. Yeah. Well, I mean, went through a divorce. You know, that's, of all the things I've gone through in my life. Now, it was at the end of the day, it was my call. And, you know, it's tough because with kids and all that sort of stuff.

Yeah, it makes it brutal. Yeah, it makes it very, very difficult, you know. And even though that was my call, it was still one of the hardest things i've ever been through um and uh yeah it's just and then uh i lost two businesses inside of a month one was just um kind of you know my something all while you're hurt too right that was all during injury yeah so it was like i think like i ended up looking it up, like three or four out of the like 10 most stressful things you can have go on in your life all happened at the same time. So, but you know what? I talked to, I think the, the podcast we called it last time was like the common denominator

is you, I think. At the end of the day, I had some stuff happen to me that was bad and a little bit outside my control in some ways, but it was still my fault because like with the business stuff, I had certain things that happened in my life and I don't want to go too specifically into things. Um, but I kind of just said, these will get better. These will get better. These will get better. And I just assumed that things would get better and things don't get better if you don't put energy into them. You know what I mean? better and things don't get better if you don't put energy into them you know what i mean and i created that situation where things bad things could happen to me and so at the end of the day it was still my fault you know and um but man have i learned a shitload what do you think the major

common denominator was i mean obviously you're saying that you take responsibility um but like you know what did you learn from that experience? What is some, some things that you could have done better all around through the business, through the marriage, through everything? Great, great question. So first off, like knowing myself better, like we talk about that, but most people don't even really know themselves that well. In terms of what makes them tick, like what makes you, if I go up and say, what makes you happy? Most people don't know that or they can't, or they can't vocalize that to you very well, right? You just know sometimes you're happy and sometimes you're not.

And no, not like you had a car accident or something like that and you're unhappy because that happened. That's an acute thing, right? That's like an acute injury versus chronic pain, right? So, you know, really, well, I have a therapist named Patty that I've worked with for two years. And one of the things she kept telling me, and I didn't listen, she was like, you are screwing up because you're not investing in yourself. You've spent time investing in a lot of other people.

You've stopped investing in yourself. You've stopped trying to focus on really self-improvement. And my thing would always be like, well, I don't have time. Like, where am I going to get this time? Cause I'm, I'm trying to be a dad and I'm trying to do this. And I'm trying to do that. And she goes, no, you're screwing all that stuff up because you're not focusing on yourself. You're not focusing on what makes you tick and what makes you happy. I'm sorry. I didn't say that was a therapist or that was a friend. Therapist slash life coach. Um, and you know, by the way, going to see a therapist or that was a friend? Therapist slash life coach. Okay. And, you know.

By the way, going to see a therapist doesn't make you a weirdo or a freak. I highly recommend it to a lot of people because there's stuff that's hard to figure out on your own. And it's like, it's not any different than if you hurt your shoulder or you hurt your back. Like you reached out to Dr. Stuart McGill. Yeah. Reach out to somebody that can help you. Yeah. Well, I mean. Don't be scared of that. I wasn't going to a therapist because I was depressed or anything like that.

I'm, I'm just, I think I'm a pretty resilient person. And Holly has mentioned this. I don't really get depressed. Like even when things were really bad, I wouldn't say I was depressed. I would still get up and not always every day, but I would still mostly have a positive view of, okay, this is, this is bad, but it's going to work itself out, you know? Um, and just like, I, like part of it is just as cheesy as it sounds. I would just get up every day and tell myself,

like literally, literally talk to myself and like, you're going to get through this. You're going to get through this. It's it's, you're going to get on the other side of it eventually. So right now it's important just to keep the, keep, keep your feet churning, right? Like a running back who hits four different guys that keep your feet churning. Cause you get through it, you know? Um, but yeah, like I don't have any shame in admitting that, you know, I sought out therapy. Um, cause it was like, I just I just, you know, I didn't have a lot of relationships growing up. I was outcasted by my peers quite a bit. So I didn't really understand how to, you know, we actually talked about this in the car.

I'm somebody who I meet somebody and I immediately think that everybody's a good person. Right. And everybody is cool and is going to have my best interest. I'm a very empathetic person. So like if somebody around me is unhappy, I'll end up kind of getting unhappy by just association. So like, I always want to try and help people be happy as weird as that sounds. And that's a problem in of itself. And I've had to get better about, okay, just cause somebody around you is unhappy. Doesn't mean you can't be happy. And that that's been a difficult thing, but like, I never knew those things about myself. And just sometimes you can't see the

picture cause you're in the frame. And that's what a therapist really helped me with was kind of saying, no, I think this is what helps you tick, right? Like this is what makes you, you, these are your core values and this is what makes you happy and going oh shit i never really never really thought about it that way you know but um he had to go through all that stuff and then the injury like exercise for me is such medicine i could be going through like the worst thing in the world how about your food and stuff at that time you just kind of throw things out the window a little bit too because you're just like you know kind of almost like, you know, cause

you're not training. If anything, I tend to under eat when I'm, when I'm stressed, you know? Um, but no, it happens a lot with divorce. A lot of people just don't eat at all. Um, I, you know, I still would say that I was, I wouldn't say I was like diligently tracking, but I always have, I always have a pretty good mental clock of what I'm eating. So I really pretty much maintained my weight. You know, my body composition got worse, but, um, you know, I kind of got, I did nationals last year and ended up getting seventh. Cause I just, my last eight weeks of training were just garbage. You know, normally like when I'm getting ready for a big meet, I'm, every day I'm going to go into the gym. I'm looking at my workout I have to do and I'm already visualizing.

I'm thinking about what I'm going to do. I'm thinking about the weights I'm going to use. I didn't even look at the workout until I got in there. You didn't have time. Exactly. Or just like, you've only got so many spoons and so much mental capacity. Like this was, this never became more apparent to me until this past year when I had to like, think about like, where's my time going to go? Right. Like to realize how

finite it really is. And, um, yeah, so, and then I dealt with like, I tweaked my lower back before nationals. Um, I tweaked my pec. That's what actually really ended up limiting me was I took basically a token bench, but, um, you know, uh, it, it really made me realize like how much things can come together too. Cause a week out, I barely pulled five 85. Like I missed it once. And then I went back and pulled it and then, uh, went in and pulled a PR at nationals, you know, and squatted. I got, I got called on depth first time ever, six 55. But if you go back and check the tape,

I still think it was a good lift, but I wasn't real upset about it because, you know, it's a close call. It happens fast when some judges aren't perfect. I don't think anybody had it out for me. It's just, you know,

if you go back and slow down something and freeze frame something, sure. You can see where somebody's hip cre is, but in the, in the actual moment, you know, but I was still happy that I squatted 655 down to depth. You know, it was only 13 pounds off my best after the back injury. And then it was like, all right, went back down the rabbit hole again after that. And, you know, it's like, not only is it tough dealing with injury and everything else that's going on, but now you have people, you know, and it's, it's my choice to put my life out there. Right. And you got to take the good with the bad. Yeah. Why did you make the choice to, uh, share your divorce with people? I think you posted on Facebook and stuff, right? Yeah. So, uh, my ex kind of made things public that I'd had an affair and, um, you know, and that, that's her right to do that.

You know, then you thought I should speak on my own behalf. Honestly, I had wanted to say something about it for a long time. Um, but I kind of like, it's one of those things. Didn't want to drag her into like I'll just kind of talk to you about anything. Um, but it was like, my kids are going to see that one day. So do I really want to put that out there? But then it went out there and it was kind of like, well, you know, at least want to show them. And some people will disagree with it. Why are you putting your personal stuff out there?

And I get that. I get that. You know, it makes sense. Yeah. But either way, it makes sense. But I, I, you know, I want my kids to be able to see one day. Okay. I get that. You know, it makes sense. Yeah. But either way it makes sense. But I, I, you know, I want my kids to be able to see one day,

okay, dad fucked up, but dad took responsibility for it. Dad said it was his fault. Right. Dad, you know, and then tried to be a good dad,

you know, like I've actually really worked on being a better dad. And I, I, I don't want to say I'm great. I don't want to say I'm perfect. Fatherhood didn't come naturally to me. You know, it was like,

I was still so focused on my goals. But I'm better now than I was a couple years ago. I think men go through crazy transitions in being a dad. It's hard. It's a wild thing. It actually sounds kind of silly, but I didn't really feel a great attachment to my children until they were about five. Yeah. Like how crazy does that sound? That doesn't sound right. It sounds wrong, right? But they were about five. Yeah. Like how, how crazy is that?

So that doesn't sound right. It sounds wrong. Right. But, but that's being honest. Right. But what a woman, I mean, because it grows inside them and everything, you know, they have just these instincts that are just different than, uh, than what we have. But once, once the kid's able to talk and once the kid's going to school and once the kid's not shitting itself anymore, uh, things, uh, things really change. I'll also comment to like, um, not to ever justify anything that you did, but as you become like more popular, um, as you get like even just a little bit of fame, more people become interested in you. Yeah. And you've, you've worked with a lot of clients, both male and female. Yep. And, uh, you know, as soon as that door gets cracked, it's, it's going to get all the way opened up and it

happens. It happens to a lot of people, you know, so you're not the only one that happens. You know, it happens very frequently. Go, go and look at, uh, people magazine, right? And everybody thinks all these people are happy because they're wealthy and because they're famous. They have a lot of other... More money, more problems. They have a lot of other issues that they've had to deal with. And it all takes time. You mentioned kind of wanting to do something.

You wish you did something differently. What do you wish that you did differently, if you don't mind sharing? As far as that goes, I wish that if I had been unhappy and knew that i didn't want to be in a relationship anymore that i just would have gotten out yeah and but it's you know how fucking hard is that you know what i mean i mean you've got you've got kids yeah you've got society's judgment you got your parents judgment that kind of stuff not that my parents are lovely

people um but you know, it's hard, like, and it's, no one would understand that that would be just as devastating probably. And in some way, you know, some things that, you know, like I know better now what makes me tick. Um, and you know, sometimes you, when you learn that some people can grow together, some people can grow apart, but it doesn't justify anything like, but I had just, again, I don't want to sound like I'm trying to justify things because at the end of the day, one of the things I learned is there is no justification for that. Just because it's hard to get out of a relationship doesn't mean you shouldn't just do it when it's time. But I just didn't have any relationships.

Like my ex-wife was the first person I ever dated for more than five months. So it was just, you know. That's the advice in Little Miss Sunshine. Remember that movie, Andrew? I remember the movie. I don't remember the advice. Little Miss Sunshine. It's a good movie.

The grandpa tells the little kid in the backseat of the van they're on, they're like traveling across the United States or whatever or whatever and he goes i got advice for you the kid's probably like 11 years old right he goes fuck a lot of women and and the parents start screaming at him he's like fuck a lot of women he just he's like that that'll make everything later on in life uh a lot better but you know it is it is important probably to get some of it out of your system before you get that i i i didn't you know i've yeah i definitely i know some people would probably look at oh this guy had an affair he probably out banging a bunch of fitness chicks right no like yeah it's a very short, short list. Men are ticking time bombs and we don't have much control over what we're doing sometimes. You know, like my friend Paul, he was like, Paul was saying something one time and I didn't quite understand at the time.

