Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 246: IIFYM- A Healthy Relationship With Food?

Episode Date: February 29, 2016

It turns out IIFYM (If it fits your macros) is a very emotional topic for some people. One of the ideas that is being sold is that IIFYM promotes a healthy relationship with food, but is that really the case? Sal, Adam & Justin are all for balance and that includes eating less than ideal foods on occasion. However, in this episode they go into detail why IIFYM is being promoted in a way that may, in fact, be creating an unhealthy relationship with food. Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Learn more about Mind Pump at www.mindpumpmedia.com

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, pop, mind, pop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. What are you reading over there, Adam? Uh, some diaper stuff. Oh, man, you got something to tell us? You're in some weird shit. No, one of my clients came up to me, Chris,

not my client, maybe somebody. So I offered to pay you to wear diapers. He did. No. He came up and he said, I always thought it starts. He told me that he's like, you know, I thought of my pump of the day

when I came across this stat and he tells me that, I think it's in Japan, I don't know, where diaper sales for adults are projected, so they're surpassed diaper sales for children. And so I was just looking it up and reading it. Now, obviously I think the baby boomer is the first thing that you're gonna like towards. Japan in particular has a very large older population,

and in fact, I believe, I don't know, you might wanna check the statistic out, because I'm not 100% if I'm correct, but something like one out of every three or five people in like 20 or 30 years will be over 70 in Japan. It's like this ridiculous number. Do you see that continuously? Now I'm curious as far as like, you know,

during wartime with people, or like as they come back from war, obviously, right? That's when they tend to the population increase. Well, here's the statistic fat. Did you find it, Doug, is that way? No, I'm just gonna comment in Japan, they don't have a lot of kids. Right, right.

And so they actually, I believe the population is declining there. They don't love you a long time. Yeah, not that. Well, you spined that to me. So they don't have a lot of children there now. So they went through like a splurge of having children and then now they're grown. And now those

those adults are not having children now anymore. Or what you find with populations where the, you know, the economy is strong and wealth is increasing. People have less kids. They have less kids. Fact. less kids fact and so what happened Oh, what happened in Japan is that people having like one child single child this is happening in Europe Europe's population is shrinking and America we are at the cusp They're the number of you need you're supposed to have like 2.2 births per person in order to maintain a society.

And what I mean by maintaining a society is a lot of government programs and stuff require more people paying in than taking out. That's one of the main ones. And America is at that number 2.2. Most of Europe is under it. And Japan is so low that they won't be able to recover from that. So they're going to have to figure out some shit. And this happens in societies as they become

more wealthy and prosperous. The reason why America's population rate is still growing at the rate that it needs to, even though it slowed down, is because we have such a massive rate of immigration. And immigrants that come in have more kids, and we grow because of our immigration also, more and more people are coming in than leaving.

But in Japan, this is a huge problem and they're trying to figure it out because what do you do when you have a huge percentage, like a huge chunk, 30% of your population, over 70. Imagine the medical costs, who's going to work and pay taxes and so it's kind of an interesting dilemma. But then 30 years after that, though, it's gonna be crazy the opposite, right? It's gonna swing the pin on the other way. But what happens during that time?

What happens during that time? And the population is shrinking, meaning that 100 years from now, there'll be less people than Japan than there are now. And that's the thing that people don't look at when you look at, let's use like a program, like, people don't look at when you look at. Let's use like a program like, I don't know, Social Security or Medicare, right? You need more people paying in and taking out. What happens when the population stops growing?

That's also why there's this whole myth about, oh my God, the world's gonna be too populated, we're gonna run out of food. Reality is it's gonna hit a certain peak number and then it's gonna start declining because the resources. Because the world becomes more prosperous, people have less kids. They just do look in Italy where my family's from. Two generations, three generations ago, man, people are having six, seven, eight kids. Nobody has kids in Italy anymore. Population is shrinking like crazy over there. So it's kind of this issue that's going on.

So where's the sweet spot then? 2.2. That's it. 2.2 to 2.4 is where they want it. Shit, I was just talking to Trinity. I wanted to have two and a half kids. Two and a half kids, yeah. Yeah. That's half one.

So basically I'm fucking out of the population. Yeah, you are. Yeah, or you could just have a bunch of kids, a little bit of a mid-children. Mm-hmm. That doesn't screw the stats up. So that's what Doug did. And I'm just kidding.

That's what Justin does. So, but yeah, in these advanced societies, America too, one of the biggest issues to our countries is the, or to our country is the aging population because it's one of the biggest segments of our population. If that's the biggest segment, our people over a certain age. So, well, when we've talked about this too

at the fitness industry, explosion of the focus being now baby boomers, because they're the ones that are retired, have the money, need the help, you know, need the corrections as far as, you know, the pains and the strength gains and things like that. But man, talk about a shift from targeted, maybe it was more at-home mom.

That was kind of the demographic. It's so much more baby boomer than anything else. It's right there. This is one reason why I think service is personal training. This is the one where I raise my selves better than me right here because he likes training old people. I know. He's on top of the curve. I know, bro, I read the market, bro.

It's like, no, it's, that was totally him selling the other day, right? He was, he hates old people. I'm just saying, he doesn't like old people. I push him over. He just knows that that's the bigger chunk of the pie right now. He's just like, oh, I love me in old person. I like you's on top always.

