Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2686: Do These 6 Things and You WON’T Get Gains from Strength Training & More (Listener Live Coaching)

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

In this episode of Quah (Q & A), Sal, Adam & Justin coach four Pump Heads via Zoom. Mind Pump Fit Tip: Do These 6 Things and You WON’T Get Gains from Strength Training. (2:39) Fatty 15 vs. Omega 3s. (28:32) Dad, the builder. (31:23) LEGO minifigures. (34:04) A terrible lie told to women about the definition of success. (39:24) Hurt people, hurt people. (53:27) How does Zbiotics work so well? (56:27) Shout out to Mind Pump Store! (59:10) #ListenerLive question #1 – How can I balance upper body volume with a serious focus on improving my bouldering (rock climbing) skills? (1:00:20) #ListenerLive question #2 – I feel like I am stuck in not being able to gain muscle because I cannot physically eat more. What advice do you have for a situation like this? (1:08:46) #ListenerLive question #3 – I feel that my body, while strong, is covered in a layer of fluff. I feel strong, but don’t feel the aesthetic is there. What advice do you have on what my week should look like with workouts, steps, cardio, lifting programs, and proper macros? (1:17:42) #ListenerLive question #4 – Please help me figure out what to do about my nutrition!  I'm so concerned that I'm going to lose this hard-earned muscle at my age, and in the thick of perimenopause. What's your advice on how I can get my act together? (1:28:30) Related Links/Products Mentioned Ask a question to Mind Pump, live! Email: [e-mail] Visit Fatty15 for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** You can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit with code MINDPUMP ** 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) ** Muscle Mommy Movement Quiz Mind Pump #1612: Everything You Need to Know About Sets, Reps & Rest Periods Mind Pump #2232: Age-Proof Your Muscles, Bones & Brain With Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Sleep and Injury Risk - PubMed Deep Dive: Fatty15 vs. Omega-3 LEGO® Minifigures | Official LEGO® Shop US Gen Z men and women divided over getting married, having kids Unknown Number: The High School Catfish Mind Pump Store 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 Mind Pump #1172: Four Ways to Change Your Workout for Maximum Results Mind Pump #2657: The Over-50 Fitness & Health Plan Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Dr. Gabrielle Lyon (@drgabriellelyon) Instagram Arthur Brooks (@arthurcbrooks) Instagram Dr. Becky Campbell (@drbeckycampbell) Instagram  

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Look, check it out. If you do these six things, you're not going to get any gains from strength training. I'm serious. They will crush your gains. You're not going to progress. And they're common. If you do them, you can forget about it. You might as well not even strength train.

It's not going to work. Let's get to them. This is why I'm not seeing any results lately. This is the face palm right here. This is it. No, these are common. A lot of these are common with people in gyms when they do strength training, especially when they don't quite understand how it works.

And the ones we're going to talk about are big deals. And some are worse than others. But some of them will literally negate the effects or the benefits you'll get from strength training. They'll take them away. I like the first one because I find this as one of the most common things that I I got to help people out when we first started and just... You bring this up so much. Yeah.

And so I'm glad we're getting into this because maybe we talk about it on the podcast quite a bit, but getting into the nuance of it a little bit and explaining more of it because I feel like no matter how many times I've said this, I know people that have heard me say it multiple times, then I still catch them do it. So I think it doesn't fully register for people that when you don't have rest periods, when you lift weights, it literally becomes cardio. It's no longer weight training. Just because you're holding weights while you do it, it's actually more like cardio as far as the signal to your body than it is like lifting weights.

I wonder if it's a bit like, you know how everybody innately knows that a warm-up's probably a good idea or to like, you know, just get the body ready and prepped before actually get into the workout, but they're just like, yeah, whatever. And then they just get into it. Like, I feel like. That's kind of the mentality. Yeah, they kind of hear it. And they're like, okay, well, yeah, I'm like, yeah, I feel recovered, though. can keep going. Yeah, no, there's exercise or activity, and then there's strength training.

And strength training is very specific. The idea with strength training, now you could just move if you want, okay? So my point with this is if you're not resting in between sets, you might as well do something else. Just because you're using resistance, that doesn't make it resistance training. It's the rest periods. The rest periods of what makes strength training or resistance training what it is. It's crucial.

That's right. The idea, the goal with strength training, in all forms of exercise, you want to think think of them as tools, right? You have a hammer, you have a screwdriver, you have a shovel, whatever. Use them for what they're designed for. If you try to hammer and nail with the screwdriver, you're going to be sitting there forever and it's not going to work. The same is true with strength training. The rest periods are what makes strength training produce the results people are looking for with strength training, which is strength, muscle, body sculpting, and then all the awesome side effects that come from that, like the faster metabolism and all those

other things. If you don't rest in between sets, it becomes cardiovascular training. It becomes glycolytic mostly. There's no anaerobic part of it. So now why rest periods? It's not because you need the rest. I think this is what people, this is where people get confused. Like, why can keep going? Yeah, we know that. Yeah, it's just going to make it harder. So why don't I just keep going? That'll make the workout more effective. No, no. The reason why you rest is you're focusing on a particular energy system that induces muscle and strength gains. When you go beyond that, now you you're working on something called endurance, which is okay. If that's what you want, if your goal with weights is, I just want lots of endurance. I don't want to build muscle.

I'm not looking to build strength. And don't rest. And you'll be totally fine. Again, you could do other forms of exercise that might even be better for that. It's a different pursuit, though. It's not what you probably think is happening is the problem. Yeah. And the reason why, by the way, I even came up with this list is I saw a comment in our private forum. There was a, I think it was a woman that commented in there. And she's like, today's the first day that I rested three minutes between sets. She's like, it felt like an eternity. Yeah.

So for someone who's not used to what traditional strength training feels like, it does. It's not like other forms of exercise where you're constantly moving. And the only time you take a break is if you absolutely have to. With strength training, you take a break to replenish this, your ATP, this is a form of muscle energy, to continue to train in what's known as the anaerobic energy pathways. When you train in the anaerobic pathways primarily, what that induces in the muscle is growth. It induces strength. Now, why does endurance not do this?

Or, in fact, why does endurance endurance through the opposite? Because endurance training can actually, in many cases, cause muscles to not grow and sometimes shrink, especially if you already have decent muscle development. Because a larger muscle gets, it's more difficult to deliver the type of energy systems inside the muscle cell. as they get bigger, you get this surface area to total volume ratio that changes, and it becomes inefficient. So a big muscle is not an endurance efficient muscle. It's a strong muscle. So again, if you're lifting weights and the goal is, like, I want to build, I want to build my butt, I want to build my arms, I want to get stronger, I want to shape my body, I want to boost my

metabolism through the muscle building process, you have to rest. It has nothing to do with whether or not you feel tired or not. It literally resting between sets again. This really just forces the intention, the intentionality of it specifically to break that. Like I'm trying to hustle and get through the workout. I'm trying to kind of do what I normally can do and I have this amount of weight and I can get through these reps.

It's forcing the hand of like, I need to really look at this as like I need to push myself in this moment and then I rest. And that's a different mentality completely. Well, you grazed over another good point, which is making something more difficult, doesn't make it more effective. Right.

And I think that that's a bit of a fallacy around personal or working out. I think people assume that if it's harder, it's better for me. And that it's just not true at all. I mean, actual programming for building strength, there's a protocol for it. And there is a right way to do it. And then everything beyond that or around that or away from that is less effective. That's right.

And so something is just really hard or really difficult, people tell themselves, like, oh, this must be good because it's hard. It's harder. Why do I need a rest? If I don't rest, it's harder. Isn't that, and that will make me, it'll build more stamina. But it won't build more muscle. And if that's what we're trying to accomplish, it's a terrible strategy. And so I do feel like this is one of the most common.

And there's also, I think there's another, there's a bit of a culture around classes and excitement. in energy. Muddies the water. Yeah, it does muddy the water. There's a lot of, there's a lot of very popular, you know, brands out there that have started these group classes that they, it's,

it's more effective, the energy and excitement than it is actual strain training. And just because they're lifting weights, people sign up for these things and think, oh, I'm lifting weights and it's fun. And there's music. And we kind of, we challenge each other with the points and see you can get more. And it's like it turns into that. And so there's a bit of a culture.

around that also. So then I think it becomes really difficult for people to go in a gym by yourself and then sit down for not just a minute, but two minutes or three minutes. It feels like an eternity when you're used to 15 seconds or less. That's right. In fact, the shortest rest periods for those people who have got great strength stamina would be about a minute, minute half. That's it. Most people, two to three minutes. In fact, the data shows even with advanced lifters, three minutes Some rest produces better results than one minute. I lean always towards that. In fact, I'll take it even a step further.

If you have a workout and you're like, oh, no, I can't, I don't have limited time. This workout normally takes me an hour and 15 minutes if I rest for two and a half minutes in between sets. I only have 45 minutes. I'm just going to cut all the rest periods super short. You're actually better off doing less exercise. Yes, yes. You're actually better off doing less exercises in taking those rest periods. That's how big of a difference.

I mean, as a trainer, I'll tell you what, like, there was so many times I would get a client who would come to me who would say, oh, yeah, I do strength training. And it was circuits or it was a class. And the rest periods was like, it blew them away. It blew them away at the results that they got. Which, by the way, as a trainer, I had to get really good at conversation between sets for some of these clients because they just sitting still felt like a waste of time. They're not going to believe you. No, they hated it. They absolutely hated it.

Yeah. Until they got the results. And it's a bit of an awkward time, too, if you're not good at those conversations. Three minutes standing by a cable machine. Just staring at you. Yeah. It's a long time for two people to not be having conversation. And so I definitely, I mean, we've talked a lot about like the art form of personal training.

This is part of the art form. Like, how good are you at getting your clients to rest for the appropriate amount of time while also giving them valuable conversation that's short enough that you don't take longer than three minutes, but long enough that it keeps them. sitting still for it. Oh, I would do conversation, information, my old facial release or I massage them, which they'd like sitting there for that.

Pop culture, yeah, all of that. All right. Next up is, and this is true for the vast majority of people who's strength training, the more advanced you get, the less this becomes important, but unless you're super advanced and watching this, like you've been strength trained for five years

and you're really kicking butt, if you're not focusing on gaining strength, you're missing the mark completely. The strongest correlate to muscle growth or shape or sculpt or however you want to name it is getting stronger. So if you're going to the gym and you're not trying to get stronger at your lifts, especially the big core lifts, again, you could be totally wasting your time. If you do the same weight, same reps, every time you work out, nothing changes.

