Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2744: How to Track Macros the Right Way (According to Pros)

Episode Date: December 6, 2025

Get 50% off a Reverse Dieting Strategy call with a Mind Pump coach. (Through Dec 6th) Visit: ⁠http://www.reversedietcall.com/⁠ ** Code DECEMBER50 at checkout ** Mind Pump Fit Tip: The Do's and Don'ts of Macro tracking. (2:00) Illustrating why it's important to understand ALL factors in a study. (22:10) Glistening beard. (32:37) Male models and awkward photo shoots. (35:57) Not just an athleisure wear company anymore. (53:47) An EXTREME example of how human reason falls apart without objective morality. (56:13) #ListenerCoaching call #1 – What is the best program to add an inch to my arms? (1:03:36) #ListenerCoaching call #2 – How can I get my body to respond? I'm not as active as I once was, and I need help with the way I feel. (1:10:50) #ListenerCoaching call #3 – A story of redemption after a near-death experience. Trusting the process after years of living in a cycle of extremes. (1:25:29) Related Links/Products Mentioned Get Coached by Mind Pump, live! Visit https://www.mplivecaller.com Visit Caldera Lab for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code MINDPUMP20 for 20% off your first order of their best products. ** Visit Vuori Clothing for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** No code to receive 20% off your first order. ** Get 50% off a Reverse Dieting Strategy call with a Mind Pump coach. (Through Dec 6th) Visit: http://www.reversedietcall.com/ ** Code DECEMBER50 at checkout ** Mind Pump Store Mind Pump #2160: Macro Counting Master Class MAPS Macro Calculator Intentional Weight Gain Strategies in Young Adult Athletic Individuals Florida man arrested after UK woman allegedly pays him to torture, kill her: Affidavit Unlock sharper focus and support long-term brain health with Ketone-IQ—clean brain fuel for deep work, mental clarity, and sustained energy with no crash. Get 30% off your subscription, plus a free gift with your second shipment at https://ketone.com/MINDPUMP Occlusion Training Guide | MAPS Fitness Products Mind Pump #2690: The NEW DIET Everyone Is Using For Fat Loss Sal Di Stefano's Journey in Faith & Fitness – Mind Pump TV Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Phil Heath (@philheath) Instagram ZUBY (@zubymusic) Instagram  

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com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Tracking your macros, proteins, fats, carbohydrates. It can be a total game changer in the positive and in some cases in the negative. We're going to talk about macro tracking the do's and the don'ts, who it's good for, who it's bad for. Let's get into it. Are you allowed to talk about this? Yeah. Why? You don't track macros. No, but I coach people. I'm definitely not qualified.

I just say, uh, I have. Obviously, we know who's tracked them. most, but I'm curious out of the two of you who's tracked the least. Justin, that's easy. You think so? Justin's never tried. Have you never tracked Justin? No, I've tracked protein. I mean, that counts.

Oh, but you've never, macros. There's plural. Not like macros in general. Like, yeah. You've tracked a macro. Yeah. I've tracked a macro. In a meal.

It happened. He looked at the label. Really, you, so you've never. I thought you did when you were. I do with my clients, but, you know, when you got, when you got all lean and ripped when we first started this, you didn't, you weren't really tracking macros? Easy with the lean and ripped. Come on.

Screw you, man. You got super sexy. Yeah. No, I just, it was mainly just protein. And then, I mean, I would manipulate my carbohydrates and everything. But that was just kind of just, I don't know, it wasn't like super detailed. So you really didn't track. Like, you've never downloaded Fat Secret or My Fitness Pall and logged food for a week.

For myself? Yeah. Not really. Wow. You? Yes, of course. Now, Justin was an athlete. So a lot of his was performance-based.

So it didn't matter. Calories, though, for sure. This is actually a good discussion because macro tracking is, I think, more valuable when you're looking for aesthetic changes, especially when the aesthetic changes start to get more granular. Then it really makes a big difference, right? You know, so like going from, if you're a guy going from 20% body fat to 15 or 16% body fat, like you don't really need to track macros. going from 15 to 9, it probably is going to make a big difference.

Yeah. Now, I did, the first time I ever tracked macros was way back in the day. 1997. Calorie King, Calorie King books. Oh, no, this was even before that. I used scale and apex. I don't know if you guys, did you ever, was Apex? I thought Calryking.com was school. You had one of those earlier.

I had the Calry King books. No. I had the book. I think I had a book, but there was no, like, internet. Well, yeah, this is pre-Carray King was a book first, then CalgaryKing.com came later. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And so I had the book to start with, which that was as far back as I went where I was writing it on paper.

But macro tracking allows you, the reason why this can be so valuable is, and there's so many studies on this, but this is also just based on our experience. The over underestimate of what you think you're eating is silly. It's just dumb. It's even for those of us who know, or pretty well versed on what. food, you know, in terms of calories and macros in food. I mean, this is what we did for a living. I could still be off significantly, you know, 10 to 20%, which is, you know, hundreds of calories, which is the difference between moving the needle one way or another,

let alone the average person who's, you know, never tracked before, never coached lots of people. So tracking can really be an effective tool for bringing awareness around where you think you're at versus where you are actually. I mean, I think for my clients, unless you had a condition, right? So there's asterisk here. Obviously, someone's had, you know, history of anorexia or a really bad relationship with food. Everybody else, it was, it was mandatory we did it for a period of time.

I just think that for educational purposes. Sure. I've never met anybody who says they don't track calories or ever have tracked calories or ever have track calories, but they have a good idea of what they eat. Yeah. Just they're always, I'm off always. I mean, as long as I've been doing this, and even right now, it's been a long time since I've probably tracked, it's been at least a year, probably more.

I think I have an idea over on that. And if you challenge me, like, you know, give me the number where you're at right now. And I had to probably sit down and go on my head, I'd give you something. But I can almost guarantee you that I'm off. You'll get generally close, which means you're probably off by 20. percent, which is enough to not. I mean, at least, at least that. That's right.

Because I'm off 20% of what I'm guesstimating, but it's just like then food, food labels and error and all that stuff. And, oh, what did I not account for? Because there's the other thing, too, is like, when you're guessing or whatever or like that, like, not only are you not measuring portion size, but you tend to also forget. Like, oh, that's right. I forgot. When I gave my son that popcorn, I took a couple handfuls of that, too. And it's like, oh, it's right. I had that little mini-sized Snickers bar.

when I went. Or even when you're cooking, that looks like a tablespoon of olive oil. Yeah. Yeah. So the value of becoming a little, especially in preparation for a calorie reduction in a cut, less important on a reverse diet. You know, I'm going to give you a little pushback with that. Okay.

Yeah, because I think tracking in a bulk, let's just say, can be equally important because what some people will do in a bulk is. they just eat a lot more. This will happen to the guy, typically, who just wants to gain muscle. And so they're like, I'm just going to eat a lot more. And you don't need a lot more to build muscle. You don't need an extra thousand calories

above your maintenance to build muscle. Yeah, but that guy is eating a bunch of processed junk to get there. Well. So if you, if you tell a client who needs a reverse diet or bulk, hit your protein intake, eat when you're hungry, how as much as you want, long as it's whole foods. You know what's interesting about what you're saying,

because that was my strategy with most of my clients, is that will put you in a cut or a bulk, depending on where your body needs to go, is what I found. So that's an effective way to lose body fat too for the person who's overeating. It's great to build muscle for the person that's under eating because you start to, your body signals start to be a little bit more accurate.

And hitting protein is the one thing that makes the biggest difference with that because of course if you just listen to your body some people under eat or overeat just based off that so so it's interesting because I've had I've done that with with getting people to build I've done that with people who need to lose weight too you know so I think it works well for both but the awareness piece with macro counting I think is really important I also think it's really important when you're starting to get away from what would be considered generally healthy body fat percentages in other words if you're a woman and you're healthy and fit,

you're probably in the low 20s of body fat percentage. There's a range, right? It's like between 20 to, let's say 24% probably, give or take. For men, you're probably, you know, north or south,

15% by a few percent, right? So it could be as low as 12, maybe as high as 17, if you're fit and healthy. If you want to move typically lower than that, that's when mackerel counting starts to become important because your body kind of fights you.

Like most guys, their natural healthy eating isn't going to make them 9% body fat or 8% body fat. And most women, their natural, healthy way of eating isn't going to get them at 17%. Well, your body will recognize that it's catabolic for an extended period of time. And it'll send signals that we need to eat more. Up your appetite. And you'll, you have to learn to become somewhat comfortable with that. That's right.

That's right. Is that, you know, like maybe one day, not a big deal. But you, you're catabolic for two, three days in a row. the body starts going, hey, that's right. We need more calories. That's right. You know, and so. And, you know, and other people listening might be like, well, I know these athletes or I know this professional something that, you know, they don't watch anything.

They're shredded. Yeah, there's always these crazy examples. But average person, average man, give or take, will be somewhere around 15%, you know, either 12 to let's say 17, fit and healthy. eating protein, sticking to whole natural foods, exercising properly, and women will be somewhere in the low 20s, which is great, by the way. Most people are happy here. You go below that, though, and back to what you're saying, Adam, your body starts to push back a little bit.

And it's just not going to, your appetite, well, if you start listening to your body and trying to be healthy, getting too lean, your body will make you eat more. Yeah. And macro counting because, and if you get lower than that, well, yeah, now you definitely, you'll try to get down to. You dream about food. Yeah, try to get down to 7%. Sub 6, you're dreaming about food.

Oh, yeah. You think about food all there. Yeah, you have to track because your body's yelling at you. Yeah, yeah. And the same is true for, you know, women starting to get below maybe like 18, 17% by the thing. And to your point, there's always somebody who's, I'm not like that. There's always anomalies. Yeah.

There's people that can build muscle when they look at weights that eat crappy food and their body powers through it. And there are terrible examples to look to for advice for the average person. The average person is not like that. The average person has to work really hard to build muscle. It's very slow. It takes a lot of consistency. The average person, it's very difficult to eat in a calorie deficit consistently. Even when they do, it takes a long time for the body fat percentage to come off, takes lots of consistency.