Yeah. I like to be number one. No, it's a very, very large segment of the population. And fitness is going to continue to grow because it's going to continue to cater to that. And so you're going to see more and more of these small studios. You can see more and more personal training. Less and less of the more boxes. Yep. 100% cater to it because you have to because that's who's paying. Oh, yeah. Well, well I mean, you know you either spend some money on your fitness now Or you spend a lot of money on your health later on right we know that well

Let's be honest. I mean, although we'd like to think that it's gonna We're gonna see a huge transition over in our our field. It's really not I mean, that's not we've already proven as Americans That's not our M.O. our M.O. is to wait till it's broken before we fix it. We're not in the business of preventative. I don't know. I think people are learning with pills. Well, I think people are starting to learn a little bit and starting to see that that's You know that they need to you know do that kind of stuff. I mean personal training is one of the has been for now the last I don't know 10 years Fastest growing segments of fitness. I'll tell you, I was a personal trainer. I started about 18 or 19 years ago. 18 or 73?

Yeah, 18 or 73 as a personal trainer. Wow. No, 18 or 19 years ago. Oh, damn, we're over here. When I started as a trainer, okay, the largest clubs, the largest gyms that I was aware of that I worked in, would sell $10,000 in personal training in a month. That was like, whoa, that's the whole club, right?

Yeah. It got to the point then where clubs were selling $100,000 worth of personal training, where you all of a sudden have staffs of 40 trainers. And we're talking big box. Forget big box. Do you guys remember all these small studios being around when we were first getting the gyms?

Yeah, yeah. No, there weren't that many small studios. Not like you see now, right there. They were there. You mean, you had the curves and you had places like that, but it didn't exist. Well, here, okay, I have a different theory than you do on all those.

I, personally, the huge boom that we saw in personal training from 2000 to 2004-ish, I think a lot of that it was attributed to the dot com era. You know, we saw a huge... Well, you're talking about just this area though. Well, I mean, because I'm talking about all over America, personal training was on a fact. Still, still dot com affected everybody all over.

I mean, it really affected the Silicon Valley the most, but it affected everybody, which is why I think we as California, I mean, it is still considered one of the fittest states because we were, we probably got, got more people involved in personal training from 2000, 2004 than any other state. But I also think that it has just had to do a lot with the flux of money. And because I felt like in 2000, 2004, when we were training, it was more of a, it was more of a trend thing.

It was cool to say I have a personal trainer. Well, I know what happened. I mean, you take, you take that, you know, situation as far as like, you know, everything crashing with the market, that like smart trainers had to evolve in the group classes. Exactly. That's where I was going with this. Everything is through. It's just cheap. Right. And when I say personal training, I should clarify what I mean is

more service oriented, higher dollar, higher service, lower volume based fitness. So that's what I mean when I say personal training, that industry, not just one on one. So I'll give you an example, like a big box of gym, like a 24 fitness or a golds or a LA fitness. That's a low dollar low service high volume business, right? They're paying 20 bucks a month, 30 bucks a month. Yeah, but you want a shit ton of people coming in

and you give them very little service. They come in, they do their workout, you don't really do anything with them. You put in the bathrooms, you sweep the floors, you're right the way it's. That's it. If you go to like orange theory, or a personal training studio, or a CrossFit gym,

or a Pilates studio, or a Yoga studio, or all these studios that are now exploding all over the place, it's lower volume, higher dollar, higher service. That's the growth of the fitness industry. That's been the growth of the fitness industry. I haven't seen big boxes. They stopped kind of exploding.

No, it's the sweet spot. That's what I mean, hence why I went to OTF. I mean, I saw the writing on the wall, the minute I looked in and I dug in all their stuff and I was extremely interested in it. I mean, you guys know riding on the wall, the minute I looked in and I dug in all the stuff and I was extremely interested in it. I mean, you guys know that part of the reasons why I even got involved in it because I saw the opportunity business wise more than anything else. I just wanted to get my hands involved in it and see what I thought about it.

And it's just a brilliant concept, a brilliant time in the industry and there's tons of them that are doing it and they're all very, very successful because it's right in the middle. It's not as expensive as that one-on-one type feel, personal training, private training where you're paying a train or somewhere $75 to $150 an hour. You know, instead, you can spend $75 to $150 a month and you get as unlimited amount of classes that you could come to and you still are in a small enough class that makes you feel like you get more of that service. Yeah, you get you almost get that private attention, which before that was like Justin was saying, you saw trainers go from one extreme to the other, they went from private training

and oh shit, the bubble burst, you know, with dot com, people can afford anymore. So now I'm going to go to this huge group of trades that are on these mat and then it was all about growing massive boot camps. Who could have the largest boot camp and I was part of that training. I had boot camps, ran them all over San Jose and did all that stuff. And it was like, how many camps can I get running? How many trains should I have a working underneath me? And that was on this push to do that.

And it got old really fast because I wanted to enjoy doing you. But I was trying to move with the market. I knew that's where I had to go. Now you see these small boxes. It's why I'm there again because I see where it's going. But at the end of the day, it's not ideal. The last trend that I hope to see happen in the industry is that people start educating, learning more for themselves, figuring out what they need to do individually for themselves.

Hey, maybe if that's... And then you use us for like two notes. Exactly. Which is part of why MindPump was created. Well, that's interesting. You bring that up. You just maybe think of my own clientele. I train, I'd say the average client

has been with me for probably five or six years. And so that's a lot. That's a long time for personal training. Most trainers will have a client, will stay with them for six months. I've had clients with me for 10, 12, 14 years. And a large percentage of my clients only training me once a week now,

because I've trained them for so long that I've worked them down to a maintenance-type style training. I have clients, I have quite a few clients actually that I train less than once a week. I have clients that train once every the week, and I have some clients that I train once a month. I have a lady that drives down, three hours down, to meet with me once a month.

