Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2761: 5 Ways to Predict Mortality (NO BLOOD TEST REQUIRED)

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

In this episode of Quah (Q & A), Sal, Adam & Justin coach four Pump Heads via Zoom. Mind Pump Fit Tip: 5 Ways to Predict Mortality (NO BLOOD TEST REQUIRED). (2:27) Good and bad news for young men. (22:20) Reducing your calories without eating less by going grass-fed. (35:26) Runit is invading America. (40:16) Speaking identity into your children. (45:12) Sal has an athlete on his hands. (49:58) LMNT has single-handedly created this new electrolyte market. (52:49) #ListenerCoaching call #1 – I train hard and feel great, but I don't feel like it's translating to everyday life. What am I missing? (55:29) #ListenerCoaching call #2 – Needing some advice on my current aggressive fat loss and body recomposition journey. (1:07:55) #ListenerCoaching call #3 – What's your typical recommended rest between sets? (1:17:50) #ListenerCoaching call #4 – Needing guidance on my fitness path and seeking advice on training, macros, and whether you offer personal training. (1:25:08) Related Links/Products Mentioned Get Coached by Mind Pump, live! Visit https://www.mplivecaller.com  Visit Butcher Box for this month's exclusive Mind Pump offer!  ** New users receive their choice of NY Strip, Ribeye, or Filet Mignon in every box for a year. ** Get a free Sample Pack of LMNT's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase! As always, LMNT offers no-questions-asked refunds on all orders. The 8-count LMNT Sample Pack doubles down on our most popular flavors: Citrus Salt, Raspberry Salt, Watermelon Salt, and Orange Salt (2 stick packs of each flavor): Visit DrinkLMNT.com/MindPump MAPS 15 Symmetry 50% off! ** Code DECEMBER50 at checkout. ** Mind Pump Store Can a 10-second balance test predict longevity? - Harvard Health Sit-to-stand: The simple test that reveals how you're ageing A brief fitness test may predict how long you'll live Push-Ups and Heart Health: What Your Fitness Level Says About Your Risk HANDGRIP DYNAMOMETER Association of Grip Strength With Risk of All-Cause Mortality, Cardiovascular Diseases, and Cancer in Community-Dwelling Populations: A Meta-analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies 45 Percent of Guys 18-25 Have Never Asked a Girl Out in Person Australian collision sport Runit makes U.S. debut with stops in SoCal Rosenthal Effect: How Expectations Shape Reality Fig and Eagle Visit Luminose by Entera for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Code MPM at checkout for 10% off their order or 10% off their first month of a subscribe-and-save. ** Mind Pump #2411: How to Know You are Overtrained & Underfed, Why You May Not Feel Low Testosterone, How to Properly Cut & More (Listener Live Coaching) Mind Pump #2690: The NEW DIET Everyone Is Using For Fat Loss Mind Pump #1612: Everything You Need to Know About Sets, Reps & Rest Periods Mind Pump #2759: Progressive Overload, the Secret to Building Muscle and Burning Fat. Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Adam | Relationship Psychology (@attachmentadam) Instagram Scott Donnell (@imscottdonnell) Instagram Mind Pump Fitness Coaching (@mindpumppersonaltraining) Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump, Mind Pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we had live callers call in. We got to coach them on air, but this was after the intro. In the intro, we talk about fat loss and muscle gain, fitness.

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dot com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. You can go to the doctor. You can get blood tests. You can get a checkup and they'll try to predict mortality. But did you know there are five ways you can predict your mortality that don't involve a blood test or even a doctor? You could do them on your own. And they're remarkably accurate. We're going to talk about them today. Let's go. I want to guess at this. Yeah. You didn't get these. You didn't get these. Well, we know one of them. Yeah. Well, we know one of them. Yeah. So predictor of mortality. It is. So. So grip strength.

Grip strength is one of them. So there's five that we have really good studies. Body fat percentage has to be one. No, it's actually not. So with body composition, to some extent, you can predict mortality. The problem is you can get people who are underweight with very low body fat percentage. Sure. And that skews it.

And that, yes, that makes it actually worse. But there's some that are really, they're remarkably accurate, more accurate than pretty much any other test that you could take. Now before you go further, just to comment further on the body fat thing, I would, okay, saying it generally like that, like a body fat test, and then that gets thrown out

because like you just said, like somebody who is under body weight is nearly as dangerous, if not more dangerous than somebody. They actually have higher mortality. Right. But I would think that we'd have some good stuff that says if you,

like, are a male and you manage between this percent and this percent, that has to be one of the best predictors itself. Like if you have a range, at which you stay in for most of your life. That's got to be like... I would have thought so as well, but when I was researching for this episode,

it doesn't... It actually pales in comparison. Interesting. Yeah, it does. Because you could have a guy, just give an example, right? You could have a guy that's, let's say, sitting at 20% body fat,

okay, so, or 22% body fat, which is a relatively high body fat percentage for a guy. Typically, you know, you want to be around 15, 16%. So 5, 6% higher than that. but they could be very fit. They could be athletic. They could be strong. A lot of muscle.

Yes. And then you could have someone who's sitting, let's say, 13%, but they just, they're not strong. They don't have good physical fitness. Their mortality is far worse. Well, and what that highlights to me is that even in a good range like that, there's still such a wide variance of health. Yes, yes, yes. So let me pull some of these up, right?

I wrote them down and I wrote down. I mean, it's got to be smoking, non-smoking is one of the ones. That's more of a behavior, but these are tests. Tests, okay. Yes, yes. So I'll give you one already. You gave us the grip strength. And I'll get to that.

I'll get to that. But I'll give you some other ones. So one test was a single leg balance test. So they've done huge studies, thousands of people. And here's what they found. That makes me feel so good about the thing that I talked about a long time ago. It was like, always tell my clients, like if there's one thing that you continue to do, just do this right here. Yeah.

So when we go through all these at the end, I think would be great for us to. talk about what we think they're all pointing to. Okay. So, all right, so single leg balance, this is just, you stand on one foot. Here's what the study's found. That people who could not hold the balance for 10 seconds. So people who couldn't do a single leg just balance for at least 10 seconds had a four-fold higher risk of death within the next 10 years.

Four times higher. Of just the next 10 years. 10 years. So this is what makes these tests so remarkable as they'll predict mortality in a decade. Wow. Yes. So regardless of other things. So if you're watching or listening to this and you test yourself out and you just try to

stand on one foot and you can't do it for at least 10 seconds according to the data. Disfunction of frailty kind of indication? Instability. Your downward trend of weakness. Yeah. Points to a lot of things. So I mean, I want to just repeat what I said because I don't remember what episode that was and what the theme was when I talked about that.

But we all shared exercises like soon. And the single exercise that I thought was one of the best, which would not fall in the average. Which I agree. It would fall in the average category of like what people would put up there. You know, it was the ability to step up on a step on a bench or a step. Balance. Hinge over. Touch your toe. Come back and step down. Without ever stepping down.

That's right. Without ever. Yeah, without balancing the whole way through that. And it's just simply the ability to step up. The strength it takes to do that is so important. to stabilize is so important and the ability to hinge and to do all three of those in a single movement,

it's what I told all my clients that of all the things you learn from me, I know how ridiculous this one thing is that we do. Don't ever stop doing this. Just keep doing this. I think what this points to is a few different things. There's a huge strength component that goes to balance.

Okay, so when your balance starts to, when I would train people in older population, older age groups, right? So people over the age of 60, their balance would dramatically increase or improve just because it got stronger. So oftentimes you're just not strong and that's why your balance isn't good. Then it also points to other things as well. Inflammation, issues with your vestibular system.

But really what I think the other part of it is as you get older, a huge cause of mortality is falling. Just falling down. Now the fall itself doesn't necessarily kill people. In fact, oftentimes it doesn't. but it's what happens after. Yeah. They fall down, they break something. It sidelines you.

And then, oh, gosh. Yeah, and then trying to recover and build yourself back up to have function again. Sometimes people, like, they lose the fight and they just kind of, it just spirals. Isn't it also, I mean, that's the saying goes fall and break your hip, die of pneumonia. Yes. And is that a lot of that is because so many resources are trying to go to heal when you get attacked by something that is that can really get you. Well, what happens when you get older is when you stop moving, the rate at which, you decline is quick. Exponential.

Exponential. Both mental health, cognitive function, physical health, because you're healing. You broke something. So now you're in a chair or in bed for a couple months. I'll never forget. I've told this story many times on older shows, but I'll never forget. I had this experience. I had a client. I had a woman who trained with me. Her daughter hired me to train her. She was an older woman. So when I was training her, I believe she was in her late 70s. there were already signs of cognitive decline. Okay. Now, you couldn't necessarily tell, but if you knew her well, you, like her daughter knew,

like her family's like, you know, she's getting forgetful. She's losing her independence. So they hired me to train her. Now, as I trained her, I trained her over the course of a few years. And we did a good job of building some strength and maintaining. But I remember she would tell me the same story sometimes over and over again. So you kind of tell that there was a little bit of cognitive decline at this point. And again, remember I had started training her.

already well past, you know, deconditioned. So this was like new to her. And I'll never forget, she fell at home. So she fell in her shower at home, couldn't come see me. It was a bad fall, broke her, you know, I remember what it was. I think it was her hip, was in the hospital. And then she was incapacitated for a couple months and just didn't come back. It was months later.

It wasn't years later. It was just months later. I'm at the grocery store and I'm just grocery shopping. and I see her, and she's totally hunched over, walking with her daughter, grocery shopping. And I went up to her, so her posture had completely changed. I went up to her, and I'm like, hey, how you doing? And she, remember, this is a woman I trained twice a week for a couple of years. She looked up at me.

She had no idea who I was. Oh, wow. And she's like, who are you? Who is he? And then her daughter's like, oh, this is Sal. And it was like, it was like six months. In six months. So fast.

The decline was so quick. because she became incapaceted. So that's one. One of them is balanced. Here's another one. Sit to stand. So here's what the test is. Yep, yep, yep.

