Mark Bell's Power Project - Why It's So Hard to Come Off Steroids - SuperCut

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

In this Super Cut, a variety of former PED-users talk about the difficulty of coming completely off and being natural again.   0:00-0:44 Intro 0:45-4:18 Justin Lovato Talks About Getting Off PEDs 4:19-12:50 Leo & Longevity On Steroid Neurotoxicity 12:51-18:36 Pete Rubish Talks Going Natty 18:37-26:17 Mark Bell talks steroid addiciton 26:18-27:36 Vivo Barefoot Advertisement 27:37-37:43 Liver King Comes off his cycle 37:44-42:29 Guerilla Chemist Talks Difficulties of Cycling off 42:30-52:06 Why Most Men Never Come off Testosterone 52:07-52:28 Outro     Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below! ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!   ➢https://drinkag1.com/powerproject Receive a year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 & 5 Travel Packs!   ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   ➢ https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off Mind Bullet!   ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box   ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM   ➢ https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes!   ➢ https://vuori.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori!   ➢ https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep!   ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel!   ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

Three years before I even got off, I was doing half a cc and I was like, do I even need to be f***ing taking this? I've used steroids a bunch of different ways. I just wanted to lift the most amount of weight. I was addicted to it. There may be permanent effects from using androgens too young. If you use testosterone with an AI, it is neurotoxic at high doses. Started when I was 20 and then up until 29,

that's when I came off. The last two weeks I was doing 1500 milligrams of testosterone and enthate. You don't just get more shredded and more vascular and more yada, yada, yada when you come off steroids. If you go to feeling really good while on HRT, why would you ever stop doing it? One of the biggest issues, if I'm being completely honest, is the lack of motivation to go to the gym. It allowed me to lose more muscle weight than I wanted to. You're 235 and you mentioned that you came off stuff years years ago like what was that experience like was that uh it was actually not that tough

like no so i i'm a i'm a big mental person you know so first i think i accidentally did did it a really great way so at age 30 i got off like all the heavier stuff so from like 26 to 30 i was trying to be a big bodybuilder. And then at 30, I was like, I'm pretty much done with this stuff. Cause I didn't think it was safe or healthy. So I, uh, I just got on TRT and I was doing the one CC a week with TRT for quite a while. And then it got to the point where I just hated putting a needle in me. I just could not stand it. So it would end up being like, I would do a shot and then like two weeks would go by and I was like oh I probably should do one and I would do one and then like another two weeks ago I probably should do and then I do and then I was like when I do half a

cc so for like three years before I even got off I was doing half a cc every 10 days and then again I went to like every two weeks and I was like do I even need to be fucking taking this? And so I just like, just stopped taking it. I just stopped taking it. And, uh, that's how I got off. And I, and I also was getting into meditation during the same time, which was around the same time, three or four years ago. And so I, I really got into the Joe Dispenza book about how you can like tell your body what to do and the same thing with Wim Hof. And so I would just tell my body to create testosterone. I don't know if it worked, but I feel great. And so I would just tell my body to create testosterone. I don't know if it worked, but I feel great.

Yeah, you said you've never gotten blood work done. Yeah, I never got blood work done. Yeah, I've never had blood work done. My libido is great. I feel good. I feel like I've actually reversed time in a lot of ways. I feel like I look younger than I did before. And so I do meditate on that a lot. I meditate on telling my body to produce natural testosterone

and raise it and all those type of things and create it with all that to produce natural testosterone and, and, and raise it and all those types of things and create it with all that stuff. But yeah, a lot of people actually ask, how was it coming off? I think one of the big components that most people do, they, first of all, they don't want to come off when they come off. And that's a big difference. I wanted to come off. I wanted to come off. I wanted to focus on my health. I wanted to focus on doing things in a more loving way towards myself. You're the first guy I think we've ever had on the show. That has wanted to come off when they've gone on.

Yeah. And I think maybe the first person that we've had on the show that has just made a clean break from it. Period. Yeah. Can you think of anybody? Gorilla chemist? Did well no he's he was off for having a baby though yeah that's different that's actually one of the reasons also why i started to come off is because at the time when i was with steph we were talking about that and i remember that's the main reason why i came up

which is really exciting you know i was like oh i want to come off and i really wanted to come off and i know that a lot of people when they come off one they don't want to two when they come off they actually start training less and they start eating worse and I did the opposite I was like oh well I want to come off I'm going to train even harder and I'm going to eat even cleaner so I think that was a huge huge thing for me and that's what I tell people all the time and then on top of that the meditation aspect I think was a huge thing the placebo effect of everything it really definitely works there was that old school bodybuilder um like I'll look his name up but I think he said he came off of everything and people were claiming he's on TRT but he's said he's not he never got his pro card he was fucking huge

though John Anderson no I'm just kidding the one. You know who I'm talking about, right? Cap, beard, Canada, went to a porn expo? No. Not part love. No, he's definitely. Okay. No, I don't think I know any of these people. It's okay. A lot of young kids are starting to just hop on steroids

because the information is out there and they have the ability to purchase that stuff. What do they need to be being careful about, not just for their body and their hormones hormones because there's a lot of stuff going on there but their brain specifically so just before I mentioned that can I mention also when we talk about liver toxicity from kratom this is not unique to kratom there are a lot of like herbal formulations for example ashwagandha is notorious for causing liver failures it does this frequently