Your body doesn't change. Getting stronger should be the focus, the primary focus of your strength training for the probably first three to five years of strength training. Afterwards, it becomes a little more complex. Admittedly, this was my Achilles heel. Even long into being a personal trainer, I still

chase the burn and the pump more than I chase strength. Switching that focus later in my career, even after many years of actually strength training and seeing decent results. I wasn't like I was getting no results over those five years, but

switching to really focusing on the strength that made a massive difference in my gains, my body composition. It was a big, big deal. And early on, I, again, was guilty of chasing the pump or that burning sensation to, or the soreness afterwards, right? Those three things. It was either, you know, burn, pump, or soreness. That was what dictated a good workout. I used to think that, oh, because I'm not a strength athlete, who cares if I can binge press 215 or 210 or whatever the number is, which was a mistake. I would have been better served if I would have focused on strength early on. But that focus of just purely trying to focus on strength is the only focus that actually,

you know, provides you with every type of benefit that you're looking for. That's right. Aesthetically, if you have pain that needs to be resolved, function, you know, you name it, like that's the one cornerstone pursuit that's going to get you there. In fact, just again, to take it even further, when you look at the data on a person, health and how it's related to muscle. Typically, you'll see the more muscle you have up to a certain point, of course, because then you have extreme cases. But the more muscle you have, the healthier you become and the better your longevity.

But there's actually a better predictor of that, which is strength. The reason why muscle in the data has been shown to be positively correlated with health is not because it's just muscle. It's because more muscle typically is strong. It improves your strength. By the way, weak, big muscles are not healthy. That's another one as well because you have a wide range. There's some people who have just genetics where their muscles just kind of larger,

but they're deconditioned and out of shape. You know, Dr. Gabriel-Line talks about this. Which is crazy. It's like a rib eye inside. It's like totally marbled with fat deposits and it's not healthy. But besides that, look, the first few years of training, this should be your focus. I've never seen somebody not have radical changes to the way their physique looks when their strength hasn't gone up.

considerably every single time, every single time. By the way, this is still true for me. I've been strength training for decades. I'm at the point now with myself, and I know you guys as well, where getting stronger, the risk versus reward isn't that great. However, if I get stronger now, I see changes in my body every single time. So focus on getting stronger. In fact, trainers know this. If you're a good personal trainer, this is one of the most important objective measures you can you can pay attention to is my client getting stronger. next up you're just not eating enough so you can be doing everything right yeah but if you're not eating enough especially of the essentials proteins fats and then just total calories limited progress

you're wasting your time 90% of my female clients right here yes 90% of my female clients under eight but wanted they wanted to sculpt build tone whatever word insert build muscle and get stronger but did it without feeding the body enough calories And so getting that client, which is really tough to do of somebody, if you are fearful of gaining weight on the scale and you always eat in this kind of, or try as eat as much as you can in this low calorie, really difficult to build and sculpt a body without the material. Yep. I mean, it's impossible. Yeah. You can, you're all we're doing is sending a signal to build muscle.

We're doing damage, but we're not giving enough body for the body to adapt and grow. It's not going to build muscle. And so you're moving, you're doing things that are good for the body. It's not bad, but you're not going to get the results you deserve. Here's how crazy this is. You will see, in the demographic here is typically women with this, but you will see people who strength trained regularly, who then start to get osteopenia and osteoporosis because they're not eating enough.

Strength training is the most effective way to strengthen your bones, just like it is for muscle. but there are people who under eat while strength training, and they're, again, consistent with their strength training, but because their calories are too low, proteins and fats are too low, their body starts breaking down and starts to deteriorate to the point where they have bones that look like someone who is not active.

I've run into people like this. I've talked to people like this where they're telling me about their routine. You know, I'm doing three full body workouts a week. I'm doing squats and deadlifts. I'm doing all the things. I just got a report from my doctor that, my bone density is going down. What's going on?

And I immediately know you're not eating enough. And then we talk about their food intake. I'm eating 1,300 calories a day. You have to give your body the building blocks it needs to recover and to adapt. If you don't, the strength train that you're doing is a complete waste of time. And in extreme cases, is damaging. When you don't feed your body enough to even recover and then you strength train, not only will you not build muscle, you'll actually go backwards.

as your body sacrifices itself to try to recover from the damage that is caused by strength training. So this is a very, by the way, one of the reasons why this one is so challenging is that a lot of people will say, I want to get shredded and build muscle. Yeah. I want to have a six pack and I want to have a bigger butt. Or I want to get, you know, whatever, bigger back plus a six back. Like, focus on building. When you want to get leaner, focus on getting leaner.

Trying to do both, it's, it's, it's not happening. Yeah, and you're always better off to just in this point, building first. The leaner parts easier when you build 100%. Next up is not treating lifts like skills. People will treat a lift as if it's just working particular body parts. So when you look at an exercise, if I were to have a graph with risk and benefit, when an exercise is performed well, when the skill is performed very well, the risk of injury is very low and the benefit is very high. as the exercise gets performed worse and worse and worse or further away from being done properly,

the risk of injury starts to skyrocket and the benefits start to go down. So exercises are only as effective, all things being equal, as they're being performed. In other words, the better they're being performed, the better results you're going to get. So think of it like you're learning a sport. If you're going to go learn how to swing a golf club, you don't just swing the heck out of the golf club. You have somebody teach you the technique because the technique is what causes the ball to go further and be accurate. Squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, you know, doesn't matter what the exercise is. When it's performed really well, incredible benefits.

When it's performed poorly, it's not only is it not going to give you great results, so you're going to probably get hurt. Yeah, I think, too, I was trying to think of how to word this, but like, when you're performing it as if it's a skill and you're practicing this. constantly, it helps you to grab the right amount of weight, too. So it's like, you know, this might throw me off balance a little bit, off kilter. Like, I have to be able to perform this really sharply and make sure my movement in my body's under control. And so a lot of times I think people have a hard time picking the right weight. And so this could kind of help that process, but also, too, it's just, it's a constant

improvement you can apply towards that exercise. Yeah, and I don't know if you intentionally ordered them like this or not, but I find the beginning ones were like some of the most important and most common stuff. These last three that you're getting into right now was my own personal natural evolution. Yeah. Like I didn't start really thinking and approaching lifting like a skill until much later in my career. So I'd already been doing it for a long time before I really went to the gym thinking like, hey, you know what, I'm not going to really worry too much about how much or sad to this.

I'm just going to go get good at this movement and think of it like that, which is interesting because I have an athletic background and so you would have thought that that would have been kind of a natural thing for me. Well, to be fair, you were a trainer so you always knew what good technique was. Yeah.

But this later was when you were like, oh, I can really home here. Yeah, yeah. And to kind of Justin's point about picking the weight, like it actually becomes less important because I'm just so, I'm more focused on the movement

than I become like, oh, you know, I got to put more weight. I got to put more weight on. It's like, no, let's go get really good at this movement. And then the next two that you're going to follow this. I feel like that this was, like the later in my career, like, okay, this really started to level this.

There's two types of people that mess up with the not treating it like a skill. One is the person, typically a guy who just wants to lift as much weight as possible. So he totally butchers the technique, shortens the range of motion. More than ego lift. Yeah, just to get 50 more pounds up. The other one is the person that's like, it's literally a means to an end. They're just like moving. I see that I was at the gym this morning and I was in there.

And I see this guy, I don't know what he was doing. I think he was trying to do it. Yeah, he's just like doing this thing. And then he grabs a bar and he's just barely moving. And he's moving as quickly as possible because they're just trying to get a burn. And it's like, man, if you slow down and did good technique, like, what you're doing right now is a waste of time. You fix the skill. That's going to blow your mind how great, how well your body responds.

Next up, not prioritizing sleep. This is a big deal. Poor sleep. One night of poor sleep will increase your risk of injury dramatically. In fact, there's almost nothing that'll increase your risk. of muscle tears or strains, like one bad night of sleep. If you don't sleep enough, you're basically crushing your body's ability to adapt. In fact, your hormones change in men, testosterone lowers, cortisol all goes through the roof for both men and women. Estrogen

progesterone starts to get thrown off, insulin sensitivity, gets thrown. Poor sleep actually organizes your body in a way to not build muscle. Because poor sleep is a stressor, and your body's like, we don't want more energy demands. We don't want tissue that requires more energy to support because we're not getting good sleep. So let's not build any muscle. All the conversion from your work happens in your sleep. I mean, that's where all the magic happens.

And it's like if we interrupt that at all, it's like, okay, you're just going to keep working without the payout. You know, that's not good. What do you guys, what is the, why is this one so difficult? Why did this take later in my career? why does every young person lifting ignore this part? Why?

Because you can get by, you know, with kind of poor sleep. I think when you really get hit with bad sleep, like you first get kids. They don't value. Then you're like, oh, wow, this way. But I think when you're younger, especially with caffeine and stuff like that, like you can kind of get by. Mandate it, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, there was a period. I don't remember how old I was a teenager when I'm like, I'm going to take this seriously because I never did. And I only did a short period of this because afterwards I started working in that and managing gyms and then my sleep just like, well, secondary. But there was a period there, right? It was like 30 days or 45. I remember it was like a short period of time.

We're like, I'm going to bed this time. I'm waking. My strength exploded. Yeah. It was crazy. The progress I made with that. Yeah, that's it. Because I do remember a period was, I was also trying to nap in the middle of day.

Oh, yeah. And I became, I was consistent. And I do remember like my strength was crazy. Yeah, I never kept it up consistently. But even with that, like, I even have examples of like when I tested it and I saw the results, but yet still kind of ignored it. I can't quite figure out why when we know, we all know how important that is. We speak to that so often, but is it less sexy?

Is it because you're not doing anything? Yeah. You're just sleeping. It feels lazy, especially if you're trying to pursue something. I get it. But it makes a big difference. There was one study where they had two groups of people, both in the same calorie deficit. One group had bad sleep.

The other group had good sleep. The bad group, by the way, they were in a deficit. They weren't working out. So anytime you go to calorie deficit without strength training, you'll see some muscle mass loss, okay, always, because the body's trying to lower its caloric demands. But anyway, the group with the bad sleep, even though they had the same calorie deficit, lost twice as much muscle. Yeah. Twice as much, which is insane. Yeah.

Next up, you're not prioritizing recovery. It goes hand at hand with this. It does. And most people, I'm going to put it out there 100%. Most people, your best results are probably going to occur with like three days a week of strength. training. Yeah. I hate to say it.