You have to go all the way down to the floor without using your hands and then stand all the way up. I love that one. Without using your hands. This one will show, sorry, no, sit to stand. That was sit to rise. Sorry, we'll get to that one. Sit to stand is sitting on a chair and standing up without hands. That's the one.

you for men anything in there if you're in your 50s anything under 19 reps you start you have a dramatic increase in mortality men in their 60s whoa hold back up because you you you switch this there so 19 reps of squats this is this is from this is from in a chair okay from a chair yes so just from a chair getting up with no hands yes you have to do at least 19 reps if you're 50s under that you start to see a real real sharp rise in mortality um in your 60s 17 reps in your 70s 14, after 80, you've got to maintain at least 10. Okay. So it's just basically box squats without using your hands. You know, it's so, it's kind of cool to hear these. Because when I think back to back when we were training clients inside gyms, you know, these are a lot of exercises.

This was an exercise. Yeah. In fact, I started, you would hold my hands. And you would be able to use it for support and then eventually get to a point where you'd stand up, get up, get up, get up, get it down. And I don't remember doing that because I heard some. study related to mortality. It was a squat.

Yeah, it was just a regret. It was like the furthest regression. Like I had clients had just, that was a struggle. If they got out of a chair, they would have to use their hands. Through the movement. Yeah. Yeah. So kind of neat to hear it connected to mortality when I know that at least that wasn't my

intention when I was doing. I wasn't thinking like, oh, if we can get to the 19 of these, we're going to say, like, it was more like, I can't do a regular squat with this person. This is the furthest regression I can think of it. It's interesting. It makes me. think of two, you know, those gravity treadmills? Like, they've figured out with some people that somehow they lose, like, the ability

to, to move their legs, but then they put them in these kind of suit. And they have them, it actually, like, moves their legs for them to the point where it eventually trains their neuromuscular system again. That's why underwater walking. Yeah. Underwater walking helps quite a bit, because they're just not strong enough to walk in many cases. So just for, just so people get an idea of, you know, know, what you could accomplish.

Like, I had, I had several clients in their 80s, which is not, that's not a large demographic for personal trainers. But I actually had at some point, just because doctors referred people to me, I had quite a few clients in their 80s. And we could do, you know, sitting on a bench and standing up, we would routinely get 20 to 25 reps. Yeah. Okay.

This is saying, be able to maintain 10. Now, again, just to give people some context, when they would come hire me at 81 years old. Couldn't even do one. One or two, if we were lucky. It was usually me helping. Yeah, that's, I had to, I had to assist a lot of people. Yeah, but we would go from one or two to over the course of six months, we'd be able to be like 15.

Yeah. So your strength can dramatically improve. I love that you're sharing this because one of the things that you're taking me back here, too, is me having to encourage them, like, how far they had come. You know, they're not barbell back squatting yet. They're not doing anything crazy or what maybe somebody else in gym. But, hey, we just moved you from a category that, is all-cause mortality in 10 years.

That's right. Out of that category, that's a massive win and progression for you. And so for the trainers that are listening that have clients like this and or the clients that are going through this right now, you know, you may not think it's that impressive, but to go from I needed help getting out of a chair to I can get up 20 times by myself is a big win. Huge win. Huge win when it comes from mortality, let alone doing squat with weight or dumbbells or anything. kind of resistance, which, again, just to encourage people, lots of studies show this. We have

lots of experience with this. Your ultimate potential may change as you get older, but your ability to get stronger is, they show, they show studies with 70-year-olds versus 30-year-olds. The strength gains are very similar in terms of percentage of gain. Now, at some point, of course, the potential is lower. You're not going to get as strong as you could have gotten in your 30s, in your 70s, but you can get way stronger. So that's, you know, just again, for some encouragement. All right. The next one is sit to rise. That's the one I confused. So sit to rise is you start standing and then you go all the way to the ground and then stand all. So you go all the way, sit on the floor and then stand up without using your hands. So this is a test. Now you, you start

with 10 points. So I'll explain how this works. One point comes off every time you have to use a hand, a knee, or an arm to help yourself up. So any times you have to put your hand on the floor or get on your knee or do something like you take a point off. people scoring the lowest on this. It was a 12-year study done with 4,000 adults. Those scoring the lowest were up to six times more likely to die early from natural causes, six times more likely to die early. And what's a low score under six.

Oh, under six of the door. Wow. Because you easily can see someone's going to get at least two. One hand and knee on the ground is like pretty, pretty. Just a prop. Yeah. That's like mobility. Oh, yeah.

It used to be part of my assessment, like, when I first was a trainer, was like, having people start on the ground, on the floor. Yep. And you can't use your arms or anything to get up. You got to figure it out. Yeah, I would actually lay them, I'd pancake them out. So you had to sit up. So we had the core strength to sit up.

You're laying down. They've got to get up. Yes. And then you had that hip mobility to get your legs kind of underneath you and then to get to a split stance and then stand all the way up. And can we do that with it? One of our trainers was doing that with somebody just the other day. Really? Yeah, yeah.

Awesome. Yeah. What's cool about this is it, this test, it demonstrates. how your whole body works together. Because some tests will isolate one part of the body versus another. This one's like everything. You've got to be able to get up off the floor. You're using the whole body.

More accurate to me, yeah. It is. It's also one of the harder tests to do. But I tell you what, I don't know how many people in just their 50s. Yes. Could do this. Oh, yeah, big challenge. Big challenge for a lot of people.

And this also adds mobility as a component, not just strength, but you have the mobility to move and maneuver your body. So that's another one. That's cool. Yeah, the next one, let me see. We had sit to rise. Push-up test. This is an easy one.

Of course. They did a study of 1,100 men for over a decade. So what's cool about these studies, by the way, is huge sample sizes. In a long time. A lot long periods of time. Yeah. And they're easy tests to do. So the problem with like diet tests and lifestyle tests.

So hard to adhere to that for extended period of time. Yeah, it's also like, it's all a bunch of surveys. So it's like you follow people for a thousand people for 10 years. What are they doing reporting what they ate once every year? Yeah. And so it's how accurate is it? How many tomatoes did you actually eat? You don't know.

This is like you show up and do some push-ups and then go home. And it's pretty objective. So 1,100 men for a decade, those who were able to do 40 or more push-ups had a 96% lower risk of heart disease compared to men who could barely do 10. So if you can't do 10 pushups or you could do 40 pushups, the difference in your risk of heart disease, 96%. At what age? This was All men. All men.

Yeah, this was all men. So, wow. 40 is legit. 40 is legit. Yeah, 40 is legit. Yeah, 40 is legit. It is. Most, I'd say most relatively fit guys can bust out 25, 30, no problem.

Yes. But 40 is a good. But under 10 is where you start to see real. Yeah. Real issues. Yeah, yeah. And then last is the grip strength test. The reason why the medical community likes the grip strength test the most is because it's

the easiest to administer. So like all the ones we talked about, sit, sit stand up. Yeah, require. Sit to the floor, you know, balance on one leg. Like this is like you get a dynamometer. It's in your office. Here, squeeze this. Let's track.

Every time you come in, you're going to squeeze this and we're going to see where you're at if you're going up or down. So now because muscle recruit. And yeah, how like easy it is for you to really like generate and localize that force. So let's have a fun little debate or discussion about this then like of the five, what do you, would you value the most? If I had to pick one. Yes.

Oh, easily the sit to the rise to get all the way up. I agree. Yeah. I agree. That's the most. That covers everything. Yeah. That covers everything.

Yeah, I agree. The grip strength test is just, it's just easy to do. Yeah. And you have to pick things. that are easy to do, you know. It's, by the way, it's just the pro- practitioners would be rad if that was like, you know, standard. Yeah, by the way, the grip strength test is not bad

for predicting all cause mortality. It's pretty damn good. I mean, for every five kilogram drop in grip strength, early desk risk goes up 16%. And heart disease risk goes up 17% and stroke goes up 9%. So every five kilos of lost grip strength. But again, it's just the proxy for overall body strength.

If you have a good strong grip, you probably have overall strength in your body. Yeah, yeah. And it's, again, it's an easy test. It's like a dynamometer super cheap. Every doctor's office can have one. Here, squeeze this and see what happens. Now, the risk of the grip strength tests one is that someone listening who's older.

They'll sit in their chair at home and just squeeze a gripper. That way that their test gets better. I'd make them stand up or split stance too. Like, you know, see if you can actually generate force when you're unbalanced. This is why I think the one that we all agree on is the best is because if you can accomplish that and get good at that. you're going to have a lot of things. You, yes, you have, you have accomplished something mobility-wise.

You've definitely accomplished something stability-wise. And balance. You definitely accomplished something balance, strength-wise. I mean, you've got, that's right. There's no cheating that test or cutting corners on that test. I think that's, which is also, to me, the progression of that is the one I'm talking about. That's why, if I could get, once I got a client to be able to step up, balance, hinge, touch their toe, come all way back down. Also one of my favorite exercises.

Yeah, that was such a good movement. and I know it doesn't get talked about a lot, but for your average client who cares about longevity, such a good movement to incorporate and teach. It's always a stable routine. Here's what's interesting about all this, right? You have all these tests that I just said that are great predictors of all cause mortality.

Now let's think of the average, let's just think of the population of America or Western societies. And we're going to try to improve their mortality. We're going to try and get everybody to live longer, and live better, so better health spent. There's a few stumbling blocks, because I can make all kinds of recommendations,

but are they going to do it? Can they stick to it? How much time is it going to take? What's the, like, how effective is it for the time spent doing it? You can't just, here's what a lot of huge, some of the big mistakes. A big learning curve to it. Lots of health professionals and longevity experts.

They've got great advice, but they don't take into consideration. Are people going to do it? And how much are they actually going to devote to this? And what's the consistency and what's the payback for the time that they're actually like, you have to look at the real world. And I'll tell you right now, no form of exercise will affect all of these as much as one day a week of strength training.

That's it. Why do I like it so much? It's one day a week. Yeah. One day a week. There's no other form of exercise that would improve all of these things as much as strength training in a one-to-one comparison. You pick any of the form of exercise for 45 minutes once a week versus strength training 45

minutes once a week. Pails in comparison. Pails a good person. Increases range of motion and strengthen that range of motion. I think people are, a lot of times have this misconception that like a lot of strength training. Now we're limiting range of motion. We're not as flexible.

And the opposite is true. Not proper strength training. No. No, not at all. All right. Got some other interesting data for you guys. This, I would, I would say is good and bad news for young men. So this is wild.