in the literature you'd be surprised and for example kava kava which is a gaberergic uh you know supplement as well similar to kratom kava kava is way more toxic than kratom so I just want to mention it's not you know unique to kratom and then about the so the studies um there are studies on humans I've reviewed these studies of how androgens of like PED supplementation with androgens affect brain chemistry. The most interesting element of what you can see from the studies is in young rodent studies, juvenile rodents. There's an interesting difference. If you give an adult rodent, for example, the study was actually on nandrolone, if I remember correctly, which is DECA or NPP. If you give an adult rodent nandrolone, they experience a reduction in serotonergic signaling

acutely in the brain. Remember serotonin modulates the neurogenesis that's the target of LSD and psilocybin, and they experience more hostility acutely. But when you take out the drug, the hostility decreases and they return back to normal function. If you give it to a juvenile rodent, a male rodent, and you take out the drug, they remain hostile in adulthood and have reduced serotonin signaling in adulthood. So there may be permanent effects from using androgens too young in terms of the brain chemistry. Particularly, it seems like, I don't know if you've ever heard of before, if you use testosterone with an AI in studies,

it is neurotoxic at high doses npp for example nandrolone is always neurotoxic but if you use testosterone at high doses it becomes neurotoxic well with when you use an ai what does the ai do the ai stops testosterone from increasing estradiol and estradiol increases serotonergic signaling in the brain thereby protecting brain cells from death through the neurogenesis. So when you use these drugs, the acute effect is you're harming the serotonin system. And that's a lot of how you develop the hostility, the lack of feeling of well-being, contentment, not from all PEDs, but from some of them. So you're working out, you're working on nutrition, you're working on your feet, you're

working on your sleep, and all these things are having benefit. But what's going on underneath the hood? What's going on with your hormones? That question is answered by working with Merrick Health. It's owned by Derek from More Plates, More Dates. And getting your blood work done by Merrick Health will help you understand what's going on under the hood. They have different panels that you can do once every six months or every single month, so you can understand how your sleep, all these different protocols that you're adding into your routine are affecting your hormones. It's important to understand and it's also important to know if what you're doing is actually working.

Andrew, how can they get their hands on it? Yes, that's over at MerrickHealth.com slash PowerProject. And at checkout, enter promo code PowerProject to save 10% off the PowerProject panel, the checkup panel, or any individual lab that you select. Again, that's at MerrickHealth.com slash Power Project, promo code Power Project at checkout, links in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Also, young kids like 18, 19, 20, 21, and TRT, as far as testosterone, you said there are barely any effects on the brain, but I don't know. I don't know much about that stuff, but I feel like there is a reason to be careful, especially you're not done developing. So what would your advice be

there in terms of making sure they're careful? Well, there's a lot of reasons to be careful about that. So for example, one reason to be careful when these young kids want to hop on TRT, one reason is this. If you have a higher androgen level, irrespective of whether you've done damage to your brain or your gonads or anything, your sex drive will adapt to that level. And when you lower your androgen level, even if your balls work perfectly fine and you have a good test level, you're not at 3000. Now you're at 1000. You're going to have lower sex drive. You're going to have lower energy. You adapt to that. You you acclimate to it and it never is quite the same after so when someone experiences that crazies it's not gonna come from TRT maybe but when you get on

a gram of testosterone it's never quite the same after so one one guide is this if somebody does want to use performance enhancing drugs always use the minimal amount don't think of it in terms of cycles I got to get the most out of this cycle and then get out of it use the minimal amount. Don't think of it in terms of cycles. I gotta get the most out of this cycle and then get out of it. Use the minimal amount that you get results from and only raise it when you need to, and then keep track of your health as you do. So you never get to 2,002 grams of testosterone

and get this crazy sex drive, then you get off it and it takes you a year and a half to have the sex drive back. So in a young man, this could cause psychological issues he could get worried doubt himself have confidence issues the second thing i want to mention is this a lot of people use trt when their balls work which doesn't make any sense so why does it make sense when your balls produce testosterone they also produce progesterone and they also aromatize the testosterone and five alpha reduce the testosterone There's a lot of complex mechanisms that happen when you produce testosterone locally. When you inject it into your muscle, it is metabolized completely differently.

And so, for example, it affects sex drive less per the nanograms per deciliter testosterone you have. If it's injected, you'll have less sex drive. So it works a little bit differently. It's less 5-alpha reduced, less aromatized, and so on. The other thing becomes this. Well, how do you know if your balls work well if you go to a do you do a blood test you to check your testosterone level and then you check your luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone if you're luteinizing hormone is say five or six well you know hey if my brain just signaled more if my brain said seven or

eight luteinizing hormone to my balls, I would produce more tests. So why get on testosterone, strangle my balls, suffocate them, they can't produce anything because they have all these negative indicators to my brain, when I could have just taken HCG and acclimated the dose, see, okay, I have now I've used 1000 units of HCG every other day, and I have the same test as I used to, well, now I know my baseline replacement dose for LH. And I can raise it a bit higher for a short time period if i need a higher test for

resilience or whatever and the difference here is when i take the hcg out all i got to do is block estrogen in the brain and my brain will restart signaling glutenizing hormone much easier than if i went on trt at 18 and three years later i decided i want to go off it well my balls literally have necrosis of tissue dead tissue that's what happens yeah there are post-mortem studies of bodybuilders I found an interesting study showing fibrosis in their testicles fibrosis happens after you get necrosis scar tissue develops so you're losing the integrity of your balls when you're 18 years old why do that you know so if you're going to do anything the first step I would always think is maybe HCG FSH and then maybe I could use something in addition to it it may not be trt if i'm trying to gain

muscle maybe just anivar three days a week well now you could use anivar because you're replacing your brain's luteinizing hormone so your balls are always going to work you have a test base so you don't have to go and do a huge cycle you could just do three anivars a week and see do i gain from that you know it's a much easier Like, like instead of jumping in a pool, just putting your feet in going slowly. Boys and girls, make sure you prescribe to utilizing like a fit chick who's going to prep for a contest type of protocol rather than like a full on bodybuilder. Exactly. I really, I really liked your explanation, especially because it got to be uh complex and it's like that's another reason why people that are young just probably shouldn't fuck with it

because once you start to pump testosterone through your body there's a lot of other things you got to think about yes i mean think i mean genuinely i obviously i never had the potential in athletics as being a top athlete but if i had potential i may done it differently. But keep this in mind just for the audience to realize any young people listening. I started reading about steroids when I was 15. I only used them at 23. And I was really, I knew anything like a normal bodybuilder knew about them, but I just didn't know enough.