Like, there's a lot of people right now who are doing five days a week, six days a week. If they just went down to three, we'd get great gains from doing less. You need to allow your body to recover from your workouts. The more is more mentality. It's just the, it doesn't apply here in that recovery window. You know, the more you can really kind of hone in on that, even like right after your workouts, if you can get a parasympathetic, if you find out how much.

more effective and strong you are like the preceding workout. So it's like just do an experiment by doing a bit less and just see what it does. I mean, I still vividly remember when I first, and I wouldn't even say I figured this out. I started to piece it together, I would say, because it was pretty early when I tested this and I remember seeing great benefits and yet still didn't fully grasp it. But I remember I was a seven day a week, sometimes double day training person on top of playing basketball and all kinds of activity and training eight clients a day. And I remember just plateaued so hard. And then I went, I think I went from seven down to five.

Just started giving myself a rest day like every third day or something like that. And like it exploded, like right away exploded. And then, of course, I've made the mistake still thinking that, you know, five was the ideal amount. It was like not until much later, I realized, oh, man, there is a, there's very much so a, a art or dance that you have to do with your body's level of stress, eating, and then the amount of intensity and volume your training. And there needs to be somewhat of a balance of the two. When you are too extreme on the training side, especially in high stress times of your life, especially high volume, high intensity, it is a recipe for no results or going backwards. Even if you're advanced, what your whole year should look like is probably something like

10, maybe 15%, where you're kind of sprinting. And then the rest, 85 to 90% where you're kind of cruising. So there is, there definitely can be benefits from having those weeks where you're really getting after it. Yeah. But that's not how you should always train. For the most part, you should be at kind of this proper volume interrupted by these short sprints where you're, by the way, high level athletes even do this. We're talking about genetically gifted athletes. They have an in-season and off-season.

Could you imagine if all pro athletes were always in season all the time, what their injury rate would look like and their longevity? Well, I think when you talk about 90-10, you really put that in a perspective. because I think we've said things about this before, but like really 90% should be cruising. And only 10%. That's very rarely does that mean you should really be getting after it like that? And I don't think the culture around lifting weights is anything like that. It is, I mean, it's beast mode.

No days off. Those are the hashtags. We glorify the crushing, punishing, failure type training as the majority of the time. And so then everybody is chasing after that when in reality, most people should just kind of be cruising and then the occasional sprint like that and then back to cruising again.

They'll get better results. Way better results. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstor.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to mindpumpstor.com.

That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, I want to talk to you guys about this. I brought it up once on a previous, podcast. This is one of our new partners. It's a product called Fatty 15, but they use this fatty acid. That's what I gained in college. That's what? It's called that in there. It's a 15, you guys. Is it 15 or 20, the freshman 15? It is. Okay. This, it's a fatty acid that I've been reading up on this fatty acid. It actually, in some studies, outperforms omega-3s for health

benefits and longevity. So it's a fatty acid that's really only fast. in full fat dairy. So like butter, one percent of it is this fatty acid, okay? But when people supplement with it in these studies, you have reduced inflammation, better mitochondrial function, better cognitive performance, better insulin sensitivity.

This is like this, like this, this is one of those fatty acids. It's going to be... Benefits of dairy without dairy, it's going to be talked about the same way we talk about omega-3s, probably the next five or ten years is...

Is it relatively... Because, you know, you talk about this a lot, like, so much of the... supplement market is recycling, you know, old news. Yeah. Like, I mean, almost always we have the, it's almost predictable of like, we could guess, like, oh, these are going to be the next ones because, hey, it's been about 15 years since we were hyping them up and then it'll come back around.

Was this something that was super popular in the 80s and 90s or something? Or is it how we just recently kind of figured this out? Is it relatively new? Yeah, but it's relatively new in the sense that you're starting to see it get marketed. But when you look at the studies, they've been around for a little while. Again, they, I mean, they've compared it to omega-3s, and it has anti-cancer effects. Like I said, it actually benefits 10 of the 12 cell types that they find versus EPA, which is four. EPA is a fatty acid from omega-3s.

So immune, heart, skin cells. I mean, they see this across many, many different skill cell lines with repair from this particular fatty acid. And because people are not consuming. a lot of full-fat dairy. There's been a lot of damage done through the, like, the low-fat campaigns of the 80s and 90s. That were people, and plus, full-fat dairy's, you know, high in calorie, I guess. So people are afraid. But they're not getting enough of this particular fatty acid.

Now, does this, do you take, would you take this with omega's or, oh, you would? Because they each have their own independent, but got it. So it's not like this is replacing the omega's. This is just, it's as good or better. than the omega's, but also working differently. So it's something that you would... And you know, it's cool about it because it's a saturated fat. It doesn't oxidize like EPAs or omega-3.

So it's way more stable, which is good news for people who are buying it. So it doesn't get rancid? No. Yeah. No, no. Awesome. Oh, interesting. Yep.

Anyway, I got this, this toy for my kid. You ever, you ever buy a toy that you got to put together and it has a number, you know, it has an age on it? Pro. And then you... The age is too high that you didn't realize it? No, it wasn't. It said three plus. No.

Or you go, this took, like, a 40-year-old engineer to put this to here. I bought my kid. Like technical. I bought him. It's like one of those marble runs. Have you seen these? Oh, but, bro, I was going to tell you the last toy where I was like, never again, was a marble run thing I had to put together. I wonder if it's the same one.

It was literally, I'd say about this. Oh, I got a small one. You tilt it. Bro, I got this giant one. I wish I don't remember the company who was, this marble one one time. And I remember telling Katrina, like, I was, like, I almost gave up. Like, I was so, the only thing that made me keep going was just purely my grit to be like, I am not going to keep up.

That's right. Building again, I have to figure this out. But it took me, like, all day to build this stupid thing. It's so hard because it's like the model is like 3D and you're trying to figure out the piece and you're looking at the instructions. The instructions sucked. They weren't good instructions. I was putting it together with my son, who's, you know, four and a half.

And it's basically me putting it together. And, you know, Jessica walks in the room. She's like, he needs to help you. Otherwise, what's the big deal? I'm like, listen, I'm going to put it together. And then we're going to play with it. So we get the idea or whatever. And then my son's like, yeah, you're not letting me help you.

I'm like, listen, buddy. I don't know what I'm doing here. It was like that. It was like that. It was like that. That wasn't the one, but it was like that I built. I mean, we finally did it. And, you know, it's fun to put the marbles down.

But man, what is going on with this three plus? Not only that. You know what I can't stay. Like they expect them to put it together. Yeah. That's what it said on three plus. Right, Jason, our mutual friend, Jason, was over at my house, like last weekend in the weekend before. And he was like, hey, I really want, I really want to show Max this race car set thing like that.

And I kind of like just, oh, yeah, cool. And I ignored it. But he keeps, he kept bringing up, bringing it up. And then finally he's like, hey, he got in the back truck. Let's go ahead. I'm like, hey, bro, I didn't want to say anything to you. I said, but we're not doing that. I was just like, I said, you know how many racetracks I've thrown away?

I was just like, they're so big. They take up so much space. My son plays them for 10 minutes. And he's over them. like, no. I don't want you to do it. And then I don't want to feel guilty when I want to throw it away in a week. And it's something you gifted my son and you see that it's gone because I just did that. I did that to my mom just recently because after I said, don't do this, she still did. And then it was this. And they take up such a big footprint. And I'm like, I can't. I'm

sorry. So my son, my son was really, really into those things where he played for hours and hours. I before. But he plays it when we build it. Yeah. And then he's over. And then it sits there. And it just takes up all the space. I'm like, I'm way more. Like, like, He's so into, like, Lego mini figures right now, which, by the way, did you guys know this? I don't know if you would knew this. I would think you might know this. There is a franchise called, and maybe Doug could look it out for me. It's called, I think, Lego mini-fig, and you can sell your Legos back to them.

There's such a market demand for these. Oh, yeah, especially the little figures. Yes. So, like, so. Do you make money on them? Bro, Lego. The big time collectible. Adam's going to get into Legos.

Oh. I mean, we were already into it. And so I've been having, I'm, like, being really frustrated with the amount of, like, Legos that we have. Off market stuff. So,

is it because they make them for certain period of time? So they retire them. So they make a run. So Lego has created this scarcity around certain ones. I mean, there's ones that are, there's little Lego sets

that are this big that are $1,000, $2,000. Because they did a run on them. There's such high demand for them. You can't get them unless you get a match to work. Which means there's a huge aftermarket for even used ones. So I don't even need to keep the box.

Not like, if I have the full set of whatever the thing is, I can bring it in. Either one, they'll buy it back from me, or I can trade it in for... Do you see that app that, like, you could literally scan whatever Lego is you have and it gives you a plan. Yeah, I have, I have that app. It's called, uh, forgets, something builds called. That's pretty cool. But yeah, no, I know you're talking about, I went, there's also like, because Lego doesn't want anything to do with military or guns or any of that stuff. And there's a whole sub-market for that.

And I bought, oh, dude, I bought my kids. all kinds of like... What do you mean sub-market? They're not Legos or they're old-A-legos? They're Legos, but they're not, like, certified, right? So they add, like, machine guns and... I was like, hell yeah, dude. My kids have the legal stuff.

We were... We flew up to go see my aunt for her 70th birthday this weekend. We were up in Seattle. And small Port Orchard, Manchester area, if you're familiar with, it's, like, super small, like, port town, super small. And one main light you'd grow. ride through and they have this and we're driving through and I look over and there's a Lego store and I'm like of all things like this is awesome and I tell Max I'm like hey we'll go daddy I'll take you to store tomorrow so he's like pumped and we go walk because one of the things we do for like we'll get it we'll surprise it with a Lego for the that's like the new thing now I've told you guys before we used to back when he was really little we used to buy dollar tree gifts and we let him open them through the flight that was what we did now we build a Lego right so and we don't tell him he's got it till we get there and then he's anticipating it and And then he's building a Lego on the flight.

And so, uh, so anyway, so we're like, we'll go, we'll go to the Lego store. And I was, I was actually really pumped to go check it out. And it had everything. And it, tons of you stuff. The, and he's really into the mini figures. Like, he likes all the different characters and the different versions of them. And so you can buy them individually. They had them all lined up.