But we all want to point to the girlfriend or the buddy or the one person who's just like, well he does that. It's like, yeah, he's, you know, there's also people like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs. You know what I'm saying? I don't care how many books you read, you know what I'm saying? You're just not going to be that smart, you know? And back to the like reverse diet bulk, you know,

tracking can be important with that too with the person who's so afraid of gaining body fat, right? Oftentimes a reverse diet, which is also a bulk. We just don't call it a bulk with a reverse diet because that'll scare away everybody who needs to reverse diet. But really you're eating in a surplus, right? And the value of that, we've talked about many times in the show. But in a nutshell, why would you do this if you want to lose body fat, build muscle, speed up metabolism, set up the fat loss to be more sustainable later, right?

That's in a nutshell. But the people were afraid, like really afraid of gaining weight. And you're telling them, like, no, no, we need to eat more food and more calories while strength training. They're like, I don't want to gain any weight. And then you finally convince them to reverse diet, not having them track what it's going it'll look like for them is maintenance deficit, maintenance deficit, because they're so scared that they're just like, ah, this is too much food.

So with that person, I'm like, no, no, no, we have to track because when you feel like you've eaten enough, you're so used to eating so little that you're still eating too little. And so now we know we need to increase because you're looking at your macros and you're going, okay, I need to eat another 200 calories, even though I think I'm eating a lot because normally it's a little. For the anti-tracking people, that's the real. value is not that you should or you need to track for the rest of your life. It's really

just more the awareness thing. Yes. Because we all have patterns and behaviors around nutrition, some that we're aware of and some that we're not. That's right. And when you track for a good 30 days or so, a lot of those surface and then you

become aware of it. And it's just like, oh, I didn't realize that on those days when I get really busy, I end up like, oh, okay, I don't get breakfast. And then all of a sudden, behind X amount of grams of protein and then that rolls into a day where I sleep in and then I'm really behind it's like yeah I thought I was making all these attempts to do that I didn't know that or wow I didn't realize how often I walk past that you know you know bowl of nuts that I grab a

handful yeah there's just that was always the surprising one I think for a lot of clients of mine was the the fat tracking and like where that was sneaking in with the oils and the yeah nuts and stuff like that because it gets so high calorie wise uh in you you you know, it just kind of sneaks in. So once you start adjusting that, especially if they're on a deficit, it was like a big deal. I think one of the best values of macro tracking

is also figuring out your natural, you know, basal metabolic rate, or maybe for lack of a better term, just how many calories you're probably burning on a regular basis. Yeah, it's your basis. Yeah, because all those calculators and, you know, estimates are just not accurate. There's such a big difference between person to person,

which, you know, metabolic adaptation and hormones and lifestyle and maybe how you've done it before can affect all this stuff. But for somebody who, like, how many calories am I, like, burning on a normal regular basis? Well, if you tracked for three weeks, without trying to eat more or less,

you just tracked. And let's say over that three week, you're not gaining or losing weight, right? So you're just kind of staying the same. Whether you're overweight or not, you're just tracking. You have a good general idea of how many calories you burn now

on a regular basis. So you add it up and average it out. And you're like, wow, on a typical day, I'm eating 2,200 calories with my normal life. That's how many calories I'm burning. Because I didn't gain or lose weight. That's where I'm out. So if I want to lose weight, I got to go below it.

If I want to gain weight, I got to go above it or build muscle go above it. Or, oh my goodness, I'm consuming so little. It looks like I'm burning. I was doing all this activity. I'm eating so little. I need a reverse diet. It'll give you a good idea of what your body is doing on its own. And that's really in my experience, the only way you can really do.

do it. The calculators are not great. They'll give you this general idea. The best part about the calculators is that I find. I mean, we have a really nice macro calculator online that's free. What's the link for that, Doug, by the way? So people are going to look for it. Is it macro macro calculator? It might be maps. Let me look it up. Okay. But my point is I do get a lot of people who are like, I just have no idea where to start. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And so they're like, You're right. And so it'll give you a good place to start. but it's not the answer and that's what I'm always coaching to it.

Maps macro.com. Yeah, so it gives you a little, it's a calculator. Yeah, so if you're like, I don't even, I've never tracked, I have no idea what I should start at, then it's like, there's two ways

you can go about this. One, if you don't want to do the macro calculator, which is what I would tell clients a lot of time is I actually want you to eat normal. Now when I'm, so if I'm coaching someone, that's actually what I want. So if you're doing this on your own, I think macro calculators can be helpful to have a starting point to try and figure out.

If you have a coach, I personally tell my clients, I want you to eat the same shitty food that you eat the week before you hired me. Like, I want to see. Just keep eating normal. Yeah, yeah. If that meant a Snickers bar at noon, eat it. If that meant you go climbing the freezer at 10 o'clock a night, do it. Like I'd like, and they're always looking at me like all sideways. Like, that's not what I'm paying you.

I just got to know what you're doing. Yeah, but I want to see, I want to see your behaviors. I want to see your behavior's habits because what I know is I could write based off of your height and weight and your goals and your steps. I can do what the macro calculator can do manually and write out and then ask you some questions about foods and write out this beautiful little plan. But if I find out later that this beautiful plan that I laid out is so astronomically different than what you just did the week before, I am setting that client up for failure. That's right. I'm far better off having them eat the way with their crazy 700 calorie Starbucks and this and that. And it's not because I'm going to let them continue to just do that way forever.

But then I, then I'll methodically change little things at a time. So it's not this huge like I went from, you know, eating out twice, my Starbucks drink, my ice cream at night. And then now it's got me on tuna fish and crackers and, you know, turkey, ground turkey. It's like that person is, even if they have the best discipline in the world, they're not going to. to sustain that forever. I need to teach that person how to make small change, small change. And by the way, small changes

produce results. Exactly. That's what's so awesome about this is you make a couple good macro changes in a diet that's really shitty like that. And you can start building muscle, start burning body fat right away. Yeah. You don't, and they could still have

a lot of like what other people might think is, that's not a good food. That shouldn't be in the diet. Well, yeah, but they were. so under-proteined and so over-saturated fat, all I had to do is switch that one meal that was so overly saturated on fat and no protein to a high-protein good fat type of meal. And now their protein just went up by 40 grams a day,

which was almost double from where they were. And I've lowered their saturated fat. Now this person's like all sudden... Or bump their fiber. Or, yeah, or bump fire in the fiber. So there's like... So, you know... Yeah, I...

100% I think. super good advice. And, you know, here's the other end of this spectrum, which is you don't want to count macros forever. And so there are people that get trapped in this. We see a lot of, we hear a lot of them when they call in where they do this macro tracking and then this is just how they live. And then it becomes a trap.

And it's a stressful trap. It is a control. It is a, it's a way of controlling things and it causes lots of stress. And it's a dysfunctional. relationship with food as well. And so macro tracking is good if it's a step towards a, you know, a life that is not stressful around food. It's great as an awareness tool. And you can use tracking throughout your life when you feel like you need more awareness or when your goals change a little bit and you can kind of see where you're at, where you need to go. But you definitely

don't want to live here for sure. Or what you don't want to do is worship the macro so much. that you find a way to squeeze every terrible food into your macro targets. This was a thing. And you don't hear too many people talking about this anymore. I think it fell out of favor. But it was if it fit your macros was a popular thing, you know, 10 years ago where people were like, well, here's my macros. And if it fits in my macros, it's all good. And they would do crazy things just so that they could eat, you know, garbage because it fit in the macros.

It didn't matter if it was canned. Well, I love how you. You use the analogy of like, why would you do that? It's like putting this whole process on hard mode. Oh, yeah. Like, you think it's, you think psychologically it's better or easier because you get to introduce these foods that are hyper palatable and you like. They just made you hungrier and threw everything off. Make you crave more of them.

It's like, it's such a terrible strategy. It's why, I mean, those that have been listening to the show long enough, why we came out so hard on, if it fits your macros. because the science doesn't make sense and if you follow it scientifically it doesn't work of course it does then bodybuilders do this you know I'm saying that's all the time they use if it fits your macros but the average client um introducing uh fact I did a reaction video to a you know a cheat meal it's like I hate that that term you know it in it implies you're doing something bad and it exacerbates this bad bad bad you need to escape your life yeah good bad good bad relationship I'm like, no, it's a good burger and fries.

You know what I'm saying? It's a lot of calories. You know what I'm saying? Take account for it. And so it's not a cheat. You're not cheating on yourself or cheating on this thing. It's like it adds this element to the relationship with food that is unhealthy and not going to serve you. You're far better off trying to avoid those types of foods as much as possible because it actually makes adherence easier.

The idea of introducing them back in every week or your cheat day. makes that far more difficult. Yeah, the cravings go up quite a bit. Yeah. Along the lines of studies and science and diet, I'm going to bring up a study for you guys because I think it's another good study that illustrates why it's important

to understand all of the factors in a study and to not necessarily take what the study says as gospel. Okay, so I'll read you to the study. I know you guys are going to see it right of way. But I'll read it just for, you know, people listening right now. So this was a study on bulking. And so what they did is they took two groups of people and one group and the, they were athletes. So these were athletes who were practicing plus working out or lifting weights. And they gave one group 500 additional calories in their diet. And here's what they found at the end of the study,

at the end of the 10-week study. the group that ate the extra 500 calories only gained body fat. And so the study says, hey, extra calories aren't going to, you know, 500 extra calories a day is too much. That's just going to result in fat game. Now, let me tell you a little bit about the participants. Yeah, tell you about the athletes. How long have they been playing their sport for? It's also this, guys, just, okay.

Both groups continued their habitual training. You ready for what it was? Yeah, yeah. four strength workouts a week and 17 hours of sports specific training per week. 17 hours and four workouts. 17 hours of sports specific training per week and four strength training sessions. Yeah. So here's a deal.

Who's the asshole program? I don't know. I don't know. Fire that coach. Extra calories aren't going to go to muscle unless the signal is appropriate. Right. Okay. These athletes are.

Overtrained. Yeah. Way over trained. Over trained. Yeah. They're beating the crap out of them. And you're just... They're not in muscle building mode.

No. You're just, of course you're going to get more body. Now, here's the other thing. I would like to see. And it did say that nothing really improved, uh, much. But I'd like to see well-being and sleep in hormone profile if we saw an improvement. It might have. Although, uh, making up for over-training with calories, uh, although some, some people would

say that that's a great strategy. It is a little bit. It's not going to fix. Oh, well, I'll, I'll, it's not going to fix it. I'm not going to fix. I'll make a prediction or a, what it would, okay, that 17 hours of their sport is what you said. Yeah. And four hours of strength training.