I have the same, yeah. And that may be what you're talking about, where they train with you initially, get what they need, correct in balances, learn some exercise, become educated, and then meet with you in a much lower frequency just to keep them accountable and to modify the workouts or whatever.

Well, that's very similar to the concept that I built when I did my virtual coaching, which the idea behind that is for me to take somebody who, you know, whatever it is they're doing, help inform them, guide them through our books and through our programs and to show them how they should be doing and to help them find their way. And it's virtually completely.

I don't even go there to train them. I mean, the only thing that you miss out with that is I'm not there physically to put you into position or to see what's going on. So there's a lot more communication going back, via text message and email and going back and forth like that. And it's not ideal, but it's also a lot easier

for people to be able to afford to do that. And you can do that all over the world. Well, and one thing too, that to really recognize, what some of these big name like CrossFit type programs have done is create this culture. So now they create a culture where I can be a part of this and everybody has an opinion about it as far as like as they're going through it. And so now like you can compare notes, you know compare scores and times or whatever going through that. So I understood that having more significance than it just being just like a boot camp but

like, you know, crazy, more insane and dumber. However, you know, what they did is they really hit that. They really hit that well as far as the addictive factor is that now somebody else knows my experience. We can communicate that and it's a very big group that communicates that. Which is something too that I know as we grow and as our forum grows and people understand the way that we do things like that, there's power in that and that you can know somebody having a similar situation or is like-minded, go into the process.

Right, people like to feel supportive, get support from other people and do things together. People don't typically like working out, but they like being with other people who are like-minded and maybe motivates them. It's very social. It's very social. But it's interesting, we're talking about this right now,

and I'm thinking about the baby boomer population and how fast, the largest segment of the population how they are aging And how that's gonna influence fitness. I think it's gonna influence fitness from Tremendously and here's another prediction we made and we made this prediction a while ago was that wellness and fitness are gonna start to merge and

Holy shit that is gonna be a huge driver of that. Think about it. Yeah. All this aging population now, you know, people getting into their 60s, 70s and 80s, they are far more interested in longevity and wellness than they are in fitness performance than they are in looking good in the bikini. They're looking to be able to move,

they're last years on Earth. Optimize their life. That's the future of, I mean, it reinforces even more what we've been saying. The future fitness really is away from that whole, this is going to make you ripped and whatever to, this is what's good for you, this is what's good for the body, this is what makes you feel good, type of mentality,

which we already embrace, but I see it going in that direction anyway, now that I'm thinking about it, holy shit, that's so true, I can't get this. That's gonna go hand in hand. Oh, it will, it will, 100% it will. You know that you're still gonna have the other extreme, though, I mean, that will never go away. I mean, we're visual creatures, no matter what, the end of the day, still the other half of the population that is

under, you know, 50 years old, still wants to look good, still wants to look sexy, still wants to feel sexy. But you know, it's interesting if you think about it, like, as you see movies change and like the heroes change and like, you know, that as far as the media shifts, you wonder about youth and what they're gonna respond to more as far as being fit and active and what that means. It might be interesting, it might have a total shift from what it is now. I think you're right, I think you will see.

I think you'll see the appendolum swing one way really hard, which we've already seen. I mean, you look at our bodybuilders an example, that they can't get much bigger. They can't get much more crazy. And bodybuilding is so out of the itte de, is so far away from its pinnacle. Yeah, it's so, it's starting to get in big ol' guts. Yeah, it's, no one wants to see that.

Yeah, well, you're, I mean, there's so much growth hormone your intestines are growing, you know what I'm saying? And it's, it's, so it's gotten to the, the extreme of all extremes. Now you're gonna see the opposite come the other way and then I feel like it'll settle somewhere in the middle. I feel like then you're gonna have this huge backlash of the studies and the things that come out on people

that have totally took all this shit in their body for such a long period of time and all the long-term effects that's happened and that starts to happen and that those studies come out. Then what will happen is that's gonna cause it to go the other way real extreme, because then everybody's so freaked out of that, so that they'll go the other way,

and it'll be almost all natural hippie. I don't even care about getting big, belly muscle. I just wanna be healthy, I wanna be happy. And then they'll be fine, this kind of like, there's a balance. There's an ability to be healthy, to be fit, but also you can look sexy and you can eat healthy. You don't have to train like a body builder

just to necessarily look like a body builder. I think it's already starting to happen. I think that message is starting, that's why I think a lot of our message resonates with so many people, it's because that's what we talk about. And we don't look like hippies. You know what I'm saying?

We don't look like that. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, my own observation with myself, like, you know, my own connection to food, for example, in the past, if I looked at something that I shouldn't quote unquote, shouldn't eat, you know, like, let's say I'm looking at, you know, a piece of cake or whatever, I'm at a party and they're like, hey, you want some cake?

In the past that they know, I don't want to eat that cake because in my mind, I'm thinking, I don't want to get fatter, it's gonna mess up my gains, okay? Now I look at that cake, I don't wanna get fatter, it's gonna mess up my gains. Okay, now I look at that cake. I don't even think of that in me. You think I might have a headache from this later on. I'm not gonna sleep very well because of this. I put my stomachs in, I'm probably frozen.

I acid reflux, yo. Or whatever, I'm not gonna feel as good. I might feel a little inflamed. And so my connection to food has changed so much that it's so much easier for me to stay consistent because in the past when it was all about how I looked, I really, I would go off quite a bit because one piece of cake's not going to change. I'm so glad you said this right now because it goes right in line with the Fitture Macros talk that we had the other day with just these

people seriously, that's the issue right there. And they think that because we counter with, we should be striving to feed ourselves better food and challenge here so that doesn't mean that we never do that. And they think that we have a bad relationship with food. No, my relationship is so much better than it. It's very healthy. I'm aware. I'm aware of what it's going to do.