You know, and the more you know, I just recently answered a question on my channel. Someone was asking like, should I use ezetimibe, that cholesterol medication for controlling my heart rate and i was like brother if you if you have made that big of a mistake there's a cholesterol medication you're talking about your heart rate don't use any of them go study you gotta go and then we have thankfully because of youtube now we have videos and stuff where people can learn don't use something if you're not completely comfortable with the mechanisms that it's manipulating in your body.

Even if a doctor is comfortable, he may not know what he's doing really and you may get yourself in a bad position. I started when I was 20 and then up until 29, that's when I came off. So I was actually, I'd just done a meet. I tried a pretty big cycle. It was the biggest cycle of my life going into that meet. So the last two weeks,

this wasn't during the whole duration of the cycle, but the last two weeks I was doing 1,500 milligrams of testosterone and enthate. So one and a half grams of test, right? Very high amount. Would have been cool to see what my test levels were like at that point. And then 1,200 NPP. So 1.2 grams NPP on Nanjelon. What's NPP?

NPP, so 1.2 grams NPP on Nanjolone. What's NPP? Oh, that's... Yeah, it's like the short, fast-acting version of DECA with less sides, I think. So it kicks in quicker. You don't get all the bad sides that you get with DECA. And threw that in as well. Then there's got to be some orals, right? I mean, it's not an official cycle unless we're on three things at one time.

Got to get all the food groups in there. Yeah, cover your bases. So I was doing Anovar for a while, about 50 milligrams a day. And I love Anovar. It's my favorite. That was. And then at the end, I came off that and did Halo Testin because I tried to combine them. So I was trying to do Halo and Anovar at the same time.

And the liver toxicity was way too much to handle. To the point like you would take it, and within 30 minutes, you want to throw up. Because I couldn't even sit up. I'd be laying on the couch, and I'd just be like, I feel awful. I feel like I'm going to vomit. The heartburn's nice. Oh, it's just so much.

The heartburn wasn't too bad, but the blood pressure, too, where your head feels like it's going to explode about. Yeah, it was really healthy stuff. Let me ask you, is that an exaggeration or does your head actually feel pressurized? It feels pretty pressurized. You get a headache like legitimately 30 minutes after the halo testing. So you get the nausea because your liver is getting, it's under serious stress. And this, I was taking too much. The last two weeks I tried to go 40 milligrams of halo, which is an absurd dose. You want to do about 20. I mean, I'm not telling anybody

to do that, but if you're a standard dose, a standard dose would be 20. You just broke and seen. Yeah, I know. I was like, I'm not condoning this, but made his gorilla mind go down the wrong pipe. I'm not giving advice here.

You do 20 milligrams, and I'm like, let's go 40 because I really want to pull 900 officially. I've not giving advice here. Fucking lost. You do 20 milligrams and I'm like, let's go 40 because I really want to pull 900 officially. I've done it in training, right, a few times.

I was like, I got to get it knocked out in a meet. And in the end, did I get it done? No. So I got the 904 to my knees

and that was it. But that's kind of the long backstory. And then after that, my wife was like, if we're going to have a baby, let's do it now. Come off now.

So after the meet, I decided to come off November. And then, you know, here we are. Been off for two and a half years. So it's been a wild ride. And at first, when you started to come off, how long did you hold on to those gains? And do you think it's possible for people to hold on to any remains of the gains that they got from anabolic steroids the more distance they get from it? I think if you come off completely, absolutely not. You're going to lose like everything for the most part.

That's not to say there's not some degree of muscle memory. But within a year, it was all gone. I mean, I went back. It felt like almost a square one. Not entirely, obviously, because you've still been training a while. But I want to say bench dip down to about 315. And it was at 485

at the peak in training. In a meet, 463. So it went all the way back down to 315. 300-ish. Deadlift got down to like 6 from 9. And it just, it was a rapid, you know know loss of muscle and strength over the course of months so the first couple months you're still hanging on to

quite a bit even though your test levels are dipping six months or so maybe you can kind of hold on to some stuff yeah i'd say up to eight even and then as you get closer to that year you just it's all gone it's like if i had TRT, I think I could have maintained a lot of it, not been quite as strong, but maintained quite a bit of that strength. But it just, my body weight dipped down to about 210 at the lowest from 250, 255. So, and right now I'm walking around about 220, 225, depending on how well I'm eating. Any warnings to people that are going to go, because you decided not to go the TRT route. I don't think you had other interventions. A good friend of mine has

said that like, he thinks that if young people, especially are going to come off testosterone cycles, he thinks that they should look into maybe taking medication for their mind and for their, you know, so they don't get like depressed and stuff. Do you think that some people should look into maybe taking medication for their mind and for their, you know, so they don't get like depressed and stuff. Do you think that some people should look into that or like, what was your experience? Yeah. I mean, it was really tough mentally. I felt pretty depressed at various times because your sense of identity is gone. Think about it. Your whole life, not your whole life, but the last 10, 15 years, everyone's known you as this really strong guy. You're known for your deadlift, your strength and being jacked and all that. And that's your