Okay. Take that client. That's a part-time job. Bro. Take those same people. Cut their sport to a quarter or a half, okay? Half. And their strength draining down to one to two days a week, add those 500 calories.

Yeah. Watch what happens. So way less activity, okay? But a more appropriate strength. building signal and a more appropriate amount of endurance and salmon training. And I bet you those calories go to good use. I bet you if you didn't even... Now you recover.

I bet you didn't even bump calories. You just cut all that stuff. You'd see it gaining in strength and muscle without even having to add calories. Yeah. So it all... You're just surviving at this point on those calories. Yeah, look. Okay.

It's like taking two people that do nothing and this person eating more and we're going to build muscle now. No, you're just going to gain body fat. There is no appropriate signal. Well, you need more energy. You're telling your body I need as much energy as possible. Well, let's store it because I'm going crazy right now. That's right.

That's right. So, yeah. So, you know, things like that, because then the, you know, the author's like, you don't need extra, that many extra calories to build muscle. And this kind of, it's like, well, that was a lot of training. I don't care how many calories. Well, let's be honest. I don't care how little or more of calories you gave those people.

They're probably not going to build muscle. No. At the 17 hours of sport training in a week. I mean, that's crazy. It is crazy. You're not talking about it. You're not even talking about a normal athlete. Normal athletes are an hour a day and a two-hour time on their game.

Like, what is, what is seven? This is three hours. This is three hours plus a day. This is like an endurance. That's an endurance athlete with, it's like someone who's like a marathon runner that is also trying to straight train train fours a week. It's like no shit, Sherlock. Yeah. No, that's mainly cardio.

Let's be honest. Like that excess amount of like movement. Totally. It has to be three hours. Yeah. I wonder. I wonder. Lift weights.

You know what athletes, because there are. couple sports that train athletes like that because not all sports do that even at the high level in college sometimes they beat up like if you're an athlete at that level they often beat people up a little excessively in my opinion but there are some sports that are just crazy than others like water polo is one of them oh yeah water polo where they just they're just working out oh yeah i mean soccer players run a lot too uh but that's not three hours i mean maybe for a small window of conditioning i don't even soccer but not even wrestlers justin wrestlers will spend a long time.

But I think water polo has to be the most. The intensity on wrestling is like way up. Yeah. I would like, you know, did they say what kind of athlete? I mean, can, can you not guess? It's a marathon runner. Yeah. Who else is, who else is doing 17 hours of endurance training a week?

Well, it says athletic training. Well, okay, athletic training. No, no. That could be any of any. They'll call that running would be called athletic training, right? Well, and what else are you doing? Four strength training sessions? Like four workouts a week?

With that? Yeah. By the way, four strength training sessions. a week is excessive for any athlete except for powerlifters, body members? Try athletes, yeah. That's a lot. Yeah. That'd be a lot.

What kind of athletes did you guys train where you were just like, I cannot believe the amount of volume. Like you're psychotic. Yeah. For me, water polo was at the top. I trained a couple water polo players at high levels. And they were in the pool twice a day for two hours. Twice a, like morning before everything and after.

Makes martial arts athletes. Oh, it could be a lot. at the high level. Oh, yeah, I could take a major beating. Yeah. I mean, they have, they have trained resilience.

But I mean, also those guys, like, I'm not building 10 pounds of muscle on them. I'm just making them more resilient. And then from an aesthetic perspective, because a lot of people just want to be healthy and have aesthetics. This is what most people want. So most people are like,

I don't want to care about being an elite, you know, polo competitor, you know, water polo athlete or whatever. I just want an aesthetic physique. I've done jujitsu, judo, judo I've done at competitive levels. I've also just strength trained, which is mostly what I've done. Rollerblading. The most, I've never rollerblading. Did you see me rollerblading? I just did competitive rollerbladed. Actually, you rollerbladed. I did. Yeah, okay. That's a

fun thing. Yeah, you did all the, you did a lot of it. I did. I did a roller hockey for a minute. I did that too. For me, for me, I could, in terms of leanness and muscularity, it was just straight strength training with some walking and diet. Even at jujitsu, even I was competing at high, high level, the leanest I could get and maintain performance was like 11, 12%. Any leaner than that? I just, my performance would suck on the mat. Yeah, it doesn't benefit you at all.

Well, that's why when we see these athletes that are highlighted, the D.K. Metcavs and the Reggie Bushes that make the magazine covers where they're like 6% body fat and they're playing football at the highest level. That is such an anomaly. That is such an anomaly. There's aliens out there, dude. There just are. There are amongst us.

And that's the examples of it. Like, you know, or the Phil, he's the bodybuilders. Like, that dude, that dude came out winning, winning pro shows natural and not lifting weights. So he was playing basketball. It looked like a bodybuilder. Like Thor Bjorgences. Yeah. Yeah.

People. And we always, I mean, it's, it's cool to watch those people. I admire. It's like one of the circus. Yeah, exactly. It's fun. It's like, wow, that's so cool. But it's like,

what happens to too many people is they see that and they think like if I just work hard enough I can't I saw I saw a slow motion video from the side so it's from the side of a 90 plus mile an hour fastball a pitcher throwing it the arm torque and twisting yeah it looked like like I couldn't put my arm in that position without throwing it's wild like if you put my arm on that but if you tried to manipulate arm they're snapping their arm off oh yeah the torque on the humorous. Yeah. It's the reason why they can't go back to back games.

I mean, they have to, they have to, they have to, they have to be real careful about the amount of pitches they throw, too. Like, they got to keep a real good track. Dude.

You're limited. I mean, you have a only certain amount. Well, it's one of the highest, we talked about this other day in a podcast about like proper power. Like it's,

oh yeah. It is one of the highest expressions of power, right? You are, it's like physics with, with just explosive power. It toes your fingertips. It's all the way you're throwing your whole body. You know what happened to the average person

if you were able to get them to move their arm that fast? They wouldn't be able to decelerate. It would twist off their body. I think it would almost, it would probably tear. Oh, it would tear so. Oh, yeah. You could tear ligaments for days. You know, what's funny about that is that

it would actually more, to a deconditioned person who never works out might be okay. And they just get sore or hurt themselves a little bit of that. But like someone who lifts weight and is strong and health. more likely to tear off. Do more damage, yeah.

Yeah, do more damage. That's always, I always found that interesting to like talk about or thinking about because it's kind of counterintuitive. You think like, people don't realize that. Yeah, how different the adaptation is. It's like, wait a second, you're this really fit buff guy. How did you carry your shoulder? Or especially if you don't know how to decelerate.

Like, you never train those muscles, like, especially the hamstrings is always the one that blows out. You know, and you start to run again. Yeah, because it's like you don't train to decelerate. You have to literally, you know, be intentional. about that. Well, it's like, it's like taking a funny car or one of these thousand plus horsepower cars that are designed to go in a perfect straight line and go race the Newborn and go like, okay, I'm going to rip around corners with all that. It's like that car would, that thousand house

would get destroyed by a fiat, a 200 horse power fiat. And that just like, that doesn't make sense to the average person. Like, wait a second. How is that possible? This thing goes from zero to whatever and three seconds. Like, but that little fiat will take those corners with 200 horsepower and beat it around a track that where it has to turn and bend. Just get the handling. Yeah. Because that thing is made, it has so much power in a straight line.

But take it around a corner and it's coming right out from underneath. Dude, you got the, your beard is glistening, bro. What's happening over here? So I, so could you?

You comb that in? I do. I'm, I ordered a, I should shout out the company because it's not anybody we work with and I really like it. I found like, it was,

you know, Amazon's topped ranked beard brush. Really nice. So it's a brush. Yeah, with the Caldera beard. Caldera Lab oil. Yeah, the Caldera beard oil.

Are you going to grow it? I am. I am. Although my wife is making me self-conscious about that because she's, you know, asked me like three times. And like, I'm like, you already asked me that. She's like, oh, are you growing it out? I'm like, yeah, yeah. And then again, she's like, seeing me comb it.

She's like, why are you growing your beard out? And I'm like, do you not like it? Is this why you keep asking? She's like, no. Oh, you're all defensive. And I'm like, could you imagine if I did that about your hair every time? Like, oh, you're going to color your hair, huh? So that's what you're doing.

So, and then I didn't just ask you once. I came back and I go like, so you decided to color your hair, huh? Like, would you not go like, what the fuck? You don't like it? Like, that's how you're making me feel like now. Somehow got turned around on me that I'm irritable right now. And I'm like, sure. I'm just like, okay.

You know? You need to calm down. Yeah, it was like, dude. It's like, I know you haven't had a lot of sleep. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, honey, you've asked me three times. I'm like, I, in fact, I told you before I was going to do it.

It's like, hey, I'm going to tell Vicky, I'm going to let the beard grow out a little bit, right? She's like, oh, okay. And then I did it. And then I got ordered the thing, and I've been doing the beard oil every night. And she's like, so why are you growing your beard out? But do you like the oil? Oh, yeah. Well, because with the gray hairs, one of the things I, what I don't like about when we grow our beards out, all of us, is it gets all wiry.

Yeah, yeah. And if you use the beard oil and you comb it, it'll bring it all down. Oh, yeah, yeah, it'll bring it all down. And I've actually never, like, made an attempt. to like really do that. I've always just let's grow out. I hate when it gets all like that. That's probably why I stop because,

yeah, it gets a little wild. Yeah, but now that Caldera has a beard oil and I love all Caldera's product. I'm like, okay, well, maybe I'll actually try and for the first time train my beer. Have you seen the ad they're running with me on it?

The one that's just me putting stuff on my face and I'm just looking at. The one that you did a shot in the front? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a good ad. I get hit with that all the time. I'm like, this is me, dude. Stop sending this. I don't want to see myself.

I wonder what Doug would look like with a beard. I know. Have you ever tried growing one? Do you have a patchy? No, I don't think so. It doesn't grow a lot right here, but I think it'd be fine. Oh, grow a beard. I did a sole patch once. No, don't do that.

No, I would never do that again. I did that one was first time. That was many, many years ago. Dude, you need to grow a beard. Wow, you would look. I agree. Yeah, let's have you grow a beard. I was thinking about doing a mustache.