So I was watching this clip. This gentleman was talking about just how different. This young, the younger generation of men is from previous generations of men in regards to. Well, trip off these stats. I couldn't believe it when he, when he said it, I double checked and he's, this is what they're showing. Men between the ages of 18 to 24. Okay. So young men, 18 to 24.

Yeah. What percentage of them have never asked out a woman to on a date? Oh. Never. I've seen some. Not like they've done it once or twice. Like right now, the current, yes. It's a large.

Like 24. It's a large percentage. What percentage have never, ever ever? Ask the girl out. Over 60. Well, no, less than that. Oh, okay. 45% almost half.

What? That's, listen. Weak. Listen, when we were growing up at that age group between 18 to 24. You already married. Listen, how many guys would you think when we were in that age group had never asked the woman out? Like, almost none. Yeah, I mean.

Okay, so. Unless you're just, like, isolated nerd. I don't. Okay, so yeah, but now you have to. Justin's the bullish thing. I just wait to be your, wait. All those 20-year-olds feel terrible right now. Yeah, well, again, this is where the nerds took over and like, now we're ruled by nerds.

Okay, so yeah. So that, what do you expect? What do you expect? You're just going down. He just digging a mirror. Hey. Hey. Let's, let's speculate.

on all the reasons why. Well, let me add one more stat because it's going to add to your speculation. Oh, okay, okay, okay. So 45% of men 18 to 24, which is crazy to me, have never in their life asked the woman out. How, what percentage of men under 30 are just like, I'm not even pursuing? I'm not even going to try to date. Under 30, 63%. What?

A majority of men under 30, don't even, aren't even. They're waiting for the robots or what? What? Why is that stat higher? That's confusing to me. No, no, they've asked women out at some point. They just gave up. And then they just give up.

63% are like, I'm not even going to ask. I give up. Come on, guys. Wow. All right. So, okay, now let's hear all the speculation. Yeah, yeah, let's piss some people off. So, well, so with this guy, what this guy was saying,

what this guy was saying is that he said that, that social connection has been replaced by forums, the internet and pornography, and pornography. And pornography. Pornography and video games have trapped a lot of young boys inside their room. It's sapped the energy that,

that, because it's scary. Like the truth, if you're a young man and you're listening, you know what I'm talking about. Women, I don't think understand this

because we're the pursuers typically. It's scary. You got to go ask a girl out. Like, she's probably going to say no to you. Yeah. And you got to get your crap together because, you know,

women don't just talk to you. And you got to figure things, and you've got to get rejected and you got to put yourself out there. It's scary. Here's another one that's a bit controversial, but it's also true, is that women, data crossing up, and women have been kicking our ass at a lot of things in the last two decades. I mean, when you look at college graduates, when you look at the testing, like, you look at what women, women and jobs, women are being. Definitely in the academic setting for sure.

Yes. Women are beating guys at a lot of things or elevating, growing, however you want to position that. And so you, and then guys are locking themselves in room, jerking. off playing video games. And it's like, it makes it even more difficult to go, you know, you're this kid who's been playing college, you're 22, and you've been messing around playing call of duty and watching pornography all the time. And you see this beautiful chick, but she's, she's midway into getting her masters and

she's got some intern at this great job. It's like, she ain't dating you and you know it. Yeah, but here's the, here's the good news because here's the truth. And I would love, I mean, I bet you can ask any young one of this. You got 45% of dudes at that age. group have never asked the girl out and 63% aren't even trying anymore. But if you're a dude and you just talk to a girl today, who's admitting this? These are surveys.

These are lots of surveys. Just this random surveys. So you, the good news is this. If you're a dude and you got the balls to just introduce yourself to a girl, you're like a huge advantage. You look like the man. Like, man, look how confident that dude. So you think that based?

But, okay, what's your argument to what I'm saying then right now? because that kid is not going up to that girl. And he knows he's going to fail. That's why he's not doing it. Listen, I'll ask you. You think that he... I'll ask you, dude, that grew up without money and all the stuff that you said.

I grew up at a time, though. Listen, you were confident. Well, you put yourself out there. You had a mouthpiece, and I'm sure you had to work on that. You had to practice. That confidence, here's a truth. And again, this is the other truth. Women tend to date based off of the potential they see in a man.

Not necessarily what they see now. So, yeah. One, I was gifted with some of these things, right? Two, I was, listen, I was doing shit. 15 years old, start my own little business, hustling. By the time I was a junior in high school, getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning, working before school, working afterwards. So if you're a girl and you're only in high school and you see what I'm doing,

I would think part of that is like, oh, he's self-motivated, going to do his thing. So that has to play a role. Yeah, but I don't think they were like, look at Adam. waking up early to go to work. You drove the crappy brown car with the mold inside of it and all that stuff. I did it because you just went out and talked to them. Lightning hanging down ahead. You know?

Yeah, I don't know. If half the dudes have never asked a girl out. And you're an 18-year-old guy and you see a girl and you want to go talk to her. I bet if you approach her and talk to her, she's going to be like, oh, my God. It's a mentality, dude. Yeah. Yeah. I just don't think they're getting enough exposure to that.

Like really understand the value of pain. and rejection and like, you know, failure. It's just not stressed enough. And it's not stressed in either video games either because they just respond and everything's fine. You know, we had to like literally start over. Scramble to try and get some code just to stay like at some level. Otherwise you go all the way back to the beginning days and days that we put in.

Well, you all... Well, you were like me too in this with... Admittedly you played video games too, but different though. Like, everything was different. My buddies and I, we would play games for a while, video games for a while. But then you get sick of it. You do. You get sick of it.

Yeah. And then you go outside and you play football and basketball and baseball and you, or whatever. Kick the can. You name it. I did it all. Right. So you didn't, you weren't like these games now suck these kids into the screen. They're so engineered, dude.

Yeah. And they, and so these kids will be. They socialize in there. It's like this whole thing where they're just hanging. And so, you know, and you can't tell me. that a lot of the girls mature faster than us. So you're this 17, 18, 19, 20 year old girl, and you're looking at these boys

who put headsets on and talk shit to each other for eight hours on the weekend on video games. Like, that's not attractive. They're not even talking to you is what I'm saying. But even if you did, like, what is he going to talk to her about? Like, the new skins on Call of Duty? No, no, you got to try. That's how you learn.

Let me ask you guys this. How many times the girls say no to you guys? You can't use us as an example. We grew up at a different time. All the time. All the time, dude. That's how you learn. No.

And the energy, like there's an energy that... I mean, I'm not... Let me ask you guys this. To make it clear, I'm not arguing with you that I do think that's a factor. Let me put this. Let me ask you guys this. Knowing what you guys know now, grown men, all your wisdom, all that stuff. And I snap my fingers.

You guys are 18 years old. And I'm like, go get three girls' phone numbers right now. Yeah. Would it be a piece of cake today compared to how it was in the 90s? Well, I think the way that. Today? Yeah, today. The first, I mean.

Don't you lazy dudes. I mean, well, so I say, go get a job, read a book, and you would probably attract those girls. They'd come to you. You wouldn't even have to go to them. Yes, yes. So that's how I mean. You would be such an anomaly to me if you're that guy who's working hard, reading, trying to make a better version of dollars. That's encouraging.

But here's these boys. Here's my argument. My argument is this. As a young man, you have a driver that pushes you beyond your comfort zone. One of them is your sex drive, and it's not getting quenched with endless pornography. You also have a drive for adventure, which you're not just beating level 65, okay? Those two things. And then talk about read a book and all that.

You know how you figure that out? You go try to talk to girls and they keep rejecting you, and you're like, I better get my crap together. Yeah. Like this has something smarter to talk to her about than just my video game. And this shapes you as a young man. You still got your hygiene. Yeah. Yeah.

They just forget about that. You can't present yourself like a dumb ass. Yeah, exactly. You look like shit, no wonder. You know, I'm always telling you that. But it's wild. 45, between 18 and 24, the first time I think I approached a girl to talk to her. I think I was like 13.

You know, 18 to 24? That's crazy to me. That's wild. But now I put myself in their shoes. If I had endless pornography and video games, I mean, I might be in the same boat, you know? But the good news is for young man listening, there's not a lot of competition, bro. Are we switching? Is it?

Are we swinging back? I mean, is it coming back to the other direction, or is it getting worse? I don't know. I think some awareness is coming around. Maybe in pockets, but yeah, I don't see it. I have such a hard time because sometimes I feel like we're in a bubble whenever we talk about topics like this.

We try to generalize all this stuff, but yeah, half of it I don't see. So it's like, it sounds cool, but yeah, I don't, I mean, I see little bits of like trying to crack and some kids getting it. It's just driven. It's like this perfect storm, too, of like, like you have these these boys that are like for a lack of a better word pusified you know in this direction while we're pushing this narrative boss bitch on the other side and it's like it's it's it's just driving a wedge between you know what happened here

we'll get controversial since you brought this up well I'm trying to force you that direction you know what happens when there's weak uh when there's no male leadership yeah the women step up women change yeah they step up that I mean, if you look at, so these, when you have these, you hear these conversations, even when like someone like Adam Lane Smith comes on and it triggers some people. And the women are like, it's not our fault. Like, we, men need to step up. And they're, they're right. There's a part of them that's also true.

You know, it's like, and I think it's, it's less about. It's less to blame a sex. It's more to blame society and a narrative that's been pushed. We've been pushing this to boys, play video games, watch pornography. You know, your friends can be online. and we've been telling girls, go out there, kick ass in the boss bitch world. And the two of those just don't work really well together. They just don't.

So it's not a girl problem. It's not a guy problem. It's a social narrative that's been pushed for two decades plus now. And we've just seen it get further and further. Now, what I hope is that we're living through and our kids are living through the most extreme time. And we start to kind of find somewhere back in the middle somewhere. Because I don't think I don't think what I just said

The extreme is necessarily bad Listen, I married to a boss bitch Right? So you could totally have that mentality I played video games too So it's like it's not like video games are evil Girls that are like strong independent women are evil It's like there's there's a balance There's a balance there

Somewhere it all works like yeah And I hope that we we start to come back Do you guys feel like Or do you get worried for? for your young ones. I know what the data is showing on young men, and they're in droves turning to faith. I think they're looking for structure.

They're looking for meaning. Courses that help men break the addiction of pornography are exploding right now. So there's a lot of awareness that's happening right now. Which is good because that... Data on exercise. Morals, discipline, structure. Totally. Definitely when you think of what does video game...