whole basis of what people know you for. And then that's kind of stripped away completely where there's no more, you know, you're not getting the compliments. You're not getting all the attention. It fades away. It faded away fast. And you're just another guy at that point. And that was tough. It was like a transition to where that was probably one of the toughest things. You have to kind of come to terms with that and redefine yourself, as we talked about. But it's taken years. It's been two and a half years,

and just now I'm kind of becoming comfortable with who I am now. And I still have the knowledge. I've still done what I've done, hit the numbers I've hit, and I'm at peace with that. But now it's kind of time to pivot to a new life. And I still coach plenty of guys in powerlifting. I'm still immersed in the industry, but I just have to do different things myself. So I still train some powerlifting,

but it's a lot more bodybuilding. It's a lot more running, different things like that to kind of keep me sane. You know, I've used steroids a bunch of different ways. And for many years, I did use them pretty recklessly because I was just trying to get after whatever I could, whatever I could. I just wanted to lift the most amount of weight. You know, that's, I was addicted to it. And so I was just like, well, this is kind of part of it. wanting to be the best is I'm also making these decisions that aren't in my best overall interest for my health. I'm compromising that part. I'm giving up that side of it to kind of jump in and go full blast over here to this. Now, there's a lot of people, that's a pretty bloated picture

right there. There's a lot of people who would think, man, that's really dumb. Like you would over inject yourself with these hormones. But if you look at most high level sports, you're going to get yourself into some really weird compromising positions. If you're into skydiving, if you're into black diamond downhill skiing, like you're going to get yourself in some, I mean, look at the stuff that Goggins does. You know, he's draining his knee and he'd go out for a run. You know, so like, I'm not trying to say that, I'm not trying to minimize what I have done.

I'm just given perspective. You look at Jordan and you look at a lot of these athletes that I grew up idolizing. I was like, yeah, that's just the way shit's done, man. You just do any and everything that you can. Do anything you can do to win. Yeah, you just do whatever you can to win.

And for me personally, in powerlifting, it doesn't seem like anybody really cares. And in powerlifting, it's been talked about openly for so long. And that's, I think, the advantage that my brother had over a lot of other people was that in the powerlifting community, we talked about it quite a bit. So me and my brothers, we talked about it all the time. It wasn't this hidden thing. Even at the gym that I went to when I was a kid, it was talked about all the time. I remember the guys that were there, they would always just dismiss me. They'd be like, there's no reason for you to even learn anything about any of this at the moment because you're

16. They're like, and every time I worked out, it felt like I got stronger. So I never thought there was any, and they told me, they're like, they're like, you're just going to keep getting bigger and more jacked anyway. All you got to do is keep showing up. And I was like, cool. But I never even was like really all that enticed by them until about three to five years into training. Then I was like, I think that I'm going to end up doing these. So I should learn about it. And I learned, I don't want to say studied because people throw that word around so much. But like I investigated it.

I looked into it as much as I possibly could at the time with the information that we had. I looked into it as much as I possibly could at the time with the information that we had. And then from there, you know, made some decisions that were at least informed decisions on what to take, how much to take, when to take it, and so on. If you don't mind me asking, you don't need to say all the things that you actually took, but what were some of the side effects when you were at your peak? Like what were some of the things that you had to deal with or some of the health issues that maybe you had to like, oh, this is happening, so I have to do this, if there was anything notable? I would probably say like some of the most notable things, like one really notable thing is your breathing. Just because like I was also really big, but I think, is the guy's name Brandon? Brandon Harding. Brandon Harding. Is that the video that you. That's the one I sent you. Yeah. Yeah. Brandon Harding. He said that like in the morning he's like posing and then he gets like out of breath and you're thinking like, how's that possible? This dude's so fit.

Sometimes from taking in the extra calories and getting a little bigger and a little thicker than what your body's used to is part of it. But I also think it's a side effect of increasing the dosage of what you're taking and you just feel bloated. So breathing can get a little out of whack. And again, that's for a power lifter who's not doing anything for conditioning. You can get really bloated, which doesn't sound like, getting bloated doesn't sound like it's all that negative, but I think it's tremendously negative, especially with some of the deaths that we've had. I think the deaths are from high blood pressure. High blood pressure a

lot of times is related to water retention. I also think it has to do with their blood being thicker, so my red blood cell count would go up. These are all things I really didn't know much about until I was probably using stuff on and off for about two years. And then as I wanted to, like, I was on like normal cycles, all the kinds of cycles that you hear people talk about on the internet. I'm not going to dive into that too much because it just gets to be weird. But when I wanted to take more, I was like, I need to look into this a lot more because I don't know what it's like. I can already feel that my blood pressure is higher because if I bend down

to like pick something up, I feel like my head is like underwater or something like that. So I already knew that there was, and my friends and stuff that took similar amounts, they'd get under the bar to do a squat. Their nose would bleed. And I've seen guys bleed out of their ears. We had one guy who bled out of his eyeball during a bench press. It was just, it was insane.

But like all kinds of weird shit can happen to your body when you're utilizing these drugs. And I think for young guys or young men, especially the worst thing that can happen to you is to have your dick taken away from you. If you're, if your shit ain't working, like, man, it's, it's a really sad day. One of those days. And I've had that happen, you know, many times because I think a lot of times you, maybe you get desensitized to the amount of testosterone. You're not supposed to have that much testosterone in your body. And I don't know all the mechanisms behind why you get shut down like that. You'll hear people say, oh, I got shut down.