No. Justin's got the mustache. Yeah, he's already established that his get the best. A beer? You would actually look good. I would love to see you in a beer. I mean, you have a good jaw line, so I understand why you like to shave. But I think a beer would look good on you, dude.

Yeah. I've been pretty much clean shaven most of my life. Yes, you have. That's why it'd be fun to kind of change it up a little bit. I know. Yeah. Let's see what Rugged dud looks like. Rugged dug.

Come on, do it. Just one. You don't have to keep it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like to see it. Maybe over the Thanksgiving holiday. Yeah, yeah. That'd be cool.

You come back. You come back. You're a nice little five-clock out of. Yeah, yeah. I, have you met me all the years you get trained? Never. Never. No, I've never seen Doug with a beard.

Talk, come on, dude. I want to see a beard. Okay. I want to see a beard. There's his videos on social media of dads, suddenly shaving their beards. And then going to their daughters in particular. They freak out.

Especially girls. You're not my dad. Especially daughters hate it. And if you look at the data on this, you know this right? When they do studies on this, people will generally consider men with beards to be better fathers. Yeah, it's consistent. Really?

Yeah, for some reason, they think you're a better father because you have a beer. And I'm watching these videos with the kids. You're more Santa Claus. And the kids are like, oh, dad, don't do that. Okay, so let's try and unpack why you think that is. I don't know. Oh, you don't think, so I think. Is it wisdom?

No. Health, age? No. I think when you stay like your, when you stay clean, shave and sharp, you're more a particular about looking handsome, your image like that you start to grow a beard. I don't get a fuck. Yeah. Yeah.

It's more of a. You're full in. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to get true. This isn't the best way to attract a lady. You know what I think it's more of that. You think so?

Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Because, you know, with attractiveness, women tend to consider a short beard. Like, look, even though there's examples, of course, now, because beards have become a little more popular. But for the most part, your male models that you'll see, they'll be clean shaven.

Yeah. They'll be clean shaven. Well, that's what I'm, but that's what we, that's what we're looking at the male models. That's what we're being marketed to. Yeah, not really. What? It's that women aren't looking at male models.

It's dudes. What? Yeah, the modeling space is run by dudes, gay dudes. You know that. It's not a secret. So straight dudes are watching gay dudes? No, no, no, no, no. It's male models, like, you're talking about, like, fashion?

Yeah, yeah. No, that's, that's, all male models in general. They're not selling. Look at the, look at the male models selling things to men. Men selling things to men typically will have a beard. They're not going to be like, you don't think you don't think when your wife shops for something that she buys you from that she's the one who's looking at the dude wearing it in the ad yeah if he has a beard she's probably thinking he's handsome he's probably not had a beard though really yeah he probably doesn't i'd like to see what i mean i there are more today there there's more of it today than they're used i mean there's tattooed guys none of that was like a thing just 20 years ago 20 years ago it would be clean shaven no tattoos pretty face like that's you know maybe gay guy i don't know if i haven't figured out if you're used i mean it's more, what's the, what's the percentage of gay guys?

I wonder if the preferences change because of the question. Yeah, like they're looking for. I don't necessarily the masculine look. The fashion industry, the fashion industry is, is, is like that. What? It's, it's typically, like, especially male, the male model female, there, it's, it's gay men that are controlling that look. Yeah, but you can also. I mean, it's a big stereotype that I'm saying.

You are. You are. Because I actually have, I have had a couple male model friends that are straight. No, I mean, I'm, listen. I mean, bodybuilding is mostly gay. Yeah. Is it, though? Okay, so according to one analysis,

approximately 6.75% of male models are LGBT. Bro, six? That's it. That means 94% are straight. That's lower than the normal population. A lot of guys who are good-looking model. Yes. I mean, it's a way to make some money.

And meet a lot of girls. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. You were way off from that. I've been body building. Hey, check body building. Body building is higher than that.

Bodybuilding is higher than that. How many bodybuilders? Come on, dude. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. I watch that movie with your homeboy. That sounds dog. No reliable data or official statistics.

They're all closeted. That's why. You did both. Little modulily, little bodybuilding. No, I did not do. I do not count. I don't count one romance novelist, modeling. I did model.

I did. I did count. Yeah. Look, he's straight. Wait a minute. You did modeling? Yeah, I did. I know he's straight.

What? What was your modeling? So I got a gig for Oracle for their annual report. And it was filmed at, where photos were taken down at the stadium for the A's. And all I did, it got paid $1,000 to sit and watch baseball for a day. Wow. Yeah. And they shot photos.

That's it. Had they find you? I had been part of an agency. You were in an agency. You had head shots and everything. Everything, man. So you're just sitting there and they're taking pictures of you? Yeah, yeah.

I got paid. I don't think they used it. Why don't we know things about you? I know. Why don't always something up about that? Well, this is, you never asked. That's the very direct. I don't need to ask you.

You know everything about me. I'm volunteering it now. Wow. What else have you done? We learned things all kinds of things. Oh, I've done all kinds of things. Never. Never a dancer.

What else? What are a dancer? What's the weirdest job you've been paid for? What's the weirdest job you've been? Yeah. Yeah, like, what's the weirdest? It's the weirdest way you ever made money. Even five bucks, I don't care.

Yeah, never a dancer. I did teach kindergarten. Yeah, I do that. So that's kind of an unusual. Did you try modeling ever? I didn't try, but I did have pictures. Oh, you did. I did.

And they're embarrassing. They're really embarrassing. They're not as embarrassing as some of the ones I have. Well, no, but I don't know if yours are out there on the internet. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I will never let out on the internet. I got some of the stuff I took. Real embarrassing one, dude.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I made the mistake of, like, letting a professional photographer, who, by the way, specializes in boudoir, let her go, like, okay, you, you lead me, I'm open, I'll do whatever. That's the one where you're, they had a swing. I've let the swing out, so you can't imagine what's not out. Wasn't that one where you're, like, hugging the teddy bear? I was, I was naked in a bush, dog. Like, like, naked in a bush. What?

Yeah, dude. Yes, yes. Maybe if we get famous enough and I need some money, I'll sell it for like crazy places to let it out. Call that the Homer Simpson. It's like a reverse version of that. I'm like, I'm hugging forward into a bunch. How did she sell them?

Hugging the bush. I sold her because I had had a previous, remember I tell the story about, you're naked and just hugging you? Were you actually making it though? There's more than that. Wow. So you know the book picture, right?

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so the book picture, the story behind that is that was my best friend who was a landscape photographer. And this was before, this was before mind pump even. And I was learning about Instagram. And this was this period of time where I realized that a lot of the people that were in the fitness space were, you, they were getting professional photos of themselves. And so I hit my boy up, my best friend up. And I go, and he's a really good landscape photographer.

I said, hey, I need to do this like photo shoot. What do you do for me? He's like, what kind of photo shoot? And I'm like, well, you know, kind of fitnessy, sexy-ish kind of, you know. And he's like, you mean like, your shirts off and some of that? And he was like, yeah, kind of like that. And he's like, he's like, best friend, you know what I'm saying? You tell you someone to do it.

He's like, thanks. And we get, and I get to his house and he's got the stuff set up. And he's like, okay, what do you want to do? And I'm like, I don't know. It was like, I'm not the photographer, right? Dude, what if I was Nicky. Hey, man. Most awkward like.

So he took those photos. No, no, no. Oh, okay. But what's great about this, I should give him the credit. He's never done anything like this. And I've got a couple photos that have been picked up on the internet and stuff and used. And at least three of his are those. And they're just these random, you know, random shots.

And not really crazy boudoir shots. Just shirt off. Yeah, shirt off. Stradling the chair one. Dumbling a chair one, dumping water on myself. Yeah. There's some, there's some, there's some, there's some, there's some stuff like that. Right. And it was just,

my best friend and I are like, I mean, just mortified both. You know what I'm saying? Just I don't think we talked at all. And for a while. He couldn't even look him in there. It was like, it was just an awkward month after that. You know what I'm saying?

And so, so that one of his gets picked up. It gets picked up for a romance novel and I got paid for it. And I literally just gave him the money. I said, hey, bro, you deserve this. Yeah. I'm saying, here you go for, I'll never put you through that. again. But it was so awkward because I had to also, I had to really come up with the ideas. I don't, I don't, I don't have a photographer eye or anything like that. And so, I still was on this plan of I need to create all these photos to try and attract attention on Instagram early days. And so I, I know somebody who does really, really good photos here in the Bay Area. In fact, she's shot a lot of stuff for us. And she specializes in boudoir, but she does everything, family photos, everything. She's done. She did those photos I have of Macs.

and me and Katrina. Those are her. Yeah, she's incredible, right? And so her name's T. And I call her up and I say, hey, T, I said, tell her what I'm trying to do for the business and stuff, what's not a business, trying to build a business and trying to gain followers on Instagram.

And so I need to have all these photos. I need a whole bunch of them. And have with me as you want, whatever you want to do. And she's like, cool. She's excited because she's a photographer. She does all this stuff. And I just agreed to myself, like, okay, I'll just do whatever she said. Wow, this is how a lot of bad stories start.

You ever hear these stories now? So vulnerable. How'd you get into the industry? I just did what they wanted. Yeah. Oh, man. So the Bush one. Yeah.

So I... Would she like, hey, get in the bush? Yeah. She's like, okay, I have this idea. Hank, just trust me. And I'm like, I do whatever, whatever you want. She's like, okay. She's like, you know, you're going to be naked, but you're not, you won't, the way I'll shoot it,

you won't see everything or like that. And I'm like, okay. You know? And so she has me like, it's a big giant bush. And you're outside. And I'm outside. Yeah. Well,

it's kind of a private property area. Of course. I hope so. But I'm like, I'm like, if this is the bush right here, I'm like into the, into the bush. You know, she's like shooting this way. And I remember that was like, that was like the, I had already done. Now, what's your, in your head? What's your inner dialogue at this point?

What the fuck are you doing? You're never going to share this. You know what I'm saying? You're never going to share this. So, but I was like, great. You know, It's a, I don't know. You know, you guys, we're big on, we're professionals in our era.

