Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2671: Ten Awesome Unexpected Benefits of Exercise

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

In this episode of Quah (Q & A), Sal, Adam & Justin coach four Pump Heads via Zoom. Mind Pump Fit Tip: 10 Awesome Unexpected Benefits of Exercise. (2:21) Not all GHK-CU is created equal. (28:13) The encouraging audience response to Sal’s new YouTube series. (29:49) 1st day of school tradition. (32:50) Game on! (38:41) When science doesn’t have a moral compass. (42:43) Outsourcing anniversaries. (48:37) It’s a miracle in your gut. (52:17) Gone fishing. (56:12) #ListenerLive question #1 – Any thoughts on how I should change my exercise (or calories) to continue to lose body fat and gain muscle? Any thoughts on what the heck caused my visceral fat to almost triple? (1:01:01) #ListenerLive question #2 – I have been running MAPS 15 since April, and it’s still too much. I'm absolutely exhausted daily and desperately want to get out of this overtrained state. Please help! (1:12:54) #ListenerLive question #3 – What tips/advice do you have to help get to the gym after working a twelve-hour shift and still have time to get good sleep and meal prep consistently? (1:22:36) #ListenerLive question #4 – Do I still have the potential for meaningful muscle growth and physical change at nearly 29 years old, after spending so many years training improperly? How can I overcome imposter syndrome as a coach? (1:29:57) Related Links/Products Mentioned Ask a question to Mind Pump, live! Email: [e-mail] Visit Luminose by Entera for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Code “MPM” 10% off your order, or 10% off their first month of a subscribe-and-save. ** Visit Pre-Alcohol by ZBiotics for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Promo code MINDPUMP25 for 15% off first-time purchasers on either one-time purchases, (3, 6, 12-packs) or subscriptions (6, 12-pack) ** August Special: MAPS 15 50% off! ** Code MUSCLE50 at checkout ** Can exercise help with insomnia? Best exercises and more How Exercise Affects the Skin Is exercise more effective than medication for depression and anxiety? Exercise for chronic pain: How physical activity can help you feel better How Exercise Improves Microbiome Health (and Vice Versa) Exploring the link between muscle quality and erectile dysfunction: assessing the impact of mass and strength Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson and Mark Cuban all agree that this one habit is key to success Sal Di Stefano’s Journey in Faith & Fitness – Mind Pump TV China firm plans world’s first pregnancy humanoid robot using artificial womb Illinois’ ban on AI therapy won’t stop people from asking chatbots for help Get your free Sample Pack with any “drink mix” purchase! Find your favorite LMNT flavor or share it with a friend. Try LMNT risk-free. If you don’t like it, give it away to a salty friend and we’ll give you your money back, no questions asked! Visit DrinkLMNT.com/MindPump Trainer Bonus Series Episode 1: The Successful Trainer Mindset Mind Pump Personal Training – Apply today! Elite Trainer Academy – Podcast Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Dr. Gabrielle Lyon (@drgabriellelyon) Instagram David Goggins (@davidgoggins) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. In today's episode, callers, called in. We got to coach them on air.

We helped them with their health and fitness, but this was after the intro. Today's intro was 61 minutes long. Now, in the intro, we talk about fat loss and muscle gain. We talk about current events, family life. It's a good time. By the way, if you want to call in and get coached by us on air, email us your question live at mindpumpmedia.com. Now, this episode is brought to you by some sponsors.

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That's E-N-T-E-R-A, skincare.com forward slash M-P-M. Use the code M-P-M, get 10% off. This episode is also brought to by Z-Biotics. This is the pre-alcohol probiotic. It's been genetically modified to break down acetaldehyde in the gut. What does that mean? You take Z-biotics, then you go drinking, you have a good time. You feel way better.

Try it out for yourself. You'll know the first time. Go to Z-Biotics.com. That's Z-B-I-O-T-I-C-S. dot com forward slash mind pump 25 use the code mind pump 25 get 15% off for first time purchasers we also have a sale this month maps 15 minutes is 50% off 50% off head over to maps 1 5minutes.com use the code muscle 50% off discount here comes a show t-shirt time and it's t-shirt time Oh, shit, Doug.

You know it's my favorite time of the week. Four winners this week, two for Apple Podcasts, two for Facebook. The Apple Podcast winners are obsessive CrossFit Disorder and Sigmund. And for Facebook, we have Kim, Sharkey Davis, and Nick Hunt. All four of you are winners in the name I just read to iTunes at Mind Pumpmedia.com. Include your shirt size and your shipping address. He'll get that shirt right out to you. Everybody knows that exercise makes you fit, right?

You build muscle. You look better. you burn body fat everybody knows that but a lot of people don't know that there are massive unexpected benefits to the rest of your life things that improve that you'd even know that exercise would improve in fact of all the things that it can improve your life exercise is near the top we're going to talk about 10 awesome unexpected benefits of exercise by the way this is all backed by lots and lots of data let's get into it it's almost like we were built to move.

Yeah. All right. So here's the first one. And the studies on this are remarkable. Cognitive function, right? Your brain's ability to process and think. This is a big deal for a lot of people, especially to get older. I think the last time we looked at the data, if I'm not mistaken, Doug, I believe it was

what, one third of us will probably suffer from dementia or Alzheimer's or something related as we get an older age. And it's terrifying, right? Nobody wants that kind of cognitive decline. But even before that, being able to think sharply and process well, I mean, that is very important for everyday life. Nothing improves cognitive function as effectively is exercise. This is what all the data shows. When it comes to preventing dementia and Alzheimer's, if there were one thing that you could do that would give you the best odds, it would be be active and exercise.

when it comes to improving processing speed, working memory, like just essentially thinking better exercise. Not just metformin. No, no, not just metformin. It's always like, we always just jump to these new tropics. That's right. And all these other, like, yeah, special herbs and things.

It's like, why don't you do the biggest mover, which is, you know, exercise more often? Is it just purely because the amount of nerves and muscles that are being active, And the brain works as this hub of this massive neural network and you're putting demand on all of those at one time. Is that the thought process? Like is it is is like say doing a barbell squat significantly better for cognitive benefits than just walking or is walking pretty closely related? Oh, good question.

All activity is great for the brain. Strength training seems to be particularly beneficial for cognitive function. Okay. So that's going to be the variety of stimulus. That's part of it. Yeah. Part of it is that. Part of it is...

Skill acquisition of it. That's right. That's part of it, right? Because strength training, you know, when you do strength training, you're doing multiple exercises, right? It's not like just walking is just walking. Swimming is just swimming. Right.

So that's part of it. The other part of it of the insulin sensitizing effects. So because muscles are so insulin sensitive, they're a storage vessel for sugar, right? Glycogen. Your muscle store glycogen like your liver does. When you have an insulin sensitive body, that means your brain can utilize. utilize glucose and operate well because it uses the energy well and your muscles do that.

Which these are the downstream benefits because you get the immediate benefits of the actual movement aspect of it and the demand on the neural network to actually do the exercise. And then you have the compounding effects of what it does for like insulin sensitivity. Does it also reduce like brain inflammation on some level? That's right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah.

Your muscles think we don't we think of our muscles. as a lot of people just look at them and say, oh, these are things that help me move or, you know, they look good. But it's an organ. It's a massive organ on the body. It operates like an organ. And when you have healthy muscles,

they send out signals and chemicals to the body that are anti-inflammatory that reach the brain. They also, I mean, exercise stimulates BDNF, which all these supplements that promise to do this and all these peptides that'll do this. And this is a big area of research because BDNF is like miracle.

grow or fertilizer for the brain. Exercise raises this naturally better than anything that we've ever seen. So literally it literally bathes your brain in this pro-growth, pro-neurl connectivity of, you know, chemical compound called BDNF. Nothing does it like exercise. So it literally prime. So think of it this way. If exercise or will be more specific, strength training builds muscle, it also

builds brain. So your brain like a muscle, if you strength train or exercise your muscles to make them stronger and bigger, let's say, or more fit, the brain becomes stronger and more fit as a result of it. In fact, when you look at, again, we'll stick to strength training because I think that's why I know the data shows that seems to be the best form. All forms of activity, by the way, are good, so long as they're appropriate. But when you look at the strength gains you make with strength training, a lot of people will refer to those initial strength gains as newbie gains. Why? Because it's marked by that first six month to year period of strength training are the fastest, as a percentage, the fastest strength gains you'll ever experience your entire life.

So if you strength train for 30 years like I have or plus, you know, I'm making gains throughout that whole time. But as a percentage, that first year is like silly. Yeah, exponential. Yeah, like it's reasonable to take somebody and double their strength in a year. Literally double it, right? That doesn't happen any of their time. A lot of that is not because your muscles became twice as strong. It's because your brain and your central nervous system became twice as effective and twice as strong.

Much of those gains come from that part and not the muscle. So for cognitive function, it's incredible. Next up is sleep quality. exercise has been shown in every study that's ever been done on this, so long as it's appropriate because if you over-train or over-apply stress, it'll do the opposite. But if it's appropriate, it increases deep sleep and reduces the time it takes to go to sleep. In fact, for insomniacs, activity is one of the first things that is typically recommended. Like, if you're an insomniac, like, let's get some exercise and see what happens.

Now, do you think this is in the context of the modern world? and this would be still true 100 years ago. So, like, part of what makes me, the studies that are around this is now, right? That's right. We have such a sedentary lifestyle, so much so that our body needs that type of activity. And so, therefore, go get the exercise

so that it can rest properly. Whereas maybe 100, 150 years ago, that wouldn't even be necessary because everything we did every day was so laborous. Yeah. You think that's the reason. You're right. 100% because, in other words, sleep quality is declined for a number of reasons.

One of them being, we're so inactive. So it's not, and that's what you're going to see, by the way, through a lot of this, is that it's not that exercise is this miracle cure. It's that we're so inactive that we're deficient. Yeah. So the example I like to give is if you're deficient in vitamin C, everybody knows vitamin C. If you're deficient in vitamin C, you have disease. You're bruising, you're bleeding, blood vessel integrity is terrible, heart failure goes through the roof.

It's like you literally have a disease. If that person with vitamin C deficiency disease takes vitamin C, it's a cure. It's a cure for all the disease. So we're so inactive that the studies show that proper exercise has all these incredible benefits, one of them being amazing sleep quality. Because, yeah, you're right. I don't think this was an issue when people were. living according to the sun and I mean an active person today takes 10,000 steps a day like 10,000

steps a day. Yeah. A hundred years ago was like we're living with art. You're not moving rhythms. You know, yeah. It was like we would naturally just decline in stimulus once it got dark. I saw that, you know, a little off topic, not to take us too far from where you're going right now, but I saw that that chart that you talked about the other day. I shared it back in our group, the one that you brought up in the podcast. You did. definitely got to give it to the, I don't know if the editing team, when you brought that up, use that graph. That graph, to watch it was one thing to hear you talk about, was another thing to watch.