He was like, nobody should get married before age 30. I'm like, well, what do you mean? He's like, you don't know yourself. You don't know what you like. That's a good point. But that being said, some people- How different are you going to be at 20 versus versus 40 and some people grow apart or some people go together some people grow apart you know and um but you know what i think um one of the things

that taught me too was i was always a very judgmental person i don't want to say very judgmental person um but i would look at something to happen and go i would never do that yeah you you do not know until you're in a certain situation, you have no idea how you would act. And that goes for drug abuse. Absolutely. It goes for anything. Anything that you see, you're not like, oh, that person's a dirtbag. Why are they doing that?

Now you're kind of like, well, maybe they fell into some bad circumstances. I had family members, direct family members very close to me who struggle with drug addiction. You know, it didn't make them bad people. They made some bad choices, you know, but it doesn't make them bad. You know, I think I tend to be of the opinion. Now, I think most people are at the core trying to do their best and we just fuck stuff up sometimes, you know, I don't think, you know, when, when people, people always want to make it like black and white, you know, they want somebody to be at fault and somebody to be the good guy. And like people can make bad choices, but I think, you know, when it comes to relationships,

whether it's friendships or it's marriage or it's boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever it is, like it's a big gray area, man. And, um, you know, but I think some of my, like my penance was like having to be humbled a little bit and say oh no like you don't know what you would do unless you're in a certain situation but you know you try to learn from those sorts of things so you know i can tell you why i never want to go through that again right hell no you know like i i just i think you know you know you try to find things that are painful in your life you learn and grow from them right you know You know, and I did that and I, I learned a lot with relationships and business over the past year.

You know, some things I never want to go through again. And, uh, you know, hopefully that'll serve me well in the future. Yeah. I think it was also like. Learn and grow. Yeah. Well, it was good in a way growing up. And I talked about this about like getting bullied so much.

I think it made me a little bit resilient. Um, because a lot of like you know uh holly bullied like beat up bullied a little bit of that but more like more like emotional stuff yeah you know and um you know uh holly and i are watching a show on netflix called 13 reasons why i just started it yeah it's so like like having a daughter and seeing some of that stuff man it's so like i have a nine-year-old and it's terrifying it's tough to watch it's tough to watch um you know they cover some really tough topics rape sexual abuse um i wouldn't be able to watch it bullying you know all that kind of stuff and um you know it's hard to watch you know

i mean there's some funny parts in it too it It's a really good show, but it like it, like there's certain parts where you're like, fuck child abuse and rape. I just, it's hard to watch, man. But you know, it's like, uh, watching that, like some kids just people go, Oh, well it's just bullying. Like that's just kids being kids. No, it like that shit fucks kids up. Like, like I know it still affects me later in life sometimes. I don't handle criticism real well. And part of that's probably from being bullied when I was younger. That's why you get into Twitter fights. I just enjoy Twitter fights with people who like to speak.

God, I got one the other day with an ophthalmologist who wants to speak authoritatively on nutrition. I'm like, I have DR in front of my name. Are you cool with me coming and giving somebody an eye exam? Like, why do you think you can do this with nutrition, you know? But yeah, like I know that stuff still affected me later in life, but some kids don't make it out of that. I mean, every week it seems like there's another kid who like takes their own life because, and I want to just say to them, like, it's okay. You're going to get through it, you know, but like some people aren't as resilient, but I think at least me having that. Also, some people don't have, uh, they don't have

parents. They don't have any, they don't have anybody. I got nobody there. No one there to believe in them at all. Right. And while my peers were pretty rejected towards me, at least I had my parents, my parents were enormously supportive people, you know, if I, but if I didn't have that, who knows, you know, like if you don't have your parents to tell, you know, you're, you're awesome, you're worthwhile, you know, like that sort of stuff. Your parents will point out all the things you're good at. Yeah. Like you're really smart. You're really this, really that, but you're like, I'm a nerd. I'm going to beat up. Well, but you know, what I try to tell kids now, because I'll talk to a few kids, is what makes you different is going to make you successful in the future.

Like that's actually like the stuff that you're being mocked for now, all that stuff is good shit. Like that's all going to be good. A great example is Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, with his accent and with the space between his teeth and how big and jacked he was in the movies. And they're like, you know, you got all these things these things his long name you got all these things working against you and then he's got the most famous saying in the history of movies saying i'll be back but it wouldn't have worked the same way without no accent no without the gap in the teeth to cement everything but what uh yeah i tell people

like you you may or may not like arnold or whatever but you have to respect that man oh you want to talk about somebody who did more than where he came from. That doesn't make any sense. It's incredible. Incredible. Coming from a different country, being the governor of the largest state of the United States. That's incredible.

And would have been president if we had different laws. Oh, yeah. Would have 100% been president. Oh, there's absolutely no question. You mentioned a couple things in there. You mentioned things being black and white towards being good good or bad. And, uh, you also mentioned, uh, casting judgment. And I think, uh, a lot of judgments placed on people when they're heavy, you know, a lot of judgment, you know, there's a lot of fat shaming, right? There's a lot of people in this country

that are, that are obese. They have diabetes, they have, uh, many different things going on. And, and what I usually say is like, just like drug addiction and just like your situation, a lot of these things are like half your fault. And maybe there's a half that's like kind of not because there's a lot of, when it comes to food anyway, or drugs or alcohol, there's a ton of temptation being thrown at you all the time. A lot of people have more anxiety and more depression than we've ever dealt with before. And it's easy to, it's easy to kind of slip on the banana peel and not, not know how to get back up again, you know, and it's, it's easy to kind of fall into these

situations. And you also mentioned like, you know, things you know, when you said things being black and white, what, what are some things that are black and white in nutrition is there anything is there any common ground like you know uh you got the calorie thing right it's not a calorie it's not a calorie a calorie is a calorie uh you got you know one it's not but it is yeah yeah right one guy it's complicated so if i if i make the statement if i say um uh you know something If I say something along the lines of that calories can be a somewhat inaccurate measure of really the actual energy that we're utilizing, would that be a correct statement? Yes and no. So the problem is, yes, you are correct. So like, for example, if you look at protein versus carbohydrate or fat, protein has a 30% higher thermic effect of food, right?

So it takes you more energy to metabolize and utilize that. It doesn't yield the four calories that are associated with it. Maybe it's something slightly different. Correct. So, and I talk about this in my book, actually, shameless plug. What's the book? So my book is called The uh the complete contest prep guide so i kind of um not to get too far into that rabbit hole i'll talk about a little bit later but i wrote this book out of desperation because i just lost two businesses and i had no

way to make money so but it turned into a labor of love that's great um and i wanted to come up with the most complete uh contest preparation guide for bodybuilding, because that's what I've done as coach bodybuilding and powerlifting for 15 years. And a 265 page book that I'm very, very proud of, of all the things I've done in business, the thing I'm most proud of. But I talk about it in the book of, you know, calories still matter. It is. So people get the misnomer that they say, well, I ate in a deficit and I didn't lose weight. So, you know, calories in versus calories out doesn't work. That's not true. If you, you weren't in a deficit because it is energy balance. Like to lose weight, it's just a simple physics thing. You have to expend more than you take in.

Why do we sometimes get people that will say, you know, I went on a keto diet and when I was in ketosis, I had 4,000 calories and I was still losing weight. They just don't know what they're talking about. I would like to see diet logs. Right, right, right. You know, like there's certain people who, again, we've talked about this. I have a hard time selling what I'm selling because I'm saying it's pretty complicated energy systems. You know, this is what we think works. And, you know, I'm not making broad sweeping statements. Whereas when some people just point out one thing is that this is the bad guy. Right. That's a little bit easier to sell. So people, especially on YouTube now, it's, we have a whole industry of people that are trying to get noticed. Right. And, and it's kind of like everybody, Hey, look at me, look at me, look at me, um, just to make a living. Right. We got to make a living. So, um, you know, people, and I'm not saying that this is always the case, but people will come up, Oh, I lost weight on 4,000 calories on a keto diet.

Is it possible? It's possible. Do I necessarily believe it? Not necessarily. But I will believe that some people can lose weight on 4,000 calories. The evidence we have suggests that if you are equating protein and calories, that your ratio of carbohydrate to fat doesn't really make much of a difference in fat loss. So what that says to me is if you like more fats, eat more fats and less carbs. If you like more carbs, eat more carbs and less fats. Or if you find that certain foods are trigger foods for you, then try to shy away from those and work up a diet that's more

constructive towards you personally. Now, that being said, when you're looking at scientific data, you're looking at means, right? Those are what's reported. So you're looking at averages. And you have people that sit outside the average, you have outliers. You know, two and a half percent of the population is going to be outliers. So while, you know, I'm a science-based coach, I always start people off kind of, okay, generally what does science say that this is the best approach or this might be the most reasonable. But I always try to pay attention and understand the fact that they could be outliers.

And so I heard something great from Greg Knuckles the other day. Do you know Greg? Absolutely. Greg Knuckles is a beast. Yes. And brilliant. Very brilliant. Yeah, he's insanely smart.

Greg said something. He said, sciencey science bros, the people who just read abstracts, make the mistake of thinking that because something was best for the average, it will be best for the individual. And bros make the mistake of thinking because something worked best for them, it'll work best for everybody. They're both errors. So we need to understand that we probably should start at what the average response is, what seems to work well for the average, but then understand that that's not going to work well for everybody.

And so I've kind of gone from being somebody who was, when I was younger, being a bro, kind of saying, okay, well, this worked for me, it should work for you, to going more towards science-y. Science bro of, oh, this is what the study says, and so we need to do it just this way, to kind of going back a little bit to the middle of saying, okay, science is helpful, but coaching is an art form and you need to be willing to step outside that

box of what a scientific study says. Um, but in terms of energy balance, that is a pretty clear, what's not complicated is you need to expend more energy than you take in to lose weight. What is complicated is what makes up those systems. So if we look at energy balance, and I did a YouTube video series on this, energy balance is how much you take in versus how much you output. How much you take in is simple. It's how many calories you ate. Now there's your resting metabolic rate, thermic effect of food, NEAT, non-exercise adaptive thermogenesis, and then your exercise. Those are the calories you burn per day. Those are the kind of the four systems. So if one method of weight loss is causing people to lose more weight with same total calories, then they're affecting

one of those systems, right? So we know a higher protein diet, you lose more weight and retain more lean body mass. And that is probably because one, you're having a beneficial effect on protein turnover. And two, it's impacting the thermic effect of food, right? But we can still point to one of those systems and say which one it changed. So when people kind of do a hand-waving argument of, well, what about insulin? What about this? What about that? Well, if it really makes a difference, it has to affect one of those systems. It's going to show up in one of those systems anyway. So when it comes down to, and we've talked about keto diets, high-protein diets, and you can go back to some of our old podcasts and

listen to those. And what I'll tell people is like, I have no problem with the keto diet, as long as somebody understands that, okay, well, they're going to kind of have to make that a lifestyle that that needs to be a lifestyle. And so if the diet, I'm, I'm a scientist, but I'm also a pragmatist. If the diet you're on, if you can't see yourself dieting that way, you know, months and years into the future, then the research the diet you're on, if you can't see yourself dieting that way, you know, months and years into the future, then the research says that you're probably going to regain all the weight you lose if, if not more. Right. So find something that, you know, allows you to create that, that beneficial energy balance in terms of like, if you want to lose weight, because obviously some people

want to gain muscle and want to be in a positive energy balance. But if you want to lose weight, something allows you to be in that, that in that negative energy balance to get to your goal and then maintain that. And actually, the research says that weight loss is not that difficult. It's actually weight maintenance that's very hard. Yeah. I mean, in this country, I think they had some ridiculous number. I can't remember the exact percentage, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of like 70% of Americans have lost weight before 20 pounds or more. And so, so losing weight is not really the huge problem. It's kind of staying there, right? Six of every seven

overweight or obese people will lose at least 10% of their body weight in their lifetime. Um, they will regain it within one year, 70% will have regained it within two years. It's 85% within three years, it's 95%. And of those people, one third to two thirds will add more weight than they lost anyway. Do you think if we were able to attack this at a much younger age, um, that we wouldn't need any sort of extremes? I think obesity and being overweight, I think it is such a multifactorial. There's physiological aspects to it. There's sociological aspects to it. There's psychological aspects to it.