That's what it is. Who wouldn't want to be educated as far as like, you know exactly what each one of these nutrients will do for you and also against, you know, as far as what your goals are. Like why, I don't understand why that's demonizing. Why is that even an issue? What? If you just put it out there and you put some scientific study

behind it, you know, and you just, you have a deep understanding of like what each of these foods will do in diversity and, you know, like why wouldn't you put that, present that information out so people can be better educated? Well, here's a deal. We've already for a long time now been telling people, this will make you fat, this will make you look good, this will make you look bad. Yeah. Doesn't fucking work. What we need to do, imagine this, okay? Imagine a society in which people ate foods that nourish them that made them feel good in a real way. Not in a band-aid way, like I'm depressed, I need to eat this real quick, but like this is good for me, it feels good for my body. Imagine a society where people loved and cherished health versus the cosmetic. Imagine what that now, imagine what that society would look like.

They would look the way that they're trying to look now, but they can't achieve it. They would look sexy, they'd look lean. They'd look hot. Inter the curious. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. It's complete, the way that we're approaching things is asked backwards. If you approach things from that, if you, if you relationship to food becomes, comes from

a nourishing, what's good for my body and I love myself and I love my body and I love my health. The choices that you will make will reflect that and it's so much better and so much easier than the, you know, this is going to make me fat and this is going to make me muscular and this is what I need to eat to look good because that shit doesn't work. We see that with kids. We see that with kids. This is why you don't tell your kids don't eat that, it'll make you fat or eat this and I'm, it doesn't work, it gives them issues.

You want to give them a valid gauge of what is quality and what isn't as high a quality. Really, it's a spectrum of quality. There has to be a standard for that. You have to be able to understand that and you've brought up the point like what does your food eat? And then what are the toxicities? What are all these things that like, you do have to look through all that. I know it's a pain in the ass, but you have to consider them. Of course, you have to consider. And it's really about just do this. Just educate yourself on this stuff. Don't make any decisions, but just learn and become aware.

Like Adam says, become aware of the food that your food eats or the way that your food grows. Be aware of how you feel after you eat something. Not just is it gonna make me fat or not, but literally how you feel, my emotions, start to connect the dots. People don't connect the dots very often. I use to, I remember, I can't tell you how you feel, my emotions, start to connect the dots. People don't connect the dots very often. I used to, I remember, I can't tell you how many times,

you know, where I'll have a client or a family member a friend who, you know, will be kind of in a bad mood, kind of down, and they don't connect the dots that the day before, two days before, they ate, you know, a bunch of sugar or they ate something that wasn't good for them, and they don't connect their mood to that. And does it affect your mood?

You better fucking believe it. But they're not making that connection. The only connection they're making their mind is, did I gain weight on the scale or not? You see what I'm saying? No, a hundred interesting. Perfect example. Somebody asked me this on my Facebook the other day

because after a video that Sal and I had done, they said, oh, okay, well, I would like to see exactly how you guys eat. What diet do you follow or this? And I said, well, actually, since you asked that right now see exactly how you guys eat. What diet do you follow or this? And I said, well, actually, since you asked that right now, I think Sal is following a ketogenic diet right now. I'm actually doing like a modified version. I wouldn't call it ketogenic.

I would just call it a low carbohydrate, high fat, moderate protein diet. And Justin probably eats intuitively right now. And really the way we eat isn't like, I'm not pulling carbs out of my diet because I think they're bad and demonizing it's because I'm trying to pay attention to how my body feels when I introduce certain foods in there. What do I feel like when I have high fat in my, does it give me energy, do my sluggish,

am I more aware? I was my cognitive function. How's my performance? How's my performance? Is my workouts, do I sleep better? So then when someone asks me, oh, so you might, like, are asses, like, oh, so you all pro ketogenic you're a ketogenic

I know absolutely not he's doing something right now to pay attention to how his body reacts and fills to that And that's how we're always rotating and changing foods and our diet if you watch tell all of us it's net We don't have something that's always the same. It's on I am always because I'm still learning always wins Not even though even with all the science and all the knowledge and all the studies that all of us in this room of red We're still learning how to apply that knowledge to our own bodies because each one of us are individuals in here, which is why I don't like going full ketogenic and I'm someone who's like,

you know what, what I've found works really well, so I kind of follow this really low carb, I stay away from all these grains, rice, it's the process, things like that and what I'm introducing is what I feel like I need something like that, I introduce berries fruit. So I get a lot of strawberries, raspberries, Asian pears. These are things that it mangoes.

These are things that I start to and I do a big old fruit ball and I feel amazing when I do that. That's just it's you got to be aware and make that connection. I'll give you another example. There's a trainer that I'm working with. She's a phenomenal trainer, fantastic trainer, very fit, eats very healthy, been eating healthy for a long time, but she's been having shoulder pain and inflammation now

for a year and a half. So this is, at the super spinatus, she also has pain at the bicep tendon, because I did an assessment for her. And this pain she's had for year and a half, she's done correctional exercise, she knows what she's doing, she went to the doctor, went on pain medicine,

they advised to give her cordless on shot, she didn't want to do it. Couldn't figure out how to make this pain go away. It was kind of this always there. And doing everything right, everything right that you're supposed to do, didn't go away. So me and her are talking, and she's been doing the correctional exercise piece now for three or four weeks. And I said, you know, I think it's time now we start to look at diet.