Isn't that crazy? It's just, where we spend our time now? Yes. That's crazy. It's very, very crazy when you think about how radically it's shifted just in the last two decades compared to all of humanity. Let's save that. Let's get back on that.

I think that's a good topic to circle around. All right. Next up is skin quality. So here's what's crazy. All exercise improve, again, so long as it's appropriate, improve skin quality. So collagen production, the appearance of healthy skin, less wrinkles, you know, more elastic, like all forms of exercise show this.

But only strength training shows a considerable boost in the collagen production that is what makes skin look young. Now, why is that? Well, protein synthesis gets boosted when you strength train, which is growth of tissue and skin is a part of that. So when you get that signal to go up because you're lifting weights, it also extends to the skin. Yeah, all our cells benefit from being stress tested.

I mean, and that's just, you see that. And even when people go to improve, like, their facial skin and, like, they're somewhat, like, stressing it out and, you know, trying to stimulate new stem cells to come to. in and heal. I'm trying to, as you go through these, I'm trying to also compare to the, you know, exogenous ways that we've tried to solve these problems. And, you know, you bring, nothing beats exercise in the cognitive game. What about something like red light that directly goes to the mitochondria versus like just pure exercise? Does pure exercise still beat even a tool like

that? It does. Really? Yeah, it does. Yeah. But combining them would be like, sure. Now you're turbo-charging. Why just do one if you can do? That's right. But, I mean, that's kind of crazy that just that by itself still is better than that. Yes. Yeah. Nothing trumps exercise, especially when you consider all the effects of exercise, right? Not just skin, not just the ones we're talking about.

Skin, cartilage, bone, ligaments, like everything gets affected. That's right. The next one is my favorite one because, well, I'll say what it is. And I'll tell you what's my favorite. It crushes depression and anxiety. The common forms of depression and anxiety that people. suffer from. So mild to moderate forms of depression anxiety. The extreme forms, you know, that is a completely different topic. But the kind of depression that people typically suffer

from, it's just moderate and it just lingers or anxiety, that general anxiety, studies on this used to show that exercise was as effective as medications and or therapy. Okay. Now, I used to make the argument that if you stretched out the study long enough, exercise would outperform it because with medications, you have this down-regulation of receptors, you have side effects that come from it that aren't so great, whereas the side effects of exercise are all good. So I would always argue exercise is better. Well, a big study came out, a huge study, I've now talked about it twice on the show, over 100,000 people. They found exercise to be one and a half times more effective than talk therapy and medication for depression and anxiety, which is crazy. It's one and a half

times. If there was a anti-depression drug or enziolidic that had those effects, plus all the positive effects that exercise, if we had that in a pill, could you imagine? What a blockbuster that would be? It would be incredible. Here's the other thing. It works on everybody. Almost everybody that exercises properly notices or gets a decrease in these things. Whereas with medications, especially with medications, oftentimes you go through a series of trying to figure out the right combination and, oh, this one makes me feel numb, sexual. side effects aren't so great on this one or yeah my anxiety's down but I'm lethargic whereas exercise uh is good for everybody uh in this particular you know the pushback I get when

I talk about this one is you know Adam I'm I'm so down or so depressed I don't even want to get out of bed I don't want to get out the couch and I think the the most important thing to talk to or talk about in relation to that is uh start with a walk and and I think people they hear that, that how great exercise is for depression and anxiety, and they feel so crippled by it that in our workout in the gym, especially the way we promote work, you know, we as in the fitness industry, promote exercise. It's like this grueling punishment for an hour that you have to do. And I think that if it seems so daunting. Yeah. I think if more people understood, it's like, no, just go do one exercise. Go do three

sets of something. Or just go for a walk. Or do toe raises while you're sitting down. Yes. Just, it, it, And that's the key is to do just a little bit of something movement related. And then we can build on that. It does not have to be this drenched in sweat, sore as hell, you know, limping out of the gym workout. I can only imagine how difficult that would be to get up to one. I don't want to do that. And I'm not depressed. You know what I'm saying?

Like, imagine somebody who feels like that that thinks that that's what they need to go do. Movement encourages movement. So just consider that. And by the way, I have a lot of empathy for when people say that. I've had a couple clients that work in the mental health field. And we would talk about this. And they were my clients, right? So they felt firsthand the benefits of exercise because before they had worked with me,

it wasn't something they had done regularly. And what they would say is, because they would incorporate in the practice. What they would say is, you know what I do now is I'll use, if I need to, I'll use the medications to give them just enough to get up to go exercise. And then the exercise does so much of the work. I mean, it does so much of the work. But initially, we got to get them just to do that first. thing. I knew a guy, I won't say too much, but I knew a guy who, he went through a depressed

period where he was too depressed to go to the bathroom. So he would literally stay in bed and he would use bottles. And he just wouldn't go to the bathroom. And his first assignment was to get up and walk to the far bathroom of the body. And then what he started of his house. And then he said as he did that, he was able to move further and further and further over time. And then eventually, and I knew this person, eventually he came in, worked out, and we would modify the studio for him and all that stuff. And it just, it took us a year, but the improvement was just remarkable. Next up, this is a cool one. Exercise has this dual effect on pain, which is remarkable. Number one, it cuts chronic pain because most chronic pain

is due to poor function. Okay, so you have joints that hurt, not an acute injury. It's not like I just hurt my knee, I tore my ligament, you know, a couple of months ago. It's like, yeah, I've had knee pain for five years or back pain for 10 years. That's often the result of dysfunction. Your body is moving in a way that is suboptimal, and suboptimal movement causes wear and tear on the joints and the body. And so exercise corrects that. When you apply correctional exercise, this is what physical therapist do really well. You apply correctional exercise to an area and you start identifying that dysfunction and then start correcting it,

strengthening what needs to get strong, loosening what needs to get loosened, stabilizing what needs to be stabilized, then the pain goes away because your function is better. But here's the other side of it, which is crazy. Exercise increases pain tolerance.

Yeah. It builds a different association with it. Totally. So, yeah. Now you see the benefit of stress testing it, going through this little bit of uncomfortable, you know, burn or pain or whatever, you know, you're feeling.

You realize that, you know, this is benefiting, I mean, now you have an association towards, like, let's keep pursuing this. It literally changes the experience of pain. The reason why pain is so difficult to treat sometimes is because you have the, the, you know, physical, physiological thing that's happening, the pain signals. And then you have the experience of the pain. Yeah, yeah. The experience of the pain is just as important as what's happening physiologically.

So someone might think, oh, increase pain tolerance. What does that mean? I still have the pain, but I just deal with? No, it means you literally feel it less. It literally means you feel it less. I've told this story before. It's one of my favorite experiences as a trainer. I had this woman.

I was the early trainer, so I must have been. Oh, I know what you're going to tell. I think every trainer's probably had at least a couple clients. I know when I tell this story, trainers are going to listen and be like, oh, my God, that happened to me. I was probably 19. There was a woman that I was training. She was in her 60s, I want to say, never strength trained before. We're doing tricep press down, super low weight.

I'm literally just teaching her how to do it. She's going. And I remember as she's doing it, and I'm watching her form, you know, oh, that's good, keep going. She suddenly let's go with a bar. weight stack slams and she's like oh and I'm like it burns I thought she was hurt I'm like wait she's like I think I heard something like what do you mean and she's like pointing to it and then it took me five minutes I'm like your triceps are burning she's never felt yeah what that feels like her association with the pain it was just intolerable meanwhile you know you got people working out

for years and they can push through pain because they're associated they literally experience it differently yeah exercise tackles pain for both ends so if you suffer from chronic pain like this is like, as close as it gets to a miracle. Next up, better gut health. Study after study shows that people who exercise regularly, when they control all the other factors, have a more diverse microbiome, a microbiome that is healthier and their digestion.

Again, does this compete with like a probiotic? Ooh, I mean, it's better, of course. Really? Now you throw both of them together. Of course. I mean, of course, that's just like the red light thing, right? Why just do one or the other? But that's interesting to me that even heads up that you would say that it's still better than that.

It changes the microbiome in a permanent way, whereas probiotics don't necessarily do that. They tend to be trans. That's why you take them every day. They're transient. You don't populate your gut necessarily with probiotics. This is what the experts will say, at least. Whereas exercise actually changes how the population of your gut to a more healthy, to a healthier one. Next up, it makes you more resilient.

Okay. Makes you more resilient to illness. So your immune system's stronger. You're less likely to get sick. But if you do get sick, you're less likely to get really sick. And then if you're in the hospital, here's where it gets crazy. If you look at the data on people with low muscle mass, sarcopenia, and they break a bone and they go to hospital. The recovery rate?

Yeah. It's crazy. It's night and day. It's insane. This is why when older people break a bone, it's so dangerous oftentimes. You get a 70-year-old who breaks a leg or an arm, and if they're not strong, their health, all health, mental health, physical health declines rapidly. You just see this chart. You look at the charts on this is crazy.

But people who are strong, who have muscle that's protective, when they're in the hospital with a surgery or something, the recovery rate is just so much better. They're more resilient. They're just, they're harder to kill. I would add psychological resiliency here, too. Sure. I mean, because there's something about exercise that getting towards any goal, whether you're losing weight, gaining muscle, is challenging and has setbacks. And there's something to be said about setting a goal, moving towards that, having setbacks, getting back up to the mental resiliency that you get from it, too. Obviously, for the immune system and the reasons that you talk about, that's obviously a huge benefit.

But I would add psychological resiliency in here, which I would argue is as important. Constantly overcoming challenges. Yeah. That's a, yeah, that's a rep that you're constantly taking. Totally. Next step, better sex life. There's almost nothing. And by the way, there's like so many reasons why it makes your sex life better.

Improved confidence, better blood flow. We just saw a study that connected muscle health to erectile. You look like disgusting. Yeah. That's a big one. Hormones are, you know, more optimized. Testosterone is better, both than men and women. Your ass is perky.

Everything. So I used to love. Did you guys, I know you guys experienced this with clients. When I started training people, we'd say an advanced age, right? So an advanced age and personal training is anybody over the age of, I think it's 60, I think is what they say. Maybe 55, which is so, uh, close. Yeah, so offensive because I'm not, I'm less than 10 years away for that. But I would train people in their 60s and 70s.

There were always women and they would always be embarrassed to ask me that say this to me. So I'd train them. It was like clockwards. The first time it happened. I'm like, I was weird. But that happened so often, I expected it. call it out before three months three or it was always around three like 90 days in specific term for it they were so funny they'd say and I'd get company know we'd be friends and

you know they look at me like I was a grandson and they'd say you know Sal I'm experiencing some some interesting results from the sexual annual time like what do you mean oh did you tell well you know I just feel more like vibrant oh like more energy like you see colors better yeah yeah no you know you know what I mean like I'm a little I had one woman say she felt more Randy. That's an old way. Randy. Yeah. But it's a remarkable for

sexual health. And poor muscle health, like I said, Dr. Lyon was one of the authors of the recent study show that was connected to erectile dysfunction. So that's a big one. And then finally, it strengthens discipline. Now, what do I mean by that?