It's just a very complicated issue. It's layered pretty fucking deep. Yeah, because some people will say, well, it's just psychology, right? People have bad relationship with food. If we could just correct that. Well, no, there's also a physiological things that go on. But one thing I can tell you is, you know, you can argue epigenetics, but our, you know, obesity is a new thing. It's in the last 70 years, really. Um, our genetics didn't change that drastically in 70 years. So, uh, one thing my PhD advisor said that I always really liked that I thought was a great statement, he said, genetics loads the gun for obesity, but behavior is what pulls the trigger. So, yes, are some people more predisposed to that? Absolutely.

Like you said, you were a heftier kid growing up, right? And my whole family's fat. Yeah, you're predisposed to that, but it was your behavior that, and you know, people say, well, if you have one obese parent, you're 40% more likely to be obese. And if you have two obese parents, you're 80% likely to be obese. Now, is that genetics or is that learned behavior? It's probably a little bit of both. Right. And trying to go back and tease apart, This is why weight loss is so individual, you know, in terms of what works, like you, you have to examine, okay, what was the reason that

they became overweight in the first place? Well, this person's always been overweight. Okay. So there's probably a genetic component. Well, this person lost their job, their spouse died, and then they became overweight. Well, that was probably a stress response or at least a big part of it. Right. And trying to figure out, like I always, when I have new clients, I try to figure out, okay, what's your diet history like, right? Like how much of a history of dieting do you have? And give me an idea of like, that's a good, good place to start. Yeah. What did your weight do in response to what? Right. And, um, I think that's, you know, we can get too simplistic with things and I had on Twitter

the other day like some of my followers were really giving this one guy a hard time who's a PhD RD who I don't agree with him very often his name's Jake May I want to say and he's kind of snide and sarcastic towards me sometimes but he seems to be a very smart guy we just disagree on certain things

but some of my followers started attacking him, and I was kind of like, hey, guys, this isn't productive. Go ahead and attack the ophthalmologist who's trying to speak about nutrition, but this guy's actually a PhD. So just because we don't agree doesn't mean he's wrong. I've been wrong about shit before, and I probably will be again too. You said that obesity is new um that it's uh within the last 70 years um as a large scale problem yeah yeah i understand

um back in the day it was a sign of wealth yeah right somebody was fat bitches be crank going all crazy around like he got some money on him yeah yeah living living off the fat of the land that's right um do you think it can be you know i i know that you probably don't agree with a lot of the statements by Gary Taubes, but do you at least agree that a lot of this can be traced back to sugar or. Objection leading the witness. Or do you, or do you think that we would be fucking fat no matter what? Like we would find a way. that we would be fucking fat no matter what. Like we would find a way. Well, I think we did find a way because if you look at,

if you actually look at a graph of sugar consumption, it goes up pretty steadily along with obesity until about the year 2000. And then it actually takes a relatively sharp downturn. We're actually consuming less and less sugar, but obesity kept climbing. So I think what happens is, it's like in the 70s when what we did was we took all the high fat products, replaced them with sugar, and people kept climbing. Right. So I think what happens is it's like in the seventies when

what we did was we took all the high fat products, replaced them with sugar and people kept getting fat. Well, now we've taken, we have low sugar products that have been replaced with fat and people keep getting fat. So I think at the end of the day, a lot of it is an energy balance thing, but how you come about that energy balance. I mean, some people for them, you know, like, so Holly and I, it's funny cause you know, Holly's very smart, registered dietitian, master of dietetics. We have a lot. Jacked. Jacked.

Jacked and tan. That's right. You see how great her tan is? She's very tan. She's very tan. She's got that part down. Yeah, it's crazy. People are like, where do you get that tan from?

She's just fucking tan, you know? Genetic specimen. Damn it. It's hard to hang out with somebody like that she makes you feel bad about yourself right do you know do you know that we're like we're on the plane right and we're both um everyone's asking her about working out and no one says shit to you well that's part of it but it's like literally some people have said to me because you know holly's a very beautiful girl they've've said to me, they're like, so what's going on with you? Are you her brother?

Yeah. It's almost like, it's okay. I get it. You're like, all right. Out kicked his coverage on that one. Okay. I'm like, you know, I'm all right. I got a few things going on.

All right. Just tell people that you're her cousin. See how they react. They'll be like, oh, perfect. And then they go sit next to her. We joked that me and Kabir are her brothers. Well, we have a lockbox in our house of junk food

because she can't have it out. She doesn't have that off switch. And for me, I don't understand. I would know right where that key is. Well, it's a code. I'm surprised she hasn't figured it out. The one time I left, it was funny.

I left, I was going fishing with my buddy. And she messages me, or she actually starts tagging me on Instagram. I had forgotten to lock the lockbox. And she opens it and she's like, all right, guys, what should I have first? And she's putting it up on her Instagram story. And I'm like, oh, shit. Because it really on her instagram story and i'm like oh shit because like it really you know it stresses her out you know but um i think she did a good job because actually by

putting it up on her instagram story then she didn't she didn't up eat anything but yeah like she doesn't have an off switch like um you know uh like what i do like i can eat i can eat 20 grams of skittles and then put it down, put it back in the box, close it up. You could eat a bunch of pizza right now and then your next meal could be healthy. Yeah. Like it doesn't bother me. I don't have that.

I've never had that weird association. Oh, I don't want to say never. I have had it, but it's been long enough to me being out of that to where I don't like, it doesn't trigger me, you know? And I don't have a, I think part of that is just looking at fuel or food as fuel. Right. And just saying, all right, well, that's 30 grams of carbohydrate and I got it from Skittles, but okay, I'll go have some broccoli and, and whatever, you know? Right.

Um, but yeah, some people just, she doesn't have that off switch and some people are like that. And I just, you know, instead of, I used to be kind of judgmental towards people like that. But everybody's wired differently. Yeah. You know what I mean? I got some shit, like I was saying, like she doesn't understand me when I travel. When they call my group, I want to be the first person on the plane. I want to get my shit in the overhead compartment.

I want to sit down and then I'll relax. Does it make sense for somebody who, like say they get into that lock box and they have a cheat meal that turns into a cheat day. Does it make sense for them like the next day to go like on a 24 hour fast or something? That's a great question. To try to fight against them in some way. Yeah. So, I mean, cause you're coming down to the research says, cause they've actually done,

I can, there's a lot of new research coming out in this, but they've actually done research on like kind of non-steady dieting where like you, you overfeed one day, underfeed the next day. And it doesn't seem to make a difference on fat loss. It seems to be more of the weekly calorie balance that makes the big difference. The caveat to that is- I guess that's something that people don't talk about often either is that your calories, they only reset because of convenience. Yeah, it's not like something magical happens at midnight.

But yeah, you don't have zero calories. Over the course of the week and the month, it's going to matter a lot more. To answer your question, it depends on the person. I think if you're some... I see a lot of people who get into this overeat, guilt, punishment cycle.

They'll overeat and then the next day they're doing a shitload of cardio. They're fasting. It just almost perpetuates itself because they do a crap load of cardio. They fast and then they get really hungry and then they do it again. Right. And it's kind of like they're going around in circles. So if I've got somebody like that where it's an actual like emotional kind of binge response, you know, or actual binge eating disorder, I'll tell them, look, just let's

go a little bit lower today in the next few days, but let's not, let's not do fasting or anything crazy. Let's just try to get back on the horse. Right. Because fasting might lead to them binging again. Well, and that what it is is that they're being punished. They're being punished for overeating. And so I want to try and take away that association.

Yeah. You don't need to be punished. You had a bad meal. No big deal. Let's get back on the horse. But I had a client even last night. They're like, hey, I got stuck somewhere. All I had to eat was this.

I went over my carb intake, my 40 grams today. Should I just go under my 40 grams next? Sure. Completely reasonable. That's totally fine. You know, that was just a calculated measure. Or like, for example, Holly, like one day she was like, well, I'd like to go out and have a couple glasses of wine, you know, this and that. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go over by this today, but I'll go under by that.

That is a thought out, rational response. That's fine. Right. You know, but again, it's when people start to get, they've had like something stressful happen. They binge ate in response. I don't like to create that kind of punishment cycle. So your answer is it depends, but, and that's just my personal opinion of how to deal with it, but everybody's different. You mentioned, uh, we're

eating less sugar, but, um, you know, everything turns into sugar in your body is like kind of another argument. Right. And, uh, there's a lot of companies, uh, I always use Doritos as an example because there's like nothing has more flavor than a fucking Dorito. Right. It's fabulous. There are a lot of companies making foods that were, you know, were quote unquote addicted to or were have a hard time regulating. I always struggle. I always struggle with the term addiction.

Not that I don't think people can be addicted to different things. It's like it's a very subjective term. Right. Right. So like, if we talk about addiction to heroin or cocaine or something like that, we can see very clearly what, I mean, you like shaking withdrawals, right. That's, that's very different. When we talk about food, you know, nobody ever had to come down from sugar where they're like, you know, sweating and shaking. Um, and like, so for example, Holly believes I'm addicted to nasal spray, like the philophen, you know, because, and I'm like, well, am I addicted or do I just like fucking breathing? You know, because like I can't sleep if I can't breathe out of my nose.

So if it comes down to me not sleeping or using the nasal spray five days in a row, I'm going to use a nasal spray five days in a row or 10 or 15, or even though it says in the bottle, don't do that. And does that mean I'm addicted to use a nasal spray five days in a row or 10 or 15 or even though it says in the bottle, don't do that. And does that mean I'm addicted to it or does it just mean I like it?

Or I just like to be able to breathe? Yeah. Well, if I like to, you know, have Skittles every night or Reese's Pieces, which those are my favorite.

Those are awesome. Have you guys seen the Reese's Cups stuff with Reese's Pieces? Oh, yeah. Amazing. Yeah, who did that? Bastards.

Fabulous. But does that mean I'm addicted to it, or is it I just like it? You know, so like people are like defining addiction. I mean, you could argue anybody who likes sex is addicted to sex, because, oh, you like to have sex. Well, okay, well, most people do if they have access to it and have the time for it, you know? So

it's kind of like, and people say, well, it activates the same pleasure center of the brain as this. Well, a lot of things activate that pleasure center. Okay. So trying to determine pleasure center. Yeah. Well, I was talking about, there's a study in the car. I think there was a study where they gave monkeys, like basically they hooked up like an orgasm button and the monkeys just kept pressing it. You know, I may have made this up, but I'm pretty sure I heard about this. So maybe I'm butchering it. But they wouldn't eat. They didn't sleep.

They just kept pressing the button. So it was just like, you want to talk about, that shit's better than heroin. How do you locate your pleasure center? Well, I'm not a brain expert. But a lot of it is a big dopamine response. So a lot of drugs work through the dopamine pathway. Yeah. And that's kind of our reward center.

