Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2814: If You Want A Lower Body Fat Percentage, Watch This !

Episode Date: March 14, 2026

In this episode of Mind Pump, Sal, Adam, and Justin break down why cutting body fat isn't always the best strategy; especially for women already around 22% body fat, and explain why building muscle often produces a leaner, healthier physique. They discuss the physiological effects of dieting too lean, including hormonal disruptions, reduced metabolism, and performance declines. The conversation also explores strength gains, muscle memory, recovery, sleep optimization, and the surprising cognitive benefits of creatine. Later, the hosts highlight the impact of good coaching and education in the fitness industry while sharing stories from clients seeing life-changing results. In the listener Q&A, they help callers with physique competition prep, weight-loss plateaus, strength programming, postpartum training, and balancing fitness with a newborn. The episode wraps with practical advice on building muscle, improving metabolism, and creating sustainable long-term fitness habits. March Sale !  The Spring Bundle: Symmetry ($187), Prime ($107), Advanced Training Techniques Guide ($47) all for $147 (over 50% off) ⇨⇨go to mapsmarch.com Get KION AMINOS !  ⇨⇨go to getkion.com/mindpump 20% off, No code needed automatically applied at check out! Crisp Power Protein Pretzels !  ⇨⇨go to https://crisppower.com/ use code MINDPUMP10 for 10% OFF JOOVV RED LIGHT PANELS ! ⇨⇨go to joovv.com/mindpump Code "Mindpump" to get $50 off your first purchase (00:00) Intro (02:06) Why Women Shouldn't Cut Below ~22% Body Fat (07:46) Build Muscle Instead of Chasing Lower Body Fat (10:45) Reverse Dieting Example and Coaching Mistakes (18:29) Social Media's Unrealistic Fitness Standards (26:00) Creatine Benefits for Brain and Sleep Deprivation (32:24) Myostatin Peptides and the Future of Muscle Growth (38:08) Sedentary Lifestyle vs Physical Labor and Recovery (43:03) Coaching Success Stories and Trainer Development (50:06) AI Content and Social Media Authenticity (01:08:46) Caller 1: Program Advice for a Physique Competitor (01:20:07) Caller 2: Weight Loss Plateau and Reverse Dieting (01:29:03) Caller 3: Strength Training and GLP-1 Considerations (01:38:18) Caller 4: Training with a Newborn and Home Gym Setup  

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That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Hey ladies, if your body fat percentage is at 22% or lower, don't go in a cut. You're just going to lose muscle. You're probably even going to go higher and body fat percentage.

It's a bad idea. Let's get into it. Yeah. This is, I felt close to home. We just got off a call recently. Recently shared what Crenner and I have done. And it's tough. And I think this is at any age.

I think this becomes extremely important. Over 35. Over 35. Post kids, perimenopausal. This becomes even more. It's important no matter what. I mean, even in young, healthy women that haven't had children yet under the age of 35, I've seen this where you're in the teens and the body just is not responding.

Many times you see things like period loss. bone density gone down, things like that. And you feel like you're eating really good, training really hard, and the body is just not showing any results. No, 20, so by the way, I want to say this too, especially if you strength trains. So if you have good strength, which means you have some muscle, 22% is how most women actually want to look. This is how most women want to look.

It's a good body fat percentage. It's lean. You're healthy. For a lot of women, for most women, if you start to push below. this, especially if you push below 20, you start to see hormone disruption, muscle loss, you feel worn down, loss of performance, energy goes down. Now, yes, there's always anomalies that are out there for both men and women. But this is generally true for a lot of women.

And again, if this is you, if you're like testing your body fat, you're like 21%, 23%, 22%, should I go in a cut? No. In fact, you'd be better off just continuing to try to build lean. muscle, which oftentimes results in a little bit of a body fat percentage drop anyway. It's just a much better, healthier, sustainable approach. The constantly chasing the leanness, the super leanness. This is also true for men.

It's just more true for women. Women are much more sensitive. Their bodies are much more sensitive to getting too lean with body fat percentage. With guys, it's also true. You see guys, guys go below 11%. You start to see testosterone drop in a lot of guys when they do that. for women, in my experience, tends to be right around below 22,

definitely below 20. Well, and since you brought up men, and we just talked about this recently with my own personal experience, how surprised I was by my body fat test because I didn't feel like I looked like that. A lot of times when I get a female client that's hovering around the 22% body fat range or so,

and they're telling me like, ah, but I want to look, I want more definition. Yeah, under muscle. Yeah. they're not exactly, is they could, they would get the look that they want by adding five to eight pounds of muscle on their body. Versus trying to cut their way down to the look. And then what's amazing about this is, and I promise you, they'll get the look you're looking for, the shape, the curve, the smaller waist by adding the muscle.