And they range from like $5 to like $50, depending on how rare the little mini figure. Yeah, exclusive are. And, but then I, but. what I got most excited about was because right now I have a spare room that is turning into the Star Wars Batman Lego set display room like it's totally

taking over that room of all these you know you're gonna make a little Lego town in there dude it is turning into a Lego town and I'm like okay this is getting out of control and I'm not gonna want this down the road and once he builds it he's over the build he doesn't play with the build he plays with the mini figures always

but he's over it and I'm like man that is such an expensive thing To sell them back Or key it for the grandkids Yeah So that's what I was just going to say Because I never get old dude I made that mistake

I don't have grandkids But I have my I have you know Two kids that are older Two kids are younger And there were things That my older kids Played with

That we got rid of That I wish we kept I wish I kept Well we inherited Justin's Lego Yeah yeah yeah When Max started When Max started to get into them

They had a huge They had a table Dedicated to the Lego He had that forever Yeah We still have a bunch though Yeah no I have more than a But, I mean, the fact that I, like, remember I've been trying to teach him too, like, and we, I just so the audience knows, too, I haven't, I've been a dad, bad dad.

I haven't followed through and executed this. And I could, this is a constant talk right now with Katrina and I, like, we have to get to this place where we teach him giving, you know, and giving a toy away. So this is kind of a cool thing, too, is I'm like, oh, okay, this gives me an opportunity to where if he wants a new one, then it's like, hey, we got to go trade. We've got to trade your, you know, your jar jar in that you built or your, you know, your, your baby Yoda that you built last month that sits in that room. Let's go trade that in. We can use that money to parlay into another one. And so I found there's another one. Multiple lessons in that.

Yeah. Right. Exactly. So I think, okay, that's cool. And I love that. If I can find a way to make a lesson out of this. And there's one in San Ramon. They're called Lego mini.

And they're, they buy and resell Legos. That's the closest one to me. This was called brick something, and it was a private one. But they're all over the U.S. I didn't even know they existed, and you can do this. So for your parents that have kids that are into Legos, you can actually trade them in. Obviously, if you keep the box and you keep the instructions

and you have all pieces, you'll get more money for them. But they'll even take just the pieces. Just the pieces, if you got that. Yeah. So they'll take whatever you can get and put it in there. That's cool. I got a crazy stat. It's actually made me really sad to see. I'll read it to you guys.

And you preface this by saying this is not the point that or the stat itself. The reason why it's, well, we'll see. As we get through it, we'll be able to talk about why it's disturbing. But this was Generation Z poll that NBC did. So they polled a bunch of Gen Z women and women who voted for Harris. Now, I do want to say, I want to be clear, more women voted for Harris than Trump. So this is a large percentage of women. Gen Z women in this country who they polled here, okay,

or that would represent that group. So here's what they found. They, important to personal definition of success. So what they said are, what are the things that are important to personal definitions of success for you? That you can say, I'm successful or I'm doing a good job at life. Okay, okay. Number one was a fulfilling job career, 51%.

All the way down the list, 6% of these women said, having children. Wow. 6% said having children was a personal definition of success. The top, top, top was a fulfilling job career. That's such a terrible. And men and women are just, we're sold lies all the time. But what a terrible lie to believe as a young woman that your career is going to provide

the fulfillment that having children will provide. It's terrible. it's it's uh it's really tough katrina's a really cool person to talk to about this too because she grew up in in in a home where her mom was the matriarch and uh the the messaging was to all the women was you don't rely on a man you make your own money you do that thing and uh she's got a lot of really successful women in the family that are very strong very and very admirable for many things. But Katrina would be the first one to tell you that it pales in a comparison of the fulfillment she got when she had her son and had no idea. And I remember when it, when it rocked

her world when we've, because I, I totally never, I mean, I have my own that I would like, whatever, but I never, like, I always let Katrina decide. Like, you, you want to be a career woman and go, like, I'm, I'm for it. I love you for who you are. And it's attractive that you're strong and and independent and can do all the things like and so i've always been very supportive of that i always wanted to give her the opportunity that she doesn't have to stay at home with our kid we can get help and stuff like that so she can keep doing that and she all the way into having max that's how she always thought and then i remember the first time he was not feeling well it was like real early it was like right up the first i mean six months you're normally kind of home and

then you go back to work and she was going back to work when he was around six months and she was getting up for like a six this was before she worked full time for us she was still working for jj and uh she had to get up to leave when he was sick and she said it was the worst feeling i've ever felt in my life is to fill that uh and she's like from the if completely changed the way she thought no long she still loves business as you all know because she does so much for us in this company but she loves that She wouldn't be doing this if we had not created something that she has this flexibility, still be a very full-time mom because that gives her so much more joy.

It's what's crazy about this, because think about it, like, and it wasn't always like this. It's a big cultural shift. If a young woman feels like, you ask a 24-year-old woman, you know, what's one of the most important things for you in life to define your success or whatever, however they were to, she may actually even feel like, well, I mean, having kids. But she might, she would probably feel silly saying it. That's how you know this lie has become so accepted. If a woman says, oh, the number one thing I want to do is, is have kids.

She's probably going to feel like, I can't say that. That's silly. Which is crazy to me. I don't know if there's a lot of that. I don't know. You could be right. Because I could understand how, you don't know until you have a kid, dude. And this is why it's such a terrible lie because a lot of men believe this lie as well.

yeah not as it's interesting because the poll showed actually less men uh men actually ranked kids higher than the women did which is kind of wild that is well really wild but what's what's really terrible about this for women is that at some point you can't have kids yeah or or having kids becomes more difficult i mean the odds on this guy by the way people like to talk about this but past the age of 35 your odds of being able to get pregnant really start to decline quickly i mean we're an example we're an example of this we don't talk about it a lot but But everybody always asked, like, you know, I thought you guys didn't have more. We wanted to.

I mean, Katrina and I have never stopped trying to have a second kid. It's just, you know, she's mid 40s. She's 45. And even being that age, we haven't stopped trying. It's just, it's become difficult for her body to take it. And it's then there's no specialist, no person that's been able to. And trust me, I've gone to them all, spent all the money, doing all the things. And nobody's been able to solve it because she's such a healthy person.

But just gets to a point when you're at a certain age. It becomes really difficult. And I think if you were to ask her and me that, you know, especially after having Max, I went from being a guy who thought, ah, I can have kids. Maybe I will. Maybe I won't, no big deal to, damn, I would have had, I would have four, you know, five. I would have, having my son and seeing how much that changed purpose, life, all these things. That's why I think, like, in the, you know, defense of the 94% of women that said the other things,

you don't know what you don't know. Yep. And if everybody's been telling you of the last decade or two decades since you've been alive, that that's the point. That it's cooler to kill it, to make your own money, to be a boss bitch, to do all those things. Like, then that seems logical. Like, yeah, that would be dope, independent, like, more power to you. Like, so I could totally get why.

That's 100% why this is so sad. Yeah, because I think it is, it's deep in our culture. And you don't know until you have that. And if you're lucky enough, because now we have, and we, again, we have women in our family that are, you know, older than 30 some years old and not had a kid yet. And I know they want to have families, but they've prioritized the other things so much. That's been an afterthought. And, well, think about it.

Like, before you have a child, if you want to do this, you know, if you want to do this, I guess, the right way, for lack of a better term, you need to find somebody that you want to spend the rest of your life with and that you want to find somebody that you believe will be a great father and then you get married and then you wait a little bit and then you have a child. But what's happening is that people are getting older and they're like, uh-oh, I got to go find some dude to marry now so I can have kids. There's a process there. So now it's extending that out. And for men, the reason why it's not, it's a terrible lie for everybody because it's true for men and women. It's one of the greatest things you could do. The reason why it's worse for women is

Because men, we can get older and then come to our senses as we get older. We don't have a biological clock. Yeah. I mean, you're in your mid-40s, you can have a kid. But as women get older, this becomes more and more. Well, there's also another predicament that that woman gets into that they don't really talk a lot about. And again, watching this firsthand, is that woman, like the women we have in our family that are badass, degrees, successful, killing it. they worked their ass off

all the way into through their 30s to get reached this level. And they don't want to settle for a guy that hasn't done all that and some. And that guy doesn't want the girl that does all those things. And so it's kind of unfair. It's like and no one talks a lot about it.

Like no one tells that girl, she thinks like her stock is rising because she's a killer. She got all these great attributes. And by the way, we're talking in generals, right? There's always exceptions to the rule. Of course there's a guy that wants that or what like that and it works. I'm not saying that. But generally speaking, you know, that girl who's now 35 boss bitch killing it making all this money got all the things going for her is not going to attract the 35 to 45 year old guy who's also done all that

and some or more that he doesn't go for that. And so it's really unfortunate because they don't really think they're talking about that. You assume that I'm going to do all these badass things. I'm only going to attract a dude who's better or what that. And it's not that those things aren't valuable, it's that men and women generally value different things. That's right. That's what I mean. But they don't talk a lot about that, that like, oh yeah, that guy doesn't care about that. That guy, the guy who's even more successful than you are really doesn't need any more money or any more financial support. That way, he starts pursuing youth and going that direction. And so it's less important.

So it's a really unfortunate lie that it's horrible. It's a horrible lie. Again, if you look at the the data on this. I always point back to the data. There's a lot of lies that we believe that just take us down the wrong path. I mean, men are told that, you know, go have fun. It kind of like never grow up, right? Go have fun, be with your buddy. Oh, you get married, have kids. It's a, you know, ball and chain or whatever. And so it's just, now it's been decades of us listening to this kind of stuff to the point now where young women are like, oh, yeah, six percent of us think having a kid is really important. Most important thing is my career. Your career ain't going to fulfill you. I don't care how great your job is.

It's just not. And Arthur Brooks talked about this. He said the type of careers that do fulfill people are the ones typically that people volunteer. I was going to say you don't get paid. It's the ones where you're serving others. You're building houses in another country. That's right.

Yeah, you're in third world type stuff. You're not getting paid a lot of money because you're fulfilled through that way. No, totally. Oh, yeah. No, that's a really. Well, I mean, what let, did you just come across that article? Yeah, that's going viral. Oh, it is.

It's going viral on X. And what I hate about this, by the way, is that people go underneath and start. just being mean-spirited to each other. I look at this as more of like an unfortunate thing because it's such a wonderful thing to have a family, have children, to not be all about yourself and the joy that you get from that.