You know, like if you've ever been into a new activity, right? Like, and you're learning about it really fast and it's very novel. Like dopamine is novelty, right? Or like if you've ever been in puppy love. So like when you're like in that infatuation, super, like you just can't get enough of that person. You think about them all the time. Yeah, right. So, but you're like, basically what you're having is a massive flooding of dopamine, right?

Like you're actually intoxicated for about six to 12 months. And yeah, that's that reward center, that pleasure center for lack of a better term. At least I think, hopefully I'm not. Any neuroscientists are welcome to comment and correct me if I'm screwing this up. Yeah. Papa Bell's checking in. Uh-oh. Hey.

What's up, Dan? Yeah. He's saying he doesn't have a full stop mechanism. He eats and then he eats after again. And then he feels like he should eat again. What's that all about? So there's actually, it's more so in dieting studies, but they show that like by the end of a diet, your hunger signals can become dysregulated. So like, and I've experienced this post-contest, I'm bringing this back to your dad, where I would eat and be physically full, like really physically full and still have the compulsion to eat.

And there's actually evidence. So you have gut hormones. And a lot of times though, that's the compulsion is to eat something that's kind of crappy because, you know, there's always room. There's always room for a donut, right?

Yeah. Well, so you have gut hormones like CCK and GLP one and some of these other things that, that talk to your brain. They, they, they send.

So I think CCK part of it is a stretch. Like your stomach stretches a certain amount and it causes CCK to be released. I could be butchering this, but from my nutrition 420 class, that's what I remember. And CCK goes to your brain and basically says, okay, we've had enough. Stop eating. Well, there's evidence that actually when you've been like calorically restricted, or maybe even in people who are obese, they could be dysregulated where your brain will like actively block that signal, give it the stiff arm and be like, nah, we're not done.

So that's why you can have people who continue overeating even when the physiological signals are, are, are done. And like that transition from like diet to, to overfeeding that a lot of us have had before. Have you ever finished a diet and then just like fucking blown out afterwards? Oh yeah. People, yeah. Rebound, right? Yeah. So that's very common. There's actually evidence now,

like adipose tissue is really amazing. Actually. We used to think about adipose tissue is just like this stationary tissue that just kind of sat there. And if you ate too much, it soaked it up. If you ate too little, it released some energy and that's pretty much what it did. And now we know adipose tissue is an organ. It's an organ. It secretes hormones. It talks to the brain. It talks to other organs. It talks to other tissues.

It's an organ. And not even homogeneous. There's different types of fat tissue. And when you regain fat, I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but when you regain fat after a diet, you preferentially regain it in your core as opposed to your extremities. And your lean body mass you lose is actually preferentially from your core as well. And when you regain it, you regain it slower in your core than you do your extremities. And that is actually more responsible for your metabolic rate in terms of lean tissue than some of your extremities. And things like, you know, leptin and some of these other hormones are usually dictated by, um, the size of

your fat cells. And they find that when you're actually calorically restricted and it kind of at that end of a diet phase, beginning of transition into not being dieting, that it's actually not the total, uh, fat mass or fat cells you have. It's more so the energy flux across the cell and you can actually create new fat cells. Usually new fat cells don't form like pre-adipocytes, don't differentiate into adipocytes unless you just become so obese that your body can't accommodate for anymore and has to make new fat cells, which it can. But even at the end of a diet, what happens is, again, people thought that fat cells just kind of sat there. And we know now your body is always making new fat cells and destroying old fat cells. And there's kind of this turnover. It's slow and it's very tightly regulated because normally your fat cell number

doesn't change. But at the end of a diet or at the end of caloric restriction, you actually create an environment where if you aren't careful with how you transition out of that, you can actually create new fat cells. So, um, dieting actually places a stress on the extracellular matrix of the fat cells and further, um, having lower, lower thyroid hormone and some other, just like, it kind of creates this perfect storm where if you overeat rapidly at the end of a diet, you can, you can cause your pre-adipocytes to spontaneously differentiate into adipocytes. So that's why I'm like telling people like at the end, now, a lot of this is my opinion based on the research I've seen, but I feel fairly confident in it. Um, that's why I tell people, I'm like, be really careful with how you end a diet and like transition. And that's why I

talk about, you know, reverse dieting and not, not just, you know, saying, well, time to bulk. You know what I mean? Like you want to transition, even if you're going to go into caloric surplus, you want to transition into that in a reasonable manner. How could somebody, how could somebody feed their hunger? You know, somebody like my dad who's still hungry. Like what's like, what are some options that maybe he would have? Well, I went down the rabbit hole, that question. That would be, that would be, that would be able to like stifle that, you know, cause it's like, it's hard just to be like, oh, we'll just go to

bed. Well, there's, so there's, there's a few things you can do and they're kind of mental tricks actually. One, use smaller plates. So if you use a smaller plate, the same amount of food looks bigger. Sounds dumb, but it actually showed that people ate 30 to 40% less when they use a smaller plate. That's why men like women with small hands. Holly does have trouble holding the deadlift bar. But you find that with small plates, people eat less spontaneously. Also, if you eat a big salad or soup before you go to your main meal, people tend to eat less of the main meal. And also kind of structure your food intake so that you are eating the less calorie dense, more filling things first. So eat your vegetables and your salad and all that kind of stuff. Eat that first and then transition to your other stuff. Um, is there any information about eating something that's hot? Um, like you said,

soup, probably. What about like, you know, eat like, uh, eating this, like I have bone broth, you know, and sometimes I'll have it after a meal. Cause I really still feel like eating something. It, uh, it obviously is not really filling me up just a liquid, but it's, uh, giving me enough satisfaction where I can just have that and go to bed. don't know i i don't know about hot versus cold i do know like some people get filled filled off coffee yeah you know yeah um but i don't know i've i've never really looked into that holly might know more about that just because she's more into the diet might be good just to have something in front of you too like if everyone's going to order dessert you know maybe you order maybe you have a coffee right, just so you don't have a,

you're not envious of what they're eating. I mean, it's, it's, you know, and this is what I taught, you know, obviously people kind of know me as the flexible dieting guy, but you know, I always say that flexible dieting is kind of self-regulating because if you're somebody who you're on, if you have to be on, you know, 1700 calories to lose weight, sure, you can have a piece of cheesecake, but there goes 1200 of your calories, you know, and it's not in something that's real filling. Right. So I always use this example of a friend of mine. So he Lee, I don't know if you ever heard of her, but she's really intelligent girl. She just finished her master's in psychology. She did. She won her pro card in bikini. And during that prep, she actually did an

experiment where she ate a Snickers every day. She fit into her macros and she ate a Snickers. I like this study. Right. So, um, but you know, after about three weeks of eating it every day, uh, so she got in great shape. She lost as much weight as it predicted she should lose. She said she hated eating that Snickers because that was 250 calories gone like that. And it was just a little thing, you know, she's like, I really just wanted a big salad. So if you do dieting, right. I don't get any ideas over there. No. If you're doing dieting, right. It should be self-regulating that as you get lower in calorie, you're just going to select foods that are more,

uh, or less calorie dense that are more, have more weight and more volume to them. Or less calorie dense that have more weight and more volume to them. But I think we kind of get away from that. And it's like, you know, I think about like I work from home, right? And I'm lucky I've got Icon Meals as a sponsor. And they deliver our weekly meals. Our buddy Todd Abrams. Awesome.

Awesome, dude. Shout out to Todd. But if you guys haven't checked out Icon, honestly, like they make really good stuff. And they deliver anywhere fast. They got good snacks and everything too great option their popcorn is actually crack oh my god yeah that's we can't have it in the house holly actually holly actually was like no we can't have that i went through too many bags oh man i'll just use it for the movies and i never crushed it every time yeah so once you open the bag that's it it's it's not getting reclosed done deal um but uh no not everybody has that option,

right? So it's like, if, if I actually had to, if I was going to a nine to five job and I had to make my food and I had to do all this kind of stuff, like it would be really hard, you know, like I get to work from home, I get a controlled environment, except when my kids are there. Cause they go crazy. Uh, but, um, you know, it, it, it just would be really difficult. So I understand like the struggle. And I think it's just, I never got it just would be really difficult. So I understand, like, the struggle. And I think it's just I never got it put better to me than, yes, you know, certain things are harder and whatnot. But everything is a choice, right? At the end of the day, everything is a choice.

So Les Brown had a motivational speech that I really liked. I love that guy. Yeah, he said, people say they want to lose weight or they, they say they want to do this. They say, watch their actions. That tells you if somebody really wants something, you know,

I'm sure some people do want to lose weight, but if they don't want it worse than they want to just get to their job quick and not have to cook something, then they're not going to, you know? Yeah. I have people all the time. They'll tell me they don't have time. I said,

there's no such thing. Like that's gotta be blocked out of your head. That doesn't, that doesn't exist anymore well you know my therapist was really good about making this very she's she'll fucking tell me straight like she's a savage you know and she'll like i would say same like well i want to do this and i want to do this and she's like lane stop saying that because if you really wanted this you would have done this she's like so stop saying that she's like pick the things that you want the most put them in order of priority i think everybody could use that right like one

of the things she made me say was like well i want to be best dad possible and she's like well then quit this and i'm like i can i can't quit that like that's that's important to me it's like okay well that's fine she's like listen she's like me. It's like, okay, well, that's fine. She's like, listen, she's like, if you, she's like, nobody wants to say this, but sometimes you can't put your kids first. Right. Just like, that's, that's now sometimes you have to, and a lot of times you have to, but she's like, you also got to take care of you. She's like, but don't say this if you're going to do this because you're not putting your

kids first. A lot of times between the ages of around 30 to 50, uh, uh, in a lot of relationships, well, sometimes the female as well, but, but the guy's got to work, you know, to provide for the family. Right. And so, yeah, you're absolutely right. Like, uh, the guy might have to go to work at eight o'clock and that's just, he can't put the kid, he can't hang out with the kids for that day. Right. And that's just, he can't put the kid, he can't hang out with the kids for that day. Right. I mean, it's just the way they go sometimes.

Well, if I want to compete in powerlifting, you know, I'm going to do four hours in the gym or something like that. Like when I've got my kids and, you know, or if I'm going to go to the gym, put them in the kind of the gym daycare or whatever, am I really being the best dad possible? No, the best dad possible would say, well, fuck powerlifting. I'm just going to spend the time with my kids. Right. So, but you also have certain things, you have to have certain things that make you happy. Otherwise you're probably going to be

a pretty crappy dad as well. Yeah. That's on balance. And it doesn't, um, it doesn't show your kids anything either. It's kind of better if you're doing multiple things. So kind of be like, man, dad's kicking a lot of ass. He's powerlifting and doing all these different things. And I think, you know, again, what my therapist was good about was like calling me out on it, right. Saying, don't say this because you're not. And you would say the same thing. Yeah. Right.

So somebody that wanted to be a better power lifter, you'd say, well, stop saying that. You can't say that. Like if you want to be a world champion. You're getting drunk on the weekends. What are you doing? Yeah, exactly. Like. It's ridiculous.

It's, it's, you're not doing every single thing you can. And in today's game, people are taking their game to such a high level, whether it's power lifting, business, social media whatever you really i've understood more than ever the need to find out what am i good at and and and focus on that don't like i started like last year i kind of was like trying to start like a clothing brand or something like i figured out pretty quick that that's yeah that don't don't waste time on that. People don't follow me for clothing. You know what I mean?