What's the bad side of video games pornography? the lack of morals, lack of discipline, laugh of structure, those things. And so just simply going that direction will help that out. Totally. Totally. And I do feel like you see the kind of the counter with women, too. You see more and more women speaking up on like the,

hey, the sacrificing the family to go have the career isn't what it was meant, what we all thought it was. And so you hear a lot more of that. And so maybe we come back by our kids age. I don't know. Yeah. I worry about that sometimes.

Let's talk about nutrition. I want to bring this. point up, we haven't brought it up in maybe five or six months, but I think it's such a good, it's such a great way to reduce your calories without eating less and actually making your food healthier. And that's simply taking your total red meat and just going to grass fed. And it's the same amount, same size steak, same everything's the same, 10 ounces of steak versus 10 ounces of steak.

But it's lower in calorie and higher in protein because grass fed meat is leaner and it has a better better fatty acid product. I remember when you first brought that up on the show, we looked at the difference. I was really surprised by... Yeah, it's hundreds of calories. Yeah. It's a major difference.

Doug, can you compare like a couple, like, you know, common cuts, one being grass fed, one being traditional? You know, I know butcher boxes where all of us get our grass fed meat. I have to say something about butcher box since you're bringing this up.

I'm back on my kick right now, and I'm tracking my protein as we teach everybody first, right? Yeah, I saw you work out like three times. Yeah, yeah. Shh, don't tell you. You have to get in your... I don't want to build a reputation around. I always keep track.

Hey, you know, you're just saying. Then I see him in there, too, extra. No, shut up, bro. Is you doing something? Butcher blocks, uh, chicken nuggets, dude. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've been living off those. Every, every, uh, three is 10 grams of protein.

Yeah. So, you get, you know, like, literally, that's a salt. Bro, they're the best. Yeah. Chicken nuggets, too. I used to, so back in my. So back in my early days, I used to do like the 20 packs from McDonald's, like terrible, the awful fake stuff, right? Well, it's 50 grams of protein and just 15 nuggets.

I crushed 15 nuggets. Easy. Easy. Easy. Easy. Easy. It's become my late night when I'm trying to get extra protein. Heat them up in the oven, like super fast.

Yeah. So it's been kind of a go-to move for me. Give me an example of grass fed versus traditional. So the protein content is very similar. It's just a little bit higher on the grass fed. it's the fat profile that's very different. That's the point he's making. He's saying that it's the same protein or higher with less calories.

Yeah, less calories, yes. Eight to 12 ounce steak. Yeah, what are you looking at? Yeah, I'm trying to find a good comparison here. Just give me a second. Yeah, so typically what you'll see is in the same cut that's like a normal serving. It's like 100 or something calories. I remember when we looked at it.

Easy. And you're eating the same amount. I like it because it's easy. It's like, here, you want to cut your calories in an easy way and not feel like you're eating less because you're not. Here, just switch your grass fed. Calories are automatically lower. Yeah. Yeah. We don't need to wait for you, Doug. Yeah. Well, I'm having a hard time for you.

No problem. We talked, Sal brought it up before. It surprised me. It was, it was enough, it was enough of a number that I'd actually never even looked at it like that. Like, I mean, look back now, I think back when I was competing and always trying to like shave calories here there. I'm like, creative. I mean, that would have been a really cool strategy. I would have actually gone back and done non-grass fed and non-prep. Right. So when I'm like off-season and so in bowl. And a easy way to cut is like, I'm not even switching in anything, but just going to grass fed and shave 150 plus calories. Totally.

I found a sport that I can't believe exist. Well, I can't believe exist. One that Justin would probably do. What is that? Doug, can you pull up? Did you get the videos of Run it? I did. You show a clip.

Run it? Look at this. So I do have some numbers here. Oh, thanks, thanks. Finally. Well, edited in and the appropriate part of the other. Hey, I just like to highlight my, you know, my Google skills here. I know you guys find me to be very, very good at it.

So, so we. You know, he'll edit the show like right after. You're sure he's not using Yahoo? This is how Doug does searches. This is like this. Six ounce rib eye grass ved versus six ounce grain fed, which has more. That's why his search is.

Listen, I think he still uses ass jeeps. I don't believe that's the search I did, but I'm not going to sit here and defend myself. What you got? Okay. So you get a lot of. of results sometimes. It just don't have the details you want.

Okay, so we have grass-fed beef, eight ounces. This is ground beef is what they've used. Okay. Grain-fed eight-ounce. So, for example, the grass-fed is 432 calories. The grain-fed is 568. Yeah, there you go. Total fat, grass-fed 28 grams, grain-fed 44.

And then getting down to the protein, grasshead, 43 grams, 38 for the grain. So there you go. So there you go. I'm going to bookmark. I'm going to bookmark this, by the way. That was how many ounces? You said, where you... Eight ounces.

It'll come up in a year. So you're talking about higher protein, lower calories by over 100. And it's eight ounces. They're both eight ounces. Yeah. That's solid. But, you know, it's not only that. It's just so many other things.

Vitamin K is higher. Vitamin E is higher. Way better. Just all kinds of different things. It's less inflammatory. Yeah. All right, Doug, pull up the run-it video. Okay, so this is a new sport that is...

I would place it. It's a little bit lower. than the slap sport where they just blast each other in the face. It's lower? You know what I mean? Like that's just peak idiot. This is just a drill that we would do all the time in football and rugby. Like it's just they made it into a sport.

Like this is literally like, oh, is this where we run into each? Like, no pads? No pads. You just blast each other? Oh, yeah. That's my first introduction. There's a name to that, Justin. What's that called?

It's called when you, are you talking about where they, where you line up? Oklahoma drill. Yeah, that's what is that. Look at the sides of these guys. Watch, watch. except this is just, they took out all the the function of it and just went into the smash. I've seen some of these, bro.

Well, what's scary is they're actually doing it from distance? And they're big. Normally you do that a little bit closer, right? Oh, I've seen some do where guys get knocked out. Yes. Get blasted. I mean, this is big old Simone guys like just clashing. And then all of a sudden, like, they're both, like, knocked out.

Oh, bro. You didn't see Doug's pulling up some nice ones. I saw some highlights. What I'm tripping out right now. looking at this is, is the, is this, whoa, wow. I used to live for this stuff, dude. Wow. What's, Justin, this was crazy is how far they are.

Like, that's a, that's a normal drill in football where they line up. Like Tony Arden. It's me and, it's me and Justin. No, these guys are running. Yeah, you're getting full of speed when you're, you're getting hit here. That's crazy. Yeah, bro. Yeah.

This is, it's just, so when you do this, I mean, you basically have to have, right, correct me if I'm wrong, Justin. you will get killed unless you have reckless abandoned. You have to go in. There can't be any hesitation. Sacrificing your entire body. Because the other guy, it's like... Also, you have to get like that extra, like, last second leverage.

So people think you just like go full blast, like just straight it. You have to actually dip and then, you know, launch and like throw all your force through your hips to your shoulder and like transfer it. Oh, and you have to do it quickly. Oh, God. So it's like if they're not doing that last second dip and up, like they're not getting the full. Some of these guys are like 300 pound dudes. They all, there's no little power output. No.

Wait to see like a little guy. I remember. Wasn't it, Justin, didn't she go to a, weren't you run a mosh pit? Yeah. And you ran to someone like that. Yeah. There's some big dude. Flatten them.

That's the thing. There's a technique to it. And like, leverage. You learn it over, over time. I was trying to teach my son this because he's like really into football right now. And I was like, if you're going to start tackling people, you got to understand the physics here. you know you got you got to be the lower one every time god bro that's brutal yeah that is i've never seen that before no me neither i didn't know that i mean i know that's a drill i knew that was a drill in

football but they they're closer in football like and you have pads oh yeah you have pads it depends how they set it up because i mean we've done crazy stuff like bull in the ring and all that too or you're just in the middle and you have the whole team around you and you're just you call them out and then you guys like smash oh wow yeah i used to love that have you seen the the the parents one Yeah, for like Pop Warner boys are like their moms come out. Some of the moms? Do you form tackles?

Like, bang. Yes, dude. They got to try to get through the moms and stuff like that. The moms are, it's like a little Pop Warner football kids. And so those big kids are taking them out. I've seen some strong moms, dude. It was one Samoan mom at one of the gyms I managed, man.

And she was, oh, yeah. She was like, you don't want to tackle that later. She was like lean 210. I tell the story. I've told it. I haven't told it a long time on the podcast but when I had

Isaac Sopawaga's wife I trained her and I remember I did an assessment on it. And now at this point I'm already like 10 years into the career so I think we're all like this.

Once you have body fat tested weighed hundreds of people, I can look at you. Like it's like yeah, it's like a carnival trick that all my family loves to do is like I can look at someone

and be like, yeah, they weigh about this one. And I'm probably three to five pounds. And I remember looking at her And you know when you're guessing someone's way, it's like my head, I know what I'm guessing, but then I'm gonna go about five pounds lighter just so I look respectful.

Yeah, yeah, I don't offend them. And I remember putting her on the scale. And like, I mean, I must have been, I must have started 50 pounds too light. And just pure muscle. Yeah. And then I body fat tester and she's like in the teens. She and just flat stomach.

Just a brick house. Just a brick house. I'd never seen a girl like that. Just brick house. Did they have kids? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't, I haven't, you know,

it'd be interesting to see their kids now because this was like, this is 15 plus years ago. Their kids could probably play sports. I hate to have Doug try and look up Isaac Sopalwana. I bet they're kids in the league at this point. Yeah, no, actually, I'll have to look him up and see, see, I know, I'm pretty sure they have kids, but they, yeah, they both were just,

so I can only imagine what kind of kids they've had. I read about this psychological phenomenon, uh, change subject, but it's called the Rosenthal Effect. And it points to, you remember how I told you guys that, so I did the, you know, we're doing the fig and eagle course on, you know, families and stuff. And one of the things that Scott recommended for Jessica and I was to speak identity into our children. And so like before bed every night, we make a list of things. And it's like, you're intelligent, you are brave, you are courageous, you are a blessing to everyone you know.