And by the way, yes, you're more tired. Of course, you're not going to have as much money. More responsibilities. Can't do whatever you want all the time. But, I mean, those aren't the things that give you the fulfillment in life. Yeah, I come from a very empathetic, place in that too because I see it in my family and so it hurts me especially when I see like

you know people in my family that I think are badass chicks you know that have worked so hard to get where they're at but then then having such a real difficult time to catch 22 yeah and so it's like this is not by any means me trying to say oh how anybody should do anything with their life live your life however you want to live your life but more show the truth yeah exactly more should be discussed that about that and and again uh men you know we can have kids all the kids all the way till 80 years old, you know what I'm saying? So there is, there is that ability for them to kind of go off and be idiots for 20, 30 years, not settled down, be selfish, all those things. And it's not, we could still

build a family, still have a kid, still do those things where, you know, the women have a window and, you know, to expect a woman to have to make that decision so early on is tough. Part of it is, too, is the role models. There's not a ton of women role models that you see in media that well i feel that i think that's equal with men totally there's i mean our role models how many cool dads do you know none well i mean it's unfortunate like i just watched another cult show which you know i just can't help myself i naturally i look for it yeah that's a whole genre right yeah but this one i couldn't watch like into completion because it dealt with like kids getting abused oh i just doesn't i can't do it uh but it started out like i didn't even

know there's this subculture of YouTube where it's like, you know, the YouTube influencers and all that's a big thing. But I didn't know it was a big thing amongst like, like more men and conservative kind of valued, uh, women that were just portraying themselves as a mom and like going and so it was almost like on YouTube on YouTube and they're like follow along and like, you know, so, you know, most of those are disastrous because it's like you put your kids all on like the world stage and like everybody has opinions and they're like. you know but but it started out with good intention because you know it was like she was trying to portray her role and like all these struggles that she's having kind of raising them and all this and then just gets twisted up and meets this lady that's just like um just a terrible terrible human being who just convinces her needs to add this like really strict discipline and all this ends up removing the kids from her husband and then like disciplining them to the point where it was abuse oh god so anyway Anyways, but, like, what it highlights me is I didn't know, it was like a big subculture.

Now, does they make money, like, as an influencer mom? Now, is that, is that separate or is it fall in the same category as the Tradwife movement that was popular? That's a really different. Yes, it's different. It's different. It's more like, I think, too. God, media is not real, everybody. Like Christian and Mormon and, you know, like, it's, they're trying to kind of, because you don't get a lot of traditional family values.

you content at most places. So I feel like people are starving for it. And so it's like, we're going to portray this on. So of course somebody in there is going to manufacture it or distort it or screwed up. It just got sideways. Did you guys see the new one that's like one of the popular ones on Netflix? I just watched it last night, actually.

Is it the catfish? Yes. Oh, my God. Bro. Did you watch it? No, my daughter told me about it. Oh, my gosh. You want to hear something terrible?

Dude. Can we give it away? This is going to be a spoiler alert. I don't know what's called. It's like something catfish. It's called... Unknown caller. Oh, is it unknown caller is what it's called?

Unknown caller catfish or high school catfish? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dude, the FBI got involved with this cyberbullying. So it went all the way from the high school, and the high school took it to the sheriff. So this girl's getting bullied, cyber bullied just constantly. Is this? Hacks and, you know, all kinds of crazy stuff. Where it was her mom?

Yes, bro. That's Munchausen by proxy. What? in the, so, bro, 40 to 50 texts a day and saying things like, go kill yourself, you look terrible, like, I mean, like, what? Like, what kind of evil? And then on top of that, like, have done that to your, what's it, Munchausen by proxy, I think it was called.

So the poor daughter, like, still wants her mom after, like, her mom did that to her for two years. two years of torturing her daughter in high school texting her sang ruddle. So for people aren't familiar with what that is. I know, explain it because Katrina was trying to ask me and I was trying to explain it. It's a terrible, terrible, evil situation but where it's a mom, for whatever reason, she's their kid's sick, so they can attend to them. They feel like they need to be needed by their children for whatever reason. And so there's cases of women slowly poisoning their kids. So the kid's always sick. So mom

always said, just enough, not to kill them, but enough to where they're Keep them dependent. Yeah. And so what she was doing is she was bullying her daughter so that her daughter was so sad. It needs help. Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, her daughter has no idea.

Because mom is confined to them. They had the whole, they had the whole school fool. They had every, her poor husband. Poor husband had no idea. Who was doing this? I'm going to find him. Yeah. It's your wife.

Oh, my God. I know. It was, yeah, I just watched that last night. And I was like, what a terrible, terrible. And then the poor girl, right, is still, still wants. She had, she served a year and a half in prison, okay, for all this, because it was, it was so bad. And so she gets out and her daughter still is starving for a relationship with her. Still wants to be with her mom.

And it's like, man, talk about, you know, and then, you know, she, she, in court, she pleaded, like, about her trauma, so like that. And it's, like, it's, like, so true that hurt people or hurt people. Yeah. But then you had one or two, like, okay, now your daughter's been hurt. She's probably not resolved this. she's, like, confused why she still even loves and wants to be with her mom. It's like, you've got to hope that this doesn't come out of her later on in life because of that was imprinted on her. Generational.

Yeah. This is how it becomes generation. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's it right. That's it right there. That's the one. And that was why. I knew you were going to bring that up.

Oh, dude. I just watched it. Wrong, dude. Oh, crazy. So wrong. I'm going to take a left here because people, one of our partners, Zibiotics, people will write in. How does this work so well? How does it happen?

So I'll explain it on the show. so that people understand how this works. So it is a probiotic, but it's been genetically modified. And what happens when you drink it and then you drink alcohol is the bacteria helps break down acetyldehyde, which is releasing the gut from the alcohol. Now, typically what happens is your liver processes alcohol and gets rid of the acetyldehyde. But if it goes in the gut, it goes directly in the bloodstream, makes you feel like garbage. So that's how it works.

So you take it and it destroys or breaks down the acetalide in the gut. that way your liver can do its job and you feel way better. So, okay, I know that there's a protocol for it. Which if people really understood just how groundbreaking the science is for this product. It's very groundbreaking. It's insane. Yeah, it's turned me into somebody who actually drinks alcohol. I didn't drink alcohol before.

I don't know how good that is. It's probably the greatest commercial to say that. But I mean, I mean, it's been nice. It's been nice that I can actually enjoy that and not feel sick from it. But I, and I know that they say you're supposed to have it first before you, have any drinks. But there's been times where I've forgotten to take it a drink or two in and I take it and I feel like it still works. Yeah. So it's still got to be helping. Yeah. Before is better, but if it's close, you're still okay. Yeah. So I'm, that's what I've noticed. Yeah. Because I know

that they tell you that. Like, no, no, no. You get to forget. Yeah. But I was like, oh, man. Or I, you know, one drink I noticed turns into the second drink. And I'm like, oh, this might end up being a couple drinks tonight. I better take that because I don't want to feel terrible. And so I'm like, I'm still go take it. And when I'm still go take it. And when I'm, I take it. It keeps me from the film terrible. The technology that they used to make this product is remarkable. Because I know that you can use this technology, genetically modified bacteria, to do all kinds of things. I know.

But this is just... You know, I got to talk to Katrina because... The potential's trippy. And maybe Doug, you pulled their website. I know they were working on some other things. Yeah. And, you know, I'm not as tied to the partners as I used to be. And so I got to ask Katrina, if they've already developed something else or not. No.

Well, they have the carb, the one... Yeah, right. The carbs into fiber product. Yeah, so you take it, then you eat carbohydrates, and it turns them from starches to fibers. See, I want to try, I want to, have you tried that? I haven't tried it, actually. Oh, you have?

I actually like it. Oh. I mean, full disclosure here, maybe too much information. It helps me be regular. Yeah. Oh. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

So when Doug eats his gummy bears, then he just, his poop is normal. They're not gummy bears, though. It's powder. It's not sticky in rainbow. Yeah. Sticky rainbow. He does. Bro, if you have Sticky Rainbow poop,

call the doctor immediately. Soft serve. So I want to bring up, because we don't ever talk about this, we always treat it sometimes like after that, but yet we always get asked a lot of times, too, about the shirts and apparel and stuff like that. If you go to Mind Pump store,

we have all kinds of stuff. We just don't push it. We don't promote it. We don't talk a lot about it. But then we have all kinds of cool apparel. And there's always sales going on or a new drop that's happening. And so since it's not a primary focus

of the business, this, you don't hear it a lot on the show, but I've been meaning to bring it up because I know we've been putting a lot of energy into new designs and new stuff there. And so I'll try and do a better job of reminding the audience. But if you've never been to the Mind Pump Store, go to Mind Pump Store.com and you can check out all the different apparel that we have. Element is an electrolyte powder. You add to your water. It tastes amazing. No artificial sweeteners or sugar. And it has the right amount of sodium. Most electrolyte powder is too low in sodium to really make a difference. Not Element. It's a full 1,000,000,

per serving for better workouts, better pumps, better hydration, go check them out. Go to drinklmn.t.com forward slash mind pump. On that link, you can get a free sample pack of their most popular drink mixed flavors with any purchase. Back to the show. Our first caller is Audrey from Rhode Island. Audrey, how are you? Good morning.

Hi, good morning. Thanks, Vine Pump, for this opportunity to be a caller. This is something I wanted to do for a long time. So very excited and grateful. Oh, welcome. How can we help you? I'll get to my question, but I want to say thank you first. I have been listening to the show for over five years now.

And to that time, you started as kind of my parasycial personal trainers and coaches to help me through, you know, some disordered eating and overtraining and towards a much healthier relationship with fitness and exercise. So I really appreciate that. And I also have gotten a lot of value from the introductions of your show where you discuss mainstream trends and some current events and mainstream narratives and political things. I find a lot of value from your discussions and the way you challenge each other. It doesn't always, I'm probably not your typical demographic when it comes to that and as I'm not a parent and I'm a young liberal

grad student. So I get a lot of value from hearing your perspectives. It adds nuance to my own ideas and kind of pulls me out of my echo chamber. And so I listen to every episode all the way through and I get a lot from those. So thank you. Wow. Thank you. I love that. I love it. It's awesome. Yeah. So my question is kind of how to balance some upper and lower body training around my serious focus on improving my favorite sport, which is bouldering and rock climbing. I've been going climbing about two to three times a week for about a year and a half now. So it's still fairly new to me. And I haven't quite dialed in my training routine around that when it comes to strength training. And I do enjoy a little bit of running to try and get faster. My goals are to improve

my bouldering skills, maintain a good level of cardiovascular endurance and speed, and then also build a strong, athletic, lean body. And so I was hoping to get your advice on kind of how to structure a routine around all that climbing. Currently what I've been doing is, like I said, climbing two to three times a week and then trying to do some full body routines around that. But it ends up kind of just looking like push movements and leg movements.

And I feel that I'm lacking some of the more athletic performance or kind of challenging different planes of motion. But I don't want to overdo it on the upper body since I am climbing so much. Yeah. Good question. Really, really good question. And so you're really serious about bouldering.