Like, it's just not like, I'll probably have some stuff just for people for making a few bucks here and there, but I'm never going to have like a, an alpha lead or something like that. Like, it's just not going to happen. That's not why people follow me. They follow me for information. You know? It's a lot easier to figure out who you're not.

You're right. It's than it is to figure out who you are. And you to kind of poke around you're like well i can't execute that the way that guy does but maybe i'm better at this right well i know what i'm good at i like lifting heavy things i like giving people information and i like interacting with people so take those and find out a way to make money from it. Right. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, but it's been, like I said, it's, it's been a really, um, like I was, I was telling Andres, I was like, I used to think I was just like, I wanted to handle everything because I was a bad motherfucker. You know what I mean? I could handle everything. It didn't matter. I could do the accounting for my business and I could be dad and I could be the husband and I could do this and I could do that. No, it doesn't

work that way. You know? And one of the hardest things for me was delegating. Yeah. It's very rare for anybody to do that, whether it be a Warren Buffett or, you know, the dude that runs Amazon or, you know, like it's, it's just too much. You can't do everything. Yeah. You're so limited. You're in too many places at once.

Yeah. And that's the thing is like, I would hate, I would also hate telling people no. Like, that's one of the things I've had to get really good at. Sorry. No, I can't do your podcast. Not you, of course, because you're hot. That's right. Uh, like I, you know, I've had people who reach out and say, Oh, I really love your stuff. And I'll, and I'll go look at it. They've only got, you know, 500 subscribers or whatever. Now,

10 years ago, I'm doing that podcast. Right. But now it's like, I look at that. Well, that's an hour I could spend with my kids, or that's an hour I could be in the gym, or that's an hour Holly and I could be doing something, or that's an hour I could spend with my kids, or that's an hour I could be in the gym, or that's an hour Holly and I could be doing something, or that's an hour I could spend on business elsewhere. And it's not that I don't hate your podcast. I don't hate you. You probably have some awesome stuff to say, and I'm sure we'd have a good time.

But I just, I can't commit that hour. But I ain't got time for that shit. I can't commit that hour to that, because if I do that, I'm taking it away from something else. And what I'm saying is that that is more important than the other thing I'm doing here. And it's just not. We've talked in the past about being on Joe Rogan. You know, you've seen me on there a couple of times and in my- How are you listening?

Yeah. In my conversations with him, you know, we brought your name up. We brought a couple of friends' names up that we thought would be- Tag Joe Rogan in this podcast. So that we thought would be worthwhile, you know know, um, when you're listening to his show and you listen to, you know, Gary Tobbs, Peter, I Tia, some of these guys, um, and just anyone, anytime they're talking about nutrition, are you sometimes like tensing up being like, man, I wish I could get on there and kind of say my piece and say my side of things. Probably.

Is it going to be real popular with Joe? I don't listen to those episodes because it will probably make me angry. It will give you a heart attack. Not so much like a – I just – I think Joe Rogan – here comes the ego-strucking. I think Joe Rogan is actually a very intelligent person. Yeah. Like the stuff I've listened – because I started listening to him when he was doing MMA announcing.

Yeah. And I always liked his stuff. And I'm a libertarian. Joe's a libertarian. I really like what he has to say about a lot of that kind of stuff. Like we probably sit down and have a beer or in this case, he'd smoke a, smoke some weed.

From an MMA standpoint. I mean, he taught the world about like what the people were doing when they're grappling on the ground. Now people cheer for those moves. He, he, he made,

he made ground stuff fun. Yeah. You know, he made it exciting. I remember I loved watching. People used to boo it. People were like, what are they doing? Most exciting fight I ever saw was Nick Diaz versus Carl Parisian

because they're just rolling around on the ground doing crazy jiu-jitsu moves and judo. But here's the thing. Greg Knuckles said this to me, another very insightful thing, and it really made me think, and I really liked it. Why is that guy so smart? He's very smart. He said, he also has a, by the way, has a publication named Mass, where they review him, Eric Helms, and Dr. Mike Zortos review studies in nutrition and strength training every month. Fabulous. He does that like on Facebook or something, or is it a website? No, it's a subscription. It's a subscription PDF, but each PDF is like a hundred pages. Somebody else on the podcast mentioned that they, maybe it was Stan.

I think Stan has a subscription to it. Lanemass.com from my affiliate link. There you go. Awesome. But honestly, it's great, great, great subscription. But he said, Greg was on my podcast and Greg said, one of the problems is, is that people are really good at determining when somebody knows more about a subject than them. Right?

What they're really bad at is when there's two people that know more about a subject than them, who is the more knowledgeable of the two? Because think about it. If you... You just think they're the same kind of... I'll give you an example.

I love to fish. Fishing is one of my hobbies. Right? If there's two expert anglers that are on a show and they're arguing over which knot is better to tie for a topwater lure, how the hell am I going to know?

Unless I want to go through and actually tie the knot, test the strength, you know, that sort of stuff and test the movement of a lure some way. How am I going to know? I'm just going to pick the guy I like more. You know what I mean? Right. But that's how nutrition goes. You get attached to certain personalities or you get, you resonate. Human beings are,

we like groups. We're very herd type animals. So we like to identify with a movement. And like, if you go into down the rabbit hole of like the anti-artificial sweetener people, like they're like a frigging church, man. Like I had a gal tell me I should be convicted of child abuse if I give my daughter like Diet Coke, you know? And I think it's people, one, if they identify with something like that, they want to belong to something and they want to feel like a greater cause. So I think that's where it's easy to become a little bit of a zealot, you know? And I'll give you an example where that happened with me. I'm a Joe, I'm a gun guy.

So, you know, and I'll give you an example where that happened with me. I'm a Joe, I'm a gun guy. So, you know, I like target shootings when my, I'm not a hunter, no, no problem with hunter, but I do like competitive pistol shooting and that sort of thing. Um, and I, I was a member of the NRA and because, you know, I believe in gun rights, but like that whole kind of subset of people also identifies with other beliefs other than just gun rights. Right. And I started like finding myself like moving more that. And then I had to be like, wait, what the hell? I don't actually believe that. Why am I saying that? You know, it's because people like to feel like they belong to something, you know? So like, why does, why do people tend to gravitate to one or the other political groups? Like, you know,

if you're a Democrat, you don't probably really believe everything a Democrat says, but Democrats tend to get behind other Democrats and just fall in line with a certain ideology. You know, that's why a lot of times I say, if you talk to most people, most people are kind of libertarian just in, just in the way they feel, but they'll identify with one part or the other because they feel more strongly about something. Right. But I think that's where it's easy to get wrapped up into, well, let's blame carbs or let's blame fats or let's blame whatever you want to pick, toxins, whatever.

And honestly, I think it's sexier to have somebody on a show saying, well, this is bad, let's get rid of this, or to have somebody say, well, this is bad. Let's get rid of this. Or to have somebody say, you've, you've been lied to, you know, the government's covering this up or whatever it is. It's the food pyramid that made us fat. Yeah. I mean, I think, um, you know, what, what I disagree with every single thing, any of them say, no, I can find, you know, if you, um, it's like, um, the, what the health documentary, right? Garbage, garbage. But there

was one thing they said that I agreed with and I admitted it. I, they, they said, well, sugar doesn't cause diabetes. I said, well, I think on the surface, that's probably true. If you're controlling for calories now, sugar is easy to overeat on. So people tend to overeat on it, right? They don't, if you drink a Coke, you don't go, well, that was 50 grams of carbohydrate. So I'm going to take that out from my, from my pasta later. No, they just drink it on top of what they usually eat. But, um, no, it's same thing. Like I think in general, you know, like take the paleo diet. I think in general, if you tell people eat more protein, more vegetables, I think those are probably reasonable recommendations and would help reduce the

intake for most people. But it's when you become a zealot about it, don't eat beans because our ancestors didn't eat beans. Don't drink milk because our ancestors didn't drink milk. You know, milk's bad for you because it has pus. Every study we have on dairy says that people who have higher intakes of dairy tend to be leaner, stronger, and better body composition. So listen, regardless of what our ancestors did it seemed like dairy's all right you know but people get so like encamped in a belief system that they that's why i tell people i tend to piss everybody off because i just piss on your beliefs because if it's not supportive so i piss off keto i piss off paleo i piss off vegan i piss off everybody

because i'm just going well you're actually wrong about that. So when somebody says something like sugar doesn't cause diabetes, maybe a right way of saying it would be if you abused sugar for a long time and became heavy and became obese, maybe you abused it enough to be insulin resistant. Maybe not even obese, right? Because obesity doesn't, not always obese to have diabetes, right? So that's actually, that's a good point. People don't know this. But if you abuse sugar for a long period of time. If you overeat sugar, you're probably overeating calories.

And so you're probably going to create, you know, a situation where you become metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes. That's possible, you know? And not everybody though, right? Because some people can handle sugar just fine. Well, and well, some people don't have the, are, will reduce their intake elsewhere, you know, and some people don't have that, right? So, but for some people is sugar a bigger contributor? We've talked about, you don't have the off switch, right? So you, you know, that if you have one donut, you're going to have 20, you know? So knowing that, Holly's the same way. So knowing that, you have to accommodate

for that. And that's where individual variability comes in. And so when I was on the Mixed Mental Arts podcast with Hunter and Brian Callen, I said, people try to paint me into this corner as I'm a flexible dieting guy, just track calories. No, I think everybody's different, but I'm not an anti-keto guy. I'm not an anti-vegan guy. I'm not an anti-paleo guy. I'm not an anti, I'm just an anti-bullshit guy, you know? So if you, if you say something that's not supported by the data, I'm just going to call you on it, you know? And so I think, you know, I don't know, I like, I would, you know, love to do a podcast like that because I would love to reach the general public and just kind of,

I think, I think it's good to tell people, Hey, you probably want to limit your intake of sugars. But I think when you get into saying, well, sugar is a poison, like you're creating,

you're creating problems for some people because now they look at it and they, and there's guilt associated with it. And this is how you can create eating disorders in people. There's probably, all of it is probably, I mean, all, if all of it can probably be viewed almost as a poison, if you eat crazy amounts of, of any of it really. The dosage makes the poison. The dosage makes the poison. You've got elite athletes who need sugar to perform. I don't want to say need. It's wrong. Who perform better with some sugar.

Right. You know, people who are consuming 6,000, 8,000 calories. Try to consume 8,000 calories a day from vegetables, high protein, and fat. Right. You can do it, but you're not going to feel real good. Yeah. Like, you're going to have some GI distress, you know? So, it's all about context.

And, and, and, you know, again, if in general, there's some general rules that work well for most of the population, right.

But you can't apply it to everybody. And I think painting anything with a broad brush is doing everybody a disservice. And so, like I said, like, um, is it like flexible dieting, for example,

is it good to get all your carbs from people said, well, why don't you just drink whey protein, eight pop tarts, peanut butter, and then filled in your fiber with, with been a fiber, right? Well, no, that's probably not the best thing, but could you lose weight and get healthier from it? You probably could, to be honest, but is it the absolute best thing you could do? No, but that doesn't, the best, I always tell people, the best diet you can be on is probably the one you can stick to, to be honest with you, because consistency and, I mean, it's like the gym, right? Right.