And they're not really talking about like their testosterone necessarily. Well, Greg was mentioning that when you do like take exogenous sources a certain amount, your body's like, I don't need to produce this currently. Right. Yeah. And so it will shut it down. But usually when that happens, when your body starts to shut down its own production of like testosterone and stuff like that, for example, a lot of other things are getting thrown way off too.

Like your sperm count. that, for example, a lot of other things are getting thrown way off too. Like your sperm count, um, your body just is like, we don't, we don't need to utilize these parts anymore. Like this, you've got plenty of testosterone. It's coming from your testicles from my understanding. And, uh, anyway, they'll, they'll shrink. And I mean, you just, you can run into all kinds of different things, But I think as a young man, that would be demoralizing. If I was trying to date people and that shit was happening to me, that would have been a great reason to be like, hey, I think I'm going to come off this stuff. But luckily for me, it was an informed decision after I've been with somebody for a really

long time. I was already married at the time. I had full-on discussions with my wife about it. We went back and forth. She didn't want me to do it. I didn't even really want to do it when I started it. But I, for some reason, and I don't really know what the calling was or where it all came from. But I was just like, this is something that I think I have to do.

And I still don't know what that exact reason was. And I still don't know what that exact reason was, but I think that, you know, maybe there's some sort of psychological thing where I just always want more. I just always want to try to be better. I just move, your hand will start to become stiff, weak, and that'll work its way up your arm. That's the same thing that happens when you wear these damn shoes. Okay. Sorry to curse, but it's frustrating because these shoes that have a narrow toe box, although they look nice in their Nikes, narrow toe box. So your toes can't move. They're not flat. So your foot is in this weird thing and it's not getting stronger and they're not flexible. So they can't move. They're not flat, so your foot is in this weird thing and it's not getting stronger. And they're not flexible, so they don't move and your foot just moves like this all day, which means your feet are getting weaker. That's why we partner with Vivo Barefoot Shoes. They have a bunch of shoes for the gym and casual shoes, but the thing about these shoes is that

they are wide, they are flat, and they are flexible. So your foot can do what it needs to do and it can get stronger over time. That's going to allow you to be a better, stronger athlete. Andrew, how can they get them? Yes, that's over at vivo barefoot.com slash power project. When you guys get there, you'll see a code across the top. Make sure you use that code for 15% off your entire order. Again, vivo barefoot.com slash power project links in the description as well as the podcast show notes throw these away dude watch the watch the camera i didn't lie to anybody when i went on the podcast and i started talking about my earnest commitment to go natural so this year starting on january 2nd i went 220 days

without any steroids pause because it's so funny when people are like you know they've been on all this shit and they're like i'm going natural like can you really say that i mean i'm not trying okay i'm not trying to be the gatekeeper of what is natural but like does that make sense if you've been on gear for a hell of years and you hop off you're saying i don't know. Well, you actually said you don't really keep the gains, right? You won't really keep the gains, but 200 days is like how many months is that? It's like seven, almost seven months.

So seven months is when you would start to, yeah, you would, you start to go downhill like after maybe like three months. Okay. Three, four months, you would go downhill a little bit. But after six, seven, eight months, you'd still be able to hold on to a little bit. But once like a year or so goes by, it's pretty much. You think all of it's gone for most people? For most people, I would say, yeah. There's probably the precautions you could take. There's probably like natural natural supplements that you can take and there's probably a lot of like

training and sleep and you could probably dial stuff in and keep some of it but um almost everything's gonna be gone after a couple months passes by and on top of that you really messed up your system so i don't know what protocol or whatever he used uh coming off but um you have to figure out a way way to soften the blow of coming off of everything because you'll be worse off than you ever were before from an endocrine standpoint, from a hormonal standpoint, you'll be worse for a while. Gotcha. But when you're saying you'll lose a lot, but he still was very muscular

and he still seemed very, very big. Um, so like when, what, what, what would he be losing other than maybe that, like that shitty feeling of like coming off of everything probably got super lazy. I don't know if he got super lazy, but like that feeling of not want, but no drive anymore, I understand is probably there from coming off of everything. But when you say lose everything, what do you mean exactly? I just meant like physically, like lose a lot of muscle, lose a lot of body composition. Again, it wouldn't necessarily be for everybody.

I think that traditionally my experience and what I've seen, when a lot of people go off of steroids, they go off the rails on everything. Like they go off playing on it everywhere. You know, they were keeping them in check. Yeah. They were like, they had like a routine going, they were doing steroids or bodybuilding. Like they had this whole regimen going and they had plans and goals, you know, I'm going to bench this at this meet or I'm going to compete in this show. And so therefore when they come off, um, maybe it's going to look a little different than what liver King was able to pull off.

If, if of course, if, if he's being honest, which who the hell knows without any peptide, without anything synthetic, if you call eating a pound of fresh raw bull testicles every single day,

natural, then I've been natty as fuck for 220 days. There's been a lot of accusations. You don't just get more shredded and more vascular and more yada, yada, yada when you come off steroids. Once again, if you go to liverking.com and you see the stats page, I'm providing weekly updates. So I was about 206 pounds in December.

You pause it. I mean, this could all just, all that could be, first of all, all that could be fabricated. Like he could just be totally lying with any of that stuff if he wanted to. I don't know if he would go that far. I don't really believe that he would in this case. But also, you know, steroid, like there's so many other things you can take that aren't going to necessarily really show up in your blood work. Or you could cherry pick what kind of blood work that you get done. You know, I could easily call any of the people that we had on the show before and say, hey, like, I want to stay really lean when I come off stuff.