Studies show that when people start exercising and doing it regularly, their ability to have discipline in other aspects of their life, like work, finances, resisting other, you know, for lack of a better term, temptations or challenges, gets better. Exercise strengthens the muscle of discipline. Well, it's the ultimate delay gratification.

You know what I'm saying? Like nobody went to the gym in one session and got their goal. So you have to learn delayed gratification, no matter what the goal is. Like it takes time, it takes a process, you're going to have setbacks. And so it's the ultimate version of that. And if learned, you can then apply to so many other aspects of your life. Have you guys seen the data? Maybe I could find this.

Have you seen the data on the percentage of successful entrepreneurs who also exercise? And you compare that to like the average population. Oh, it would be interesting to see that. Oh, it's, I've been going down that rabbit hole lately. I just shared stats with you guys not that long ago. I've been on that kick of just how few of people. like really make it in business and and then even when you make it like how many like make it make it and then make it for an extended period of time and how far yeah yeah oh it's

crazy you gotta be a little delusional Doug's pulling up some data here a significant majority 76% of successful entrepreneurs engage in regular exercise 76% that's interesting the average it's crucial the average in the population far more likely than as an entrepreneur if you're successful that you also work out that's right far more likely that's right whereas the average person, I think it's like something like 20%, if I'm not mistaken, 20-something percent. So it's such a high, and again, it has to do with that discipline. And by the way, these are not often, I've trained enough entrepreneurs to where they weren't exercising. Then they start working out with me. I remember the first time this happened to me, Jim, my client Jim,

hired me for health because his wife was nagging him about it. That's what he told me. Those are his words. We started working out and he goes, you know why I keep coming back sell? I said why he goes, it makes me more effective at business. Yeah, you're more productive. Yeah, you're clear-headed. So cool. Well, I mean, there's, okay, the benefit to somebody who clocks into a nine to five is you clock in and you're told what you're supposed to do.

You're told how your day is going to look, you know what I'm saying? And some people actually like that. But if you're somebody who doesn't like that and you are going to be successful, you've got to learn to make sacrifices, do the hard thing when you don't want to. Business is that way. Almost always the thing you need to. do in business is the thing you least like to do. So you have you have to learn to embrace that part of being successful as a successful entrepreneur is that I recognize that the things I don't

like to do or I'm not very good at are the things I need to do the most exercises that way. Can I just can I just off topic? You just made me think of something. I was just thinking about this a week and I was just so grateful that I have partners that are so good at the stuff that I don't like to do that I could just focus on the stuff that I like. It's so great. It's so great. I wish I remember the quote. I'm going to destroy it or butcher, but it basically was talking about hiring and it was like you hire your weakness. I think a mistake that a lot of people do is they look for another version of themselves because we're just, that comes natural. It comes natural. If you had success in a thing and you got to hire somebody else to do that thing with you, that you look for

the same attributes and it's actually the opposite of what you should do if you're going to build a successful team you should really look at okay i'm not very good at this thing and you know even though maybe just and i are totally different he's really good at that thing and so it's a good strategy for you to hire that way and i just think it's unnatural to do that no no 100% um which is why i feel so bless because i didn't necessarily pick you guys i think it all just kind of happened like this is perfect yeah anyway so uh i want to talk about the peptide g hkCU uh uh for skin. Katrina just order some more of that.

Oh, man. That's stuff. It boost collagen production of the skin so much. We go through a lot of that. Courtney was using that just for her sunburn last night. Oh, it is. We be bathing in that stuff. No, we do.

I'm serious. Katrina and I go through that like crazy. She was just like, we had a vat of it. She was just like, we had four bottles of that. How are we gone already? So, well, you're using it. I'm using it. I use it on my psoriasis.

I'm like so. It worked so well that you could tell by one or two applications, like a couple applications. The next day, you can actually see a difference. Now, it's getting popular. So a lot of skin, like, creams and stuff are starting to talk about including it. But they don't put enough. Yeah, well, it's expensive.

So how much is actually in there? First of all, if the liquid, now here's some of them will put dyes, okay, but it's blue. GHKCU is blue. So when you're using, like, the company we work with luminos by Interra, there is, it's blue. because it is the highest concentration that you'll find anywhere. And GHKCU is not cheap either. So if you're buying one that's like 40 bucks, eh,

it probably doesn't have a good thing. No, I mean, you're going to be very popular if it's not already popular in the skin care play in field or whatever. And they're going to pixie dust it just like they do in the supplement industry.

Yeah. I mean, because it's so popular, it's so effective that you probably could put a little bit in a lot of products. It'll be better than what they've been. Exactly. People will still experience a positive, but you want something that's really high.

grade if you want to really see the impact from it totally we love it we love it we like crazy anyway uh so um a lot of um encouragement uh this weekend from the series going out yeah yeah you got to tell us a little bit about how that's going because i know you had some crazy interactions yeah i don't want to talk too much because i got we have some episodes coming out but um just a little i was actually pleasantly surprised by um the response i anticipated um it to trigger some people. I just knew that would happen. I accepted that, you know, people, some people get really.

That's a good way to go into it too. Yeah. And I think that was the right out to. It was like, hey, because if you go in thinking everyone's going to be excited or happy about it, you're going to get disappointed when the people that come on there that are looking to hate. But actually an overwhelming positive response, way more than I anticipated too. I, what's, what's crazy.

So the reason. Which is good. Yeah, here's why it's encouraging because, so, you know, people don't know behind the scenes kind of what we do. And a lot of what I do, you see, right? You see me talking a lot on the show, presenting things. And I organize episodes quite a bit. I'll put them together and the guys trust me enough to do it.

And they know their stuff so well that we could just get into it. And with this series, there's no planning. I know that I know the goal is. The goal is to take down this idol of fitness that I've struggled with for so long and do it for God's glory. I don't know what that looks like. I don't know what's going to. And so my tendency is to organize it and control it.

This is what episode one's going to look like. Here's what I do here. At the end of it, this is what it look like. I'm going to throw away my supplements and I'm cured or whatever. Okay. You know? The fact that you've really probably thought of that, it's hilarious. Well, it's my tendency.

You know, my tendencies are we're trying to control everything, right? Or the things that I want to control. And, you know, I got people telling me like, you know what you should do at the end is you should do like a mobility drill to show everybody or you should be able to do this or whatever. And I'm just like, you know, my problem is not trusting God enough. Like, just trust him. Just go and see and pray and whatever. And so that's what I did. So I don't know what it's going to look like each time.

I'm going into it. In fact, I interviewed, I'm not going to say who it is. I'll leave it as a surprise. Let's just say it's a very, very influential person. Well known. Yeah. And I went in and interviewed him for it and I had no prep. I literally sat down before and I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to say.

Sometimes the best stuff comes out of that. I mean, sometimes it does it, right? Sometimes it sucks. Whoa, where did this go? Yeah, you're right. So, and what's happened so far, I'm just speaking of what's happening now. I don't know what's going to, I don't know where it's going to go. I don't know where God's going to take it.

But what's happened is I feel like it's, it's emboldened people to come out and speak about their faith. And so that's what's happened. So the encouragement was, I'm hearing from people in our space. I don't even know that this was, uh, yeah. And they want to talk about it. And then the comments were so encouraging. And I'm just like, man, this is so great. Such a blessing.

You know, speaking of an interview, did you see the interview I did at Max? No. Oh, did you see it? I didn't. Oh, wait. Oh, no, no, with your son. I thought you meant, like, Max. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did watch that. So, remember, I told you guys, we're going to, so first day of school was Friday. Oh, no. Oh, that thing you were going to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll have Doug pull it up to it. Okay. You put it on his little, yeah, I put it on his, yeah, on his Instagram page.

So this is the first one. Yeah, yeah. So we sat down and we had a series of questions. I'll tell you what the questions were that we are. And you're going to do this every year. Yeah, I mean, I have to, I'm totally stole this. I stole this for somebody else. It's not my idea.

I can't, it popped up in my feed. I don't know, a couple months ago, and it was this dad. Like, I follow this dad stuff and it gets me all emotional all the time. I'm just like, oh my God, it's such a sucker for this stuff. Yeah. Because you were ever kidding. You know how wild that is is that changed? Did I share this on the podcast the other day?

I have a really hard time I've noticed this watching any movies or shows where things like happen to kids now. It hits totally different. It just hits way different. Way never. I'm like, oh,

I don't want to watch this. It's like, it just bothers me. It's like it could be a good movie too. This is why court, like I had to intervene. Like Courtney couldn't work at pediatrics anymore. Oh,

like after we had both kids, it was like, this isn't going to work. So cool that. You got to get me emotional. Oh, I know. What do you want to be when you know up?

I was like, Dad. Dad. Oh, come on. It's so. It was so great, dude. I saw the dad who did this. He did it for his daughter every single year all the way until she graduated high school.

And it was such a cool thing to watch, you know, a change and evolve. It was like, oh, dude, I'm going to definitely do that. So I'm so glad we did it. We set it like a calendar to do it. And then the whole family, everybody really enjoyed it. I was like, oh, that's such a cool idea. So this goes back to here. I mean, this is some of the stuff that I do like about the time we live in.

like to capture that. Like, that's so, I mean, none of us have anything like that. No, no, how cool it is. Tell me how cool that would be to see yourself kindergarten for a second, like answer a series of questions. Yeah, your brain is developing and working and, like, your problem solving. The other thing, too, is you're so good at being aware of this, capturing the stuff, because it's so easy when you have kids to get caught up in the day-to-day.

I mean, first day of school is a busy day. We've got to get ready. We've got to do this. We've got to do that. And so you're so, and then I got to get to work. And, you know, your kid's six once. And then when they're seven, they're no longer that same kid anymore. And it just changes so fast.

And you, you know, I'll do this sometime. Oh, I got to remember that. And you forget. Yeah. You forget that kind of stuff, you know. I made sure, like, it was so important to me. I had Katrina sent a reminder. I had a reminder.

We talked about it, like, going, I was like, I don't want to forget that because I'll be so mad at myself. Because I've already done that on a couple things where I'm like, oh, I need to do that thing. And it's like, and then it goes by, and you're like, ah, shit, I didn't do that thing. So, but he's so great, dude. That's so awesome. Yeah, yeah.

He was, uh, hang out with me too. This, I, Katrina got sick really bad. And so he was, him and I were just spending a bunch of time together and stuff. And he's so, he's so chill, dude. He's like such a fun kid to hang out with, even on adult time. Like, I don't mind bringing him to adult stuff because he just hangs out. He just hangs out. Yeah, chills with me and stuff like that.

Doesn't do the, Daddy. when are we going to leave? I'm hungry. I mean, all the normal things that you expect a six-year-old to do. That they're supposed to do. Yeah, they're supposed to do. Like, I wouldn't even get mad if he did do that because that's what kids are supposed to do, but that kids are not like that. It came down last night.