If you're not in here every day, it don't matter if you got the best program in the world. If you're not consistent with it, it's not going to do shit. Yeah. You need the consistency. And a lot of people will kind of like diet hop, you know, and they'll, they'll be on, you know, one diet and then the next day or, you know, they're on another diet and it's like, you need, you know, not only a few days and not only a few weeks, but probably a few

months. And sometimes like this stuff takes a long time. I've had some people in here that I've put on a ketogenic diet or even just, I'd rather just call it a low carb diet, put people on a low carb diet. And sometimes it will take them two or three months to just learn the food and to just catch the rhythm and to be honest with themselves. Because as you were, you were pointing out earlier, your therapist said, no, this isn't what you really want to do. People say they want to lose weight, but they're still drinking on the weekend. It's like, well, I'm, you know, for you anyway, in this particular case, that doesn't work for you. Maybe that

works for somebody else. Maybe somebody else has to think about it less than they, they just cut back carbs by 50% and all of a sudden they've lost 20 pounds. Yeah. And I work that way for everybody. Yeah. I mean, it's again, I'm a very, what I try to get people to be honest about is, okay, just don't say things like calories don't matter. Let's just get away from that. Now, it was funny because I kind of just had a really big Twitter debate with a doctor who was a very big low-carb, high-fat zealot. And he kind of talked in circular logic about, well, you know, a ketogenic diet works better and this and that. And at the end he kind of said, well, but a lot of people can stick to it better. I said,

well, that's what I've been saying this entire time. And then he goes, he goes, well, my work here is done. I said, no, no, you like talked your way around this. And then I like, what I've never heard you say, okay, it's not metabolically advantageous. I've never heard you say that you kind of try to like make it sound like there's some kind of magic, but at the end you said, well, it's better adherence, maybe slightly. Like it does seem on the average, like a little bit, uh, lower carb, higher fat, it produces a little bit better dietary adherence. I think it's probably less to do with a low carb and more to do with by trading out carbohydrate for fat. I think it's much harder to be with a low carb and more to do with by trading out carbohydrate for fat. I think it's much harder to be on a low fat diet than it is to be on a high fat diet.

Yeah, a low fat diet, especially like if you're somebody- You can't go out to eat. Yeah, you can't go out to eat and things like that. But for some people, they don't care. They don't care. They'll prep all their meals and they'll do fine. I know Alberto Nunez, he's a very successful natural bodybuilder and he eats like 50 grams of fat a day.

So shredded. He shreds his shit. You know, he's eaten 800 grams of carbs a day in the off season, 400 grams of carbs during prep, you know? So again, I think it boils down to individualism. And I think, I think hopefully in the future, what's going to happen with nutritional recommendations is they're going to move towards that. Um, but it's tough cause not everybody can afford a personal coach.

Right. And, uh, if you're the government, you have to give some kind of, I mean, well, you don't have to, but you're the government. So you feel like you got to say something about everything. So you've got to give some kind of recommendation. So do you overgeneralize and maybe give it the wrong information or do you not say anything and hope or give people all the information and set and probably confuse them? Somebody might say something like, uh, like sleep, right? Sleep has a very specific, uh,

like, like RX, like a prescribed amount of sleep for everyone in the entire world is like seven to nine hours. Now I know that there's other people that can kind of, so the people that get five and I understand, but like, um, in, in just hearing different people talk about sleep, they just say there's so much more benefit if you're getting seven to nine hours. Yes. Is there anything in nutrition that resembles anything close to that? Like, can we, could we just flat out say like, you're not going to get obese if you do these three things, or you're not going to get fat if you were to, you know, is there, can you, can we prescribe an amount of carbohydrates to people, an amount of fat to people, uh, that rep, that goes along with their body weight or, or is it, or there's too many different things going on

in the human body to, uh, to have an RX for it. It's tough because I've seen people eat a clean diet of low carb, uh, modest fat, higher protein, and still get, get fat. Right. Um, now a lot of that was targeted overfeeding sometimes, but I think in general, like general rules for improving adherence and satiety are, you know, eat a higher protein diet, probably around, uh, two grams per kilo of lean body mass or up to three grams per kilo of lean body mass. of lean body mass or up to three grams per kilo of lean body mass. Um, you know, eat more vegetables, more fiber. And, you know, as far as carbs and fats go kind of find where you're able to be most adherent. And I, and I'll also like trying to become hopefully at some point an intuitive eater where you, I don't, people use the term intuitive eating and they just

go kind of, let's go by what, how hungry I am. Yeah. Most people can't, it's too difficult to, our hunger signals become so dysregulated because of the way our society works. What I mean so far is, is if you eat a plate of something, having a general good idea of what was in it. Like most people just don't know that, you know, the most I ever learned about nutrition was when I first got into bodybuilding and I just went through the supermarket and looked at what does this food have in it? Like you would learn so much if you just, like I tell people, just track what you eat for three weeks. Don't even change anything. I almost forgot about that time period in my life, like where I checked every label of everything.

And I was like, and you learn a lot, but you learn a ton. And what happens is that, you know, you might not be able to estimate perfectly, but you usually know around what you're taking in. Now,

you know, a bag of chips, you know, you kind of like have an idea of what that looks like. I can tell you what most bags of chips are. 21 grams of carbohydrates and seven grams of fat. Yeah. And milk and everything else.

You got an idea, like 13 grams of sugar, you know? Yeah. Eight grams of fat. I think honestly, like that education for most people would be a huge benefit. You know, what are we, you know, teaching in high school that kids aren't using? Well, what if we like just taught them how to like, what was in food, you know? Because here's the other thing too, is if you're tracking what's in your food, you probably change your behavior just by default because you'd have to look at it.

Yeah. When it comes to, you're mentioning the sugar, perhaps not causing diabetes. Diabetes is caused from insulin resistance, right? We don't know exactly what causes it. Some people argue this. I'll give you my opinion. And I'm kind of in line with my PhD advisor, Don Lehman. Maybe just start out saying what diabetes is first. So diabetes is basically where you have, uh, so type one diabetes is where your

body does not produce insulin. Uh, usually it comes on in early child or, uh, like adolescence, like anywhere from, you know, five to 15 years old, usually after some kind of – they find it's usually after some kind of virus. It's kind of like an autoimmune response where your body gets rid of the virus but also for some reason attacks your pancreatic beta cells. At least that's what we think happens. So you can't produce insulin and your glucose becomes really high. And glucose is actually – is toxic to your blood vessels. And so you have to clear that. And if you don't have insulin, you can't clear it because insulin disposes of glucose into muscle tissue, adipose, and other tissues.

So that's why people who are type 1 have to have exogenous insulin. Type 2 is quite different. exogenous insulin. Yeah. Type two is quite different. Uh, type two, basically your insulin that you do produce becomes less effective. So your blood, your blood sugar begins to come, become elevated because the same insulin that would normally dispose of that glucose is now no longer having the same effect. And you release insulin typically when you eat carbohydrates, but it can get spiked from protein. Protein as well. And that's where I always kind of come to the great cognitive dissonance of people like Gary Taubes, where they're advocating for a high protein, which I love high protein diets. But it's like, all right, well, if insulin is what's really doing this, insulin goes up after protein.

So how do you... As much? Probably not as much, but it's still going up. So how do you, how do you, uh, probably not as much, but it's still going up. So how do you kind of reconcile the two of those? Now I'll tell you kind of, you mentioned you can be fat and still not be type two diabetes. There are people who are fat,

who are by all means, if you went and check their blood lipids and everything are still in shape. Yeah. They've been fat their whole lives and they don't have type 2 diabetes. And a lot of times there are people who exercise who are just, they don't lose the weight and they're just fat. It's called the fat but fit phenomenon. And there's people that are skinny that can have diabetes. Yes, exactly.

So what I, this is 100%, I'm off the reservation here. I'm going out on a limb. Okay, this is not a scientific fact, everyone listening. This is just my a hundred percent opinion. I don't think obesity causes diabetes, type two diabetes. I don't think type two diabetes causes obesity. I think they come across in parallel, just in a high percentage because of when you have too much energy coming in, you have to dispose of it. And you create, your mitochondria can become dysfunctional. And basically, you've got to think about mitochondria, the steps of glycolysis and then the Krebs cycle.

You have glucose enters and eventually winds up somehow as ATP. Well, it doesn't get converted to ATP, but it drives ATP production, but gets converted to essentially carbon dioxide and water. That's what all oxidative respiration ends up as. In those steps of that chain, if you start, think about like a train. If the front end of the train slows down, the whole thing slows down right, you start stacking it up even if they weren't connected, if you had one slow down, the rest of it would start, it's like traffic traffic's a better indication

red light, traffic starts backing up if you're not oxidizing these intermediates what you find is, and in diabetes you find this, type 2 diabetes these intermediates start to build up in the mitochondria. And what happens is everything inhibits the thing behind it.

So it's called negative feedback. And what happens is it starts backing up into the bloodstream. Okay, because you now can't dispose of it into the cell. Because if you look in type 2 diabetes, not only are carbohydrates elevated, lipids are elevated, uh, fatty acids are elevated and amino acids are elevated in the bloodstream. So people kind of look at this the wrong, in my opinion, the wrong way. There was a researcher who was like, well, branch chain amino acids are elevated in the bloodstream in obese, in obesity and diabetes. So they must be, they're causing it. They're somehow the cause of it.

No, everything's elevated. Everything's becoming backed up, but it starts at the mitochondria, which is your, where you produce energy. Because if you just, here's, and here's why I don't think obesity is causing diabetes or vice versa. If you have somebody calorie restrict and start exercising, I bet you within, because we saw this in our lab, with Lehman's lab, with some of the studies did within three, four weeks, their blood work fine. Like it, it, it, it corrects itself that quickly.

Um, they didn't lose all the weight they put on. Right, right, right. So what happened now they're eight, like something like HBA1C, which is a glycosylated hemoglobin that will take longer to go down. And that's a, that's a marker for diabetes, but that's because blood cells take 90 days to turn over. So you're basically saying though that you're going to run into a problem. You could be likely to run into a problem if you're consuming excess amounts of food.

Of anything. And you're not burning it up. Right. Period. Right. You can have heart disease. What we have is- You can end up with all kinds of different things.

You know, one of the best ways to get the mitochondria work is to work out. Right. You know? I think people go, oh, it's 80% nutrition, 20% exercise. I'm a nutrition guy. That statement's bullshit.

You would love for it to be that way. You'd make more money. I would love for it to be- Listen, I tell people, like, I wish I would have found magic foods. I went to grad school to find magic foods. Because if I found magic fat-burning, muscle-building foods, guess what? I wouldn't be here.

I'd be sitting on my 200-foot yacht in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Eat blueberries. Eat avocados. Fucking getting fanned by five bitches on either side. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. But, like, I would have made a ton of money. But the fact of the matter is there wasn't magic foods.

Like, we just didn't find that, you know? um, magic diet, not a magic diet, you know, but overconsumption of anything, you know, like people say, what about protein? Protein's harder to over consume just cause there's, there's, well, you can only like, it's a hard to like eat three, 400 grams of protein. Like that's an actual job. You know what I mean? like eat three, 400 grams of protein. Like that's an actual job. You know what I mean? Um, but you could protein itself probably wouldn't make you fat, but it's enough calorie cushion that if you ate enough carbohydrates and fat, that would make you fat. So it's complicated,

but again, too much of anything is probably a bad thing. And, you know, I think we're going to tease a lot more of these things. I do think some people do physiologically better on a higher carb, lower fat diet and vice versa. But we don't know kind of people claim they have blood tests and genetic tests that measure this shit. But I don't. Yeah. I'm kind of. I think I think we know we've sequenced the human genome. I don't think we exactly know what everything means just yet.