And one of the things I, my favorite, when I have a client is just like, hey, I have, I think we should do it this way. I think that, but you're the professional. Your thing. You're a thing. I trust you. And I mean, I love that. Like, let me do your thing. And so I had that attitude.

Like, listen, I, I, by no means think I know what is a good shot or what will do well or whatever. It's like, you're the professional. And I know she's good at what she does. So tell me what the do. do and I'm just like. What's Katrina with you? Or are you by yourself? No, Katrina was there.

Yeah. Of course, Katrina's loving it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. He was like, oh, yeah, that's hot. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, have him take more off. Yeah.

Oh, my God. He's super comfortable with himself. Oh, no, mine's not that bad. Mine's definitely not bad. Oh, yeah, no, mine are bad. I took my photos because I was getting really fit, and I just wanted to document it. But there's some of them that are just like, hey,

look into the camera like you're sexy. And so I made it. Oh, those are like all of mine. Such a goofy. Yeah. I'm like behind like a chain link fence. I'm like looking through. Let me in.

I've got one. I did post one a long time ago. That was for Valentine's Day. I'm holding like a metal heart. Oh my God. So, oh, man. I mean, what?

All the followers from that one. Oh, God. You know what? So remember when I talked about before we started this, I went through a transition on Instagram and I always try and tell people that we help that, like building a business. like, I mean, I took off like a rocket ship with stuff like that. Like the amount of engagement and comments on my page.

But we wouldn't recommend that's why you build your. No. And that's my point I'm going to say. So I had to go through this transition of like building my page of. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the tension I was getting was all the wrong attention. Yeah. It was like it was not for my fitness knowledge.

Even though I would sprinkle that in there too, like I would be teaching. They weren't liking it for the time. No, they were like, when's the next half naked photo coming? That's what I'm here for. you know what I'm saying? And that was like how it was growing. Jojo baby. So, yeah.

So I had all this attention, but I couldn't convert it into business. And so that's when I bailed on all of that stuff. And then it was just like value, value, value, value. And then my numbers went way down. But the people. But the people that were engaging were like, hey, is that right? Or is this really helpful? Or what would you do?

They were asking about nutrition and fitness and the stuff that was helpful. Do you think it would have been crazy? had it turned into a successful monetary business. Would you have been put in a position where you're like, ooh, I keep going in this direction? Well, I mean, you could argue that it was having somewhat success. It just, it was having way more of the other stuff. You know, it was like, I get one.

So even before that, you were like, I don't like this. Oh, I didn't like any of it. I mean, I, it was a discipline thing for me. It's like, I'm going to do this thing. Listen, no. not to offend everybody that's on social media and stuff like that, but I used to literally say like, I wasn't on Instagram,

was on Facebook, I wasn't on any of those things. I was like, I have friends in real life. I don't need to get online. That was literally my thing. Someone would be like, hey, do you with Facebook?

I'm like, no, I have real friends. That was like my attitude, right? It was only because at that time, and we're talking back 17 plus years, I started to meet people that were young, 20-year-old kids that had built a following of 10,000,

people, which is not very many. It was a lot then, but 10,000 people on Facebook and were running six figure plus businesses off that Facebook. And I was like, and I had heard of that, but once I met somebody, I was like, you did that? And that really? Then I was interested. And then it was like, okay, I'll do this and try and figure this out.

And so that was a lot of me, not knowing anything of what I was doing, trying to figure it out and um thank god i i found out that's not a good that's not a good did you have you ever done anything model wise jesson no really no nothing no except for that one time he accidentally sold told us yourself yes you guys remember that that was just from my wife top top five mind pump moments oh god talk about that we did yes we did right afterwards great i was so great and we were good about it bro we didn't rip it i was so very i was so very i was so very very But, like, at the same time, it was so funny. And you're so lucky it wasn't worse.

Oh, I know. It was so lucky it was PG-13. He took a picture to send to his wife but sent it to our group text. And it was like a sexy in the mirror picture. But with a shirt off. Yeah, with a shirt off. But it was like, I think we're all guilty of probably sending our wives a lot more than that. So it could have been really bad if it was something like that.

Well, she was there too. So it was like, yeah. It just, because it tagged photos. And, like, I had, like, the group, and, like, I was, I was sending you guys something else. And it just added that one in. Yeah. I was like, no. And we're at dinner.

And we were good, dude. We had your back because we saw it. And we could have totally ripped into you at dinner for everybody. Oh, my God. But we all just looked at each other, like, this will save this for later. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I mean, I did take pictures for my website, you know, for business, but, like, they're professional. Well, and that's why it's so awkward for me when we do those, right? Yeah. I just like, I don't even know what to do with my hands and my face. Yeah. Like, anything, dude. You don't know what the fuck I'm doing, dude. I'm not even like a flexing guy.

You know, like I even know that. Like anything else, there's an art to that stuff, dude. I ain't good at it either. There's people that they just, I mean, you, I've, well, we've had them. We've had so many models. We've hired so many people to come in and shoot photos and videos for our, for all of our. That's what they do. And there's a clear difference.

Remember when we had, what's her name? That's like a professional model that we had, that we used a lot. I remember I liked her a lot. You brought her from Santa Cruz. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can't think of her name her now? That's all right. So anyways.

Kendra. Kendra. Shout out to Kendra. I mean, she was like, I think at that, when we were like, we were always like, what we used a lot was like fans that were in the show that also kind of like dabbled in. But she was like the first like professional model. Like somebody who like made a living off a modeling that we brought in. It was a clear.

remember all the editors are like, oh my God. No, she just knew every angle. The way to look at the camera, the way to position your body. Like you, and half of that is like, it's awkward because when you're directing it, it's like you got to kind of like stop and adjust them. Especially when you don't know. Yeah. You know?

Like, I could see, like, that's the funny part. I could see it in other people. But like for me to, you know, replicate that, it just doesn't. Right. It's not your craft, right? You're not. But you could totally tell when she'd get on. You can look and see it.

She'd be sitting there. You know, the camera guys would be getting all their stuff. And we'd be talking to her about how she had stuff with that. And they'd be like, okay, we're shooting the shot. And she would literally, her face would change. Her body posture would change. And it would be like, da, da, da, da, da, that. Like, 10 shots we shot.

And they would be like, amazing. You're like, whoa. Like, there's definitely, there's people that can just do that, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Because you, yeah. One thing you just look at, you know, to present yourself different. No, Justin does that.

His famous pose in the picture is like, he instantly, like, I'm not. I'm amazing. You don't look like that normally. What do you do? I know. It's always getting so angry. I'm like, no.

Like, this is a bad representation. That's great. Adam, are those the new Viori? Seaside. Seaside. I have a black pair. They're the most. I've got,

soft, comfy. I've got every color, but they're green. They're amazing. So they're Viori seaside. Yeah, that's a sea. They are so soft. Yeah, that in the sweatshers.

Bro, they're just like, wearing a soft blanket. They have, you got to have, you try their sweater. The sweatshirt that goes with it. The sweatshirt that goes with it is like super. I didn't get that with the blue ones.

But yeah, I have the blue, the black. And then my favorite are the, I think it's this. I don't know what color they call it, but it's like a sand color. Yeah. They just keep coming out. They have it. So I bought Jessica a sweater from there. But it's not like a, at leisure wear.

It's like, no, isn't it? You and I comment. When we were in there shooting our last shoot with them, they have really expanded, like, the styles. Into like, into like. Winter stuff's my favorite too, because it's like... But it's like not at leisure wear some of the stuff now. Now some of the stuff is like, you'll just wear this out. And it's...

No, I mean, they have flannels and cool vest. Like, no, they've really, they've really grown beyond just... I mean, they remember when they started... I mean, Joe could correct me if I'm wrong, but like I really felt like they were the answer to Lulu Lemon men. Yeah. Because Lou Lemon took off like crazy. But it was, of course, the yoga pants for women.

it became a, you know, it's a historic time and fashion, right? Like they, like, they created that space, right? Athleteure wear. But the, they put very little energy towards the men section. And I remember I used to buy some of the stuff. It didn't fit me right. I didn't really care for it much. And Viori really addressed that.

And Viori went hard, Joe went really hard, founder of Viori, I mean, went really hard on, we're going to address like men, athleisure wear. And they crushed it. And then they really started, then they moved over into the women's space, crushed that. And now they've, like, grown outside of just athleisure way. I like their yoga pants better for my wife than the...

Same. Way. That sounded creepy, but they look... Seriously. On my wife, really? No, I mean. Same, yeah. I like it all your wife.

Whoa. No, you know what? I'm always trying to sell my wife on the tennis skirts. And she's like, when am I going to wear this? I'm like... I have my job. I'll find reasons. I'm thinking about picking up tennis.

Yeah, exactly. I'm picking up just for that. Dude, I got to tell you guys about the craziest article I read. I don't know if you guys have seen this. This is a case, I believe, I want to say it's in the UK. I'm going to pull it up. It is. It's a UK woman.

Check this out. So a woman, obviously not mentally well, 32-year-old woman, goes on these, like, fetish websites and is looking, was looking for someone because her fantasy was to be murdered, tortured and murdered. What? Dismembered, tortured, and murdered. And she was looking for someone that would engage in this with her. She found someone.

This man killed her and now he's on trial. So this is, and the evidence, all the evidence is like she voluntarily did it. She wanted it. This was her thing. Doesn't matter. Obviously, it doesn't matter. But my point with this is this is such a good. extreme example of how human reason falls apart without this objective morality because I could

reason and say she's consensual. This is her body. It's her choice. She wants it. They're not even a role play. They went all the way through. She went and he did exactly that. She traveled to Florida to do this. She flew all the way to Florida for this. How crazy is that? Isn't that wild? So now here's where I'm going to make this sound even wilder Because you have now assisted suicide Yeah, I was going to say all over the world Can you look up Doug in Canada? Look at the candidates.

How many Canadians have now been essentially put to death medically? It's actually an alarming number. I think it's like 2000 or something like that. If I'm not, maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, what happened to the pushback with that? It's like, you know, for some reason all of a sudden now this became like, oh, this is a great option. Boy, in 2023,

15,3, 343 Canadians. Wow. Receive medical assistance and dying. Medically assisted. Now, how many are real? What a weird, what a weird, like, this is, it's wild that we're doing this. Now, what percentage, though, of those people are, like, vegetables and that are like, when you're unresponsive, that's not considered assisted suicide.