And we made different ones for all the kids, right? And even the teenagers, right, my niece and my daughter, they light up every night. And I don't know how they would respond, right? Teenagers, you never know. But every night, I go in there and I do it and you just see their faces light up. And it seems to have this, like I can tell it's having this kind of positive effect. And I just happened to come upon something called the Rosenthal effect. This is a very interesting phenomenon where they've done many studies on this, but one of them was a classroom experiment where teachers were told that certain students showed exceptional potential.

even though the labels were randomly assigned. Over time, those students perform better academically. So teachers unknowingly gave more attention, encouragement, patience, and feedback to the students they believed that were gifted. This also works when kids are told that they're a particular way. They suddenly, suddenly, over time, start to behave more in that direction.

And so, you know, saying these things to your kids every night, they actually start to take on this identity because, well, my, you know, every night my dad tells me I'm courageous. So then when they're scared, without realizing they become more quick. I keep forgetting. I keep forgetting to tell Katrina that I want to add that because I, you know what I'm doing. Because I, which is interesting to me because I always thought it was like, instead of like telling your kids they're this thing, I was better to attach it to a behavior that I see.

Right. So we're reinforcing behavior. So every night we look. I think that's great. Right. We look at something. But I mean, I could do both, right? What stops me from, hey, daddy saw.

you do this today. So proud of you. Also, by the way, you're Papa, ba, ba, blah, blah, so I want to add, I want to add that. You know, I have my cousin who's visiting right now. And he's never visited me before. And you're getting caught up with him. He's been from the other side of my family and, you know, that I don't get to see very much. And, you know, we saw each other last year for the first time in years. And he said, man, want you come up and visit some time? And so he came up by himself. He spent the last like three, four days with me, does this construction job. And then he goes to an after school program for low-income families. And the kids range from five to like 13. So he's got all of them.

And so I've just been asking him all kinds of questions. And he just loves it. It's like, it's like he's comes from a family of teachers. And, you know, so he has a lot of passion for helping kids. He's got an incredibly loving sweet soul. And just asking him a lot. I'm like, man, what? I mean, I can only imagine a lot of these kids are probably troubled and challenged. And he goes, oh, yeah, no, definitely. He goes, and they love to push boundaries. I'm like, how do you deal with that? He's like, you know, honestly, he's like, what I've learned or what I find is just like, kids just want attention. And a lot of times these kids that are so quote unquote bad or misbehave lack the attention. And, you know, he had been spending these days with me.

And he last night before he went to bed, he's like, dude, is Max always like this is always what everybody said? Is Max always like this? I'm like, yeah, he's like, actually, I think he's acting kind of wild because you're here showing off. he's like he's such a well-behaved kid I said well I think it goes back to what you said I think that it's the just the amount of attention that he gets you know we don't do the eye

yeah it's the they want they they they want that and there are a lot of energy you know I get like there it's all the time it's not like he wants attention every once in a while he wants attention all the time and so yeah we do a lot of Legos we do a lot of puzzles we do a lot of games like every day

every night multiple times a day And I think that that is what you see is that you just see that he gets a lot of that. And I said, I can see if a kid doesn't, how they can start to get on your nerves. And then you want to just throw an iPad on it. And then the next thing you know, they're a bad kid because they're acting out. I said, I just, I think you hit it on the head when you told me what it's like to manage these kids. I think that a lot of kids, and some kids need more. I mean, your kid's an example that he needs physical attention.

He doesn't need just attention or sit down the puzzle. It's like, you got to take him outside, throw the ball out. him go shoot a gun it's like you got to actually do something like that and I think that makes a world of a difference and the kids just don't know how to communicate that at that age at that age he doesn't know how to say daddy I want more of your attention his way of yeah his way of doing it is is acting out speaking of which I wasn't I need your guys's help because I think you have an athlete bro yeah dude you for sure do and I'm I'm not you know so my son you know was it the other day he's like hey can I try hitting a ball with a bat?

I'm like, I've never done this with him. I'm like, all right. So we're in the backyard. I gave him, it wasn't even a bat. It's like a toy. It was kind of like a bat. And I had a tennis ball. And nine out of ten times, he, he connects.

Nine out of ten times. The first time, bink. And he's just over and over and over again. I'm going to start sitting here. And I'm like, I got to have your uncle Justin and Adam over this. I'm going to start sitting you something because I follow all these. It's just so funny. Like dad's teaching different sports.

And one of the dads. I love to follow. It teaches his son baseball. Oh, yeah. He sits on that bucket and puts the helmet on. Yes, bro. I'm going to send it to you. Like, he's got this, he's got a kid who's just so into it.

And obviously he has a baseball coaching background because the way he's teaching him. Okay. And it's in a fun, playful way, the kids loving it and stuff like that. And it's like, if it could give you a couple tips on it, if you have a little natural athlete and you feed into those skills. Show someone he's too early. Yes. Yes. Dude.

It's so cool, man. harness that now and if he's got a natural gift and then he leans in that. Yeah. We went to our friend's house yesterday and they had football on the TV and anytime football is on, we don't watch football. I never watch sports. But if you're somewhere in football's on, he sits down and watches it. Oh my God.

He likes it. He sits down and then he's like, what's our team? What's our team? I don't know, the red one. That's so ironic. It is so ironic. Yeah, I just like pull my kids into interest, you know, in that direction. It's been such a weird experience for me because it's a weird experience for me because

so like I just gravitated towards it immediately, you know? So, yeah, it might be that case where it's like he'll just do all the extra practicing and all that on his own. That's why you've got to lean into it because if he's into it that much where you start giving him drills and he loves the drills, if he doesn't love the drills and who cares, but if he loves the drills and does that, it's like, too, then it's game on, do you? Well, I just like hanging out with him, so I'll do it with him. But the issue is this.

The issue now, there's not an issue now, but pretty soon he's going to need someone who, who knows how to do this stuff. I don't. So it's at some point, I'm like, you need to practice someone else, dude. This was always my secret prayer, though, is that Sal's gonna have a kid like this.

And then it's like, you're gonna have to get into it. And then you get into it. You're gonna just really start to love and appreciate sports. I just watch, fast forward five years on my book, Sal's like dropping all the stats on all the games. And we were, we always trying to get into trampolines, dude.

You know how much I hate jumping on a trampoline, dude. It's not. They're like, ooh, I just feel. be like I'm a throw up or something. And I just get, I had to get into it. And I'm like, I have to figure these things. And then I was like, you know what? You guys are awesome at this.

And I'm just going to watch as a spectator. I got to ask you guys, do you guys ever drink the one element flavor I don't have much of is the chocolate one? Do you? Who was it that has that in a hot? I used to do it in a coffee. You had to do it in a hot chocolate. Moka kind of. Wait, hot coffee?

Yeah. Is it good? Yeah. Yeah, because the salty. That's not a bad idea. It's really good. There's no calories. Yeah.

And you kind of... Are you guys making your way through all the new ones, though? All the new skinny ones? Dude, I just love... They have a lemonade one and, like... Yeah, the lemonade one's...

And Pina colada, I think is the other one. Pineapple. Pineapple, yeah. Pineapple one is the best. That is the new best flavor to me. Oh. That's... I haven't tried it.

I do like the lemonade as well. Lemonade is Katrina's favorite. Pineapple is... Yeah, I've done the lemonade. Pineapple's really good, yeah. Fire. Ooh, I got to try that. Yes.

Yes. I mean, I always told you guys Greatfruit was my favorite. Still, one of my favorites, but the new pineapple flavor is fire. Yeah, I got to try them. Yeah, yeah. They're, we got, didn't we get a report from them recently? They're just murdering. Yeah. Companies growing

like crazy. You know, they have single handedly created this electrolyte, this new electrolyte market. Yeah. It was not, you see all kinds of copycats. Yeah, all because of them. Yeah, all kinds of copies. All because they were not afraid to put the amount of sodium that's, uh, doing away from the The sucralose and all this other nonsense.

And it was just a thousand milligrams of sodium. Everybody's too scared to put that much sugar. Shout to Rob Wolf. Yeah. Very smart. Because I mean, he was the, I believe he's the one that was really had the formulation. Of course. Push the formulation that way.

Yeah. So, no, they're a great, great company and continue to do really well. But yeah, you guys have to go through all the new flavors. I'm going to try the pineapple. The new flavors are, I'm curious, too, how that's, too, because they did like a smaller size can now, right? So it's like for some people that are not going to drink the big full size can. So they're smaller, right?

So I think they're half. They're half. 500 milligrams. Yeah, they look like a red bull size. In comparison. Yeah. I'll try it. Yeah.

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Our first caller is Kevin from Texas. What's up, Kevin? What's up, Kevin? Hey, guys. How's it going, man? Good. How are you? good uh just writing in a little bit of my back story i'm 54 years old um been going to the gym probably

since i was in my mid 20s uh but always struggle with my weight uh it was always a big issue about a year ago i got on a glp one and it made a huge difference um finally able to get the diet under control uh been killing it at the gym about three months ago i got on t rt that's made all the difference in the world, probably in the best shape of my life right now at 54 years old. The problem I'm running into is being in the best shape of my life, I feel like everyday things aren't, the gym life isn't translating to real world as much as I expected it would. One example, like I volunteer with my kids band, my kids in the high school marching band. I volunteer with them on competition days and games and stuff. We are busy unloading trucks, putting props together, moving props out

on the field and stuff like that. And by the end of a three, four day or three, four hour, you know, work schedule, I'm just tapped out. And I feel like, you know, being in the shape I'm in, things should be a little bit easier. One thing I do notice is I recover a lot easier. You know, I'm not just tapped out the next day and bedward like I used to be. But it's, you know, am I missing something should i be doing something different should i be training different my my first guess is to ask you where are your calories at because the testosterone will make you feel a lot of those positive feelings that you're feeling and of course dropping that weight but uh a lot of times our clients that do the glp ones end up going so low calorie and and that might be what you're feeling where your

calories at uh calories you know i got to force myself to get about 2 000 a day yeah there you go that's what it is. You're low, low, yeah. So when we, did you know we took a group of, what was it, 50, 60 people? Yeah, 50 people. Oh, 50 people that were all on GLP ones. And we, we coached them through the whole process.

And the common theme, regardless of you got little results, amazing results, everybody ended up hitting a plateau at some point, whether that was after 100 pounds, 30 pounds, it didn't matter. They all, and what ended up happening where they all became this point where they were exercising consistently. They lost the weight, but their body was stalled. They're just not seeing, and or they were feeling just really just tired and fatigue. They didn't feel strong.