And she's like, well, I eat healthy. You know, she's lean. She's like, I eat very healthy. I eat like this. I, you know, these foods and my body fat is this low. So I eat very healthy. So well, let's look at your foods and start removing things that could be inflammatory.

For some people, certain things are inflammatory. All we did, this is all we did, is we eliminated sugar completely out of our diet and I eliminated grains because for a lot of people that's not for everybody. So if you're listening right now, I'm not saying this works for everybody, but for some people, those two things, especially sugar can be inflammatory. We eliminated them. No joke. I'm not making this up. There's 100% correct. If you want, if you call me on it, I'll tag her and you guys can ask her

yourselves. She eliminated sugar and grains within three days. This shoulder pain that had been nagging her for a year and a half was about 85% gone. She was so blown away by it that she completely denied it. She said to me, she said, it can't be that. There's no way. It must be the correctional exercise. So I said to her, I said, okay,

I said, reintroduce some sugar and see how you feel. Let's start reintroducing those things and see if that's what did it. Sure enough, she'll eat some sugar, see how you feel. Let's start reintroducing those things and see if that's what did it. Sure enough, she'll eat some sugar, boom, shoulder pain comes off, she'll avoid the sugar for three, four days, pain is gone. She did this four or five times

because she didn't believe that that could possibly be what's causing her pain. She couldn't fucking believe it. Of course now, she's a believer. But that's just the thing. That's a lie. Even someone that is very fit, somebody that understands the general information when it comes to health and fitness

was unaware of how her body truly reacted to the things that she was doing and eating. And you better believe in the past she was lean. So in the past she would allow herself to have sugar and stuff like that. She would have chocolate, she's like, I'm lean, it's not affecting me. But now that she feels the pain,

she has a different association with that food. And it's not that she's not eating the sugar because it's bad and I can't eat it. And she's demonizing it, it's not worth it to her. You know what I'm saying? Now she looks at it and she goes, you know what, I do want that chocolate, but it's just not fucking worth the pain.

So I'm just not gonna have it. And so when you change your relationship to food and to the things you do and you become aware, it becomes easy, it becomes fucking easy. This is one of the reasons why I don't, you know, I've been doing this for a long time now. I don't track my food I have in the past. And you know, people make fun of me like,

so I'll track your food, tell us what you eat. One of the reasons why I don't do that anymore is because I went through this journey probably about six years ago. It was a huge learning curve for me. And I'm at the point now where I know how I feel after eight certain things, and I know how to change my diet according to how I feel. If I'm feeling a certain way, I introduce more veggies.

If I'm feeling this way, then I'll introduce more cholesterol, containing foods, or more of these kinds of fats. Sometimes I notice a little extra inflammation if I'm having too many, you know, red meats, red meats, not a fish in your diet. Then you know I'm gonna have a couple days where I just eat fish. Sometimes I'll have a day where I'm vegan.

Where all I eat is vegetables and with, you know, with like all the boiling stuff like that. So I have a different relationship to food now. And as a result, the side effect of that is I maintain a leaner body fat percentage and And as a result, the side effect of that is I maintain a leaner body fat percentage and I look better. Isn't that the goal?

That's the thing, like how you put that though, because that's how supplement companies sell you on each one of those things. And people don't realize that when they eat food, like they're doing that same exact thing, they're trying to get more energy. They're trying to, you know, lower their inflammation in their body.

And like this can just happen by manipulating what, you know, your macronutrients that you're consuming. And as opposed to, I'm going to take this pill because I need to lower my inflammation in my body. Dude, your food is food and activity are the most important factors in your health.

Food is number one, activity is like close or if not tied with number one, they're both extremely important. But when it comes to food, you have to be aware of how you feel after you eat something. For example, people will go eat a big meal and they'll be like, oh my God, I'm so sleepy now. There's a signal. There's a signal. There's a signal right there.

Pay attention to that. You just ate a meal and now you feel like crashing out and taking a nap. That's a signal. What is that telling you? That's telling you that you're probably not responding well to what you just ate. You might have eaten too much or it might be the macro breakdown.

For some people, a high fat meal might do that. For other people, myself included, a high starch meal. Look, we just ate breakfast. We just, right before we came up here. I have tons of energy right now. Right, right before we came into record, this is literally what we ate. I'm gonna out everybody, okay?

This is literally what each of us ate. Steak, three eggs, a side of spinach, a side of bacon, and we all shared some linguisa sausage. This is a high calorie meal. That's a fucking high calorie meal. It's very high animal proteins and fats, very high in fat. We didn't eat a single starch or single carbohydrate. I feel absolutely fine.

Now, had I replaced just the three eggs with potatoes, or had I replaced them with hash browns, or a pancake, or some toast, I swore to God right now, I'd be fucking dying on this mic. Had I replaced just the three eggs with potatoes or had I replaced them with hash browns or a pancake or some toast? I swore to God right now, I'd be fucking dying on this mic. I'd be passing out going to sleep. Some people are the opposite, some people respond that way to high fat.

You gotta pay attention to the signals that your body's giving you. When I eat a certain, I've had people tell me relatives, like, oh, I'm gonna eat this and then, bo, I'm gonna have trouble sleeping tonight. Ha, ha, ha, that's a signal. Like, if I eat this, if I eat dairy, I have trouble sleeping. Or if I eat this, I get heartburned.