So, of course, bouldering is going to be the most important thing that you do, right? It's going to be practicing the skill of bouldering. And bouldering and climbing require a great deal of mobility and end range strength. So for people who aren't familiar when you watch bouldering or rock climbing, isometric strength is important because oftentimes you have to hold yourself in certain positions while you're looking for a place to put your foot or your hand. But then also you reach for areas and then you've got to be able to grind yourself out of those areas

to get to the next spot. And so for lower body, what you want to do is really a challenge and range of motion strength. And for the upper body, you want to do a few exercises. And what this looks like is like once a week strength training. More than that is going to...

Impede. It's going to impede on your progress. Because bulwring, I mean, it's quite intense. And there's a huge strength component. And you're doing it at least two to three times. That's right. Well, that's plenty. That's right.

So, you know, what would a lower body, a good lower body exercise look like? You know, sumo stance, deep squats, split stance, exercises with a really wide stance. Long range strided lunges. Cossic squats would be great. Yep. Yep. Where you're really focusing on control and that end range of motion. instability. And then for upper body, you're picking a few strength exercises at most, and the

intensity is moderate. So what it looks like is you're doing sets of five or six with a weight that you could probably do nine with or 10. So it's hard, but it's not really hard. And you're just practicing the movement. What you should notice if this is all works together is when you go bouldering, you should feel stronger. You shouldn't feel like you just took away from your ability to Boulder. Do we have a program right now that we could just like scale her down to one day a week and say follow that? Like what

would be closest? I mean ideally it would be like phase two of performance like if you know just pick one of those. Yeah exactly just that like one or two or like a week of that just do one workout from that particular phase because it focuses so much on all the different

ranges of motion and you know different planes of motion. Audrey do you have performance yet mass performance? No, I was kind of between that one or Performance 15 because I was wondering, I do like to be at the gym. So if I could break it up a little bit over multiple days. That's a great option, too. Okay, yeah. Yeah, that'll pretty much solve it.

If you were already leaning that way, I would prefer that way because you're just doing two exercises a day is going to be far better and less likely for you to overreach. That's right. Yeah, because if you're in the gym that much, that's perfect. Yeah. Yeah. I like to get there, you know, kind of in the mornings almost every day. and for a shorter period of time before school. So I appreciate that.

No, that's perfect. And then what you would do is on the days you boulder, you could either skip those days or you could do the strength training at the end, but probably better to skip those days. So what it would look like is 15 performance, then you do your bouldering. And then when you're not bouldering, then you would just jump right back into the program.

Wow. Yeah, that would be great. That's some of the advice that I'd want. And I think would include more of those multi-plane movements that I'm not doing when I just end up benching and squatting. Yeah. And, you know, keep in mind, like, those traditional exercises will help as well. Yeah. So there's nothing wrong with them. But I like 15 performance because it's so functional based. Yeah. And the volume is so low that it would complement what you're doing.

I wouldn't follow it by the week either. The way I would follow is just workouts in a row. In other words, like, you're, you know, you're going to be every day that you go to the gym, you're just, that's workout one. Then you go the next way. It doesn't matter if it falls on the, this goes into the second week. Do you know what I'm saying? Okay. So you know how to, even though we structure. it by the week, you know, these are the six workouts. You just follow an order. You just follow an order. So it doesn't matter. So it's like when you're working out, you follow that one. And then the next time you come to the gym, whether it's a day later or two days later, you follow the next workout and just use that structure like that with what you're already currently doing. I think it would be great. And then make sure to take a day off when you start,

if you start to feel a little like fatigued, there's no, just take a day off and then jump back in when you're ready. Yeah, for sure. Okay, great. That's really great advice. I appreciate that a lot. You got it. That's awesome. Good for you. That's a fun sport. thank you yeah it's great and it complements training our strength training a lot so it's been awesome so great that's all i have for you guys awesome thank you so much for calling it i appreciate the growth mind yeah i love it we appreciate the support of course all right have a good day bye that's awesome yeah you know the bouldering's an interesting uh they have a their own culture and community oh yeah and i don't i'm not like i'm in it so it's like i but i've gone to uh what's that castle rock

you know where you go high cut and you go there and there's always these these these guys, you know, guys and girls that are bouldering. And you can see, like, they have their own, like, culture. Oh, yeah, Yosemite's big, yeah, like, I had a few trainers I used to work with that were, like, really into bouldering. And they could do the one finger pull-ups and stuff like that. And it's just that in-range strength and that grip and that control of their body and everything else is, like, on another level. Yeah, the only thing I would add to her advice is we all shot it out a bunch of great exercises that if she can use some of those and replace in Maps 15. So if there's a traditional exercise in there.

It's so well made, though. The 15's going to cover some. Yeah, she should be fine. I would have put her to kettlebells too, like if at all possible. But, you know, just dumbbells is going to work the same. And then side note, like for people always inquire about grip strength and how it impedes their ability to deadlift or whatever, look at rock climbers.

The ability of your hands to get strong is we just don't even understand. Like, we can get really, really strong hands if you train properly. Our next caller is Nicole from Minnesota. Nicole, what's happening? Hi, Nicole. Hi, guys. Very nice to meet you. My name is Nicole.

I live in Minneapolis. I've been listening to the Mind Pump podcast for about eight years. So huge thank you for years of knowledge and motivation. It's incredibly surreal to be talking to you right now. A question that I've been struggling with lately is that my calories are maxed out for my comfort, but I would still like to gain muscle. For context, I'm a 35-year-old female who's been weightlifting for about 10 years, typically bodybuilding style.

I'm at the gym five days a week. I'm 5-7. I weigh 150 pounds. And my calories are currently at 2,750 a day. I'm to the point where I'm eating cake, cookies, any other unhealthy food, or just something calorically dense to hit that calorie limit. I always set my protein goal, but, you know, some days I've been. gone as far as to just take shots of

olive oil just to get those additional calories in. And I just feel like I'm stuck in not being able to gain muscle because I just cannot physically eat anymore. So what advice would you have for a situation like mine? Mini cut. You're like a

female sal. I mean, this is like the place that you, I always want to get my clients to is to where they look back. I mean, they're like, Adam, 2,800 is just so many calories. It's so hard. It's like, cool, let's go on a little cut now. So I'd put you in a mini cut. And I would do this to you every time you start to feel like this, right? So maybe the cut looks like two or three weeks long where we try and lean out a little bit and lower the calories. Once you feel that appetite kick back up, then we bounce back up, try and keep you up there for a little bit. As soon as you feel that way again, we go back down. And I would just keep doing that, knowing that every time we're in a cut, we're going to lean out, you're not probably going to build a lot of muscle there. But then every time we come back to, you know, reverse dieting or adding calories, we're going to hopefully add some muscle. each time we do that. Have you shifted your training up to do more like low rep, more kind of power lifting style?

Some, I typically do, you know, I try to go for eight to 12 reps. So I haven't really, I've done a few times where I'll do like a five by five training. But typically, yeah, it's more that bodybuilding style staying within that range. Here's a thing too, Nicole. So you've been lifting consistently for 10 years. You've got your calories up. You're obviously very dedicated. I could tell you have a lot of lean body mass on your body.

You're probably pretty strong. At some point, you start to reach kind of a genetic limit. And this is probably not a calorie problem. So once you get 10 years plus into it, you know, it can be a calorie problem sometimes. I don't think that's the case, though, with you. I don't think eating more is going to get you necessarily more muscle. At this point, the nuances of workout. programming become more important. So that's what you want to look at is your workout programming.

That's where you're going to find the solution. It's not going to come from your diet just based off of what you've said. So what I would look at for you is, or what I would try to do with you is I would try to reduce volume. I would train for strength for, you know, 12 weeks. I would experiment with really low volume failure training, you know, more like a heavy duty Mike Menser style of training. I would look at all these kind of different styles of training to see if you could start moving the needle again. But again, typically with someone like you, this is where workout programming becomes even, like just the nuances and changes become more important. And it's not like I'm going to change the exercise or I'm going to change the rep range a little bit. It's like really, really trying a completely different style of program and giving yourself like eight weeks, you know, at that, with that attempt.

Nicole, you've been listening for eight years. Have you gone through mini maps program? What have you done? Yeah, I used to do, you know, I think I did about seven bodybuilding competitions. And so I've just cycled through. I used to have an online trainer for when I was doing that, those programs. And I've just cycled through old bodybuilding routines that he had provided me with at that time. So you're doing five.

So no maps programs. Yeah. I have not. No. Sal, that's. Welcome to a new world. Yeah. Yeah.

So tell me about your volume. You're doing five days a week. How many, what do you, what's your split look like? and how many sets are you doing per body part? Yeah, I typically do a chest tri, more of a bro-split, chest, triceps, shoulders, back by, legs, and a full body. And I usually do about five sets, four or five sets of maybe four or five different activities for each day.

Okay. So, I mean, honestly, even if you just cut your volume down, you probably see some... Put her on MAPS and ABLEC, bro. Put on MAPS and... Or power lift. Yeah, either one of those. Yeah. Do either one of those, do the thing, do still do the advice I gave with the diet. So when you get to those places where you feel like that, but I have a feeling,

the new programming is going to also fix the diet. It's going to make a world. It's going to make you hungry. You're going to be training different. And yeah, no, this is, follow maps and a ball. How good is your sleep? I want some questions. I'm going to ask some more questions about your recovery.

Is your sleep good? Yeah. Sleep's great. Yeah. I definitely sleep a lot. And you feel good. You don't have any signs of overtraining? No, just, you know, some tightness in a hip, but I think that's probably just more my own imbalance than anything else.

But I would say, you know, no other real, like I said, I've been listening to you guys to kind of hear some of those traditional overtraining things. And I'm always listening for it. And I don't think there's very much. All right. So here's what we're going to do. I have another option. I think MAPSinaabolic Advanced for someone like you, you're feeling good. Doesn't sound like you're overtraining.

Anabolic advance is so different from what you're doing, especially. especially the weeks that are failure-based, that I think you're going to see some gains on it. But what I want you to do is when I send that to you is I want you to do a delode week before you go into it. So before you go into MAPS Anabolic, do a week of easy training, then jump right into Anabolic Advanced. And I'd like to see you again on the podcast in about 12 weeks.

And I'd like to hear how it went for you. Okay. Okay, yeah, that sounds great. Can I do just, I guess a question with that, should I try to do something like a mini cut in conjunction with that new programming? Follow the advice I gave you with the diet. So right now you're, if you're taking shots of olive oil, just hit your thing, that's enough for me.