And what that is is they hit a point where their body has adapted to how low the calorie is and your body's telling you, I need more fuel. Now, the exciting part, where you're at, where you're on a, you have a night, and you've done a lot already and look great and you've got a solid frame. and you're on testosterone, you start to feed that body, and you're going to build some muscle and really start to shape, change, and feel different. Yeah, you'll get leaner, in fact.

Yes. How tall are you? How much do you weigh, and what does your workout look like? I'm six foot. I'm currently at 230. I go between 235, 2.30 around there. That's from 3.30 a year ago. My workouts, I do four to five days resistance training.

upper lower split. And then I try to throw in, you know, one or two days I'll hike or do some yoga or something like that. Yeah. You're super underfed and overtrained. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Got your size doing that much exercise. Yeah. You're like, you're just, you're going to be fatigued. Yeah. Your body is like just trying to stay where it's at. And you're probably doing about as much as you can tolerate. So you're throwing a three hour day of moving things.

You're going to be dead. And you're on. And you're on testosterone. If you were on testosterone, you'd feel this even more. The good that you feel is from that. That's giving an artificial signal of like we're doing good because otherwise your testosterone will probably be crashing. There's two things you can do.

Bump your calories by 500 and cut your workouts way down. There's no, not only there's no reason for you to be lifting that much that often. It's not getting any better results. You're actually getting worse results. You're doing way too much. Three days a week would be the most. I'd have you in the gym. The hardest part of this, Kevin, is,

Is it where you, now what you've come from is that it will be the mental part. Are you taking a GLP one that's preloaded or do you take, do you actually measure for yourself? I'm taking a compounded. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what we would do. And I started splitting up the doses. I, you know, I was doing the once weekly and I've started splitting that into twice a week.

That's fine. So, you know, talk with your doctor and say, hey, I'm trying to eat more because I'm trying to build some muscle, but I'm having a tough time eating enough. I'd like to try a lower dose so you can get approval and then they'll put you in a lower dose. That way you could start eating more. I'd get you, I'd have you go immediately to 2,500 calories. Follow like a MAPS 40 plus program. Don't do any more than that. You can walk throughout the, you know, throughout the week.

Make sure you walk, you know, eight to 10,000 steps a day. Within, within days, you'll feel a difference in energy. Within weeks, you'll see a difference in muscle. And you'll get leaner. It'll actually get you leaner. Yeah. Yeah, the diet, that won't be the hard part. The staying out of the gym will be the hard part.

Well, you can still go. So my clients that love that consistency, you can still go. Just the days that it doesn't, we haven't programmed you to lift weights, you walk, go for a nice walk. Put an e-book in or listen to a podcast, walk on the treadmill. It's not a hard thing. It's just walking. Walking's great. So don't break the routine.

When my clients are in a rhythm where they're like, Adam, I go to the gym, five days a week every Monday through Friday. That's my thing. Like, I don't want to stop that. I just let me tell you what you're going to do on those five days. It's going to look like this on these days, look like this. So the days that we don't have programmed lifting weights for you, you need to be doing things like stretching and walking and listen to audio books,

mobility stuff like that's recovery recovery. Sona, steam, those are all good. I'd love to hear you doing those types of things. So think of it like that. You're still going to the gym, just focused on recovery type stuff when you're not doing what's on the lifting protocol. And we'll send Maps 40 to you, so you have the protocol to follow.

Yeah, follow that as it's laid out. Don't add to it and do more. And Sal's right. Start right out the gates with 2,500 calories and you watch what happens. Yeah. You know, Kevin, just so you understand, 25 isn't even where you would start. No, no.

Yeah. Yeah. If you were my client, I'd start you at 25. I'd show you some strength gains because that's what you're going to see. You're going to see some nice strength. and muscle gains. And then I'd slowly reverse diet you over 3,000 calories. Yes.

And then from there, if we want to get leaner, it's easy. But where you're at now, you couldn't get leaner if you tried. You're just going to lose muscle. Your calories are so low. Yes, yes. Yeah, the snail has, it's stalled for probably a good month now. This is everybody, bro. Everybody that we've helped eventually.

And the fact that what's awesome and positive is that you got to shed 90 pounds before what happened. Some of these people we see it happen at 10 pounds because they were already so low calorie and so the GOP one just took them even lower and so they get a 10 pound shred and then they had a hard plateau for six months a year and then we get a hold of them. You got you drop 90 pounds, which is awesome. Here are some of the challenges so you understand with the reverse diet because that's what we're kind of coaching you through right now. So reverse diet is the slow introduction of an increasing calories, high protein, in combination with good appropriate strength training. Okay. And the goal is to build lean tissue, which then results in a faster metabolic rate.

At the end of a reverse diet, you have a much higher metabolic rate, which we can then easily cut from. So let's say right now you were running at 3,000 calories, 3,200 calories, and you were like feeling great and strong. Then I could cut you to 2,500 calories. You'd see fat loss. So in other words, you would cut at higher calories than you're currently at through this process. Now, there's a couple challenges that people run into. It's like, okay, well, what if I start gaining body fat? Or how do I know how fast they go up in calories? Or how do I know when I'm ready to cut? Or what if the strength training you get changed, this is when working with a coach becomes very valuable. So what I'm also going to do, Kevin, is I'm going to have a coach call you. And if that's something you're interested in, a coach could actually just individualize it as you go through the whole process, through the whole reverse diet process and the eventual cut. Our trainers have a reverse diet framework that they take people through. So there's an actual framework. they'll step you through and then you'll just check it with them. It's also just individualized. Yeah, yeah. You'll check in with them and then they'll modify it accordingly. But the most difficult part is definitely the psychological part. Always. You'll have these. Yeah, that's going to be that that'll be

especially because you lost 100 pounds. Yeah, yeah. Eating more is scary. That'll be the hardest part. But I'm telling you right now, we can get you all the way up to 3,000 plus calories, feeling better, looking better than you ever have in your life. If we do this correctly. Let me ask, where should these calories come from? Currently, you know, I'm meeting my protein goals. That's been my big thing. Protein, protein. I'm getting around anywhere from 180 to 200 grams a day.

Should I pull from carbs, fats? All the above. Yeah, I'd have you go. That's impressive, by the way, that you're at 2,000 calories and you're able to hit 180, 200. I'd have you keep your protein around 200, 210, but then we'd probably bump your fats because, you know, I'd want to see where they're at at 2,000 calories. By the way, Sal, I mean, the highlights, too, probably where are this energy crashes coming from, too.

He's probably so high protein and so low. Fat, carbs are low. Yeah, fat and carbs are low. And so that's another reason why you feel the energy like that. You just don't have enough. Yeah, you're just not having an intake enough energy. Great job, though, hitting the protein because that's normally one of the things that people miss bad and they lose a lot of muscle when they lose that 90 pounds. So that's probably what saved you and has done a good job is the fact that you've done that.

Yeah, my lean mass has gone down a few. maybe five or six pounds in the year. Wow. Wow. That's impressive. That's really impressive. To drop 90 pounds and less than 10 of that to be is a huge success. You're going to see some. Yeah. If you do this right, very good, very good. If you do what we're saying right, you're going to see some really, really surprising muscle gains. Yeah. Like you're going to be like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. You got a, you got a fun year ahead of you do. Yeah. Yeah. It's exciting. That's exciting news. It's got to be a good year. We'll have one of them. We'll send over Maps 40 and we'll have one of our trainers.

out to you. All right. Well, I appreciate everything, guys. And thanks for being there along with me this past year. It's, uh, you guys have been an amazing help. Awesome. Thank you, man. Good job, brother.

Yeah, great job. Thank you. That's, this is just so good for people to hear, uh, who go on a diet or who use a gLP one, which, you know, really helps with the, your body adapts. Uh, and then you're, that's it. And you're stuck. And look, here's a guy that's six foot, 230 pounds, a big dude. he's working out six days a week.

That's very low calorie for a dude like that size moving that much. Way low. That's very low. And he's doing other activities, hiking, walk in, help him. Of course he's exhausted when he goes and tries to be. He had barely any carbs and all that too. Yeah, he's energy has to be. I mean, you got to eat more.

You know, guy that size doing that much activity typically is going to be around 3,000 calories and lean. No, I'll tell you a bit of him that's in an anomaly. the fact that he was able to lose 90 pounds and less than 10 of that B muscle is a testament to how without even knowing this guy well enough. Protein. He was consistent with his protein and he lifted weights through this process. That is the only way you lose 90 pounds in GLP1 and don't lose 20, 40, 50 pounds of muscle along the way. Most people just cut the calories so they dramatically decrease their, their problem.

protein intake. They don't have the energy to lift weights consistently. And sure, they lose the 90 pounds, but half of it is muscle. The fact that he was able to sustain that is a testament to his high protein intake consistently and the fact that he was hitting weights. Our next caller is Sam from Kentucky. What's up, Sam? How are you doing, Sam? What's up? Hey guys. How's it going? Good, man. How can we help you? Good. All right. I'll just do the normal thing. read down my question. I changed a little things because, you know, this was about a month and a half ago, so a couple things have changed since then, but I'll read down. So I'm currently in like a pretty aggressive fat loss recomposition journey. I'm 34, 6 feet currently weigh 286. I weighed this morning.

I've been lifting weights for a really long time, so I'm kind of past the whole like, newbie gains phase. But I still think I can get a lot of muscle mass on me. I'm not close to that limit or anything like that. Years ago, I lost 100 pounds. I went from 350 to 250. Gained it all back. I didn't really have a mechanism in place or a process in place for like maintaining that.

And it just, I gained it back pretty quickly. Also, like, I lost a lot of muscle in that process. process, like even no matter how much I lifted in the gym, I could, and I didn't really lift hard or anything, but I could just tell, like, I was weaker. And so that caused me a lot of lean mass loss. I think I gained a lot of it back, obviously, when I gained the weight back. But, so this time I'm doing things a little differently. I started Zepbound about six months ago. Really good friend of mine is an obesity medicine doctor. And so he sort of gave me some parameters. and he said hit 200 plus grams of protein daily, 80 ounces of water, 40 grams of fiber, and lift a lot.