It was so funny. Katrina's starting to just finally, she's on the way out, starting to feel better. And, you know, we put him down. And this was Saturday night. So, you know, no school the next day. And he was like, hey, it's Saturday. Can I stay up late? We're like, oh, you already stayed up late, buddy.

It's time to go to bed. Okay, so he goes to bed. And then Katrina and I right away, you know, set up downstairs and, you know, had the lights on and getting the hot tub and, you know, just, just relaxing. And then all of a sudden you see him, we could see the end of the house, you know, coming down the footstairs. And he comes over to the glass and he's looking out at us. And then Katrina, like, calls him over and stuff with that. He goes, I didn't want to come over here because I thought that you would get mad at me and I'd get in trouble. Oh, come on.

I got up because I didn't get to kiss you good night, mommy. She's just like, oh, my God, it's such a sucker. And so we're like, come on, get in. Go ahead, get in. You got all excited. You know what I really was the other day? So he was, he, he, he, he, bedtime for him is just, I mean, it's just a war every time. Like, he just drags his feet and he won't do it.

And he just, he's like, he's like dramatic about it. Like, like, all right, get in the bathroom. Go pee. Wash your hands. And then, like, tell him, no, no, you got to go right now. And he'll literally, like, get on the floor and drag himself there real. Like, just. Like, just.

Like, just. Just drags it out, right? So his mom was like trying to get him to go And she was getting frustrated or whatever So finally I intervene and I pick All right, I'm gonna pick you up buddy And I pick him up, put him in the bathroom, closed door And he's mad, you know, it goes to bathroom

And he comes out and he goes, I need to draw a picture real quick Like, like, and so Jessica's like, just let him draw a picture I'm like, all right, so he goes and sits down And he draws a picture and he comes back What is it? So earlier he was asking So I'll tell you what he did So he draws an apple

With a cross, like he crosses it And then he draws a picture of like a broken heart. And then he draws a picture of Bluey. And we're like, what is this? And he goes, well, this is an apple. I love apples, but mom says, I can't have one because I need to go to bed, which, and my heart is

broken. And then he goes, and then this is bluey. This is, this is, you should probably have him in your family, not me, because you guys don't like me. He walks away. So dramatic. He draws pictures of the words. Oh, my God. I like this kid's too much. Pick the graphs at all. Is it too much?

funny that's a good time i'm trying to pull a ninja move uh right now with everett and uh because like a big thing value wise in the family for me has always been like i have to make sure and establish that we're like physicality moving and like all this stuff is like a big priority and uh you know ethan's really taken off with gymnastics and he's still like you know plugging away at it's a jack kid by the way 15 year old kid he's like he's built i don't know over the last few months he has gone through this not just like a gross spurt but like a like a muscles he's like one of the buffed this 15 year olds

ever since he's he's really strong dude and like he's like and he's funny because he's his personality so different yeah I thought he was going to be the book nerd who didn't work out doesn't he doesn't look like that anymore at all but like I mean they're doing really

strenuous stuff in gymnastics and he's like they're putting him you know to the intensity like he's doing all these pushups like like handstands like, you know, ring dips. That's awesome. And so, yeah, he's getting jacked, dude. And that's like, whoa.

Meanwhile, I mean, Everett is like not big. Like, but he has a gross spur. He, his voice is changing. You know, like, I saw him the other day with his friends and he towered over him like an inch. Like, so, and then he's got braces. So he just came back to school. He's got braces. He's taller.

Deeper voice. He's like, uh, uh. And I was like, I remember those days. Were you like awkward, you know, voicecratch? Yeah. Everything's all weird. But, like, so I'm trying to find this sport. And so the only thing I could see was, like, lacrosse.

And I'd, I've been just trying to plant seeds. I took him to this event. And, you know, it was nice. This lady put this event together where you could just casually kind of show up. And, like, they would teach you things. And you can kind of play with these other kids. And he was kind of like, yeah, because all these little kids were playing it. And I'm like, ah, that wasn't it, you know.

And then, you know, his friend down the street, like, had a stick and was, like, kind of showing him how to do things. the lacrosse stick and I'm like oh yeah dude there's something there and so I just like on a whim like we're signing him up you know whether he likes or not I'm not gonna tell him yet you know this is gonna either backfire hit me in the face or it's you know I'm gonna have to override it with force but I ended up uh spend a lot of time with him over the weekend and then I went and personally I bought one for myself and then I just kind of was like hey man look what I just got and so you know just invited him outside and we started throwing because I don't know how to

freaking use a lacrosse stick. I've never done it. And so we're learning together. It is hard to run with that thing. We're watching videos. We're playing outside. Like, hit the car a few times. Like, having a great time.

But I'm like, and so he's warming up to the idea a bunch. But we'll see, dude. Like I, it starts with like in a month. And so like that's where I'm like, okay. Does he know he signed up game on? Does he know he signed up? He still doesn't know. You're waiting for me.

I like this. Yeah. Yeah. I'm waiting for that because we have been to sign you up. And you'll find out later. It was a plan all along. Yeah, that's so awesome. What's the ball? Is the ball feel like a racquet ball ball?

No, it's hard. It's that hard rubber ball. Oh, it's even harder. You know the one to be in my old-fashioned release? Yeah, remember we would use it sometimes for my own. It's heavy. Oh, you can hit with that in the face. You're losing teeth.

Oh, so that's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. So you do it too with like a tennis ball. You know, obviously you don't want to like smash anything up. around your property.

But so we have this like retaining wall and I guess you just throw it against it and like you can keep working on the skill of it that way. There's a way to run with it because my daughter played lacrosse and then she get to cradle. She was show, yeah, she's like, here, try running with it. And I'm like dropping it because you have to like move it in a particular way so that it doesn't just fall out of the. It's fun, dude.

I mean, I'm digging it. I'm like, I love learning new things. Yeah. And new skills. And he's really apprehensive about it because he doesn't want to suck. And I'm like, you've got to learn how to love the suck. Yeah. That's where it's at.

That's where all the gold is. Did you guys see what China just unveiled recently? No. Their new, Doug, look up the China. Is this the hole they're digging to, uh, to America? Dude, they have like, on record, they dug the deepest hole that's in record on record. They already did it?

They already did it. Because the Soviets had the deepest at one point. I believe they've surpassed it because they're looking for even more. minerals, I guess, this way for energy. By the way, the deepest, deepest holes is like, not even that deep. Have you seen, like, have you seen that it's like, we barely get through, I don't think they make it through the crust, right? Or did they make it through the crust?

Barely. Yeah. That's crazy. Okay, so here's what they did. Doug, look up, China Pregnancy Robot. Oh, I did see this. Yeah, dude. Yeah, yeah. You can, you can have a baby carry, or you can have a robot carry your baby? That's right. Yep. It's a $13,900

uterus, or what? Right. It's set to give birth by 2026. What? So $13,000. So trying to make women irrelevant? Almost $14,000. And they will be able to, uh,

for, well, that's not what it's going to look like, but, so that's the illustration. I'm sure it's not going to look like an actual robot with a baby. It's going to probably be a machine or something. Dude.

But they're going to put an egg, fertilized egg in there and the robot will grow. This is possible? Are we literally living in the, like this is the matrix? Like, what are we doing? I, yeah. Is it really possible?

We, we've never, So the 2026 is supposed to have the first baby? So it's already happening right now. So a baby's... No, no, no. So here's a deal. Of course it's possible. Of course it's possible.

But the moral implications of this are wild. Now, I know some people will argue, well, you know, if I can't have a baby myself and this, that, and the other, I get that. But the driver behind this is not that. The driver behind this isn't great. This is where science gets... Yeah. This is where science doesn't have a moral compass. It's not supposed to have a moral compass.

Science just says, can we? They don't ask, should we? Yeah. But I think I'm going to guess that the reason why they're doing this is because they... Population issue. That's right. Yeah. Their one-child policy screwed them.

Yeah. Really bad. And so they need to figure out how to get more people. Yeah. You need people for your society, really, to thrive. That's right. If you have more old people than young people, you're screwed. Well, yeah, we've built it all on the consumers coming up, the next consumers to

consume more so they can support the previous consumers and so that number has to always grow. It's so crazy that we're here. Do you know how easy this will be, this step right here, how easy this step will be to go, oh, we're just going to put an egg, fertilized egg in there, and we're just going to provide it nutrients so that it's good until it's great. Do you know what a small step that will be from genetically engineering or engineering the nutrients to produce more superior humans or people that are better, either more complacent, better workers, I don't know, whatever they decided.

Well, it's going to be interesting. I mean, right out the gates, you're going to think they're going to feed it the most optimal amount of, yeah, but you know what? This will be interesting, you know. We'll see. We'll see how you do. Oh, man. We'll see how that.

You don't think for a second, they're not going to take AI teachers, AI nannies, AI moms because they're going to produce these. Who's going to take care of all these extra babies? Oh, don't worry. We have, they're going to link them with neural. link, like in utero. This is so weird, man. That's wild.

And it's cheap, $13,900 to do this. And we're going to see the first one, 2026. That's what they say. Dude. So that means one's growing right now, right? Yeah, it's too much. I guess soon, right? I guess soon.

I don't know where in 2026. It's still got to go through the whole like nine month cycle. So I would imagine that means there's one growing right now. Either that or they're going to start it in early 2026. And it'll be, it'll be at the end of 2026. I feel like every time they announce something publicly, they've already had it, you know, figured out. Good point. Right. Yeah, you would not put out a price for this if you hadn't already prove you could do it, right? Yeah. I mean, usually. Oh, man. Isn't that crazy? Unless we're trying

to create some false hype. Just beyond crazy. I know, it's wild. What's that? You're right, Matrix reminds me in the Matrix. We got one of the babies growing. Oh, man. And you start using us for batteries. That's, that's, that's what was that Scott who brought up the double, the, the, the, the, the, the information doubling. Yes. I mean, AI means that all the information on the internet. is doubling every 13 hours. So that's exponential, insane growth of information. Yeah, just thinking where we're going to be in a couple. I mean, things that we used to talk about when we were younger of what the future beyond,

like our kids' kids would, like, is all going to happen in our time. Do you guys remember what I brought up on a previous episode about, I forgot what state it was, Illinois's banned AI from giving therapy because of there were some issues of suicide and whatever? I dug it. I went down that rabbit hole. and it's inducing manic episodes in people because so there's somebody actually confirming somebody actually posted a comparison i don't know if this is real uh but a couple people like oh i tried it where they they presented to jat gbtia situation and then they presented

to grok a situation here was a situation my wife came home from work after a 12-hour shift she said she was too tired to make me dinner and i got really mad at her and told her how angry i was that she didn't do it. And then they said, you know, and then they had ChatGBT-G-T analyze it versus Grog. Here's what Chat-G-T said. You're fully justified and being angry because, you know, you have needs to. So it's like totally validating.