I'm like, okay, it's time to go the other way. So follow Sal's advice, put yourself on a mini cut for at least a week or two. That's it. And then go back. And then every time you start to feel like that again, where you're like, oh, I'm having to take shots of olive oil or eat cookies, just hit your calories, go back down again. Just kind of do that to yourself. I don't know, every three to four weeks.

as you go through the program, interrupt it with a week to two-week-long cut. Okay. And a mini cut to you is cutting three, four, 500 calories? 500, 500. If you're at 2750, you can easily go down to 22, 2, 2, 200 calories for, you know, a week or two. Yeah, yeah, totally can do that.

Easily, I agree. Yeah, yeah. And then that should, so, yeah, especially since you're really pushing it 270, I'd say go down to 2,100 calories and do that for that week or two, then go back up. Yeah. And I want to talk to you in 12 weeks.

I want to see how this goes. Yeah, yeah. I think new programming, you're going to see a big difference. Yeah. And I think just having been a bodybuilder, when I hear cut, I think you're going to lose muscle, right? And so I think that's kind of kept me where I've been at as a week. No, let me sell you on the science, okay? When you do a mini cut for like a week, you're resensitizing your body to the calories.

And so, okay, so you've competed, right? You know what it's like to get ready for a show. You know the gains you get after the show. show when you start to refeed all of a sudden your muscles fill out you get these incredible gains there's this there's a sensitizing effect that comes from a cut so when you reintroduce calories your body wants to grow yeah so that's all we're doing is we're taking advantage of that with a really shortcut yeah yeah yeah that sounds great thank you so much yeah you got it can't wait to hear back from you yep okay yes thanks for checking in on me i think i needed that's harder to

kind of make the change so thank you we'll see you soon thanks yeah i mean it's when you get to that level I mean, sometimes it's over training. In the case like this is when you start to mess with programming, it becomes more important. Well, it also... It sounds like she's been doing the same thing for a long time. Watch what it'll do. It'll also solve the diet problem because when you're so, your body's so adapted to your training. Even when you're doing a lot like she is, it's not stimulating.

It's not growing. It's not needing any additional calories. It's figured it all out. How to maintain stay what's at. As soon as she starts doing something different in from the programming perspective, it's going to kick up the body go, oh, shit. This is new adaptation. We got to move, and it'll kick the appetite up too, watch. That's right.

Our next caller is Scott from Pennsylvania. What's up, Scott? Hey, I'm great. How are you guys? Good, man. How can we help you? Well, just love what you guys do. Listen to it all the time.

You guys are kind of my workout playlist. So I just really appreciate the, I like hearing about your families. I like hearing about your path as fathers and all of that stuff. So question is, I've tried many of your programs. Own a lot of them. I love them. Super easy to follow.

Appreciate them. So 57-year-old male, 6'4, between 230, 235 pounds. Spent most of my youth skinny, went to college, discovered beer, and have been chasing a lean body ever since. Went through the Atkins, Whole 30, other restricted diets. I would always lose weight fast, but as you know, put it back on. I did CrossFit for many years, love the competitive side as I was a college basketball player and a coach. I love to golf and I love to work out. I struggle with not working out every day and I've tried push-pulled legs.

I've tried hit, five-by-five, et cetera. They all have been good and I've been able to get much stronger, which I'm really proud of. I'm a high school principal and love to go to our wait room after school when the kids are there, throw in my headphones and lift alongside my students. It has gained me some credibility with the students as well. well, especially when they see that I can do strict pull-ups. Man of God. Yeah.

Man of God who longs to live a Christian life alongside my bride of 18 months, who is also an avid workout woman and strict macro counter and meal prepper. She sends me to work each day with macro-friendly food and meal preps like nobody's business. However, I feel that my body, while strong, is covered in a bit of a layer of fluff, I feel strong but don't feel the aesthetic is there. So I'm looking for advice on what my week should look like with workouts, steps, cardio, lifting programs, and also proper macros. I have a love, hate relationship with tracking and on and off again, but willing to do it in a search of a leaner athletic physique. I've tried online coaches before and had results, but I think it was at the

expense of how my body felt the training was way too intense and the feedback was not customized as I felt like I was on an algorithm and just respect you guys and would like any feedback that you would have. Well, Scott, first of all, amazing. Yeah. Amazing.

I think you're kicking ass. A example for the kids. And I love that you work out in the gym with your students. I wish I had a principal like you when I was so rad. That's so cool. You say you got a later of fluff.

Do you know what your body fat? Let's get objective here because what it's maybe is that you may be a little bit you may be stuck on a hamster wheel if I need to get my body to change when in fact you're doing pretty damn good so where are you at body fat percentage wise do you know?

Well I use um I have a hume scale okay um I don't know if one of those body pods and yesterday I did like the whole chat GPT upload a picture and have them decide um so anywhere probably between like 21 to 28% body fat I don't feel like I'm 28% but that's what chat GPT spit out

as I put in some statistics. I don't think you're 28 would lie. I'm even surprised at 21. You'd have a big belly. You said a layer of fluff, but a big belly would be, you know, 28 or even 21%. Yeah, you're not 28.

But 21's even higher than what I would have guessed you. I would have guessed you in the mid to high teens at most. Yeah. Have you ever had a caliber test? I have not. And I've considered also getting a Dexas scan done as well. Yeah, that would help. Yeah, I would do one.

But let's pretend you are at 27%. I think there's things that we can do advice we could give. Yeah. Have you recently tracked calories at all? Do you have an idea of kind of where your maintenance is or where you tend to hover? Yeah, so I, when I do track, I was tracking at like 2,200 calories. I felt that was too limited. I have bumped that up the last couple of weeks to 2,500, making sure that as part of that,

I'm getting between 200 and 220 grams of protein, making sure I get that each day. You're a reverse dieting. Yeah, that's low for a guy. Very low for you. Your size. Yeah, working out. It's kind of low. Way low.

There's a couple ways to approach it. I mean, you could do a reverse diet, a slow reverse diet and just focus on building strength and muscle and track that. Don't get carried away with it, which I don't think you would. You track things. So what I mean by that is sometimes people reverse diet, they don't track and they just go, I'm going to eat a bunch more. That'd be the wrong approach. You'd be a slow approach.

You want to kind of slow inch your way up, 100 calories, 150 calories every two weeks or something like that. and if you're getting stronger, you're moving in the right direction. Then when you're ready to cut, there's a couple ways you could do this. You could cut from, you know, when you get yourself close to 3,000 calories. That's right I'd probably want to get you. At least. At least. Yeah.

And there's a couple ways you can do. You could just kind of consistently be at a deficit. Or you could be around 3,000 calories and have a couple days of low calories, which for some people seems to work a lot better. That works a lot better for me. Scott, are you really sedentary at work or do you move around quite a bit? What's your step-s like? Yeah, no. My goal is by the time I leave school each day is to be at 10,000 steps. And I've been getting that we're about six days into school. And I get, I'm about 12,000 steps every day, whether I'm working or not. But I don't stay in my office very, very much. As a school administrator, I'm out quite a bit with my students and teachers. Scott, we're really low, really low. That's what's going on right now. And I bet because you feel like you have a layer of fat, you probably haven't put. yourself on an aggressive bulk in a long time have you done that have you have you

intentionally tried to bulk no yeah oh never so there you go so what's happened is you're metabolically we've just slowed down and you've gotten yourself in a place where you're so low that you don't want to go up any calories you're holding on that layer of fat your your your body is not responding the way you wanted to because you're already lower than you should be we i mean i would want to get you above 33 300 calories eventually like you wow you're a big dude you're a little guy. You're 6-4-2-30. You're bigger than me. And 3,000 is low calories for me. So that's me cutting. So 3,500 to 4,000. And the fact, if you were sedentary, it'd be different. If you said you're only moving 2,000 steps, but you're moving 10,000 steps and you're that big of a guy

and you're working out. Oh, yeah. We need to reverse diet you and just get you to a place where you're pushing over 3,000 calories and then bring you back down to like 2,500 and you're going to lean that body fat right out, right out. And you can step, you can go slow if you want if you're afraid of gaining tons of weight or whatever. Like I said, 150 calories a week or even every two weeks and just take your time. And if you're getting stronger with some of the core lifts, you know you're moving in the right direction. Give me an idea, too, of the last Maps program you follow because I think a good thing strategy you do right now is to put you on something totally different and while we're reversed on you would be a great strategy. Yeah, probably the most recent one

I did was aesthetic. Okay. And most recently, after one of your episodes, I think it was the August 6th for what you should do, the workouts you should do if you're over 50. Yeah. Yeah. So it was like sled push. Like today I'm, I'm scheduled to do a sled push, the incline press. So those exercises, Sal that you outlined that one episode of like, here are all the things you should be doing three sets. So I've been doing that for about three weeks. And then one day a week, I'll just do like a kind of like just like active movement just with some movements just with the barbell just to, um, and I'm crazy, I mean, I'll do push up challenges and pull up challenges and. That's awesome. I just like to move and just like to be. Yeah. Yeah, just like to be

in the gym. You're an active guy with low calories. Calors are too low. Yeah, you're just a you're, yeah, we need to get you up. And it's, uh, it'll be a little bit of a process, but I tell you what, you know, just check in with us. Are you in the private forum yet? I am, yeah. Okay, so like, this is the goal. We're going to reverse diet. you, so we're going to bump the calories, at least 250 to 500 calories. What program do you want to put them on right now? 40 plus. 40 plus.

I love 40 plus for you. So put you on 40 plus. We'll send that to you. Follow that as it's laid out. And then what you're doing stepwise, the fact that you got wife making you macro-friendly meal, I mean, you're good. It'll match you really. Yeah, you're good.

And just you trust the process. Anytime somebody is used to kind of lower calories and they're afraid of putting body fat on, there will be a psychological part as you start to review. you're going to fill up a little bit. And so don't allow that to freak you out. I promise you 500 more calories is not going to make you fat. You get stronger. Yeah, you're going to get, and that's what we want to see is getting stronger.

It's getting stronger in the gym. And then every time you have those feelings, like you don't like it or you feel weird or you're not sure, message us in the forum. Just stay in touch with us as you're going through that process. And we'll talk you off the ledge every time you think that you need to go back the other direction. Because we need to get you up over 3,000 calories for sure. for your level of activity, your size, you're lifting weights. Yeah.

We got to get you up. This way, Scott, you know, if you're not making, if there's a economic recession, you're trying to not spend money. That's what happens when your calories are really low and you're telling your body to build muscle. It's like, nope,

I'm not going to build muscle. In fact, we're going to hold on to this body fat as an insurance policy. Yep. So, you know, a guy like you, that active, Adam's 100% correct. I think it's just holding on to body fat. It doesn't want to build any muscle

because you're not giving enough calories. Yep. Awesome. Cool part is this is very solvable. And when we unlock this, just watch. Yep. Yeah. This is cool.