Here's the plan. But I want to like have it not registered in my blood. And they would be like, oh, don't get your homocysteine checked and don't get this checked and that checked. And like no one would really be able to see, you know. So you can fabricate all this. I'm sure everyone would be aware of that in advance anyway. The thing is, too, it's like, I mean, there are old videos on the Internet showing him doing like crazy CrossFit wads before he came out as the internet persona. So it's like he did look pretty decent beforehand.

And I'm not surprised if he looks decent when he's off. But yeah, let's see. And then I got down to all the way down to 182. So I've lost over 20 pounds. You know, and anybody who interacts with me... You need to pause this for a second again. 182 pounds is very large for a guy of his height. Like, I think, you know, he said,

I got all the way down to 182 pounds. It's big. He's like 5'7 or something. Like, that's still a lot of body weight. And when you're that lean, that's actually absolutely incredible. Real life will tell you, I look leaner for anybody who doesn't believe me. All you have to do is look at my social media photos. Look at it from December. Every five seconds.

That's not, that's not all you have to do. You know what I mean? Like he's overselling you on something, right? All you have to do, if you want proof, all you have to do is go to my website and you'll see the stuff on my blood work. And all you have to do is, I'm just like trying to just help people, you know, work their way through this. before and he's maybe he's lying again i'm not even saying he's lying i have no idea really i don't really even care about this i think that he um has a persona that people want to talk about and they're intrigued by him and they they want to 2.1 million followers i mean he came through um really fast and was able to grab a lot of attention um i like some of the stuff that he does i think some of it's funny.

I think some of it's cool because it grabs attention, gets people talking about diet, gets people kind of wondering like, oh, I wonder if I did go all in on my diet, what it would do. Just like everybody else, I hate the fact that he deceived everybody. You know, he kept saying adamantly that he was natural.

He was going out of his way to say he was natural. And then it turned out that he wasn't. You know what I appreciate right now is that, um, even though obviously he did lie about that before, it wasn't an admirable thing he did. Uh, you're still somewhat giving the dude the benefit of the doubt. Like you're speaking the same way you did about it before, because before all of it happened, before it was found out, right. When we first talked about him, you're like, he might be, he might not be, right? You didn't just automatically write him off, right? And then obviously when it came out, we were, you know, I was called dumb as fuck and people said some shit about you too.

But it's just like, even now, you're still somewhat giving the dude the benefit of the doubt. He could be telling the truth. He might not be. We can't know. But I like how you don't just paint somebody with a brush after something happens. Yeah. And this is after he lied to your face. Yeah.

You know, and also, too, I think this would even be more annoying for people to know. It would be even more annoyed with him. But if you were able to meet the guy and you're able to hang out with him for a little bit, you would have a lot of fun. And you would say, this is an interesting dude. You want to hear more from him. Yeah. And I think that that would like even bother someone just to hear that. Like me and my brother had the greatest time with him.

It's like one of the best trips I've ever had. We fucking went all over his ranch and on four wheelers and stuff. And we got stuck in the fucking mud. Yeah, you broke one fucking mud. Yeah. You broke one. Yeah. Yeah. We broke one.

We got to shoot all kinds of guns and throw axes and see his family and see his kids and how they all interact with each other and stuff. And he had people like working the ranch. He had like, he had everything like set up for us. It was crazy. Like we went into this house that he took an extra home on his property that doesn't live on he it was like this i don't know 40 acre ranch and somewhere in houston texas it's fucking huge um the place that he you know lives at he's got all these cars got all this cool shit atvs and

shit yeah he's got a nice pool he's got a river in the backyard he has like a a boat i mean he just has a lot of really cool and fun things. And it seems like authentically he likes those things. It seems like he's into those things. Seems like his family is into those things. So we had an amazing time. And so I think even, even without that though, I like to try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Cause I don't know, I don't know like what they're saying in, and I don't know I don't know like what they're saying in and I don't know what their like angle is you know but I do think it's important that people should understand that most of the time people do have some sort of angle and so just as long as you know that going in that

someone might try to hook you with something I think in a liver king's case what he's the most guilty of is trying to sell you on on an a, on an idea more so than just products. Cause it's, you gotta keep in mind, he made his wealth before he was ever really on the internet before we ever saw Brian Johnson turned into like the liver King. Um, no one knew who he was and it seemed like ancestral supplements was doing really well. And I've seen some people that have kind of tracked his finances because you can do it through some apps and things like that. And they're like, this guy's probably not lying. He's probably making like $10 million a month. Probably making like $10 million a month. They scrolled over like one product that he had. They're like, he sold over a hundred K in this product for the month.

He sold over a hundred K of this product for the month. I mean, that's fucking, that's crazy. And the video I saw, they were like, this is probably why Greg Doucette doesn't like this guy. Cause then they went to Greg Doucette stuff and they went over that. And it obviously makes way more money. He makes way more money. Anyway, let you had to hop off and you were losing some muscle. I'm curious, since you've been in this space for a long time, obviously steroids can help an individual reach their natural genetic potential and then surpass their genetic potential. But from what you've seen, if a person does choose to hop off

and not take anything anymore, and let's say they don't take, and let's say they don't take anything. Let's say they don't even go on a TRT dose. They just, they just stop. They do what they need to do to stop safely and they stop. How much of that do they keep? I mean, it's probably individual, but can an individual expect to have a good amount of kept muscle from when they were using steroids or do they go back to what their peak would have been if they stopped taking it? That is a very individualistic thing. I personally know somebody who was a good friend of mine when I was an undergrad that came off everything to have kids and his testosterone was super low, like below 30 or something like that.