It's validating a jerk, right? Your wife comes home for 12 hours. It doesn't make you dinner. She's tired. And it totally validated the guy. Whereas Grock was like, she's tired. You should probably make your own dinner. It was like a short answer.

Interesting. Yeah. That's weird. Yeah. Yeah. So people are going to be, like, super validated into states of weird psychosis. Speaking of wives, Justin, you had your anniversary this weekend, yeah? I did.

Yeah. Yeah. What was that? I saw you guys, uh, cheers in your zbiotics. So you guys got that one in. Yeah, yeah. I saw that. I know.

Yeah. She's like, oh, you guys use zibiotics. You didn't take a video? I take a video this time. Where'd you guys go? What'd you do? Uh, so we just, I mean, we, we went to dinner, a really nice dinner. But before that, we went to, like, an.

art and wine festival there was one like in in scott's valley like uh so walked around you know did the whole thing with some friends but yet nothing like crazy uh just spent some good time together but yeah it was like we were thinking about that it's been so i had dated her like three years previous of that so it's literally like 20 years yeah plus a year of the engagement so you guys have been together for oh we found it's Courtney said so adam actually went to our wedding it's funny there's this one picture actually because we have this huge wedding book that's like really really nice quality and it's like printed on there the pictures and so like everything is really like high definition and all this stuff and then you get

this one picture of Courtney kind of walking towards me and then you see Adams like half of Adam's face like it's only picture we have of him in there yeah he was there yeah whole head of hair rocket shorts yeah rocket shorts and his Tommy Bahama handsome face yeah yeah he's I can't record. I don't know. Super Pan was there. So when you guys, so, okay, for, this is question for you guys, both you guys, when you guys have like an anniversary or something like that, do you guys outsource the planning?

Like, wife does everything. She plans. She decides with that. Do you do it together? Do you just do it? Like, how does that normally work in your guys' homes? We, uh, Jessica and I have this, uh, it's like a tradition. We haven't been together nearly as long as you guys, uh, Justin.

But what we, what we do, because our birthdays, are so close to each other and then we got married in between that so our birthdays are so close plus when we got married so we do not it all on one we plan a trip we try to plan a trip is what we try to do

so that's what we've done before in the past solid savings there bro yeah it's isn't great you know that hey listen the fourth is my birthday the fifth was when we got married the sixth is her birthday the seventh is when we got baptized it was all the same week dude yeah yeah so you just do

one cake one trip everything yeah All together. We're trying to do a trip together. Consolidate. And so, okay, so in a situation like that, do you plan the trip? Does she plan the trip? We'll both decide typically where we want to go. And then typically, I'm the one that will plan it and do all that stuff.

I'm always planning, but then she comes in and gets all the discounts and savings. And, you know, let me just book it. You know, I'm like, oh. I try to be all ahead of it and do it. And then she's like, wow, you didn't use any points and gets mad at me. All right. all right but yeah we did uh we usually wait till there's like a like so the fifth 15 year uh we went to scotland and so we try to plan something big for like like like you know um some of the the more memorable

kind of like uh staples so um this was like i don't know this one was more casual uh so we we kind of like go we we undulate it so it's like if it's more significant we'll do a bigger thing for it Or if it's not, it's just like, I mean, we've been married so long that it's like, dude, you know, it's almost like high five. And then we hug. We made it. Yeah, yeah. We're still doing good. Yeah.

We did it. You know what yesterday was? Exactly. It's not, it's really not a big deal because we're going to keep doing it. So it's like, it's not like that substantial. You know, to go back to Zibiotics, I have to say this because we've gotten messages and people are saying how does it work so well? So just for people don't know, Zibiotics is a probiotic that was engineered. to break down acetyldehyde.

So when you drink alcohol, then there's this negative, this chemical that's produced called acetaldehyde. And your liver breaks it down. It's not an issue. But some gets released in your gut. Yeah.

And when that happens, it gets in your bloodstream, and acetaldehyde makes you feel like garbage. And so what Zibiotic does is this probiotic actually destroys acetaldehyde. It's been genetically modified. So all the acetaldeid released in your gut gets destroyed

so you don't get those, you don't feel like that works. I just tell my family, it creates a miracle of your gut. I say, it's a miracle in your gut. It's a miracle. Listen, if you don't like alcohol or alcohol affects you negatively, it's a miracle. It's the best party, buddy.

Yeah, so you know, Jesus turned water to wine. This turns into wine back into water. Especially when I'm having champagne or wine or anything, like, oh, God, I have to have that. Who plans yours? Is it you or? What do you think? What do you think? Who plans it you?

No. Stop it. No, definitely not. Katrina does. Oh, you're the guy. You're the buyer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will, so what I do is.

You're a buyer. You're not a planner. What I'm, what I'm, what I'm. good with Katrina is that throughout the year, and this is including the gifts and trips and I send lots of stuff, like all like constantly. And she normally will catalog it or go like, oh, I really like that. And then she'll put it to the side or whatever. And then I have, what I don't do good is going, oh, a month and a half for now having any idea what I'm supposed to be doing and then segmenting out three or four days to do something. She runs all that. I just check in on a

weekly basis of where, in fact, I just did it yesterday. I'm like, what's going on next weekend? You know, I have always, like, the beginning of the week, I'm always asking her, are we in town, or are we going? And so, and she normally will lay all that out. Yeah, I just provide the, the card that takes care of it. That's not what I meant. What it meant is you like to buy things.

Oh, oh, you mean, as far as my love language. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's what you'll plan. You've done it before. Oh, yeah. I like to do stuff. I love to do stuff for her. You know, it's so funny is that I've had to learn to look at that as a selfish thing,

right? So like I buy stuff for her throughout the year and I don't count it doesn't go towards my goodwill or go towards anything. Because that's not her lovely. No, it's not. So like it and actually, you know, I was telling us some of the young trainers, we were talking about relationships the last time we were all meeting together and I was telling them how this was such an important thing that I had to learn was that, you know, when I would do these things for her, you know, I counted that as I was loving her hard. You know, I was doing doing all these things. but it was selfish. It's what I like.

It's what I like to do and what I want. And so she doesn't receive it the same way. It's a written, handwritten letter or a planned day, you know, that or even me just saying some things. It's far more powerful for her than the most expensive gift I could possibly get her.

So when I do those things, I always have to remind myself, this is what I want to do. And I still like that because I love that she's the type of person who doesn't need, those things and I think and I don't know if you guys experienced this with your wives or not but it makes that more enjoyable for me there's something about it when like I've dated women before who like that's all they want or think about or talk about or ask for and I don't know it loses kind

of the joy of shopping and getting it you know for them versus someone like expected yeah exactly it feels expected doesn't feel appreciated the same I don't know with her she doesn't expecting those things so it's always a great surprise and it's always something that she wouldn't have thought of or so I enjoy it. But it's selfish. I have to remember that. So the cards is like her thing. But she plans those things.

I mean, look, I mean, she organizes all of us in the business. So of course she plans me. Anytime someone asked me, can you be on my show? I don't know what I'm doing. Talk to Katrina.

She'll tell you what my schedule is ever. What'd you do, huh, this weekend? You? Fish. Yeah, how was that? I took, it was short. It was only a couple hours.

But my son's asked to go fishing forever. Yeah, this is why I wanted to bring it. I was like, dude, I can't believe I saw this guy doing... It wasn't a big deal, you guys. It was just, I have a friend who's like... It's a big deal. I said the safety thing. He's not going to bring it up.

I'm like, bro. You'd go into the park. I was already proud of you. Why go to the park all the time? I know. Did you even know where to get bait in a pole? You go fishing now? Listen, I don't know what I'm doing.

So we have a friend who hunts and goes fishing and he does all the stuff. So my wife did a group text. Hey, you know? Maybe you can take salad. I'm like, thanks, man. You put you on a man. Mandates so you can learn on. Thank you.

But I love this guy. Like with bait and everything? Yeah. So I love this guy. He's just a great guy. He's like super manly dude, super humble. But he's a hunter. He does all the stuff.

And I've never done that stuff. So he's like, just get a pole. And then I'll provide everything else. So we went and bought a little kids, you know, fishing pole. And there's, it's like a percolating pond. There's one in San Jose. It's not a big deal. You can't even eat the fish, by the way.

There's a sign this is. There's one off Dell. We used to like practice casting. I think that's the one. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. went over there and did he catch anything no you know it's funny chris throws his in immediately

catches something and then we got nothing and so my son was so upset about him he was so mad i was trying so hard i'm always interested in like i think this would be interesting with your son because i feel like how you feel about fishing has a lot to do with the first time you went fishing i know like i don't i don't care for it because i didn't have a good fishing experience i didn't catch anything. It was like a long day. It was like, I had to get up really early in the morning with my dad. I was just like, fishing sucks. Yeah, you almost wanted to bring him to one of those, like,

trout farm places where they, like, plant them all in there, and you can see them, and then you're guaranteed to get by. We, I'm going to get the, at least first. I know what to do now, and I'm just going to go to the same percolating, just for fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got this little Superman in a fishing pole. So we're like throwing it in. And he did all right, honestly, because he's not the type to me that was, I feel would sit still

like that. But then he was upset because we didn't catch anything. Yeah. So then he was like, can we catch a turtle? What about that? What about that duck? Can we catch that duck? And then Chris is talking about hunting, right?

So Chris is like, oh, duck hunting, you know, it's really cool. And so he's like, I want to shoot a duck. Yeah. And Chris is like, well, you can't shoot that duck. You're not old enough to shoot. He's like, why, we can't come back with a shotgun and shoot, like, if we shoot ducks in here, they'll arrest us. It doesn't work, dude. You want to catch something.

This is such work, dude. Like, I tried, I was really trying to kind of make that a thing and went a few times. It's just like, I mean, I never actually fished myself. I was just getting them out of snags and, like, redoing their lines. Dude, that was it. The whole time. Yeah. And they loved it.

And I'm like, uh-uh. You know what I'm going to do. It's horrible. There's this thing that we do. I'm going to do this. I almost, I thought of this. So when we go to, you know when you go to those, I think they're called tepaniaki, like Benihana, where they cook in front of you?

Yeah. Okay. You know how they always do this? the thing where they throw the food, you got to catch at your mouth? Yeah, yeah. So I know my wife knows my son's personality. And if he misses, he's going to be pissed. So what she does is she has some egg in her hand, like a, like waiting in her hand. Yeah. And he opens his mouth and he closes his eyes. And when the guy throws it, she does. Shut up. She does not. She does. Wow, she's a ninja.

He's always like, yeah. What a clutch mom move right there. Yeah. So every time, he goes flying. And she puts it right in his mouth. He's like, I did it. Right. So every time we go, he catches the food. every time, right? So I'm like, this one I'm going to go fishing with him. I'm going to get a fish. I'm not even going to let him know that I brought a fish. And when he's not looking, I'm going to hook it and throw it in and be like,

you caught something? Look at your line. He's a cat of a fish. And he won't be traumatized until he's 22 and he listens to his podcast. It'll be a sardine from one of the cats, you know. It looks dead. It's not even moving. I was moving.