Great. Yep. Great. I love it. I love it. Right on. Yeah. We'll send that over to you and then stay in touch with us in the forum, Scott.

We'll do. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. You got it. All right. What a cool principle. Yeah. You know, that's, and he's 100% right.

You're in the gym with the students. You connect with them in a whole different level. They see that, you know, you're working out. I had a math teacher. he'd go lift and he was so strong and just you know everybody just loved saying that but yeah your calories are too low your body is going to try to get rid of muscle yeah and it's going to you know through hormones and metabolic changes hold on to body fat is what ends up oh and he said it he's like I asked him are you have you ever tried to oh absolutely not yeah he's like he hasn't

even tried he hasn't even tried to bulk so he's been carrying this little layer of body fat probably every time he's on a kick or being consistent he's keeping the calories low because he doesn't want to put any more body fat on he needs a reverse diet so yeah i can't wait to see what happens because i think i think he's actually going to be super oh yeah someone that consistent with the lifting and everything like that adding calories to him find a different program some muscle oh yeah our next caller is loren from indiana hi lauren hey doing lauren hello hey guys how's it going good how can we help you good um well let me read my email it's about a low histamine diet and my training and then i'll give you an update on some changes that I've made in the last several weeks that might help with

your answer. So my email says, hey guys, I need some help sorting out my nutrition and programming while I'm on a low histamine diet. I'm 46 years old and while seeing a functional medicine practitioner to sort out my gut issues, we recently determined that I have a histamine intolerance that has caused a lot of allergy symptoms and reoccurring headaches. And after going on this low histamine diet, which is a whole foods diet, but also excludes some healthy for you foods. I found that I'm not eating a lot of calories. I sometimes eat between 1,700 to 1,900, but I'm trying to get to between 22 to 2,300 calories a day to maintain my muscle mass, but it's really hard. I feel really good on this diet, but I'm struggling to figure out

what to eat. I've narrowed it down to greens, berries, meat, some nuts, right? and sweet potatoes. And so I'm sure you can imagine eating that kind of food makes me feel full on lower calories. In addition, I just started coaching a group fitness class. They encourage us to take the class to connect with members. It's a progressive strength-based class, but also has a short matcon at the end. And I don't always want to do the metcon. I know that at my age, lifting heavy weights is the most important thing.

And when I think about the fact that I'm struggling to get calories in, I'm really concerned. and I could be overdoing it in the gym. So my current routine looks like two days a week, full body strength training, two days mobility, one day Olympic lifting, one day focused on squat and press because that's the class that I take with the members. I walk 10,000 steps a day. I stretch throughout the day. I'm currently in my offseason of CrossFit.

And so during my off season, I'm trying to build the strength and maintain the muscle before training four months for the CrossFit open. please help me figure out what to do with my nutrition. I'm concerned I'm going to lose this hard-earned muscle at my age. I'm in the thick of perimenopause. I want to take care of my body. But I love the people like coach. I want to show up for them.

What's your advice on how I can get my act together? Lauren, this is not a diet problem. This is a you do too much exercise and overtrained problem. Yeah, yeah. You're not going to really do the CrossFit open. Are you coming up? No. With all this going on?

Yes. I want to. That's why I'm trying to figure out my diet situation. But your body's trying to tell you don't. It's not going to happen now. So you're trying to fix your gut health, okay, which is a process. It's a bit of a process. Right now you're on a low histamine diet. You're trying to heal your gut.

Any thyroid issues? Yeah. So that's what I wanted to give you an update on. So in the last actually four weeks, I met with my functional medicine practitioner. again. The gut issues are resolved. I'm on a maintenance protocol, basically. So now we've decided to tackle, I'm right on the cusp of potential low thyroid and my testosterone is super low. So we've decided to tackle the testosterone first. So I'm on a very low dose of that right now. And we're supplementing for the thyroid. If I cannot get my thyroid,

up in the next couple of months, we're going to, I'm going to go down the route of medicine for thyroid. I've got good news and bad news for you. Okay. The good news is there's a solution here, which I'll get to you. The bad news is you're not going to want to do it. Okay. So now here's a deal.

The reason why you run into these problems, histamine intolerance, gut issues, thyroid issues, low testosterone is because you've overtrained the hell out of yourself for a long time. It's probably what happened. Okay. And the reason why I asked you thyroid issues is because while you're talking about, talking to me and telling me all the stuff you're doing and you had good issues, I like 90% chance there was some thyroid stuff going on as well. Typically, it's what you'll see in women who beat themselves up for a long time is they start to develop antibodies to thyroid or get developed

thyroid issues. Now, you can bandate it with hormones, but if you keep pushing yourself down this path, it's going to get worse, worse, and worse. So here's what we got to do. Once you heal, once you fix the gut issues, you got to give yourself time now to allow the gut. to heal. So once it's remedied, that doesn't mean you go back and you're like, I'm good. Think of the gut as you have this gut lining. It's been damaged. We've solved some of the issues with, let's say, CBO, let's say, you know, the histamine issues. Your body's not so reactive. You got to give your body time to heal now. Over training, by the way, or beating yourself up destroys the gut. Okay. That chronic inflammation also contributes to gut inflammation. There's a very strong

correlation between people who beat themselves up in the gym too much and gut issues. Very, very strong. You can look at the data on this. It's pretty remarkable. What you need to do, focus on gut health, back way down on your training. The worst, worst, worst thing you could do is go compete in CrossFit. So if you really want to get better, don't go into CrossFit. If you want to push yourself into menopause early and have hormone issues that plague you for a long time, go do the CrossFit competition.

So if that's what you want, that's what's going to happen. I would bet money on it. So this is what your routine should look like. You're teaching your class once a week. You're going to do two days a week of strength training. That's it. There's nothing else. And it's two full body days, moderate intensity.

You're going to allow yourself to heal, which could take three months, it could take a year. And through that process, your hormones are going to start to feel better. You might need to go on hormone therapy because you said paramedopause. I don't know how old you are.

So you still might need, nonetheless, what will happen through this process is you're going to feel like you got your body back. You're going to start to feel like, oh, my God, my body is responding, and I'm doing way less work. This is amazing. The challenge is going to be breaking the chains of this dysfunctional relationship you've had with exercise for so long. It's probably scary to you to say, don't do the CrossFit thing because you've got this relationship with it. You got to dump it. You got to break up with this boyfriend.

Abusive. He's abusive. He is. He's abusive. It is not serving it. Walk away. Walk away. Yeah.

It was fun at the time. And I'm telling you, if you get out of it and give yourself time to heal, you may later on be able to slowly work yourself back into competition, but it ain't going to be beating your crap out of yourself. And by the way, those two workouts a week should look nothing like CrossFit training. Nothing. Okay. Big rest periods.

Three minutes. You're doing like four minutes. Three minutes. Okay. You're just getting strong. Yeah, focus. That's it. Moderate intensity.

Endurance. Lots of rest in between sets. Nothing like probably any of your crossfit training looks like. Now, aesthetically, here's what's going to happen. You're at first, you're just going to start to feel better. Okay? You're going to feel libido get better. Energy start to get better. Sleep will start to get better. Oh my gosh. I think I'm, I think this is kind of working. And then slowly what'll happen is just start to build muscle. You'll start to feel good. You'll start to have all this energy. And it's going to feel like your body is responding like you probably have an experience. You're haven't experienced in a long time. And then you're going to be tempted to want to go back.

And then you're going to be tempted to go beat yourself up again. It's hard when you're a CrossFit coach, too. Of course. Yeah. Well, it'll make you a better CrossFit coach, Lauren. Yeah. Because I can guarantee you have a lot of students like yourself. In fact, you're probably a better coach to them than you are to yourself.

I'm sure you've given this advice to other people. Yeah. So it'll make you a better coach as you experience this. What advice do you have on my calories? Just eat more of what I'm already eating. If I can. If you can. And, you know, a good, a good meal.

I'm somewhat familiar with histamine intolerance. My kids, we've dealt with it with my kids. So we've had to work around this. You know, a high fat content ground beef made with rice is a real easy way to get nutrient-dense calories. Dr. Becky Campbell has a great book with recipes for that. It's always all the time. But yeah, like if you made a bowl with rice and like 80% ground beef, like that's a high calorie. easy-to-eat, you know, dish right there.

You give your proteins, your fats, your carbs, it's low histamine. It works. Of course, you want to, I'm sure you're familiar with this. Like, you know, if you save meat, the histamine content goes up. So make your serving so that you can eat them kind of in the moment. And that's it. But back way off on the training and your body will heal. If you don't, this is going to be tough.

Okay. Sorry. Okay. It's a hard pill. I know. All good. No, that's why I asked the experts, right? Yeah.

If you follow us and you do listen to us, I'd love to hear back from you because I think it'll be life-changing. You know what? That's a good idea, Lauren, because I'm afraid you're going to be tougher. Why don't we have you back on in three months so we could see how you're doing. Yeah. Okay. That sounds good. All right.

Support system over here. We'll see you in three months. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you guys. You got it. Thanks. Bye.

She's like, fuck, no. Not what. Cool story, guys. Not what you want to hear. Cool story, guys. Not what you want to go figure this out. I got to tell, too. I'm just talking to the trainers listening right now.

That's a tough one. When you become, when you start to gain experience, this is why you can't experience trumps everything. Like, you've been training people for a long time. What I did right there, and I just want trainers to understand this, is I knew that she had thyroid issues, but saying it made her go, oh crap,

how did he know that? I know that because you beat the crap out of yourself. You're in paramedopause. You have histamine issues. You're going to have thyroid issues. Yeah, yeah. I only said that so I could, show her. I know what I'm talking about. I mean, the obvious one for me was that I'm doing all

this stuff right now that I have issues with just so I can go do the CrossFit Open. It was like, this is probably how you got there. And the fear I could I configure this in some way, just like compete in the fear I would have for someone like her is she goes the full hormone therapy route, which eventually. And then she feels good. She feels good and thinks that she's solved it, but it's not. It's like progesterone at night, testosterone, then maybe growth hormone and then thyroid in the morning, and it's a Band-Aid, and then she keeps going down this path, and then in four or five years, crashes really hard, which you don't want to do. But if she does everything right, she's going to have a miraculous change in how she feels.

I hope she, I hope she takes it. I can tell that it was not what she wanted to hear and not the plan at all, so I really hope. Having her back on might help. I know. We could berate her if you. Somehow we'll get in there. Come on, Lauren, you got this. I believe in you.

You can do it. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram at 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.

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