Every time I eat this, I get heartburned. Well, guess what your body's telling you? You probably shouldn't eat that, right? It's probably not, and what happens? I drink a lot of Jack Daniels, I wanna throw out. It's crazy. But what happens drink a lot of jack Daniels. I want to throw out. It's crazy But if you make that connection if you start to connect the two and become aware of your body It will motivate you in a very different way

With your food you'll be motivated in a way that's sustainable It's not sustainable to constantly be motivated by your appearance that has a very high Potential to turn into a disorder to turn into, you know, the more extreme things like believe me, anorexia, when you're looking at food that way, but if you look at food in terms of how you feel, then you tend to make better choices for your health. Don't you think there's levels to this shit though?

Like I feel like that's a big step for somebody to take who. Oh, it's one step at a time, right? It would be one step at a time. Because I feel like most people have no clue even what they're consuming. I mean, they're inconsistent with their sleep, their time when they don't eat, if what the food's paired.

They're not intuitive, it's not intuitive to them. Yeah, you haven't got to that point yet, so you're absolutely right. That's the first thing you have to do. That's exactly. And that's how I feel like that is first is understanding that. Like because if you don't even make it, I mean, you eat one day, you eat all fats. Another day you eat all carbs, you know what I'm saying?

And you're eating things by itself all the time and shits and packages and you're skipping this and adding artificial that. It's like if you're all over the board with no sort of structure, consistency or pay or at least paying attention to what you're doing, I mean, you got to first get that down. artificial that it's like if you're all over the board with no sort of structure consistency or pay or at least pay an attention to what you're doing I mean you got to first get that down you know that's why too the very first thing I do so that and every time somebody eyes me they very first question and one

oh you're gonna make me a meal plan blah blah and my favorite answer is no I'm gonna make you a meal plan what you're going to do is you're going to eat like you always eat and you're gonna track it. You're gonna track it for one week. Just I want you to and be don't try and impress me, don't try and do anything special. Eat exactly. If you feel like you would normally eat a Snickers bar or they're there, eat that damn soon. You feel like you would normally do this.

I want you to do that because I need to see. I need to see one of your normal patterns for a week. Then together, we're gonna sit down and we're gonna make subtle changes. And going to show you what we're going to, and then each time I make a subtle change, I want them to give me feedback. You know, okay, we, you notice it? We always do this. Okay, now what I want you to do is pay attention to how you feel when I have you eat this instead. And then tell me, do you like that? Does it make you full? Does it, do you feel good? Do you feel tired afterwards? Do you have energy from that? How do you feel right now?

And then that's what we do. It's just baby step up. Totally, I don't write these meal plans. Like I used to as a trainer. As a trainer, I used to write like my diet. You know, this is how I, here you go. Do this, you'll be ripped. That was such a big moment for me.

It's like you get through that. You do so much work putting it together. And like, you know, you might have a good solid week where they're like, yeah, you know, I was liking that, you know, they might be some feedback of things I gotta change because, you know, socially, situationally, it didn't work out for them, whatever.

But then it just immediately trails off because the thing about food, it's not like fitness. The thing about food is that there's a lot more involved with that. It is. It's people you're hanging out with. It's environment. It's where you're going to get it. There's just so many different things that if I just put it on a paper and it's like

this black and white thing, my relationship to that is just gonna be that it's this law, it's this right wrong situation where you need to understand what you're doing. And the only way for you to understand what you're doing is to know how to navigate through everything and know how to walk through a grocery store, pick out, something that is gonna benefit you, through everything and know how to walk through a grocery store, pick out, you know, something that is going to benefit you.

You know, stay to the section where you're going to get the most bang for your buck nutrient-wise. You know, how can I create more diversity, more color? You know, all these things matter. You know, and so it's like, it's not as a simple thing, it's like here's your meal plan. It's stupid. That's your carbon copy pill, that's your pill prescription. And that's not how it works. It never does. And I'll tell you what, the freedom and the flexibility, the true flexibility and the freedom that I feel now with the way I eat, it is light years ahead and different

than the way it used to be. In the past, when I would eat according to my, you know, how I looked, I got to stay lean, I got to build muscle, I didn't have as much freedom to go off and do different things. Like now, because I eat based on how I feel and what nourishes my body, I feel so free to go to the grocery store and say,

you know what, I feel like I need to eat mostly vegetables today. So I'm gonna go, and I'm gonna go in the vegetable sector. Right, and you're not gonna freak out that you're not gonna have protein for the day. I'm not muscles in a fall off my legs. That's just how I used to feel. I'm not freaking out. I'm looking, I'm like, I'm gonna try this vegetable.

I'm gonna try this vegetable. I've never had this before. I need to have a mushroom dish. I haven't had mushrooms in a long time. And wow, look at bok choy, I haven't had bok choy in a long time. Or maybe I said, you know what, I've eaten lamb and beef the past two days.

I wanna have fish. I had salmon before. Let's try some sea bass. Let's try something a little different. I need a fatty fish. I need to have some of those Omega-3s. Or you know what, I'm gonna eat a little leaner. Maybe I'll have some plain old chicken. But the freedom that I have now when I go

to eat food is so amazing. My relationship to food is so much better. I would have never considered myself to have a eating disorder before, but that's sure as fuck what I had. Now I wasn't your typical eating disorder. I wasn't bleemick or anorexic, but it was like, you know, the same meals, five, six times a day, every day, I have to get, you know, tray out of that, you felt like this, like panic. Yeah, 250 grams of protein, 300 grams of protein a day, you know,

253 grams of carbohydrates a day, you know, 50 grams of fat, 80 grams of fat every day, and I had to follow this, this regiment, and okay, my best sources of carbs are rice and sweet potato and vegetables, broccoli, and it was, it is literally like having an eating disorder and you have no, you don't have that freedom to go in and explore with what real healthy food

is all about and I'll tell you what, I enjoy tasting it. Like, it's like people ask me, like don't you miss eating a burger and say, well, I'll have one every rate once in a while, but let me tell you something. For me, you know what tastes really fucking good? When I have like a new, you know, I had a dish the other day that was a-

To love a Cato's olive oil and sardines. But I had that the other day, without them. He's eating that in my house and they're doing like, oh bro, dude, I love it. I had that the other day and it was really good. But really bro, you don't even know. He comes, he comes walking into my pad bro. He pulls out his can of sardines.