And so I kind of took that to heart. And I used to lift a lot more like six times a week. And that tired me out real quickly. I could feel myself overtraining. So now I'm trying to do about two to three full body days and then two more focus days on on what i you know kind of what i want to work on or anything like that and try to get steps in as well getting around on average 6500 a day i try to hit more especially when it's warmer out uh go for a walk in the middle of the day or something like that and trying to get that

up to at least 8000 obviously it's difficult on a glp1 um but trying to eat you know before i was going around 8,000. 1,800 calories a day. I've up that to probably like over 2,000 to 22, 23, 2,400, which again, it's not easy on a GLP 1, but I don't want to like severely cut my calories too much and that would tap into my muscle. So I guess my question would be like, am I doing anything or is there anything I should do differently?

I eventually, I'm still pretty far away. from where I want to be. But yeah, what should I be doing differently, either in my training or nutrition? Yeah, your doctor almost gave great advice. Like we were hitting it out the park at the beginning there. So like the protein, great, hydration, fiber, great. Training is overdoing it. The amount of training you're doing and cardio is way too much in relation to where your calories are.

is just that and how big of a guy you are you're not a little pate i mean that's like a diet for a 135 pound girl you're you're a big guy you you're and you're moving you're not like a big guy who's sedentary you're a big guy who's moving and training um you're just gonna if you haven't already hit a hard plateau you're going to hit a hard plateau and the body's just not going to respond you probably feel tired you probably don't feel like you recover well you're probably not very feeling very strong uh sam you're saying you're saying you're saying you're You said when you're talking about your calories, you're saying probably around this, that, and the other. Do you know for sure, or are you just guessing?

No, I track pretty consistently. And just, you know, I get at least 2,000, but it's usually in like the 2,200 range. It's just every day is a little different. So one day it might be 22, one day it might be 24. So unless you lower your dose of Zepbound, because that's their appetite. So it's going to be hard to eat more. And you're probably already feeling like your stuff in yourself. Yeah, it's really hard.

So your routine should be MAPS 15, and you should aim for 8,000 steps a day, and that's it. If that's what you're going to do with your diet. Walking too, not running. No, no, walking. Yeah. That's it. Yeah, that's what I do.

I don't like the treadmill. The only real running I do is I'll play basketball once a week. No, no, you need to stop all that unless you just, unless you're going to increase your calories. Yeah. Yeah, 2,000 to 2,400 calories for 280 pounds, six foot dude is really low. And your strength training is going to be map. 15. So you're doing like two lifts a day. That's it. By the way, you'll get stronger on that. Yeah. Okay. And no other cardio except for, you know, hitting your steps. And that's it. Unless you're, you're, you're going to start bumping your calories. What that'll probably look like is you talk to your doctor and you say, hey, can I lower my dose? Because I need to get my calories up to 20, you know, just to start with like 2,600. But if you keep lifting, you know, if you're lifting two, three full day plus two focus sessions, plus you're doing basketball.

And you're eating that few of calories. Like, it's going to be hard, dude. Your body's going to just... Not just hard. You're done. You're not going to keep going. This is what happens to everybody who's been on a GLP1 is eventually they hit a plateau where they're just eating too little for the amount of activity that they're doing. And the body's no longer responding like it was when they first got on it.

So it's super common. And the answer is to reverse diet out of this. And one of the things we want to do is bring down the intensity of the intensity of of training and or volume of training, which you've got a lot of, you've got a lot of training you're doing right now. Anything high intensity like basketball, got to go. Just you're not fueling the body and supporting that. It's only working against your results right now. I'm not saying it's quit basketball forever, but you need to be like over 3,000 calories and feeling good and strong to do something like basketball inside your routine. Eating in the low 2000s, training that much,

just it's it's it's too much your body's got not going to respond the way you want it to so revering out mass 15 do you uh what maps 15 do you uh what maps 15 do you want them on uh wow yeah yeah i mean we can go real original we can go a power lift yeah uh do you like do you like do you like you like you like you like you like going to the gym right you don't want to work out be power lift yeah yeah i like i go to the gym five days a week i've actually noticed some good strength gains since scaling back from like six days a week of course of course so it's going to get better by the yeah by the way that just that's just just an example of how you much you needed that you do it again watch what happened it'll go up again yeah let's

send a mass 15 power lift yeah and so follow that um and uh when you'll be going to the gym most days but you're only doing one or two lifts and the rest of the time you can walk to get your steps up yeah walking's fine you you if you want to stay busy you got extra time walking is totally fine but stick with that and then the protocol and then bump your calories at least two 300 from where you're at right now. So if, and if that's difficult, then this is where you got to go back to the doctor and say, hey, can I lower my dose? I need, or can I get a little bit less so I can eat a little bit more?

And that's the plan right now is we got a reverse diet out of this. Okay. I think I can do that. Honestly, like even now my protein, like you, like you guys know, with gLP ones, it's hard. Very hard. A lot of it is like shakes. That's the only way I can get it in. That's right.

Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Super hard. Yep. super common dude okay yep great that's a great plan okay sam you got it man yeah let us know how it goes thanks guys you got it brother this this i you know we predicted this but uh it's getting crazy the demand for coaches is only going to go up oh yeah it's gLP ones because it's it's not

it's not good advice it's a tool it's not the solution i it's a great tool but sb u's right it's it was wild to us when we first now we see so many people that talk to us but yeah You would see people who would lose 35, 40, 50 pounds. They'd have another 30 pounds to go and they'd plateau and you look at their calories. You're like, you're at 1,200 calories. Yeah. And you have 30 more pounds to go. And, yeah, fatigued.

Like, this is, we have to figure this out. I linked up this weekend with five of my buddies. I used to run around back with my 20s. All, like, they used to be like all jacked. Everyone was into working out, lifting weights, all the things. They're all married, fathers, kids. Most of them have a bunch of little girls. Great time catching up with them.

The five, right? And their wives. So there's 10 of us there. Of the 10, eight are on GLP ones. Of the eight that are on GLP ones, none of them should be. That is where we're at right now with this. I mean, it's like it felt like overnight now I've got. And who knows how many other people that are somewhat connected to me that are

that aren't admitting it and telling me, these are just, I just think it's like a fat burning. Yes. Everybody is just hopping on it as like a way to, because it just, it's going to be 70% of America. Yeah. I mean, that call is so on point now. When I see it hit like a circle of my friends like that, very, very obvious to me. Yeah. You know, so.

Our next caller is Dallan from Utah. What's up, Dallan? What's up, man? Hey, guys. Thanks for having me on. Yep. How can we help you? So my question, it's,

Less of a case of something that's like clearly not working and more just trying to optimize and get the most out of the time I'm putting in. I'm a busy guy. I've got three young kids, got a busy career. I carve out, you know, four to five days a week to lift. I am prioritized strength training, trying to build muscle. And I usually have about 45 minutes to an hour. And so as I've been trying to build more muscle, I've focused a lot on taking reps close

to failure or, you know, one or two reps and reserve. And when I do that, I feel like in order to be ready to go for the next set, I need like three minutes, sometimes even more in between each set. And so that drags out the exercise that it makes it so that I'm only getting, you know, maybe five different exercises in a session by the time you factor in all the time between, which feels like the volume is, I'm always worried in the back of my head, like, would it be better to do more volume and lower the weight a little bit so I can cut down those rest periods. Does that make sense? Yeah. No, you're fine. No, you're doing good. What program are you following?

I'm not following one of years. I've actually just kind of made it my own through the years based on different things I've seen, listening to you guys and stuff like that. There's your problem. There's your first problem. I mean, I think you do great on like a Maps 15 protocol. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Listen, you can, you can, you can, if you can do either. Okay. So what you said, you could rest a minute. Here's a deal. You can rest a long time between sets. Yeah.

But don't make it any less than a minute. Less than a minute. And it starts to not really be strength training anymore for the most part. Right. So between one to five minutes in between sets or more is perfectly fine. Five exercises in a workout is great. Plenty. Plenty.

Yeah. So you can do, you can try doing where you do less weight so you can move faster. Yeah. But you're trying to put on mass and size. I'm looking at you right now, you're probably more of an ectomorph. You're better off going with the longer rest periods, go heavier, up your calories, and you'll get better games.

I think Max 15. Yeah. Or a power lift. Mass 15 power lift. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of feel, if you already were thinking it's less volume with what you're doing

right now and was worried, it's going to feel like that even more. But just keep focusing on what you're saying. Get strong. Yep. Get strong. Yep. Okay. Give long rest periods.

get good at those lifts. And then as so long as you're consistent, too, with hitting your protein and calories. So that's the other piece of this puzzle. If you go in and you do this great lifting program and then you're inconsistent with, you know, hitting your grams of protein, you're going to be spinning your wills. That's right. You're going to be moving good. And that's good for you. But if you want to build muscle, you've got to give it the building blocks consistently.

So the two things you focus on is that Master 15. protocol, having your meals ready for you so you can hit that protein intake, and I guarantee you're going to see the results. Yeah, here's how you know, Dellen. You follow the program that we're going to give you. You'll get stronger by the second week. And then you'll know, okay, this is working. Okay.

Yep, that's easy. Are you good about hitting your food? I am. Yeah, I know, I've gotten, this year I've gotten really dialed in. I've, you know, got my nutrition better than it ever has been. I lost like 45 pounds of being in the year. Good for you, man. 30% body fat.

Wow, good for you, in the past, you know, since about May, June, I've just been focused on building muscle. And I've seen, you know, some decent gains. It's just always that question in the back of my head of like, okay, I'm at the 80, 85% level. How can I get the extra five or 10, you know, how do I get the most? Yeah, we'll turbo charge you. Yeah, dude, when they talk volume, let me just help you out down, because you sound like, it sounds to me, correct me if I'm wrong, that you'll read studies and you'll read articles. Is that what you do? Okay.