But his regimen from diet and training and cardio and everything he was doing, he probably lost a little bit of weight, but stayed super lean, stayed muscular. And he was pretty big? Yeah. Oh, he was probably 240, 250. He was a big guy. He wasn't a small guy.

I mean, he had been doing things for a while, but he was able to successfully use you know, use fertility meds to have kids and maintain his mass. So for me, one of the biggest issues, if I'm being completely honest, is the lack of motivation to go to the gym helped or allowed me to lose more muscle weight than I wanted to. but inherently not having high testosterone having high estrogen kind of changes your body composition to store fat versus to burn it and you know drops muscle mass because like we talked about you don't really need muscle anymore like your body's holding on to it um and you have to exercise to use it but if you but we're not hunters and

gatherers we don't need to carry it so your body doesn't your body will use it but if you but we're not hunters and gatherers we don't need to carry it so your body doesn't your body will use it as fuel first instead it's a breakdown so that's why a lot of people just lose that initial whatever it is 10 pounds 15 pounds like i lost a lot but i also you know came off after nine years of trt so without using ht, which is my fault. Yeah. The driving motivation thing you mentioned is actually a very big deal. I don't think a lot of people think about like, if let's say that before you started something, you weren't really finding that much motivation to go work out. You start and now you're motivated and then you come off and your motivation goes down and you're not training enough to stimulate that muscle tissue. You might just go back to

where you were because you never liked the gym in the first place. Right. That's not the case with me. Oh, no, I'm not saying, no, I'm just saying in general. Like that, Mark's talked to me about the mental aspect of that stuff and that's wild. Yeah, I mean, there are plenty of, I have had plenty of personal experience with friends

that have never gone to the gym ever and the first time they went to the gym, they wanted to take something. And that was their motivation to go to the gym. And then those are the guys that either fall in love with the gym and continue to do stuff, or when they come off, they don't go to the gym anymore. So yeah, it's real.

I mean, and Mark's an intense guy, obviously. And Mark loves to train. I've trained with Mark before. And he's also one of those genetic freaks and just stays ripped year-round and all that stuff so he's right about that oh I'm not I was meaning this mark oh well yeah mark it's the same thing that you know you're dedicated to it it's part of your life but if it was never part of your life,

and then you hopped on gear and it didn't become part of your life, then there's no point. You would just lose it and possibly even be in a worse spot than you were before. What does testosterone do to our brain? Are you pretty well informed on that? I know that it can affect your brain. It can affect you. I don't think the quote, road rage is a real thing.

I think it brings out different aspects of your personality, but it definitely has a detrimental effect long-term on your brain. There are papers that show correlation between high testosterone levels and certain different types of brain issues. Off the top of my head, I can't remember, but I've definitely read studies on that so if you

do a quick google search on that you should be able to come up with something that shows like high androgen levels will affect this part of your brain or that but i don't think that i think that if you're an asshole it'll make you a bigger asshole but if you're not you're not just going to turn into this giant asshole. But your emotions obviously change. Just like on estrogen, they change. It's just a swing. It's on test. How can you explain to them, if you're doing that,

you're going to feel really good, but why would you ever want to stop? If you go to feeling really good while on HRT, why would you ever stop doing it? And Smokey was like, yeah, I mean, there doesn't make to be any reason why I'd stop now

since I've already been doing it. It'd be like if you started getting bad sleep. Like, obviously there's no reason you would fuck up your sleep. That's what I would feel if I stopped taking testosterone. So it's an odd thing. It makes you wonder, like, there is a certain age where maybe you do want to

get on, but do you ever get off? Is there ever a reason to get off? If you, people used to. Yeah. I was going to just real quick. You'll have a way better off of crazy dosages,

right? Like, yeah, they used to cycle. Yeah. Yeah. Before you give like a legit, really good answer,

Mark, um, I would just say like, if you're just, you hate pinning yourself like on a regular basis good answer, Mark, I would just say like if you're just you hate pinning yourself like on a regular basis. Like, I mean, you got to deal with fucking injecting yourself multiple times a week. Like that's a literal pain in the ass sometimes. So it's like I could imagine somebody being like whatever we'll say 20 years old being like, no, I'm going to do this forever.

It's like, well, fuck, dude. What if 20 years in you're just like goddamn tired of it like you're fucked like you have to keep doing it at that point I mean again 40 maybe I'll say 10 years because at 30 years old you should still have plenty of testosterone natural testosterone but you've already crushed it for 10 years and so like I mean we'll say two pins a week for 10 years straight it's a lot of needles that are being injected that brought a lot of fun with what i do you know i love training i love running um because i chose to do performance hunting drugs a long time ago um i just have chose like i think this is what i'm probably going to do for a long time. I might

come off at some point and test that out as well. I think I'm young enough to fuck with that and kind of see what that would look like. I mean, why not? Um, and even if I went back on, all it would do is give me like more results just because I would, you know, I would, uh, resensitize yourself. Yeah, basically. Yeah. Resensitize myself. And, uh, it would be like starting all over again, you know, in some ways. So halfway would suck, but halfway would be like a great challenge and it would be a lot of fun. I think people just got to feel it. They got to like, kind of think about what they think is going to be best for them. And, um, uh, performance enhancing drugs has been like,

it's been a pretty big part of my life. Like it's, it's, it's been, it's been a tool that has assisted a bunch of stuff that I really enjoy that I really love doing. Yeah. And probably like in SEMA, probably it feels great every day learning new stuff and tackling some of

these things. And I feel the same fucking way. You know, I just made a different, I made a different choice. We're just on different ends of the spectrum when it comes to that. But I made the choice. I feel like everything's clicking, everything's going really good. I just got more blood work done. I'll have the results back on that.