Okay. Assisted suicide is consensual. Conscious. It's me saying I have this terminal disease or I'm always in pain or I'm depressed. Yeah, it's mainly, yeah, a lot of it's mental. Some of the, because I know that they open the floodgates and essentially are like, if you are extremely mentally tormented or depressed, that that now will qualify. So what do the, what does that say there, Doug?

Yeah, so since they started this in 2016, there's been over 60,000. Holy. This is not, this is wild, you guys. This is wild. This is human reason gone craziness because there's no objective morality. It's not right. Well, it's, it's accounted for 4.7% of all deaths. This is what?

In Canada, I am. This is crazy. Doug, look up the reasons. What would qualify you for assisted suicide? Well, so they say 96% of them had grievous and irredeemable medical conditions. Yeah, well, what's that? Yeah, exactly. I mean, that could be AIDS.

Cancer was the most common. Cancer that you could live with for 20 or 30 years. Yeah. Just still. Like how... Yeah. Look at... Like, is it like you're at stage four cancer

and you've got maybe months to live and you're like, I don't want to go through these last four months? But also it's like... And again, if we try to reason this with human reason... I know. I'm trying just to play devil's advocate, right? I'm not like, by any means. I'm trying to think like, where does this kind of make sense or understanding,

like, where you could see that? like stage four cancer of terminal cancer is a gnarly last couple months. Here's a deal. If you had terminal, if one of you guys had some terminal illness and it's like you're suffering and you're looking at me and you're like, bro, just to help me kill myself. You don't know what I'm to tell you? No. Yeah.

I'm no, bro. If you want to do that to yourself, I don't want you to. You could do this to yourself. But I'm not going to help you do this. No, I wouldn't. This is crazy to me. I believe in miracles. So here's the main reasons.

illness related. So physical pain, nausea, other forms of suffering. Nausea. Serious incurable illness, disease, or disability. The second one is loss of ability. So loss of the ability to perform activities of daily living or engage in enjoyable and meaningful activities. The third one is fear of future suffering. The fear of what the future may hold.

Yeah, that would be like the stage. How is that qualified? In psychological suffering. Isn't that always what happens when people commit suicide? Isn't there always psychological suffering when someone tries to kill themselves? Yeah. And now we're legalizing it and making it. I mean, I guess it's, oh, I don't know, man.

Yeah, it would be interesting on the process they have to go through to get approved. Like, how easy is it? Is it like, I just got to come in and be like, oh. 60,000 people are doing it. It's got to be not. You just got another right words. Yeah. To get what you want.

It's got. It's got to be. Yeah. And I almost feel like it's kind of sold. Like, if you think, hey, listen, you know, we have this option. And we go to. sleep, you don't wake up, it's painless. I mean, oh, terrible.

That's wild. Again, we got to be careful with, this is where, like, you need, this is just evidence. There's so much more evidence of this, but you need a, you need to believe in the, in an ultimate power because that's where you'll get your objective morality. If we rely on ourselves, human reasoning goes crazy. We could rationalize so much insanity because I can make an argument right now. I could see here. right now make an argument that if you, it's your life, it's your body, you can decide

to kill yourself. And if you want someone else to do it and they agree to do it, then it's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. Yeah. It says they shelved it, Doug? I don't think so. This isn't 2024. This is the same argument that used for like, you know, reducing the population.

Yes. Like, oh, okay. So where? How much you want to bet that that's part of the argument that they're like, it's a strain on the medical system. Yeah, this is good for climate change. This is good. for, you know, the medical care because it's cheaper.

And, you know, it's just all these rational, like, it's crazy. They use this weird morality behind it. So it does sound like they shelved the medically assisted dying for people with mental illness. Yeah, gee. I wonder why. Yeah.

That's crazy. Wow. That's a lot of people. That's so many. That's alarming as hell. Yeah. To me, that's just, wow. That would be sad if I had a family member that wanted to do that.

And then I find out, oh, the doctor did it for him. Oh, horrible. I'm furious anywhere. Running on ketones gives you sharper thought process. It's good for your brain, improves verbal fluency. Makes you feel good. But what if you don't want to be on a ketogenic diet? Well, you could try taking exogenous ketones.

My favorite company is ketone IQ. Take a little bit of that. Instant ketones, instant focus. Go check them out. Go to ketone.com forward slash mind pump on that link. You can get 30% off your subscription. Here comes a show. Our first caller is Matt from New York.

What's up, Matt? What's happening? What's going on, Matt? What's up, fellas? How are you doing? Good. How can we help you? Going very well.

First, I just wanted to give the obligatory thank you for everything you guys do. My brother-in-law, he actually introduced me to you guys four years ago and haven't missed an episode since then. So thank you. I'm actually now at the point where I went back to start listening, like from the beginning. Oh, God. Absolute gems there. I don't know if you guys have played these back, but it's so cool to hear. you forecasting what you're going to do to grow the business and basically how much of that has come true.

Very, very cool. I appreciate it. However, there is one thing that I need to bring to your attention. Doug, I apologize in advance. You are going to absolutely hate me for this. I'm up to episode 261 at the five minute and 15 second mark. Adam says, and I quote, we eventually will build a mind pump gym. And when that day comes, you can hold me to this.

I will make Doug rollerblade in tights and we will video. No way. We said that. Oh, we are so making your ass do that, bro. Thank you for reminding us. Wow. Adam, I know you're a man of your words. So there you go.

Yes. Matt, I don't like you. All right. Yeah. I know that you said to stick to the email. That should be easy. Yeah, I know he said to stick to email. If I put that in there, you probably would have blocked me.

Wow, dude. All right. Okay. Thank you. So, now. Now of my question. Furnimal. I'm currently bulking, and I have a goal of adding one inch to my arms.

According to my research, it looks like I need to gain roughly 10 to 20 pounds to do that. So 32 years old, 511, 185 pounds. My nutrition has been dialed. Currently eating 3,000 calories and been increasing roughly a half to one pound per week. For the training, I was thinking of running aesthetic. Most recently, I've run MAPS 15 in Power Lift. I just did phase one, day one, and it took me an hour and a half. So this is not a problem for me to do on the weekend, but for days two and three, I don't have that kind of time during the week.

I wake up the 4 a.m. to get to the gym by 5.45 and need to be out of there by 545, 6. So working out of the evening is also not an option. I want to know what's the best way to modify the program, either splitting it up the days that I can't do fully or just doing the compound lifts for the foundational days, then doing the focus session on biceps and back, as those are my, main leg and body parts. And then just really quick, after aesthetic, my plans to run symmetry. As I know, I'm going to need to do some mobility work running from 15 to power lift to aesthetic. So appreciate the guidance in advance. What do you think about MAPS and a bulk advance instead of aesthetic?

Yeah, that would be good. And aesthetics a lot of volume, dude. For most people. It's really bodybuilding inspired. It's really bodybuilding inspired, like having that kind of time to lift in the gym. You could also just do aesthetic and cut the sets down by a third. So when it asks for three, four sets, you do two And do something like that

Or cut out an exercise I like cutting the sets down And then I like just giving a maps Anabolic advanced Yeah, anabolic advance will be good too Do you have that program? No, I don't What does that look like?

Is it also three days a week? Anabolic advanced is four days a week If I'm not mistaken Okay How many days a week do you want to go to the gym? I actually like being in the gym Every single day So like the plan right now is

You know, I would do like the foundational days if I'm able to do a full one. Yeah. And then do the, you know, do the focus session on the other day. And then I do like recovery. So I'll go and do mobility for a little bit or do son or something like that. So I like to be in the gym every single day. Not necessarily need to work out every single day.

So have you done, you've done traditional maps anabolic, right? Yeah. Okay. So here's the other thing you do. Oh, he could blend. Yeah. You could also do maps anabolic traditional. With focus days.

With focus days in between on the arms. Yeah. And I would, have you, have you ever done occlusion training? training for your arms? No. Oh, that'll give you a quarter inch on your arms like. Tie off. In weeks.

Yeah. Up at the shoulder. Let me send you our occlusion guide. And then here's what you do. At the end of one of your workouts, not all of them, but one of them, you're going to do a few sets of occlusion for your biceps and triceps. And that, that'll add a quarter inch fast. So you got the breakdown here, right? So you're going to basically run, go back to anabolic, but then instead of trigger days, you'll have focus days.

That's where you go and do light, do like a light workout for biceps. So literally take from the, take from the MAPS aesthetic focus day program and make that your trigger days on MAPS and a ball. So run MAPS on a ball. As laid out, but now add in focus days instead of trigger days. And then we're going to send the occlusion guide for you. And then like Sal is saying, just one of the days end your workout with an inclusion. Like a few sets of inclusion. Yeah.

Yeah, I got it. Awesome. And if you find yourself getting burnt out, cut it down. a little bit, but that's it. You feed yourself well. I mean, that should be. You should be okay. Even that's less volume than aesthetic that we just prescribe.

So that's it. And then keep going with what you're doing diet-wise. Just keep trying to creep up a couple hundred, you know, calories every couple weeks to feed to feed the growth. But sounds like you're doing really good. Awesome. Yeah. I was sensing that with aesthetic.

I mean, just doing the first day was like an hour and a half. The second day was also an hour half. Third day. It took me like an hour of 15. And I just, I don't think there's any way I could keep up with that with like the amount of limited availability I have in the morning. Yeah. Aesthetic's a lot of volume.

It is, yeah. This is perfect. This is perfect. And then I like your idea after that to go to symmetry, like you said. I think that's good advice. So run the anabolic with the focus days, get the worst on the occlusion guide, and then after that, do symmetry.

You have symmetry? I do. Yep. Okay, good. You're good. Okay. All right, dude. Yeah, bro.

Thanks, fellas. I appreciate it. I'll make sure you get that video, Doug, in his rollerblades. Yeah, I'm sorry again, Doug. I appreciate it, though. Good look it out, man. Good Christmas, brother. Yeah, Matt.

Thanks. Did he say episode 260 something? I don't remember that. I don't remember that either. That's cool. I don't remember it either. Oh, it's documented. Well, you have to find it before I do anything like that.

I don't know if I agreed to it either. Thanks, you to edit it. Yeah. You may have just thrown that out there. That's cool that he said that we said we would do a bunch of things that we did. Now I'm like curious to see. I know. Well, of course we did.