Totally. Yeah, yeah. And that can get you spinning all over the place. And what the articles are going to say is that volume and progressively increasing volume is closely connected to hypertrophy. Strength is very closely connected to hypertrophy, especially in the first few years. You just lost a lot of weight. So now you're in that kind of strength building phase. You're going to be there for at least a few years. That's what I would chase. But consider this. Every time you add a rep or you add a pound, you've added volume. It's not just sets. so it's not just how many sets I do like if you added 10 pounds to your squat and you did the same three sets you just went up in volume so if we drop your your sets down how do you follow our program like this and you get stronger

your volume's going to be good not to mention in the first few years of trying to build muscle the best possible thing you could do is chase strength now strength isn't a great correlate for hypertrophy later once you're hitting like big numbers and you're getting real strong,

then the risk factor is high, and then gaining 30 pounds on your lifts isn't going to correlate as strongly to muscle. But right now it's going to, for sure. Like, if I gave you 30 pounds more on your squat, I guarantee your legs would look a lot bigger. Not to mention this way of progressive overloading the body, this organic way that Sal is talking about

where you just get stronger and you add five or 10 pounds to a lift every week is a much better approach than what most people do. Most people do like, okay, this is what I did last week. So now I'll do an extra set of this and I'll do one more exercise. And now I'll go to five sets of every like that's what people do. And it's way too much, way too fast. And they hit a plateau or go back the other direction. Just do this, do this minimalist type of program, try and get really strong.

If you're getting stronger, you are progressively overloading the body. And that will take you quite a way. So those three months of doing that. and paired with making sure you hit that protein tape, making sure you're feeding the body what it needs, and you're going to grow. You're going to grow. 100%.

Cool. Thanks, guys. Cool. You got it, man. You send that over to you, man. Okay. Yeah, this, you know, we should have a more detailed, maybe we'll do at the beginning of this episode,

on progressive overload because there's a lot of confusion around this, especially with the studies that come out. Right. And I'm going to say this right now, In the first, conservatively, okay, first three years of consistent strength training, not three years of inconsistent, but three years of actually really being consistent with strength training, get strong. Nothing will build muscle like getting strong. Well, that naturally does the progressive. Right.

Now, as you get more advanced, it gets tricky, right? So, you know, if you've been strength training consistently for five years, then you've built a great physique and you're really strong, now it's a really tricky game. And no, you can't progressively overload forever. If that was the case, look, I've been lifting weights to cell 14. I would be working out for 15 hours a day in order to continue progressing. It doesn't work that way. In fact, oftentimes, the way it works is you get more advanced is you figure out how to scale down. Give your body what it needs.

It's a much trickier game. It's not so straightforward. Just do more. It doesn't work that way. Our next caller is Dustin from California. What's up, Dustin? What's up? Hi, guys.

Thank you for taking my question. It's an honor to meet you guys. You guys have been so inspirational over the years. It's really exciting to talk to you guys. Thanks, man. How can we help you? So I wrote you guys a really long letter. I'm going to try my best to summarize it.

You know, I've been stuck despite really doing this fitness thing for quite a few years. And honestly, I don't know if anybody that saw me would even know that I go to the gym. So I feel like after this much time, I should be further ahead than I am. And I was, I'm willing to be open-minded and just take your advice and see what you guys have for me. A little background is my entire life. I've been really on this diet, lose weight kind of mentality. I've had multiple really big swings in weight over the years. I've done unhealthy diets.

I've been caught in that binge restrict cycle. I do, you know, I was in the military, so I got some PTSD, which leads to some poor sleep. So it's really not uncommon for me to wake up two or three times a night. And I admittedly, you know, usually get up and use food as kind of a comfort. And so I'll easily add a couple thousand calories, you know, on a night if I, you know, don't let my, if I don't keep that in check. You know, as a mailman for many years, that's when I found you guys. And I've been listening ever since. I did in 2019, I got, I realized I had a problem with alcohol, so I got, I got sober.

And so that's playing a part in, so what that led to is I became a counselor. And then so I left my job as a mailman and had a desk job for the most part. So I lost a lot of physical activity. And so I'm 43. I weigh 255. I'm six foot. I've never really done an intentional bulk. I've played with macros a lot.

So my number two question is, given some of my bigger swings with my diet, is have I ever even been in a cut? Or has it, when I swing the other way and kind of go off of my diet, does that equate to enough calories where it is almost like a bulk? You know, I tracked last week. I didn't try to diet. I didn't try to do anything special. and I was eating about 4,000 calories, just adding in all those extra little snacks and things like that. So where I'm at now is I currently do a five-day split. I put my calories at about 2,500 calories a week.

I do some incline walking on the treadmill maybe a couple times a week. And based on some things you guys said, I did, I changed my 4 to 6 rep range to 10 to 12 reps for about 4 weeks. and then I just came back on my four to six reps and I noticed I was able to add some more weight to the bar, which has been really nice. I've been on TRT for the last couple months, and my goal is honestly just aesthetic. I want to build strength and muscle, have a lower body fat percentage and really just look good. And then since I wrote that letter, I left my job as a counselor, kind of decided to take some time off and really just kind of work on some just my own mental health kind of thing. And so I've been doing some like therapy with the VA.

And that said, I have a lot more free time. So going to the gym five, six days a week is really definitely like the main part of my structure of my day. And I definitely, it's kind of like another therapy is just getting to the gym and I enjoy it. And I really like lifting weights and, you know, I don't do a ton of cardio. said, just walking a couple times a week. So the questions I had mentioned for you guys was, I was wondering if you guys have mind pump personal trainers and if that's something I should be investing in to kind of see where I'm going wrong. But my real question is, what's really

blocking me from making progress? I don't really know what I should be doing exactly with my diet and training-wise. I don't know if it's just a problem of patience or if it's a consistency problem or if maybe there's something else I'm just missing entirely. So that's kind of where I'm at right now. Amen. I appreciate you calling and Dustin. God bless you. You came from, you've come a long way. Yeah. From what you've described, you've come a long, long way. So you're doing really well. You're at the point now where we have to figure out the root of the behaviors, change that, and then the behaviors will change. If we focus on the behaviors, and that's part of the process as well.

But if we just focus on the behaviors and the look and don't solve the root of what's driving those, it's going to be a very, very difficult battle. Now, I have a question for you. I know you were working with people as a counselor. Were you helping them with their own sobriety? Were you helping people through sobriety and all that? Correct. Yeah, I've worked a couple different programs, like an outpatient and inpatient.

The last one I worked at was a detox center. So it was people that were really just getting over that, you know, initially starting in their sobriety. Okay. And were you getting a good sense of purpose from that helping other people? I do get a lot of purpose from helping others, which is what led me to start in that field. I do also do some like AA type stuff so I can help others, even on my own personal time too. Good for you. That's one of the best things you could do is help others.

It's other focused. So some of the challenges sometimes, this is even, this is especially even more true with men, is when we focus too much on ourselves and our insides, we get in this kind of downward spiral. It's actually a hallmark of depression is lots of self-focused. But doing for others, especially helping others in areas that we need help in, really tends to help us quite a bit move in the right direction.

So I, if I were, you know, you said you're working with a therapist. I would consult with them and say, hey, do you think I should go back to counseling and working with people just to give me kind of that sense of purpose? I think that'll help you a lot. You asked if we have trainers and coaches. We do. It says you're in California. You don't have to tell us where you're at, but are you near San Jose? Because I'd like to see you in person, if possible.

Yeah, no, I'm not too far away from you, guys. Okay, here's what we're going to do, Dustin. We have personal training in person and virtually. I want you to come here. Yeah. If we're not too far, we're in San Jose. So if we're less than 30, if we're, you know, if we're somewhat convenient, I'd like to see you in our studio working with someone in person. Wow.

Yeah, I love that. All right. I'm going to set you up with an assessment with one of our trainers in person here at the studio. When you come in, you make sure you say hi to us. Okay. And that's the best possible thing you can do in this direction. If you combine that with helping others, because our coaches have been trained by us. Okay.

So they know what to do, fitness and diet. Like, that's the bar. That's like the minimum, right? You got to know that. But they're really good at getting people to the point where this becomes a lifestyle that's healthy and relaxed and not stressful. One that is not, is no longer this crazy stressful struggle for you. Okay?

Like, in other words, Dustin, imagine what it would be like if eating healthy and taking care of yourself is something you really enjoy doing and you wanted to do. And if you felt stressed out, if you reached for something else, that served you better than the quick comfort of, let's say, food, or for some people, it's alcohol, other people, it's other thing. If it was something not destructive, if it was something that was really serving you, right? Imagine what that would feel like. This is what our trainers would work on with you.

And I like that you'd be here because we would see you. So we're here at least three days a week all day. And so we'd see you come in here. So I'll have somebody reach out to you, man. Okay, yeah, that'd be amazing. I really appreciate it. It's awesome just talking to you guys too. Yeah, I appreciate, hey, listen, I appreciate you calling it.

I also, I want to encourage you, dude, you've come a long way. Yeah, yeah. You've really come along. I mean, if you think back, you don't need to give me details, but I'm sure if you think back, you're probably in a completely different place than you were. Now you're just like, okay, there's another level here that I want to, you know, get to. And we can definitely help you with that. So, yeah.

Got you, dude. That would be awesome. Well, thank you guys. I really appreciate it. You're going to get a call here probably within the next hour. Yep. Okay. And hopefully we'll see you soon, man.

All right. I look forward to meeting you guys. All right. Thanks, brother. Take care. Yeah. Yeah, that's PTSD. Really, really hard.

The fact that he stopped drinking alcohol, man, that's phenomenal. Huge. That's phenomenal. And food is, I mean, look, yes, you can abuse food, but he's working on it. But, you know, one of the most helpful things, things that you could do is work with other people who need help in a similar area. Because you can help them. It makes you feel good. Yeah, we didn't ask him. I was kind of curious why he quit that. He know, you know, especially since he knew it was serving him and it helped him.

I wonder what the reason behind quitting it was. You know, I don't know. I'm going to guess. So you're right. We should ask them that. I'm going to guess, but probably because it got stressful. Yeah. You know, I know when, when, if I coached it. You know, if I coached, you know, if I coach enough people with body dysmorphia, I start looking at myself real straight, you know? And it's like, oh, and it makes it a little bit more difficult sometimes, which is a good thing.

Yeah. But I'm getting a guess. That's what it was. So I don't know. I don't know. It's a good guess. I mean, and then maybe that's what's catapulted him into, okay, I'm going to get down this and I'm going to go fix myself.

But bro, we got him in here, you guys, with one of our trainers. Yeah, I hope he's going to be a great. Is he telling you how close he is or no? It doesn't show. Yeah. But he's, I said San Jose. He says it's convenient. So let's make it happen, dude.

It would be great to see him. Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. We'll see you. It's 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,

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