But I've been pretty consistent over the last couple of years with getting blood work done. I've had things be off before, but you know, we've ran through some of my blood work on one of the shows. Right. And we've talked about it forever. Um, and I've had things come and go and go up and down. And like, there has never been anything except for when I was heavy and I was powerlifting, that was like a real red flag. You know, there has never been anything like where it's been wacky. But I have had red blood cell count be high and like, you know, some shit like that. But those are things that I track, that I watch. I pay attention to it.

And I don't want to, just because I like PEDs, I don't want to be unhealthy. You know, I don't want to just, you know, completely, uh, throw out other aspects of my health. And I do realize that they do carry some dangers. So, um, when I get the blood work done, I try to be as diligent as I can with it. Uh, but also, you know, to like, I don't know, a reasonable extent, like how far do I really, you know, do I want to like be on the spot with every fucking thing that i do i'm working on it it's like a work in progress i try to do a little bit better at each thing all the time and i'm getting better sleep i'm lifting better my mobility is getting better like it seems like everything's continuing uh to improve and it seems like i can continue to

improve at a bunch of different things at a bunch all at the same time you know so for me it feels it feels good I just don't feel like I have any reason to change it so if you're somebody that's young that's like trying to uh you know up your game and you're trying to you know get stronger and you don't necessarily, like performance enhancing drugs is not where you start. And I know like I've taken them for a long time, but it wasn't where I started. Like just start lifting, start running, start doing some of the things, whatever it is that you want to do,

play around with it, mess around with some supplements, see what happens with some supplements, see what happens with eating more food. Eat six times a day. Try to eat 10 times a day. I mean, I remember times of consuming 400 grams of protein and 500 grams of protein. I remember times of consuming four or 500 grams of carbs and doing all kinds. I'm sure you did a bunch of different stuff. I did the inch on the arms in one day program. I've done German volume training. I've done every fucking thing that you can kind in one day program. I've done German volume training.

I've done every fucking thing that you can kind of think of almost. I've tried a lot of different stuff and it's all been fun. And then I just got to a certain point where I wanted to kind of make a push to do something slightly different, to be able to take things to another level. And I personally felt for myself that I needed to do that for somebody else it might not look the same way they just might make a decision to compete and just work harder and maybe they don't decide to do peds so just figure out like i don't don't just don't think there's any reason like everyone gets so uh worked up over this topic all the time, but you got to just pick what you feel

is going to be good for you. And you need to clarify, I'm not like, I'm not anti-TRT or HRT. What I'm actually, I'm anti-TRT and HRT for young guys that don't actually need it. They don't need it. Like, especially young guys who haven't gotten their habits in check.

Like, let's say that they're drinking a bunch, they're barely getting sleep, they're half-assing their workouts. Like, no. I'm actually anti when it comes to those guys. You're going to look half-assed, though. Yeah. You're going to look half-assed.

You're going to take some shit. You're still not going to look that good. You're still not going to be that strong. So just fucking chill. Like, get some good habits together first. Yeah. But for, I mean, even if you're in your late 30s or 40s or whatever, if you want to go that route, at least have your habits in check, go for it. Like that, that's fine. And again, even if you're in your 20s, you're an adult, you make whatever decision you want to make. But those are the guys that I'm really just like, just stay away for a while. Because you just see that way too much with 18 and 19 year old dudes. And of course, they can, they can make their own decisions, but you see that you're like, what if you just

lifted for five more years, bro? Like what if you just really came in and liked this lifestyle? You might find that you never need it. Maybe. That's kind of cool. But the big thing that I just don't think young guys don't think about is what does happen when you want to come off you know like what what actually does happen because i don't think they think about that shit you know it's never talked about what happens when you come off steroids but it sucks i mean you can get i mean erectile dysfunction is really fun like that's a really awesome one a lot of times acne happens because of of the hormone change like because your hormones are dropping. Sometimes it doesn't happen for everybody. Um, when they, uh, first go on stuff, um, your mood could change a lot, your kind of brain chemistry. And especially for younger guys, I think, uh, most men, um, who

are in their like late twenties and thirties and forties and stuff, think back to when they were like 16 or 18. And they're like, yeah, I was like, I was pretty aggressive sometimes, you know, when I was younger. And imagine if you're younger and you go on a cycle and you, you know, get big and strong and then, and you're excited about some of this new growth and you are pretty happy with a lot of this progress that you're getting. And then you cut that shit out because your parents found it in your bedroom or whatever. And you got to come off stuff. I mean, that's're getting, and then you cut that shit out because your parents found it in your bedroom or whatever, and you got to come off stuff.

I mean, that's a very, it's a very dangerous position to be in because not only could you find yourself being angry, you could also find yourself being like very depressed. So people need to be, what kind of person are you? You know, are you the kind of person that has depression and things like that?

Well, testosterone can certainly actually help you on a more positive level when it comes to something like depression. However, it's still not, I mean, I've said it in bigger, stronger, faster than movies fucking really old at this point. I said, steroids aren't for kids. And I, I, I would like to see young people and even someone who's just young to lifting, even if you're 35, but you just started lifting, pour some time into it. And, and I don't know, like what, like just want to find out what's going to happen if you work hard for 30 days,

reevaluate at the end of 30 days. Like I stuck to all my habits, all the things that I wanted to do in the gym. If you enjoyed this episode, which I know you did because you got this far, then click this one right here because you'll enjoy this one just as much. And if you're choosing to still listen to me currently as I'm telling you to go over here and watch this video,

well, hey, that just means you like the sound of my voice. And well, I'll just keep seducing you right here. Hello.