So I don't think you can get blood work done. It just automatically shows that you're gluten intolerant, right? I mean, uh, uh, let's see. Gluten intolerant. It's like a 23andMe or whatever shows you that you're like, I don't know. It tests your genetics, right? Ask Holly about that. Holly actually knows.

So Holly is actually celiac. Yeah. So she knows a lot about GI disorders and whatnot, uh, just from her own personal interest and is really FODMAP sensitive too. So she would be good to ask about that. But yeah, it's, I think we will get to that point where we're going to have, you know, you'll get genetic testing done and find out what you're probably more predisposed to do well on. But then again, at the end of the day, let's say it says, well, you do genetically best on a high carbohydrate, low fat diet. But that makes you overeat.

Right. Because you really like carbs and you tend to, you know, eat more carbs. Well, then maybe it's not the best diet for you. All right. So there's, again, this, this problem is a, is a multifactorial problem. I think most of these things start with, uh, just hunger and cravings. Um, you know, because not always, cause some people, it starts with stress, man. Like some people, different stress, but some people get stressed and they become anorexic. Like my, uh, my personal assistant, David Mathis, awesome guy. He was an army medic. He was like literally on his deathbed. And when he describes it, you know, he kind of had a little bit of, um, you know, he said

it was kind of like, um, I don't want to, I don't want to misquote him. So David, I'm sorry if I, if I screw it up. Lovely guy, by the way, awesome guy. Um, but he, uh, he became anorexic, but he was like, you know, what really wasn't like, I didn't, I wasn't like scared of food or necessarily it's kind of a control thing. It was kind of a control thing. Like he had a control issue, right. And being over in, in, I think he was stationed in Afghanistan for a little while, and he was like, you know, also, like, it's an example that he doesn't sleep well because he was used to just getting woken

up, like, bombs would go off or whatever, and he would just, he just has a hard time sleeping. Well, all that stuff kind of, like, there was a few kind of traumatic things that happened in his life, and he just stopped eating and started exercising a ton, you know? And, and like he, he posted a picture the other day on Facebook and he was like, he

got admitted to the hospital. Like he, his vitals were bad. People don't realize this. Anorexia is actually the most deadly mental disorder in the States. More so than depression. It kills more people every year than depression. Wow. I didn't know that.

Yeah. So people, people don't realize like these food disorders and like the way we talk about food, people got to be careful. I've worked with, I've worked with probably

800 to 1,000 women over the last 15 years. Over 70% of them had some form of eating disorder. And I'm not, I'm not trying to dog on women at all. No, yeah.

Like, but I think when you're, when you're told from a young age, you need to be skinny. You need to be on a diet. Like, and a lot of these are learned behaviors from their mothers. Right.

Right. So mothers will look at themselves in the mirror and call themselves fat or the, and I'll tell my female clients, if you have kids, if you have daughters and you call yourself fat, you're going to give your daughter an eating disorder. It's very likely to happen. Right. Like it's just.

I've been talking to my kids since they were really young about nutrition. And when, when they were really little, I kind of made it kind of black and white just because I thought that was the easiest way. And I would say. It's hard to give kids context. Yeah. And so like when they'd eat a cookie or something, I would say, and they wanted a ice cream after dinner, I'd say, no, you had the cookie earlier. Yeah. And so like when they'd eat a cookie or something, I would say, and they wanted a ice cream after dinner, I'd say, no, you had the cookie earlier. Yeah.

As, as they got older, they, they kind of self-regulate themselves a little bit anyway. My son a little bit less, but like, uh, you know, he loves to have a Coke with his, with his meal. And, you know, I try to teach him like, you know, just, just have one, you know, because they're going to keep refilling it over and over again. The thing you don't want to do is say that Coke's bad. Right. That Coke's bad. Or you've done a bad thing or make them feel bad for eating a certain thing. Right. I just try to teach them, just, just regulate, just know what's going on. Just be aware, like let them know, know what the hell's happening. Yeah. Because if you, I remember it, I was at a party one time. I'm not going to say who it was. Um, they're a friend of mine, but, and

they didn't do it on purpose, but they're referring, they were using fat free cheese and they were, they were like, they told their daughter. Fat free cheese. Go have, go have the, go have the,

you're going to have the bad cheese. Like, don't say that. Yeah. Like don't refer to food as bad or good. Like refer to what it is. Well, honey,

you're just going to have the regular cheese. Okay. Cause she's like, like, you know, this kid is like skin and bones. Like it doesn't matter. But if they hear I'm having the bad cheese, well, then they're going to grow up thinking that is bad, that fat is bad or the, you know, like that sort of stuff. And you don't want to create those kinds of associations. This stuff, this stuff messes people up.

People don't realize this. This stuff messes people up. There are people who are very, very, like I've worked with people who are intelligent, top of their field MDs who have eating disorders because, and even though they know better, because you can't, once something gets crossed up in here, it's hard to undo. It is. It is. And I think, you know, it's, um, you know,

people are just very sensitive to it. Like it's a hard thing to even talk about. You know, somebody doesn't want to be like, Hey, I'm fat. I need to make some changes. You would have no idea how many top level people that I've worked with who

I've never said that I worked with me and who never admitted that they worked with me because they had such bad eating disorder. I'm not trying to say I'm like a therapist or eating disorder specialist or anything like that. They end up being one kind of, yeah. But, but I mean, just trying to unfuck their minds from what they had been told from previous coaches and throughout the course of their life. Like some people have such a distorted view of nutrition and food. It's just, it's really tough. You know, it's really, really tough. Um, and you know, I keep client stuff pretty confidential, but I mean, I've worked with people who had millions and

millions of followers who, you know, looked on the surface, like they would have the life everybody wanted. And these people were like prisoners in their own mind, you know, it had no quality of life. It's, it's, it's pretty nuts, but you know, food is something that is, you know, has to be part of every day, right? It's like when somebody drinks or somebody does drugs, they can go to therapy for it and they can do all kinds of things. And we don't really have a protocol for food in the same way. Yeah.

Yeah. Sounds pretty bleak, but I think we're actually, I think things will get better. You're in a much different spot than you were the first time I had you on the podcast. I think you were a little bit more – you were still open because I remember in speaking to you, a lot of friends were like, oh, you talked that asshole, Lane Norton. I didn't know asshole was associated. I thought PhD or doctor was associated with him. Pretty huge dick.

Pretty sure that's what it stands for. That's right. Literally and figuratively. That's right. But anyway, they would always, they would always say, you know, oh, you know, was he, you know, talking about flexible dieting or whatever. I was like, actually, no, he was, he was very open, but you see even more open now than you were then.

Yeah. Well, I think life has a way of humbling you. Yeah. So you get too big for your britches and you start to learn, oh, you didn't know as much as you thought about that. And, you know, like, like digging through the research more and more, I mean, you talked about, you know, it's probably a little bit your fault, probably a little bit environment, probably a little bit genetics, obesity, you know, I used to be like, it's your fault. If you're fat, that's your fault. Stop eating. Just stop eating. Put the fork down, asshole. And then you start to get into it a little more and you hear people's story

of how they kind of overate and how they got to there and you realize, yeah, they did make a decision, but life's complicated. You definitely don't, so from your perspective, you don't think that it's one thing. Like someone like... I think it can be one thing. I mean, I think if you're somebody who

eats 200, 300 grams of sugar a day, well, then you're probably going to be overweight or obese just through pure calorie. If you eat, you know, a tub of peanut butter every day, you're probably going to be overweight because, but, but I think that in general, if we look at what can cause it, I think it's very highly multifactorial, you know? And, um, I think we need to be open to the idea that maybe, you know, let's not make the type one error and assume that just because something worked for us, it's best for everybody. And let's not also make the other error that because something works for most people, it should work for everybody. Let's be open-minded enough that we're not closed off to either one. We got a few questions over there.

Yeah. From right behind me. Uh, Joey's asking, do you think it's a, like a, a problem with like over-tracking your macros and stuff? So I think if you're somebody who, uh, tends to have kind of that obsessive compulsive type, uh, style that you can become a problematic with tracking macros. I mean, I've had people go, Oh, hi. Well, I went over my three grams of carbohydrate. I'm like, stop. Like that's, that's nothing, you know, like that's, that's a, that's a spit, you know what I mean? Like, and in fact, food labels aren't even that accurate that you can be that close. So for somebody like that trying to, but that's tough

because they're going to be obsessive with something. Like if they were trying to do like low carb, they'd become obsessive about low carb. You can't coach somebody out of their own personality. So that's something where I just try to get them to, to, to, if I can get them into their logic brain and out of their, that brain. At least relax a little bit on it. You know, like, um, yeah, it's, it's usually you can talk to somebody and say, okay, well, like you've got this little bit of buffer, you know, like, don't worry about hitting

me exactly. Try to get within five grams of each and be consistent. And some people I can, I can get them to do that. Uh, but I think, you know, if somebody is not going to compete or is in the off season, the goal is to get everybody more towards an intuitive style of eating. Like, I don't expect people to like frigging take a scale to a restaurant every day of their life or every time you go out to eat you know like if you're in contest prep that's one thing you know but if you're in the off season like i mean i get well i don't judge because you know i had i had a client um and she just really liked being lean in the off season she's like i know it's going to take more sacrifice i know i'm not gonna be able to go out to eat as much but this is what i like i like being lean and this

is what makes me happy and i'm like who am i to judge her for that if this is what I like. I like being lean and this is what makes me happy. And I'm like, who am I to judge her for that? If that's what makes her happy, then hey, like, it may not make me happy, but who am I to judge that? So, but I, yes, you can have it to where it's too much. Right. Uh, and, but that's more of a conversation of trying to help somebody understand. And sometimes tracking macros isn't best for everybody. I've, I've had people where I've like, we need to stop tracking or I've had people just track protein and calories, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. But you can definitely get hyper obsessive about it. Gotcha. Uh, high intensity versus high volume for fat loss.

High intensity versus high volume, like weight training. Yeah. Like just meaning like versus the list, that type of thing. I mean, yeah. Like just meaning like do a HIIT versus a LIS, that type of thing. I mean, I think what the research says pretty conclusively right now. Oh, for cardio. Right. They didn't specify, but let's-

They're probably talking about cardio. Yeah, let's go with cardio. Okay, let's go with cardio. So again, this is something where I've kind of come back towards the middle. When I started out, I was a bro, and I was, oh, you just do walking, don't do any high intensity to burn muscle.

And then we had a little bit of data that suggested maybe high intensity was better. I was like, oh, I'll do all high intensity, no less. You'll lose muscle. And now I'm kind of, I think that high intensity, if you're looking at per unit of time, high intensity wins a hundred percent. The problem with high intensity is it's pretty damn taxing. It's hard to recover from. Yeah. So if you, now if you're, so I don't really have many people who do more than two or three sessions of high intensity a week, absolute max, because it's hard to recover from. Yeah. So if you, now if you're, so I don't really have many people who do more than two or three sessions of high intensity a week, absolute max, because it's hard to recover from enough to get, to do well in your weight training sessions. It doesn't take very long to recover from a walk.