We did forecast a lot. I remember some of it. Early on, we, that one of the things I, like I enjoyed that we did was we talked to the audience about the business moves. I remember telling them about turning down sponsors and no, we're not going to work with. There's just any company. I remember the conversations around being a media company and us just really only have a podcast at that point. Not having any other media or even white label for podcasts like that.

It'd be interesting to hear some of the stuff that we, some of the stuff we got way wrong. But occlusion training, just for people listening. Like this is one of the fastest ways. I've ever added size to my arms and calves. It's pretty remarkable. Low impact. Very, very remarkable. Give it a shot.

It's super remarkable. It's almost, I remember how tempting it was to replace traditional. It won't do that. I mean, it was that good, though, that it tempts you to like, oh, maybe I'll just do this. And then you just do that, and then you notice that, like, you missed the, you met, but adding it, just that little. The right amount. Yep.

Our next caller is Sandy from Texas. Hi, Sandy. How are you doing, Sandy? Hello. Hello. Hi. Nice to meet y'all. Yeah. How cool help you? Okay. So do you want me to read my question? Yeah, whatever's easier for you. Okay. And I don't want to say thank you for taking my question. I listen to you all all the time. And I've learned a lot from you. I don't know, probably the last couple of years I've listened to you. Thank you.

So, you know, my name is Sandy. And I wanted to get your feedback on an issue I'm facing. I've been working. I've been working out seriously for about 10 years, I'm sure more than that. I'm 59 now. When I was like 48, 49, one of my bucket list things was to do a bodybuilding competition figure. So I started out by doing thebodybuilding.com workouts back then. So, and I got really great results. I also followed macros. I was like, crazy about that and I hired various trainers who taught me a lot as well. I loved bodybuilding even when I was younger, but I never really was seriously into it. I would consider myself an active person throughout my whole life. Fast forward to the competition, I hired a coach and looking back, he was one of those people,

I think who would rather I would have been on PEDs. He had me doing some things that I would never do now. Tons of cardio, probably too much. I would question him and he didn't like that.

I did do the competition, but I was way too lean. I was 8% body fat. I looked terrible, to be honest. I did a second show the next year with a different trainer. I looked better, but still not good enough.

I was probably about 12% body fat. So now I'm 59 and for the last year, just losing focus on training. I started HRT recently and it was like the beginning of September to try to help out with the way I've been feeling. I was dealing with a lot of fatigue, but then I thought maybe it's because I'm not working out a lot anymore.

you know, I probably took a good five, six months where I didn't work out. I'm still active, or I was still active, but nowhere near what I was doing before. My fiancé, you know, we would work out together all the time, but he struggles a lot with stress, sleep, and injuries. We did invest in a home gym, but I don't, I like going to a gym more than having a home. gym, if that makes sense. But he likes it because it's way more convenient for him. So right now, I'm currently at 140, and I'm guessing 23% body fat. And I just, the needle does not move.

I've been 140 probably for the last two, three years. I eat right, I track and work out, but nothing happens. Maybe one or two pounds. I want to be 130 and 16% body fat by, May of next year for our wedding. What can I do? How can I make my body respond? Is it my age?

And then I sent you a couple of pictures of from 10 years ago. Okay. Where are your macros at right now? Well, right now I got them set at 1,800 calories, 128 protein, 170 carbs, and 57 fat. We need a reverse diet. Yeah. We need to go up. You got to go up.

Your calories are low, but let's, okay, let's back up for a second. Let's talk about healthy and fit, okay? You want to get down to 16% body fat? Which is unhealthy. For your wedding when you're, and you're 59? Yeah. That's not a good place to be. First of all, that's not a good place to be for a 20-year-old, let alone someone is 59.

So you're going to place yourself in a pretty unhealthy place to get down to 16% body fat. You want to live, as a fit, healthy person, you want to live in the low 20s. It's going to give you the best immunity. It's going to give you the best hormone response, the best energy, the best strength. And objectively, you'll look your best, although what you consider what probably looks good is probably distorted because of your involvement in bodybuilding, that whole space, which I understand because that can be the same way. but you're the reason why the needle is not moving is because you're in a good place.

Now if you want the needle to move, the direction I would move is to build strength. And that's the, that's the metric that I would measure. I wouldn't look at body composition because your body comp, if you're sitting at the low 20s, at your age and all that, you're crushing it.

You're doing very, very well. Let me put it this way. Yeah. If you're 16% at 60 and you get injured, or sick, you're in a bad place. You're not in a good place at all. Because 16% is too, it's not a good body fat percentage to be at if anything happens. So just to put it differently.

But 21 to 24% fit, strong, fed, like excellent. And you'll be able to keep that for a very, very long time. Your body's holding, though, where it's at because you're so low calorie, though. 1,800 calories. If you're active and you're lifting weights, is not a lot of calories. How many days a week are you working out right now? Well, I've switched to four days a week because I can't do five, six, seven days anymore.

Yeah. It's just too much. So I switched to four. And that's working out for me now because it's been about three months since I wrote the letter. And since I've been on my HRT, which started in September, I've also added testosterone. And I have noticed a difference. Yeah, you will. In my strength.

Be careful, though, because that's, you know, That's an outside signal that's telling you that. That's not you necessarily being that much healthier. You add testosterone to somebody who's not in the healthiest of place. They will feel better. So I would rather see you at three times a week like a MAPS Anabolic, and then I'm going to bump your calories to 2,000 plus calories. Your body's in response so well.

You have so much muscle. You're lifting weights four days a week at 1,800 calories. I'm surprised you're able to do that still. and you're probably not feeling great. Well, I know you're not feeling great because your calories are so low. I would automatically, I would bump you automatically

250 calories a day and drop your training. But if that's too much for you all at once, then keep four days a week and just bump 250 with your calories. Get your fat up. 57 grams for a woman is low, especially one that strength trains.

Bump your fat up and then and then watch how you feel. Watch your strength. I wouldn't be surprised if you've got leaner. Bail on the scale too, because I don't really, care about where your scale goes right now because we're going to build some muscle. So we're going to go up and maybe on the scale one or two pounds, but it's going to be muscle

and your metabolism will get faster, which will eventually lean you out. Now, let's pause for a second, Sandy, because you just heard what we had to say, which is right. I'm confident that it's right. But how does what I'm saying and what Adam's saying feel? Because I can see right now in your body that something's happening. Some reserves. Yeah, what's going on? How are you feeling?

Well, do feel good. And trust me, I don't always eat 1,800 calories. I'm sure there's days I eat 2,000. It's not often because I can't eat. I've never eaten that much food. Yeah. So, but I feel, I do feel good. No, you don't.

No, you don't. Sandy, you don't know, you don't know what you feeling really good feels like yet. You're adapted to what you feel. Yeah, but I'm not going to, no, no, stop right there. We have you on recording. You just told us you don't feel good. Are you scared? What do you scared of?

What are you afraid of? Bump your calories up to 2,200 calories. What do you think is going to happen? It'll look like I might be uncomfortable in my own, like I don't like to look like I weigh a lot. Okay. If that makes sense. So let's pause, okay? You think you're going to gain a lot of body fat?

Yeah. Okay. So you think you're going to gain a lot of body fat, but then you're also going to maybe going to be uncomfortable. One of those is going to happen for sure. That's the uncomfortable part. The body fat's not going to happen. I'm going to tell you that right now.

If you go up 250 calories, you're not going to blow up. No. That's not going to happen. It doesn't work that way. It's physiologically impossible anyway, but it's not going to happen. Especially if you're lifting weights. If you're lifting weights, that ain't happened. But the uncomfortable part, you're going to feel for sure.

But I'm going to strengthen you a little bit right now, okay? You like lifting weights. You like being uncomfortable so long as you agree to it. So you probably like lifting weights because it changes your body. It's a challenge. It's the discipline, right? We love that. We love that.

Can I add some more discomfort to what you're doing to challenge that part of you? Can we do that? Yes. Okay. Yeah, because I want to see a change. Okay. I want you to bump your calories and I want you to get comfortable being uncomfortable with it because it's going to feel like a lot of food.

And you're going to question the hell. Sandy, are you open to working with somebody? Like a trainer? Like one of our trainers. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I do enjoy learning from other people. It's not just. Like reverse? It's just not that.

It's that what we're asking you to do is real easy for us to say on a call real quick and hang up. It's going a lot of conversations. But the uncomfortable part when you're going through it is what is really difficult. And just having a coach who you're checking in with on a regular. basis that's reminding you that you're doing the right thing, you're doing a good job when your head is getting in your own way and you're going, I don't think you lack the discipline. I don't think you lack the smarts. I think you've been in this world long enough to get macros idea. I think psychologically, it'll be the most difficult part and the most valuable part of the

coach isn't necessarily teaching you new stuff, but it's getting you out of your own way. Is why I want you to work with one of our coaches. Okay. Yeah, because I've already tried not. weighing myself. That was, that always made me so, um, disappointed. Like, gosh, I'm doing all, everything else right. Why? And I'm busting myself up about a scale. Yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah. Sandy, how would you like to have a relationship with this where it's not stressful? Like, you love it, but imagine if we got rid of the stress. How would you like that? That would be great. Okay. It's there.

If you trust us. It's there. It's going to take, though, and here's what will happen. You trust the coach. You just trust the coach. You go with it through the discomfort, through all the, you're questioning it, and it feels wrong. And I don't know. But then once you start to see what happens and you feel the transformation, which will take a second, then it's not going to be as hard anymore.

Because then you're like, okay, I can kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel. And then the longer you stay with it, the more revelating it's going to become. and then this whole thing's going to change for you. The only other thing I worry about is like holidays, and what if I don't do my diet 100% right? Like, I stress about those things. No, no, no, good timing. Yes.

Good timing right now. We're going to reverse diet with holidays. Perfect. Yeah. This is the best time to do it. Yeah. Yep. You're in a good place.

Okay. And I've never reversed diet is, so I don't even know what to do. That's right. Don't worry. You just, if you promise me that you'll trust our coaches to do it, they've all been trained by us, okay? so they know what to do with you.

If you just trust us, we'll take care of you. Okay. All right. Yeah, I'll try that. All right. We're going to have you back on in three months. That's right. We're going to have you back on here.