You reeled it in fast. Wow, bro. You caught it and killed it. It made it taste like olive oil. That's crazy. I'm for sure, I swear to God, listen, I won 100% thought of this. I'm like, I'm going to do that. That's funny.

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or you're somebody that eats a low carb diet. You need more sodium for the most part. We'll try them out for yourself. Go to drinklminti.com forward slash mind pump on that link. You'll get a free sample pack of their most popular drink mixed flavors with any purchase. Back to the show. Our first caller is Christine from Virginia. Hi, Christine.

Hello. Good morning. Hi, guys. How are you? We're good. How can we help you? Good. Thank you.

I love your show. You guys are fantastic. So I feel really grateful to be here. So thank you. Thank you. Well, great for you too. How can we help you? Yeah.

So a little context. And then my question. So I've been tracking macros for almost three years, and I started weight training about two and a half years ago. But I would say I've been very active my whole life. And I did my first DEXA scan last August and came in at 26% body fat and 114 pounds muscle mass. Between last August and current day, I've primarily focused on body recomp by reducing cardio, increasing weights, and then going through a reverse diet. And I was eating around 1,300 calories, gradually increased that up to 2,300, and throughout the whole time did not gain any weight.

In fact, I was actually losing weight. Wow. I stayed at maintenance for only like a month because I was getting ready to go on vacation, and I wanted to do a cut to be leaner. So I did a six-week cut, brought my calories down to 1,800. Then right before vacation, I went in and did my second DEXA, and I lost eight pounds of body fat, so I went down to 23%, but I also lost almost five pounds of muscle and my visceral fat increased from 0.14 to 0.37.

So I was kind of, like, disappointed with the results, like happy to see the body fat percentage decreased, but didn't like the muscle loss and then was like what's going on with the visceral fat. I lift weights four times per week, two up or two lower, 10 to 15,000 steps a day, and then one day I do 30 minutes of cardio. So ideally I want to be around 20% body fat, but just curious how I can gain muscle, lose fat, and then what is going on with the visceral fat? You killed it, first of all. Those are really good results, and it's really common when somebody goes in a cut that

they're going to lose some muscle too. So just keep that in mind. typically that's too hard, too fast, too much, too fast. So like you could have not cut your calories as high or you could have backed off activity and that would have potentially reduced the amount of muscle that you lost. And or we could look at programming. Like if you were kind of doing the same program

and it hadn't been a new stimulus and their body didn't have a reason to adapt and add any muscle or sustain, that could happen too. But typically for clients that when I see this happen, it's because they cut too hard too fast and they didn't need to. And it's not, again, let's keep this in mind. Those are good results.

You reduce body fat percentage, a good number in a relatively short period of time. All in all, I would count that as a win. But then I'd also go like, you know, if we were really picking it apart, I'd say, okay, we could have probably kept your calories a little bit higher, you know, or we could have not been so aggressive with the amount of activity in steps. I mean, there's a lot of different ways that we could have approached that. But typically that's what that means when you lose muscle, when you also lose body fat like that. Christine, you did great.

You could have done a little better if I'm going to get real like granular, but you did really, really good. I want to go back to the visceral body fat. Is that pounds or is that percentage? What is that number? I would, that's a good question. I think it's pounds. So it's tiny. So that is well within the margin of error with the nexus can.

If your overall body fat percentage went down, your leaner, then I wouldn't trust that number at all. Even though it tripled, it went from 0.14 to 0.37, that's well, well, well, within the range of what would be considered margin of error with any kind of a test. So I wouldn't worry about that whatsoever. As far as everything else is concerned, you were doing so good that there was no need to go in a cut. Right. You were moving. In fact, the cut set you back a little bit.

Yeah, you lost some body fat. You lost some muscle. I think you should just keep, you would have been better off staying at 2,300 calories. Okay. And just keep going in that direction. In fact, I would say, are you back up to 23? No, I just came back from vacation.

and I was back in a cut because I had gained some weight from vacation. So I'm now going back, reversing back up to 23. So right now I'm at 2000. Good. And then when you went down to 18, did you notice any strength loss? I really did not, actually. And I would say from August of last year to current day, I definitely noticed strength gain.

So I was kind of surprised when I went in and saw that I had actually lost the muscle. But I'm trying to progressively overload as well. Yeah. It's with a difference, too. Yeah, the other thing, too, is that, you know, lean body mass loss can sometimes be recorded when you have less fluid in the muscle. So the strongest correlate, the strongest thing that will predict muscle gain or loss, there's nothing that comes close to strength. Now, strength isn't perfect because you can lose strength because you're tired or you can lose strength because you just don't have enough fuel or because you're stressed because your central nervous system can get affected. However, if I were to look generally speaking and I were going to, and I saw a measurement like this, I'm like, okay, did we actually lose that much muscle?

I would look at the strength in the gym. And if your strength maintained or went up, I'd be like, I don't trust that. That number doesn't mean anything to me. So I would, you're doing great. I would say keep reversing. You could probably keep reversing. Keep building muscle. And what's going to happen over time is you're going to continue to progress.

You're going to continue to progress. By the way, 23% body fat is great. Yeah. You know, dropping 3%. You'll see something in the mirror, but at what cost. 23% for most women. Do you mind if I ask how old you are? No, I'm 42.

Oh, God. If you kept 23% of you. percent and you just built muscle and got stronger and just kind of fueled yourself and then looked at you know and try to measure things like energy and strength and life quality you'll probably get a little leaner over time anyway you'll probably find yourself around 21 percent chasing 20 percent you're going to sacrifice some of that stuff and I'm going to tell you right now at the end of that you're going to be like eh I don't know if it was worth it I think where you're at is amazing like 23 percent and fit so if you're strong and fit

and you feel good. You got good energy. Life quality is good. You don't feel like you're starving yourself. It means your hormones are probably good. You know, you start to chase fat loss, especially over the age of 37. For women, you'll start to see hormone changes happen a little faster. You'll start to notice.

So I would say, don't even worry about it and just slowly reverse diet and just look at performance in the gym. Am I getting stronger? Do I feel good? If I am, let's just keep going in this direction. And then, again, you'll probably. slowly start to lose body fat anyway. I think the question that I would ask that would determine my advice to you would be more along the lines of like, how do you feel at 1,800 calories?

How do you feel at 2,300 calories? Like as far as the food, is it a lot of food? Is it little food? Do you feel like you're hungry all the time? Do you like, how do you feel at those two numbers? Yeah, I would say at 1,900, 1900, I'm very hungry. Okay. When I was at 2,300, I would say that I was going through the day and I was giving myself like

scale at 1 to 10. I'd give myself like a three. I was like, okay, I'm not, I'm hungry when the meal comes, but I'm not like thinking about food. Like when I'm at 18, 1900, I'm definitely thinking about it. Get to 23, 2,400. That tells me right there that that's a good place. You could probably go up to 25.

Yeah. Like, I mean, yeah. If you hang around 23, I think you'll lean out like Sal was saying over time. You can reverse diet and go up and then come back down and you'll lose body fats. By the way, here's the thing too, Christine, is that how tall are you and what's your total body weight? 5-7, 145. Okay. So if you gained no additional body fat, but you gained a few pounds of muscle. So your body weight went up, let's say, to 148 or 150. First off, you wouldn't look any bigger. You would just look more sculpted. So you would notice more shape, more sculpt. And you would be leaner as a percentage of body fat. So if you just gain muscle, that's how your body fat percentage will go down as well. And that comes with the wonderful benefit of better, you know, more improved insulin sensitivity, better hormone profile. better energy, mobility.

So I think that's the direction that you should go. What program can we put her on? What are you on right now? So I just kind of made up my own, honestly, and I just bought anabolic like a week ago. I haven't started it. That's great. That's perfect.

Do the three-day-a-week version in there. Prepare for the strength gains. Definitely reverse diet in that, and you're going to get strong on that. Yep. Okay. And do you think it's okay to start anabolic now, even though I'm not at my maintenance or should I wait to, like, no, start reversing.

Start reversing while you're on it. In fact, when did you, how soon ago or how long ago did you go up to 2,000 calories? Just a week. Just a week ago. Yeah. Okay. Go up to 22. Start Mapsynabolic.

Watch what happens. Okay. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. Great. Okay. I mean, you guys definitely, I was thinking I probably wasn't at, you know, maintenance long

enough. I mean, good to hear. Like, maybe I didn't even need to go into a cut. So you guys definitely helpful. Thank you. You got it. Good job. All right.

Thank you. Have a good day. You too. Yeah. you know, it's, uh, she was moving and, what she did wasn't bad, cutting to 18. No, no. But she would have been better off staying. Staying or like a lesser cut.

She went from 23 to 18. She could have went to 21. Yeah. She could have went to 21, just a little bit of reduction, leaned out, probably a lot. She might have still lost a little bit of muscle doing that, but less, she'd lost less. Or she could have stayed right where she's at and just lost a little, probably a little less body fat, but almost no muscle. Yeah. I'll never forget, like years ago, I went on, I used to do bulks, well, I was always bulking.

But for the first time in my life, I remember how old I was, I did a controlled bulk, where actually like was looking at, generally looking at calories. And I'll never forget, I went on a controlled bulks. Because my old bulks were just like, eat as much as I possibly can. But this one was like, okay, I'm actually going to try to do this the right way. And I did it. And I remember, it was probably, I don't know, it was not that long after, maybe six or eight weeks later, I was getting my body fat tested every few weeks.

and my body fat percentage not only didn't not go up, but then it started trending down. And I remember, and the scale was going up. And remember, this is the first time I realized, like, oh, if I gain muscle without body fat, my percentage goes down. And that's what happened to me. This is my greatest critique of the bodybuilder bikini world

is this thought that we need to aggressively bulk in the off season is such a myth. The best results I ever got was just kind of hovering around what I thought was about maintenance. Eating until I was satisfied. Like I, when I started doing, when I was in a bulk, because back in the days when I'd bulk, I was aggressively bulmed.

I was like stuffing myself. I know exactly what that. And then instead of that I started doing in the off season, I started going, you know what? I'm just going to eat when I'm hungry. And it'll probably land me somewhere. Hit your protein. Yeah, hit my protein.

That was the only thing I was really paying attention to. And then if I went a little bit over on calories, great or if I hit maintenance, it's fine. And then what ended up happened is what I tried to communicate all the time is like, I probably was hovering around maintenance. But in reality, what that looks like are some moments. I'm in a deficit, which is what causes what you said, which is I actually see the scale go up, but then I get leaner.

It's like you're just adding muscle and you're sometimes actually losing some body fat. It's a perfect place to be. Our next caller is Rachel from Michigan. Rachel, what's happening? How are you doing, Rachel? What's up? Hi, guys. I'm really excited to be here.