He takes two avocados, scoops out two avocados, goes and gets his olive oil. Jouses it with olive oil, then comes over, throws his sardines over in a little bit of salt. Hey man, it's fish pink salt. It's fish fish in avocado, but or like the other day. The other day I had a vegetable curry

with made with coconut milk, and I ate that, and it was so good, and it was what I needed. I thought to myself, I could eat some fats, but I want some vegetables, and I had that. Like, I'm very satisfied on all levels when it comes to my nutrition, and I don't track anything because I'm listening to my body. When I stop listening to my body, is when I need to start tracking things.

And when I notice like, oh fuck, I'm getting very similar again to intensity of training. Absolutely. Go, you know, the next day and you, you got to SS those feelings, like, like, that energy level, that, that feeling you know where you feel strong that day, you know, that's a real feeling and you got to listen to it. And even for longevity, even when we talk about longevity, that can even get misconstrued and turned into something else. Here's what it's all about. You don't exercise, or at least you shouldn't, you shouldn't exercise and eat right to live longer. You do it to live better. That's what it's

really all about. It's about living better right now. And the side effect of that, the real side effect of that is you're gonna look fucking awesome. You're gonna look better if you try to live better now than if you're trying to just look better. When people see you walking down the street, you're gonna be more impressive. And there's something that you look...

You know how depressing it is to... I'm gonna run in the treadmill for an hour so I can have that donut. Yeah, or I- It's a fucking horrible mentality. Yeah, or I need to get lean, I need to get rips, so I'm gonna eat a certain way, specifically just to get ripped.

When versus, I'm gonna eat this way because it's nourishing and I feel good, and oh, wow, look at me, I'm ripped on accident. And I'm sick and tired of IIFYM type people trying to put us in a box and label us as clean eaters because we try and eat good. Oh, because they think we're the bodybuilder, rice chicken and broccoli. And that drives me crazy.

Stop trying to put everybody in a box. That's what we're trying to take everybody out of all these bullshit boxes and teach people how to look at this completely differently. It is okay to run your walls and let's hug. Quit falling into that bullshit, that, oh, it's bad to demonize foods and then you have this bad relationship. Quit falling into that propaganda.

That's fucking propaganda that they're using to pitch whatever diet, pitch whatever supplement, pitch whatever pill they're trying to push on you. Start looking at food differently. Bridge. And it's okay to want to try and eat your best and try and eat best for you. That's okay.

There's nothing wrong with that. That is not a bad relationship with food. And dammit, whenever you're at a wedding and you have a wedding cake, don't jump off a cliff over it. Fucking just accept that it wasn't your ideal food that you've got. You're being an asshole anyway.

I do that. How dare you do that to your mom. Well, you're being an asshole anyway. Yeah, I mean, I do that. How dare you do that to your mom? Well, look, she wants you to do that. Well, look at this. Cigarettes, cigarette use has dropped considerably since the public has become more informed on cigarettes, right? Are we having a bad relationship with cigarettes? No, we know more people know it's bad for them,

so more people choose to not smoke. I'm not saying you can't go eat a pop tart or go eat a donut. If you want that, you can go ahead and eat it, but be aware of how it makes you feel. And I promise you, when you start to make that connection, you're just not gonna want to. You're not gonna wanna have it, not because you can't. There's a difference.

There's a big difference between me looking at a donut and say, I can't do that. I don't wanna get fat. That's a bad relationship with the donut. The good relationship is, I don't want that donut. I just don't like the way it makes feel. I just don't want it. That's a bad relationship with the donut. Well, the good relationship is, I don't want that donut. I just don't like the way it makes feel. I just don't want it. Here's another bad relationship with food.

I fucking love donuts. I love cake. I have to make this work. That's right. That is the say, oh, I don't want to give this up because you have this craving and addiction for that. Exactly. Try, you know what?

Try being a clean eater for two to three weeks and flush all that bullshit out and tell me what fucking fruit and like real whole food sort of tastes. Like, you'll notice you don't crave that stuff. And then you'll reintroduce it. What happens, right? It's so funny because like you're just thinking about that, like that mentality. It totally reminds you of that junkie, you know, that junkie that's just like trying to just, no, you're a stand man. Totally. Like I need that. It gives me what I need. Don't don't think, oh, whoa, I just, you know, I had a couple bites of a donut. I was like, you know, don't, don't think Mickey D's got where it's at just because it's got some cool ass harshes in their

fries or Bob. There's a reason. I mean, that there's a science to that fucking taste at science. Yeah, there is a exactly. is exactly, and we're all silly to think it's the toy in the fucking in the box that got everyone out there. It's not crazy things here, brand. Oh, no, it's not that at all. And I'm fed up of listening to people try and tell us that it's creating a bad relationship

food because we encourage people to eat, clean, and eat right. No, no, no, we're just, just be aware. And if you wanna make those choices, you make those choices, nobody's gonna demonize you. We're not gonna talk shit. We make those choices sometimes. Sometimes we, you know, foods that aren't good for us,

but we're not pretending that it's, that it's somehow okay because it fits our macros or we're not pretending that it's, you know, it's not that bad for us. One pop-tart's not gonna be that bad or whatever. It may be not in terms of like me dying right now or whatever, but in terms of the way I feel, it is. And I don't wanna eat it because it just doesn't make me feel good.