And you know what you're going to tell me? Oh, my God, that was so hard. That was so I can't, but oh my gosh, I can't believe it. I feel so good. You guys were right. That's what's going to happen. In three months, we're going to have you back on. Okay.

All right. We'll have one of the trainers call you. You do it. Thank you, Sandy. Thank you. Thank you so much. You got it. She's terrified.

Yes, she is. That's why she has. I hope she doesn't bail. I can tell us. I'm talking to where she's, yeah. Well, you hear her,

she's never reversed dieted. Yeah. Listen, I need, I need people to understand this right now. It hasn't changed in three years. I need women to understand this right now. You're working out a lot.

Four days a week with the kind of lifting she's doing, I can guarantee was a lot. Oh, yeah. And you have a normal life. She was in five days a week. She's sitting at 23% body fat, which is a great,

which is a great body fat. And, you're eating 18-hhhh calories a day? Too low. It's too low. You can't build on that. No, you could do that for a short period of time. Yeah. But not all the time. And she said, I've never been on a reverse diet. I bet. And she's like, and then here's the other side of it. I want people. And this, you may do this to yourself. She tried to back out of it after she would just told us she didn't feel good. She backed. She's like, oh, no, but, you know, sometimes I hit 2000 and I feel good. I'm like, no, you just told me you don't. Yeah. Yeah. We like to mention 2000 once in a while.

is not surplus. I bet you it's $1,600 sometimes, too. Yeah, yeah. You know, so... Yeah, yeah. But... It takes discomfort to change. These are success stories that I love.

Oh, no, you take someone like... She has got shit. If you saw her picture, she had great muscle mass on her. So you put so... You give that girl some calories. She's a... Her muscles are sponges waiting for some water. Waiting for those nutrients.

They're hungry for it. It's gonna be awesome. But she's got to bail on the scale because that will mess with her head. Because she'll probably go up on the scale of five pounds, just building muscle alone. She's going to feel uncomfortable. Once she gets over that and pass that, her fast metabolism, she'll look better

and she's ever looked. She'll be eating more and she's ever ate. And she won't have this crazy, stressful relationship with fitness. Yeah. Get rid of it. We believe in you, Sandy. Our next caller is Jason from North Carolina.

What's up, Jason? How you doing, Jason? What's up, buddy. Hey, what's up, guys? Thanks so much for everything you guys do. I really appreciate you having me on. Yeah, man. How can we help you?

Well, I'll give you a little bit of background about me. I'm 44 years old. And when I turn 40, I got really sick. And let me back up a little bit more. Sorry, I grew up as a heavy kid overweight, and then I ended up as an adult weighing 305 pounds at the age of 20. And that was 5 foot 7. And so I thought, well, I got to do something.

So I did exactly what you guys talk about. I restricted my diet. I overtrained, and I got down to about 185 pounds. But by that time, I was eating 1,600 calories a day. working out six days a week. So as you can imagine, I started a pattern of gaining and losing, gaining and losing. So I was the classic yo-yo dieter. And when I was 40 years old, I was back up to 306, my heaviest ever.

And I got really sick. I was 2021. And so I ended up in the hospital with COVID. And it was really bad case. They ended up sedating me for six weeks. I was on a ventilator. Wow. And when I woke up, I was all out of it, as you can imagine, all kinds of drugs and whatever else.

And I remember them weighing me and it was like 246 pounds. And I thought, well, I lost 60 pounds, but that's not the right way to do it. But, you know, I woke up. I couldn't walk. I couldn't talk. I had to redo, relearn all that stuff. Went through severe deconditioning. Went through bouts of physical therapy.

But eventually I was up and around, got back home, got off oxygen, totally. healthy. In fact, I was the only one in that hospital who got that sick, who survived. The rest, none of them made it, unfortunately. And so I credit everything to God. I call it a miracle. Even the doctors and the nurses said, no, Jason, you're a miracle. There was one other guy who made it out alive, but he died last year from complications. And I'm really blessed. I have no lingering symptoms. I'm totally, totally healed. My lungs are back to normal. But I knew I wanted to get back in shape. And so earlier this year, I had been doing, you know, just trying to restrict calories again,

trying to go to the gym. And I thought, I got to do it the right way. This isn't going to work. I was sick and tired of yo-yo dieting, as you guys can imagine. You probably heard it, you've probably heard it numerous times. And so I remembered seeing Zubi on a show. I said, what was that show Zubi was on where he was talking about breaking the deadlift record, the women's deadlift record.

And I was like, wait a minute, that was called Mind Pump. So I'm like, maybe these guys know what they're talking about because I had read books and I'd, you know, been working out my whole life, but I always fell into that pattern of under-eating and overtraining. And so I started listening to you guys. That was April of this year. So I'm new to the show, but I love it. And I keep trying to listen to as many back episodes as I can.

So I started eating more, which was really scary because you always think, man, I got to eat less if I want to weigh less. I started basically following your example of doing like a reverse diet. And then the scale started coming down. When I started, I was 276. And as of last week, I was 235. And I'm eating more than I've ever eaten like 33, 3,500 calories a day, 200 grams of protein a day. And so far, the scale is still moving down and my strength is still going up.

I added 110 pounds to my deadlift, 140 pounds to my stomachs to my stomachs to my squat. So I'm like, I'm seeing all these things happening that you guys are talking about. Yeah. And I'm like, well, is this going to keep going or do I need to change something up? And I guess that's kind of my question. So far, things are still going well. But a couple of rules I'm breaking is I'm in the gym five days a week. I do three days a week on the big five. And then that's Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And Tuesday and Thursday, I do arms. So I'm like, well, I don't want to get to a point where I'm over training again. So what do you guys think? I mean, you're doing pretty good.

I'll give you a program so you have one of ours. But what you're doing ain't a bad deal at all. I like it. You're getting stronger. You're feeding yourself. You feel good. You're doing good. You're doing great, dude.

What's the calories at right now? Do you know? Yeah, about 3,500 calories a day. Oh, yeah. Brother. You're killing it. You're killing it, dude. I know some people who are not eating as much as me, and they're like,

how come you keep getting smaller? I'm like, you got to eat more. Yeah. So, but it's scary, especially when you've yo-yo dieted your entire adult life. But I'm like, well, I'll be eating the, like, I try to do exactly what you guys say, too. I got off protein powers. I'm just doing whole natural foods. Good shit.

Perfect, man. Yeah. I'm like, I'm chicken, beef and pork enemy number one because I'm just have their carcasses at my house all the time. Oh, man. You're doing great. You do it so good, bro. Yeah, dude. We do it so good.

I'll send you a program. I'll give you a map. I think you'll like it. Cool. When you're ready, you can follow that. And then when you're done with that, you can take a look at some of our other programs. Maps Anabolic, Anabolic Advanced, Performance, Strong Power Lift. Okay, why don't we do this?

Since this is a good time, we'll send them the symmetry. But why don't we line up what you would put him do in the next two to three in a row? It's a good time right now. You've got Black Friday going on. Everything's freaking 60% off anyways. What would you line up his next like four programs? After symmetry, uh, uh, uh, power lift. I like power lift for you

Then I like performance After that Then go to something like MAPS Antibalk Advanced Anabolic advanced And then yeah So we just gave you like a year That'll keep you busy for the next year Like that order right there

Yep So I appreciate it guys Yeah you got it dude And keep going in the direction you're going You feel good The feel great The challenge when you're crushing it Is what you just expressed

Am I doing enough should I do more? But if you see yourself improving in the gym, especially, and you feel good. Yeah, you're doing into it. Yeah, dude, you're doing great. How's your steps, daily activity? What do you, what are you hitting on a regular basis?

Do you have any idea? Well, unfortunately, I'm sitting right here at work, so I sit at a desk. So I'm lucky, and I probably do it more than half of the days. I hit about 8,000, but a lot of days it's more like 6,500. That would be the one place. That would be your one place. Yeah, 8,000 steps consistently.

That'll be great for your health. Yeah. Pick up the walk in when you can. Not run, not do a bunch of crazy stuff. Just add some walks and whenever you can. That's it, dude. That's good because I hate running. Yeah, that's okay. No, no.

You're doing really good. You just keep getting strong. You keep hitting that protein intake. You keep those calories around there. You're going to be good. Jason, what do you do for work if you don't want me asking? I'm a financial advisor. Oh, good for you, dude.

Yeah. Let me ask you a question. Maybe you don't have an answer for this, but you talked about the miracle that it was. You gave God the glory with that, and I do believe it's a miracle just from what you're saying. Have you put a purpose behind that? Is there something behind that way? You're like, okay, this is why I was taken out of that.

This is why I survived. And the only reason why I ask is when you put a purpose behind something, man, it's one of the best feelings in the world. Well, you know, it's obviously something I've been wrestling with. It's like, well, God, why did you spare me when pretty much no one else made it out of the hospital. And one of the first things that comes up is I'm a father of four. Oh, and I'm just trying to raise them in the ways of the Lord. I mean, I love hearing about your journey. Sal, I've been walking with Jesus for 23 years now. So it's the greatest thing that anyone could do. So that's my purpose. And I do. Yes. And I teach Bible studies.

But the main thing is my children, you know, my family. Oh, God bless, man. I'm glad you shared that. That's more than enough purpose right there. That's wonderful, dude. Good for you, man. Very cool. Good for you, dude. Yeah. Stay in touch, dude. I'd love to hear as you go through the programs. You're kicking ass right now, man. Good, good.

Thanks, guys. Thanks for all you do. Yeah. You got it on. I'm so glad he shared that. What a wonderful story. Well, I'm just so glad he shared that because it works. It works, everybody.

Bro. He did, he went down. 1,600 calories, up to 3,500 calories, dropping weight, added 100 pounds to feeling good. Come on. Come on. And which one's more sustainable, ladies and gentlemen. which one is the one that's going to be,

he'll be able to, you know, maintain. And which one feels good? Yeah, dude, at a 3,500 calorie daily intake, the metabolic flexibility that comes with that. Which you don't even have to go that high. You don't even have to go that high at 5-7, but his body is roaring. Yeah.

You know? So it's great. Yeah, it's awesome. Look, if you like Mind Pump, you got to come find us on Instagram. We'll see you at Mind Pump media. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body,

dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic, nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin

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

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