I was actually on about a year ago with a similar question. So my question last time was about if I could run MAPS 15 indefinitely and still get results. And this time, my question is, what do we? what I do if I've been overtraining on Maps 15 since that's like the easiest program you have because I'm pretty sure I'm over training on it. So let's get to the bottom of that. Yeah, let's talk about the rest of your life. Because that's not common.

What else is happening in your life that's adding to this? Sports, lack of sleep, going to bed late. What are you doing? I mean, honestly, I think it's, I think I get about seven hours of sleep a night. And I just, I don't know if that's enough. and I'm a really active person just in general. I have an active job, and then I have like a homestead at home. So then when I get home from work, I got to take care of all the animals and the garden and everything.

And I kind of take care of my family a lot, too. So it's just a lot of general life stress, I think. Oh, you're a champion. You have kids? No, I'm only 22, but I take care of my younger sisters and stuff. Oh, God bless you. Walk me through a normal day. just so we get an idea of what this looks like.

Tell me when you wake up and what you do with your job and then when you get home, tell us all about it. So normally I get up at like $4.50 and I get ready for my day. I stretch and everything. And then at about $5.40, I end up doing a workout. I just do MAPS 15 workout and I add a five-minute core session into it. And then after that, I eat some breakfast and then I head off to work. And at work, I'm a park ranger, so I do a lot of activity.

I walk around a lot, take care of campers and stuff. I weed whip a lot, maintain the grounds and everything. And then I get home, and normally I start preparing dinner and everything for the family. And then after that, I try to get into my garden or out to my animals and tend them and stuff. and then by that time it ends up normally being about 8, 39 o'clock by the time I finish everything and I lay down for bed and I instantaneously fall asleep and then start it all over again the next day at 4.50. Rachel, you're a beast.

You know what? You're awesome. Hearing her story, it reminds me what we talked about yesterday. Kyle and I were talking about how a hundred years ago, if somebody were to come forward in time and see that we pay for gym memberships to go inside and lift heavy things and put them back down, They would laugh at it. You're actually doing it. Yeah, exactly.

This is like, this is how people used to live. And so it's like, does it require a lot of exercise in the gym? You are exponentially more active than the average 22-year-old. You also have a tremendous amount of responsibility in comparison to the average 22-year-old. So, yeah, of course you're tired. So here's a deal. Do MAPs 15 every other day. Yeah, I was going to say.

Don't follow the same. Don't follow it every day. Do a workout, take a day off. Do a workout, take a day off. See how you feel. If you still feel run down, do a workout, take two days off. You're so active. You're probably so fit.

I bet you if my partners and I tried to follow you around all day, we probably wouldn't last a couple weeks. That's the thing. People always tell me I do too much, but, like, I just wish I looked like I was, like, more fit. I feel like I'm just so weak lately and like my lifts have all gone down a lot in the gym and I just I've lost like 12 pounds. I just feel like way overworked and I just want to like I just want to be like strong and lean and I just I kind of just have like a lot of belly fat and stuff and I just want to get like strong and lean and I don't know what to do really either. So another way to

approach it like to Sal's suggestion is this is like so right now we follow Mass 15 the way it's laid out only you're giving a day in between every time you go to the next workout. If you still feel this way, do two days in between. That's right. And then do three days in between. And just follow it in the same order. But you're always just going to be gaping days

in there. And until you find the sweet spot, it could be only one day of lifting a couple lifts. It might be. But that's how I would do it. It was like the way Mass 15 is laid out, you know, you start now giving the day in between each workout. And then if you still kind of feel the way, put two days in between each

workout if you still feel that way put three days in between each workout here's the other side too how's your nutrition are you eating enough um well that's kind of the thing i thought i was eating enough because i felt satisfied but i actually tried to i've listened to your podcast the other day about is under eating making you fat and so what i tried to do i was like well maybe i am under eating maybe that's why i'm so tired and my hormone levels are super low and everything and i just feel so week every day. Maybe I'm not eating enough food. So yesterday, actually, I tried to eat like a couple more eggs at breakfast. And I felt like a whole different person just trying to eat a little bit more. So I was like, maybe I haven't been eating enough this whole time. Okay, what's your

typical diet? Give me a typical day of food. What would it look like? Before you added the two eggs, what would you eat? So it would be two eggs per breakfast with two glasses of milk. And then at lunch I'd eat like a bowl of yogurt and cottage cheese with um I make a lot of jerky homemade jerky so I'd eat cottage cheese yogurt jerky vegetables and with some peanut butter and then dinner's just meat and vegetables every night with some fruit you got to eat more you're like you're under you're like 1500 calories or less yeah here's the other side of it too you might have a nutrient efficiency are you also taking a multivitamin um yeah I take a multivitamin and then I take some beef organs and some fish row from Paleo Valley.

Oh, good. Okay, you're good. You got to eat more. Yeah, 100%. It's all healthy food, but we just got to up the bones. Add two meals in between breakfast and lunch, and then again, another one in between lunch and dinner. And if you can't do that because you're too busy, add it, and make it a shake.

But don't go with just the protein shake. You make it with some fruit or something else. You have some carbs in there, too. Your calories are too low for all the stuff that you're doing. Are you at least doing whole milk when you drink your milk? Is it whole milk? Um, yeah, it's, it's raw milk from my, uh, neighbor. Okay, good, good.

Okay, at least you're doing that. Yeah, yeah, bump, you got to eat way more, huh? Yeah. Yeah, that'll, that'll, yeah, especially for your activity. It's, it's, it's funny. It took me that long to realize it, because I think I started realizing it yesterday, because I'm like, I've been going down like half a pound to a pound a week, and I haven't really realized why, and I think it's, I'm not eating enough food now.

No, no, no, no. You got to eat, like, you got to eat a lot more. You got to eat a lot more. Yeah, okay. Yeah, bump the calories and take the advice on the gaping the days until you start to feel good. And what should happen with the increase of calories like that and a little bit more of a break on the training, you should start to build muscle. And building the muscle, we'll speed the metabolism up. We'll help you get leaner.

I bet you're just eating more is going to make all the difference. I bet eating more is going to make all the difference in the world. Yeah, big time. Yeah, because to be honest, I just, I just really want to get really strong and lean. I just feel so weak. Like, I just want to feel super strong every day, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to eat a lot more.

Yeah. Yeah, really push the calories. You're eating healthy food. I'm not worried about you eating garbage. So push the calories. Throw some rice in there, some potato, have some meals in between breakfast and lunch and dinner. Do the every other day workout. We're going to have you back on again because I want to follow up with you.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, I love that because really I just, I feel like I've been struggling for a long time because my life's kind of been like this for, well, since I was 16, I started working out. And I just feel like I've never really made any progress because I've always been taking care of my younger sisters and my family and stuff. And then now with the full-time job on it, too, it's just spent a lot. I just really want to overworked underfed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is one of those cases. This is, there's an old saying that's not true.

But sometimes it is where someone says there's no such thing as overtraining, just under eating. You might actually be that person. So I think really bumping your calories, like getting up, you know, a thousand more calories would probably make all the difference in the world. Where do you find time to do fun, like things like date and stuff like that? I don't really, to be honest. I kind of just, like, normally I have like an hour on a Friday night and I may be watch a movie. Besides that, I'm always just working all the time.

Well, all right. Hopefully a nice young man watches this. Yeah, your catch. Good for you. For sure. You're on the right track. Eat more every other day, work out. We're going to have you back on a couple months, okay?

Okay. Yeah, I really appreciate that, guys. Thanks so much for your time and everything. I really appreciate it. You got it. All right. See it. You ever meet a kid and you're like,

you have good parents or something. I know. Like that is a responsible, you know, hardworking kid, doing all the right stuff. Almost too responsible. Not lost in the whatever. But it's so funny. We didn't ask her diet.

Towards the end, I'm like, I wonder if she's under eating, doing all that. And she's eating like 15 hundred calories a day. Or less. When I was doing the quick math, I was like, I don't know how much of that beef jerky she's having,

but that was like the highest. Yeah, and beef jerky is like, Like just protein. I know. And that's like, of all the things she listed. It was like, that's like the highest calories.

Like 2,800 calories a day doing all that stuff. Oh, yeah. That young, that much movement and strength training. Oh, for sure. Especially if she's losing weight on the scale,

like she said, for sure. Yeah. Our next caller is Justin from Indiana. Justin, what's up, ma'am? Hey, doing, man.

Hello. Hey, nice to talk to you guys. You got it. How can we help you? So the question I had just to get right into it is so I'm a full-time

ER. critical care nurse. I'm in school for my nurse practitioner. I also personal train on the side anytime fitness and work for a brand called Mutant and promoting them. So I've read a lot of self-help books and one in particular was Arnold Schwarzenegger's self-help book and he really dialed in that book on we all have the same 24 hours in the day. So I generally agree with that. However, I work 12-hour ships. I also work weekends, holidays, stuff like that, which is a typical, you know, healthcare rotation. So how, like, what tips advice do you have to help get to the gym and meal prep and still try to get your adequate sleep after working a 12-hour shift?

You got to take some time off and rest more, brother. Yeah. What program are you running of ours? Or a nurse practitioner. No, no, what program of ours are you running? What maps program? Oh, I actually am not running one currently. That would be a good place to start.

And I would start you with like Maps 15. I mean, you're the perfect person to follow something like that. Yep. Yeah, yeah. That's more than enough training for you to stay well-fed, focus on your sleep, enough to send a signal to build some muscle. You're not effective if you do too much. Yeah.

And so there's definitely the mentality, and I get it, you know, that like you can do anything, push yourself. But I think you got that. I wouldn't be worried based off of what you said that you're not. doing enough you're you're you're probably doing too much is what it sounds like so you got to rest more so that you can be more effective so that you have more energy so that you can see the results from working out so it's actually less is more with you for sure so follow maps 15 and don't do any of the strength training uh and and watch how you feel and i think you'll feel a lot better

you'll have more energy for all the other stuff yeah we'll send maps 15 over to you you're gonna you're gonna like that it's perfect for you yeah that's perfect any like advice on so like should I if I work three twelves in a week and I do a 12 hour clinical day support clones for a while I was trying not to work out on those days because I was already doing a 12 hour shift and I would you know maybe go for a mile ruck for you know 30 pound vest or something do you think it's beneficial to work out on those days or take those days as your with I definitely I definitely win ruck yeah math 15 would be appropriate it's two lifts okay yeah it's two lifts okay but

Yeah, I wouldn't do an hour rug. You can also do this. The way we've designed it is you can smash two days together. So you could go day one and day two could be one day. It's a short enough workout. So then you just do. So you could have, like when you have an off day and you feel really good, well rested, you could smash two of those workouts together and then take a day off before you go to the next one.