And I feel like that's threatening to some people. That's like a threatening attitude. But- So you're getting into their addiction, bro. Taking my drugs away. I'm saying nobody wants that, nobody wants that. Check it, there's the bad relationship with food. That's what you need to look at.

Look, if you say that, if you, oh, I don't want to give that up, that's way too good. Why would I do that? That's living. And let me tell you, man, you can eat things if you want to have something sweet or you want to have something, I used to feel like we're about cheese though. Yeah, I love cheese. If you want to have something sweet or you want to have something that's saltier or whatever,

you can do that with things that make you feel good too. So like, for example, a dessert that I'll make is I'll take full fat coconut milk, I'll put it in the fridge so that shit gets, because the fat will get hard, I'll pull that out, I'll scoop it out, put it in a bowl, I'll whip the hell out of it, I'll add some stevia, I'll add some cinnamon, I'll add some vanilla extract,

and then I'll put some berries on top of it. And it's a fucking dessert. It's a dessert and it's amazing. But after I'm done eating it, I don't feel like shit. I feel okay, I feel good, my body feels good. I've developed, that's what a healthy relationship is. It's important that you point out though. So like, let's say somebody just heard that, right?

So I'm somebody who eats bad. Okay, I'm gonna give this a whirl with salsa. I'm gonna try this little thing. And then you go and you try and have a scene and you're like, let's say somebody just heard that, right? So I'm somebody who eats bad. Okay, I'm gonna give this a whirl with salsa. I'm gonna try this little thing. And then you go and you try and have a scene and you're like, oh my God, this doesn't taste good. And the reason why it probably won't taste good to somebody who does that. You can't compete with the shit that they put out, right?

Exactly, you can't compete with that. It can't compete with the pounds of sugar that are getting shoved into your food. When you eat that. The reaction out of your brain immediately. It's, what it's like it's doing is this, okay, let's use drugs, right? Let's use cocaine, okay?

It's like, let's, no, it's really, because- We always go here. I don't know, think of it like that, because it is. It absolutely is. If, you know, think of the most minute amount of cocaine, if you absolutely somehow ingested it, are you gonna die from it, are you gonna have any real adverse,

I mean, Tom, super small, I'm talking like, no, not even feel it. Exactly, right? Now, if you start taking more of that and more of that, more of that what happens, your tolerance gets up, you become addicted to it. Then when you try and compare having cocaine to having absolutely no cane, cocaine whatsoever, or having something that is ton times less. Having like some coffee. Yeah, exactly. Having some coffee and then trying to compare it to that feeling that you get when you have an A ball of cocaine. It's just not the same.

You're not until you completely go rehab yourself until you get that shit out of your system and you're no longer addicted to it anymore. And then you re-induce, then guess what? That the taste that's sourced, I'm a... It tastes like that for him because the motherfucker eats good most of the time. If you eat like shit and then every once in a while

you try and reduce a healthy recipe that someone gave you and you go like, oh my God, this tastes like shit. I'm gonna stick with hostess. That's a red. That's a red flag that you've got a cocaine problem. Yeah, you know what else is a red flag? Pay attention to how your kids react when you give them food. Yeah, I have so many parents will tell me this.

Oh, I give my kids sugar and then they go crazy. Yeah, and it's so weird. It's not just but it's not just every time. Here's what you got to think about you too. It's not just that they go crazy. What's causing them to get hyper? What's causing that reaction? There's something in their body that is happening that is causing this Advert, it's an adverse reaction is what it is because my kids will get irritable. The lead sugar, they'll be okay. They're fine with each other. And then I'll notice like three hours later, they get irritable and act kind of like crappy. And that's an adverse, that's an adverse reaction.

God, he just made me think of something. That's so true. And if we, and it's, we've already screwed ourselves up for so long that if we were adults that actually, if you were a kid who never ever, let's see, never had sugar. And then now you're 30 years old and you decided to have candy, you know, at a nowhere, you would probably get that turn into like,

elf, you would, you would probably get this a, we like, we wouldn't get that anymore because all the years that it's already been pushed through our body already and poison. And now we introduced it. It's like, oh, because we don't have it a lot, we might as well as a little bit of a spike or a little bit of difference. But now we introduce it. It's like, oh, because we don't have it a lot, we might as well notice a little bit of a spike or a little bit of difference.

But imagine if like what the child feels like right now. Well, and then to be fair too, though, like children, they're, they're sense of taste and all that is like so heightened in comparison to adults. You actually lose a bit of that. Well, why is that? Because it's all new stuff that's being introduced, right? I mean, as children like that and they're growing

and their palettes are being created, all that stuff is happening right now. So much is happening. And all of a sudden we go, here you go, here's some candy. Here's a super concentrated, here's an A-Ball, okay. Don't worry, you'll be able to handle it later. Yeah, don't give your kids coke.

Whoa. Thanks for listening to Mind Pump. Please leave us a five-star rating and review on iTunes. It sounded like a GI Joe thing. Hey kids. Thanks for listening to Mind Pump. Please leave us a five star rating and review on iTunes. Sounds like a GI Joe thing. Hey kids. And you can find us on Instagram at Mind Pump Radio. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find Adam at Mind Pump Adam. And you can find me at Mind Pump South.

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