I think what the data says is that you're probably, if you're looking to maintain as much muscle as possible, you kind of want to go one or two ends of the spectrum. You either go pretty low intensity and just easy and you do it for a while, or you do high intensity for a short period of time. The middle moderate, like jogging, that sort of thing, especially because of the eccentric loading of jogging, probably not the best thing for physique and muscle retention. So I would say like for most people, if you're fat loss in general, probably the majority is going to be some low intensity cardio with a session or two of like really high intensity intervals sprinkled in there

of what you can recover from. Yeah. A lot of people that run don't have great physiques unless they're sprinters. Right. Like you said with Holly. Yeah. Now, part of that is, were they great sprinters because they had a lot of muscle mass or did they have a lot of muscle mass because they're great sprinters?

Yeah. What the hell came first? Chicken or the egg. Yeah. And that's the same thing with like surfing or beach volleyball. Like are those people, you know, are they in shape because of that or are they... Genetically

selected for it. Probably a little bit of both. Yeah. Artificial sweeteners. I give my daughter sparkling flavored water because it's better than soda in my opinion. Am I giving her poison? No. The research data and people will, I'm sure people on this podcast will go,

it makes formaldehyde! It does. You also get 10 times more formaldehyde in a glass of tomato juice. So, dosage makes the poison. All the research data we have suggests that things like aspartame, sucralose, to get

an amount that would cause side effects, you would actually drown from the diet soda, from the fluid first. Like you would actually deplete your electrolytes and die from that first. That being said, there is some new research that suggests it may alter your gut microflora. Now people have taken that and said,

oh, that's going to mess you up. That's going to screw you up. We don't know if that's a bad thing. We just know that it alters it. So I'm going to wait you up. That's going to screw you up. We don't know if that's a bad thing. We just know that it alters it. So I'm going to wait to pass judgment on that until we get more data on that. Just in terms of taste, you drink something like Crystal Light. Do you think that might elicit a bad response in some way? Or do you think it's...

It definitely doesn't elicit an insulin response. That's pretty conclusive. And here's how you know that it doesn't because if it did, every time you drank a diet soda, you would go hypoglycemic because if your insulin went up and there's no carbohydrate,

your blood sugar is going to go down. Or what it says is that there's a corresponding release of glucagon. Glucagon acts in opposition to insulin and so you don't need to worry because glucagon is opposing it. Now, as far as like cravings and stuff, some people, a small personal population,

yeah, it seems like if they get a little sweet, they keep wanting more. For most people, like physiologically, it doesn't seem to do that. Psychologically, maybe different. I think a good idea too is just, and I think you've mentioned this on the podcast before, other people, you know, rather than subtracting, Rather than subtracting, add stuff to people's lives.

So in the case of a kid, just teach them the importance of water. Hey, you can have that, but let's drink some water. Just things like that. That's great. How about hard gainers like me? I'm skinny. What am I supposed to be eating? More calories.

Just in general? More calories, yeah. And you've got to work out. And you've got to Or calories, yeah. Well, and you gotta work out. And you gotta work out, yeah. Otherwise you just get fat. But, I mean, you know, a hard gainer is more about, well, you know, people that just tend to have a higher resting metabolic rate, they tend to dissipate energy better. Yeah, it's, you know, you just, it's hard to build muscle in an energy deficit. You can, but it's more difficult.

So try to get yourself into a positive energy balance is going to be the most paramount thing. Obviously, making sure you're taking enough protein. But most people who are into lifting weights, they usually eat enough protein. People talk about high-protein diets. Most people in the fitness industry over-consume protein. Most other people under-consume it. Right. And just real quick, spend as much or as little time as you want on describing what reverse dieting actually is. God, you want

to be here for three hours? That's why I left it up to you. So if I had to describe it in like a really quick 30 seconds, basically the idea behind reverse dieting is to improve your metabolic rate while limiting fat gain. Okay. So people say, oh, I want to be on a diet that boosts my metabolism. No diet boosts your metabolism. Any diet that's calorically restricted that caused you to lose fat will lower your metabolic rate. Otherwise you would just burn fat until you died. Okay. Your body adapts to dieting by lowering your metabolic rate through a variety of mechanisms. Um, we talked about earlier how at the end of a diet, you can set yourself up for actually gaining more fat cells.

Um, so the idea of reverse dieting is to, instead of just eating what the fuck you want right after a diet, probably a really bad idea, um, a controlled addition of calories over time, um, not to not gain fat, but to limit fat gain, right? So to recover your metabolic rate, but hopefully with minimal fat regain. Because if it took you eating 1,800 calories or 2,000 calories, for example, to get down to 230 pounds or something, do you want to maintain 2,000 calories for the rest of your life? No. You're not going to have a high quality of life. So the idea is that you can hopefully restore your metabolic rate by adding calories in slowly, but not regain as much fat as you would if you just took them straight there.

And I, we don't have, there's no scientific studies on this yet that I know of. Um, but I've just seen it with clients. There's just basically like in short, there's a little bit of wiggle room with how many calories you're consuming when you're, when you're dieting and trying to lose fat. In the extreme circumstance, I've seen somebody go from 170 grams of carbs a day to over 400 grams of carbs a day. And they lost a kilo during that time. Right. And this was over like a four or five month period. All right. Now, not everybody responds that way. I find there's a very differential response and there is data to support that, that some people are more fat gain resistant post diet than others. But I find that most people do better. And even people who have just like a really slow metabolism through years of, of really poor

dieting habits. If you do kind of a slow addition of calories over time, hopefully to restore their metabolic rate back to normal, then they, then they're consuming more calories to maintain their body weight. Hopefully they can diet on more calories. Does that make sense? Yeah. So basically it's a way to restore your metabolic rate with minimal fat regain, hopefully. Do you think you'll be working on publishing a paper on reverse dieting? If I make that a priority. now, that's, that's the research, like going back into research studies isn't a priority. Um, but obviously like I'm very passionate about that and I would love to see research done on that. It'd be interesting just cause I,

what I've seen with clients, it's so divergent in terms of the responses. A paper may not so much in terms of averages. Um, but individually I've seen quite a bit and you know, people have said, you know, law McDonald hates me and thinks I made the whole thing up and I'm a piece of shit. Um, but I made it up to make money and I said, well, I was going to make something up to make money. Hopefully I make something up. That's a little bit more sexy other than, well, you might gain some fat and hopefully we can get your calories higher. Um, but you know, it's just what I've observed with working with clients. And I kind of came to have, well, I can wait for a research study to come out on this in 10 years from now, maybe.

Or I can talk about it now. So if people don't believe me or they think that it's not a useful tool, then that's fine. All I'm saying is it's an option and it's a tool in the toolbox. So I find it pretty useful for certain populations. But for other people, not so much. Yeah, I've been telling people for quite some time, you know, mix it up a little bit, you know, go through periods of time where you're going to be restrictive, go through periods of time where you're not. And actually like you restriction is a motherfucker on the body. It's like, people don't realize like, it's like your

body, when you, when you calorically restrict, you probably, especially as a physique athlete, you need to spend more time in maintenance or a surplus than you do in a deficit. A deficit should be like a war. Get in, dominate, get out. All right? Don't do a sustained police state. All right? 10 weeks, 12 weeks?

Yeah, I mean, even 24 weeks or something like that. But with the idea that you are going to recover afterwards and get yourself out of that. Right? Yeah. Because that's very, especially if we're talking to getting show lean, that is fucking hard on the body. We see people who are competitors who burn out in a few years because they just put their body through the ringer and not even with drugs, which is the dieting aspect of things.

Uh, doctor, I'll, I'll, I'll kind of leave it on this mark. Um, guy named, uh, uh, Dr. McLean at university of Denver. He's done a lot of body fat regain studies. And he said the body's response to dieting is enormous. I'm going to paraphrase. Enormously complex, saturated with redundancies, and completely focused on restoring the body's depleted energy reserves. and completely focused on restoring the body's depleted energy reserves. And any weight loss kind of diet that we come up with has to account for this stuff.

Otherwise, you're just going to regain it all. And when you diet, it triggers your body's self-defense survival system. Your body don't give a shit if you've got abs. It cares if you live long enough to pass on your genetic material. So it's going to do everything it can to keep you alive. And part of that's lowering your metabolic rate. So we all know people who've been on diets for long periods of time who they seem like they can't lose weight on low calories. Right.

That's kind of where this whole idea came from. Yeah. So I've heard people kind of talk about, you can't turn't turn a basset hound into a greyhound. It's just going to be an emaciated basset hound. Can't diet your way out of a bad metabolism. Yeah. All right, guys, that's all the time we got. This is Lane Norton.

Lane, tell us about these books and some of the things you've got going on to plug. I think you have a new app and stuff like that too, right? Yeah, so no app yet, but I work at Builder on my site. No app yet, but like my workout builder on my site. So Andres and I, my powerlifting coach, we've created basically a way for people for about $12, $13 a month. You subscribe to my site and you can get access to basically customized training programs that we've built that you can customize to yourself and your needs. And we have a bunch of different templates. So we're going to be expanding that for men, women, powerlifting, bodybuilding, bikini, figure, whatever. So it's a great option for people who maybe want like science-based coaching, but can't afford a coach

for training. We now provide an option for that. That's really affordable. So that's at biolane.com. And then my prep book I talked about, which people ask me, well, if I'm not going to do a contest prep book, this book is great for anybody who just wants to learn how to set up a fat loss diet. Now, there's extra chapters like peaking and tanning and all that kind of stuff. Are there carbs in it? Because I'm not going to read it if there's carbs in it. Well, pages are technically carbohydrate, I think. There is some carbs in there. In the actual paper but we you know we we go through you know

just down from a scientific perspective it literally is a roadmap of if you want to do a show how long to do it how you want to diet how to set up your diet should you do refeeds should you do diet breaks how to peak how to pose how to like everything we put everything into this 265 pages. And like the best feedback I got back was from other experts in the industry. Like, you know, Eric Helms said, this is the book that every competitor should own. Uh, so he, Lee just, she said, holy shit, this thing is comprehensive. Um, John Meadows said, this is great for beginners, intermediate, advanced, whoever can learn from this. Uh, and John Romanello called it a, uh, what'd he say? A value laden tomb. So that's, you can get that at, uh,

contestprepbook.com. And, um, I'm really proud of it. You know, you never get a hundred percent glowing reviews, but I would say out of the thousands of people who have purchased it, we've only had a few people who weren't happy. And honestly, most of those people were, they were like, I didn't know this book was about contest prep. I was just buying a fat loss book. And it's like,

it says contest prep on it. And there's somebody on stage on it. I don't know. That's probably from that eye doctor. Probably, probably. So I'm real proud of that. I think it's a great value for what you get.

You can pretty much teach how to coach yourself if you can't afford a coach think it's a great value uh for what you get um you can pretty much teach how to coach yourself um if you can't afford a coach and it's 50 bucks so um you can get that at contestprepbook.com and yeah i'm just super excited about those two things uh going on because those are things we've been working on real hard for the last few months yeah awesome man i was just gonna say we had like you know, the trolls will come out early on and then they'll fade away. But just, I mean, every interaction I've had with you

and I want people to know this, like today you gave me a big old hug. You've been nothing but the nicest person and you've never given me bullshit. So just for everyone listening, dude, Lane's the shit, dude. Yeah, you know, if you... Well, they keep having me back out,

so I must, either I give really good blow jobs or you know I'm an alright guy no I invited you out because I want to learn how to have

bad squat form and hurt my back and over train oh see now careful you're edging on being funny but also triggering me yeah

alright guys that's all the time we got strength is never weakness weakness is never strength bye