So you could set it up like that too. Okay. Awesome. Yeah, that helps a lot. I'll definitely have to look into that. I haven't looked into it at all. Yeah, I've been caught up with someone that's all. these other things, but yeah, we'll send it over to you. We'll send it to you so you got it

and follow it the way it's laid out. The only thing that I would change or modify it for you is you can put two days together like on your off days. So, because it's designed for you to be lifting every other day or every day. Okay. Yep. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. That sounds good to me. I appreciate talking to guys. That's really the biggest question I had is just to see what you guys thought about, you know, after work in 12-hour days. The hard part is going to be doing as little as we're telling you. I'm going to tell you right now. Right.

I think you're right. I do struggle. I feel like if I don't make it to the gym after a ship, but I'm not doing enough. Think about it this way, okay? Because what's behind that, what's fueling your desire to do more, more, more, is because you probably want to be effective. You probably want to be effective at work with your family and life. You sound like you're a pretty, pretty driven person.

and you're not being effective right now because you're doing too much so when you're doing this and you start to feel good if you listen to us and you start to do this you got to trust it for a little bit you're like oh my God I got a lot of energy I feel great

your tendency is going to be like cool I'm going to do more now don't do it right stay effective yeah I think you're exactly right and what would happen oh yeah I mean your ex crossfit

Spartan tough mutter ruck guy like oh yeah you're going to have a you you're a client that we've trained many, many, many times, and the desire to do more is going to be the hardest thing for you to do. If you trust us, run the whole program as laid out. I promise you're going to feel great. You have a family?

You got a wife and kids? I got a girlfriend and, yeah, the large family. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you got to make yourself effective, dude. You're doing too much. Yeah, yeah. I think, I mentioned reading all those self-help books. I think having like David Gagins in the back of my head

and definitely doesn't help. Worst, yeah, no. Terrible advice. Terrible fitness, for sure. No, no. Okay. I mean, I love to follow up with you in a couple months after you do it because I think it'll make a huge difference for you.

So if you reach back out to us after you've been following Maths 15, so you've got some accountability there. So stick with it and then write back to us in a couple months and let us know how you're feeling. Okay. Yeah, that sounds great. I really appreciate the time, guys. You got it, man.

Thanks, thanks, pulling in. All right. Thank you. You know, I want to be clear, the message that Goggins will say and other people like that will say, which is like, push yourself, grind, like, there's value in that. Like, don't get me wrong. There's definitely value in that. But if you do that all the time, you're not only not effective, you're ineffective, you're ineffective, you're burnout, and you're doing nobody any benefit.

Now you're just idolizing the feeling of being, you know, crushing yourself. Yeah, it's a bit of a martyr kind of syndrome. It is. That message is so strong and resonates with so many people because so many people need that and they're not doing anything. And trying to get them to go that hard is, okay, maybe they'll do something in that direction. It's rare that you get somebody like this who's already doing too much. That's the worst message.

And so he's a small percentage. Most people aren't doing all these things and they could do more in their life. And so plus it's rooted. Wasn't Goggins in the military? Wasn't he like that? Yeah. Yeah. So that like.

It works perfect for military minds. Well, yeah. because you're in war. You have to overcome. Yeah, you're not getting sleep, dude. You're dying, and so you've got to keep going. So that makes sense, but you're not in war. It's not great for your body.

And you can't live that way all the time. Body composition change is science. It's not grit. Yeah. Science. And there's a right dose. And more of that dose is not better. It's like, there's a...

It's like, I'll take two ibuprofen from a headache. Oh, you know, I'll take. I'll take 20. Dead. Yeah. And that dose is dependent on the person. It's not this general. rule that, oh, this is a perfect amount of of strain training. It's like, there's a perfect amount of strain training

for each individual and each individual at certain periods of their life. And when you have this going on in your life, you need very little of a signal to build muscle and any more than that is only going to throw you in that over-stressed. Our next caller is Dulce from Texas. Hi. How are you, Dulce?

Hi. Oh, my God. This is unreal. Thank you so much. How can we help you? Okay. Well, First of all, thank you so much for having me on. This is very exciting. I've been listening since 2018, and this is crazy. Like, I consider you, like, part of my family already. Oh, thank you so much.

Awesome. This is crazy. Oh, God. We're like cousins. Would you like me to read my email and then my questions or just jump into my questions? No, whatever you feel comfortable doing. Yeah. Okay, perfect.

All right. Well, my name is Dulce Berber, commonly known as dogs. Because a lot of people pronounce it that way. Either way, it's fine. I'm a fitness and nutrition coach creator of Fit by Dolce in my small business. I'm reaching out not only as a devoted listener of your podcast since 2018, but as a coach and a woman who owes a big part of her growth in transformation to your show. I live in Texas, though I was raised in Mexico most of my life.

English is my second language. Language, so please forgive me if my pronunciation isn't the greatest. Still, I speak from my heart. Over the past few years, your content has been a lifeline for me. You have helped me stay grounded, keep learning, and believe in myself through some of the most difficult seasons of my life. The life coaching episodes especially have changed the way I think, trained, and coach others. My fitness journey began 10 years ago, but for the first eight years, I was doing nearly everything wrong. I struggled with OCD, still part of my life, but it's way better now.

Disorder eating, obsessive behaviors around training, I punished my body and under eight, trained out of fear, not intention. It wasn't until the last two years that I began to heal from the inside out. I began to educate myself properly, nourish my body, and trained with purpose. I've also worked closely with a great online coach who's help me structure my own training and overcome the harsh way I used to treat my progress. I'm still very tough on myself, but I have come a long way. Professionally, I hold a national certification through NCI. I also completed two fitness certifications while I lived in Mexico, and I'm currently

working hard to earn my NASM certification. Fitness is my true calling, but it's not my full-time job yet. I'm working to jobs right now to support myself and my family back in Mexico. And while my financial situation has been tough, I haven't given up. Today, I write to ask to honest questions I carry with me every day. Number one, do I still have the potential for meaningful muscle growth and physical change at nearly 29 years old after spending so many years training improperly? I have been training consistently for a decade, but only the last two years have been guided by real knowledge, proper nutrition and recovery. Sometimes I wonder if I've missed my window or if my body still has more to give.

And number two, how can I overcome imposter syndrome as a coach? Even after three years of helping some of my clients improve and studying nonstop, I still find myself doubting my worth. I sometimes feel like my small wins are just luck, not the result of hard work. I want to believe that I'm a great coach, that I truly belong in this space. I want to build a mindset that keeps me inspired and moving forward, even when fitness isn't yet my main income. And life feels uncertain. Your podcast has been more than just education to me.

been a voice of a strength, reason, and hope. Thank you for everything you have done to the community, and especially what you have done to me because you don't realize it, but you have changed my life in the positive way. I'm deeply grateful, and I will be honored you to the time to share your perspective. Dulce, I like you a lot. I like you a lot. So the first answer to your question is yes, of course. 29 years, you can do it at 79, okay? But at 29, yes, your body can respond and change and all that stuff. Here's what I like about you. You have good character and you're humble.

You're the kind of person that I want working for me. Oh my goodness. I want you to go to mindpumpjobs.com and I want you to apply because we are looking for virtual coaches who can work from a distance. Now the hiring person is Kyle, so he's in charge of hiring. We've given him all the authority to do so. He's the one that makes a decision. But I want you to apply there because

you've got really good character. You're the kind of person that I think would be a good addition. Thank you. Like, I think that was my standard. I was like, if I feel like I'm ready to apply for the mind pump guys, then I have done a good job as a coach. And honestly, I feel like this is, this is, this is my calling. Fitness is my everything. I have overcome so much and fitness has been part of my life. Oh my God, I'm going to cry. It has been a huge part of it. I feel like so many things have changed thanks to fitness,

not only physically, but mentally, especially mentally. Yeah, I get that. How much family do you have in Mexico that you support? I do have my husband. We're working on getting his legal residency right now. I have my sister and my dad, and I have my two pets.

Yeah, I want to address the importance. imposter syndrome since it's so common in the in the in our space it's in it's common in any profession I believe but it's I feel like it's even more common in personal training and there's two there's two big keys here one is outwork yourself doubt meaning the more reps you get you're going to build confidence and who you are and what you're capable of and then number two don't misrepresent what you do or what you can do I think what happens is why trainers get imposter syndrome is they're making promises or telling people they can do this and in their head they're going but i've never done that before so don't say that so don't tell somebody you can or did something

that you haven't done yet be honest and i think uh there's there's something so freeing about saying things like hey i've never had somebody like you but i'm so excited to take on the challenge because i'll tell you something right now nobody's going to work harder at helping you than myself i have a passion for this so speak your truth speak who you are where you're at you're at in your current journey and people will receive that if you if you try and pretend like a lot of trainers do and act like you're something that you're not that's where imposter syndrome creeps in so be speak your truth be honest do not be afraid of or to say where you're currently at in your journey of this whole process and then the second one is just get those damn reps in if a person

is not in front of you if you are not helping somebody even if it's for free you're missing out on the education and the learning phase of this whole process and I'll tell you once you've 100 reps in your back pocket and you look like you're going to that confidence on how you speak about what you do will be there. And so that's the key. Those two things. Just to piggyback off that too. Like it's it's not you're not doing this for the approval of other coaches. You're doing this for the education and knowledge for your clients and to really build them up specifically. And so your motivation is always about like bringing in as much as you can to help and to guide these clients. And so I know that that becomes a trap for a lot of trainers where they're trying

to portray this this knowledge out there. So other coaches will kind of agree with them or they they'll get approval on some level. But really, if you just stay focused on that and what you're good at and you have a lot to give. So just always remember that. They'll say a trainer with a little bit of knowledge who builds incredible relationships and trust with their clients is infinitely more effective than a trainer with all the knowledge that does a terrible job building relationships and trust with their clients. And what leads to that relationship and trust is consistency and honesty. So when you're vulnerable and you're talking the way you are right now, that's why I said

I like you. Yep. Because you weren't pretending. You're just like, hey, here's a deal. Here's where I came from. This is what it means to me. This is what I love doing. That's the character of a trainer that does a great job with clients.

so when we hang up here go and apply apply and hopefully kyle and you can can meet or talk and it works out and then you'll get more clients than you can handle regardless take the advice so i said okay on the imposter syndrome no matter what happens right yes i will for sure go get those reps speak your truth mind pumpjobs dot com there it is my pump jobs dot com okay you got to look it up right now all right all right d'lsa we'll see you there thank you so much you guys god bless you okay thank you You got it. Thank you. Yeah, it's all about character.

Now, if she meets all the other criteria, Kyle's an excellent. Does an amazing job at hiring good people. But that's it right there. That's the character. That's the, and, you know, she presents that to her clients. You know, they're going to love her.

They're going to want to follow her. They're going to listen to her, and she'll connect with them because she's not putting out this fake, you know, I know everything kind of persona, which a lot of trainers will do, but it comes out of insecurity. And then it really does feed into that imposter syndrome.

All of a sudden, you're trying to live up to something that you're, that you're not. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. Mind Pump Media. We'll see you there. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maps Anabolic, Maps Performance, and Maps Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin,

to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin, as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now, plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a full. five-star rating and review on iTunes, and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family.

We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.