And that seems counterintuitive, but it's true. And it is true for both men and women. a lot of times we are chasing this look and the better approach is to feed the body more, build more muscle because even at a higher body fat percentage with five more or eight more or for men, 10 more pounds of muscle on everybody looks radically different than you're just dropping down 2% body fat from where you're currently, where you're currently at. And we've seen this time, time again. And I mean, I've experienced it with myself many times where I'm surprised.

I'm like, oh, wow, I would have not thought I was that body fat percentage because I know what I feel like when I'm a certain percent. And it's like, I definitely don't feel like the guy that was 19% body fat and started his transformation journey 10 or 13 years ago or whatever when I did that whole, when I documented that, I'm only 1% different than that guy. But look, radically different because I have a lot more muscle mass on the body. And I think a lot of women, they get stuck in this percentage where they're at and they want to get. get leaner. Many times they're eating in the low 2,000 calorie or lower already, and they want to get a leaner looking. And they end up losing muscle. Yes. Yeah. So just, I mean, just to kind of paint it differently, let's say there's a woman at 22% body fat and she says, I want to go on a cut. I want to drop 3% body fat. We get down to 19% body fat. And in that process, let's say she loses, I don't know

what the numbers are. Let's say she loses seven pounds, but two or three pounds is muscle. But she lost more body fat than muscle. Let's say the percentage actually goes down. Is she in a better place? And I would argue, no. She's not. That loss of muscle has resulted in a reduced metabolic rate. So her metabolism slows down a bit. This happens when you cut calories anyway, even without muscle loss. Your metabolism learns to slow down. But if you lost muscle, that's most likely going to happen. you'll see some hormone changes. Losing muscle tends to cause hormone changes that are not as ideal. And does she look better, even though she's leaner but with less muscle?

I would argue if we take that same woman, had her gain eight pounds, even if she gained enough body fat in that eight pounds to keep her body fat percentage the same because she would have to. Okay, so if you gained eight pounds of lean muscle at 22% body fat without gaining any body fat, you would actually get leaner because now you have a smaller percentage of your body's body fat. The ratio changed. But let's just say she gained muscle and she gained enough fat to stay at 22%. So she's eight pounds heavier on the scale.

But she's got more muscle and enough body fat has been gained to maintain 22%. She's got a faster metabolism. And she looks better. Even though her body fat percentage is the same, she looks better. Her arms look leaner. Yeah. Even though she's up like eight pounds. Eight pounds.

Yeah. And so she's going to look at the same. look more sculpted in her delts, in her back, her butt, her quads, all the areas that she may have wanted to increase definition. And yet now she's in a place with a higher resting metabolic rate. So now maintaining 22% means she could eat way more. She's stronger. Her hormone profiles better.

Oh, yeah. She feels a lot better. Energy's a lot better. Like even like fertility markers and things. I mean, you have to pay attention to these things. your body's naturally telling you, you know, where your healthy zone is and where you're thriving the most. Even for men, like, you know, if your sex drive, like plummets, that's something to pay attention

to. Almost every time I've worked with a male client who's natural, because obviously you could take testosterone, so this changes things. But a man who's natural, who starts to try to get down to 10% body fat or a little lower, okay? Like clockwork, they're not as strong, less energy, and there's a reduction. and libido. Okay.

Now, 14%, 13%, 15%, 15% feel great. Once we start to get down to, and this is for men, 10%, 9%, okay, you look leaner, but you feel way worse. And I would argue with that same person

if they just built muscle at 12%, 13%, objectively, they would look better. So we have to be really careful with this like body fat percentage game. It's not what you think it is. And I'll say this.

Like, you mentioned fertility. You know, many female clients I had that were fitness fanatics who worked with me, who maintained. We had to gain body. Dude, I had, I can think off the top of my head, three women that I trained who were athletes. So these were like, they were, they were high level college athletes. And then they hired me a little later.

So they're in their like, you know, 20s, 30s. And they walked around really lean because they liked to be really lean. So they walked around 18% or so. And then they're married and I'm still training them. And they're like, oh, we're trying to have a baby. and it's taking a while and we have the conversation. I'm not a fertility expert,

but it would pop up. And I'd say, if we bumped your calories, you got your body fat percentage up, I bet it would be a lot easier. And all three times. Yeah. All three times.

That was the answer. Bumped their calories and within two months, they got pregnant. We have to talk about, though, why this is so hard, though, mentally. Just because, I mean, when Corinne and I are going through this right now,

and, And we tested our body fat. I want to say it's been a month and a half. I have to go back and look at the exact dates. Do you remember the dates when I showed you the two tests? I want to say, it was about a month and a half. Like 45 days maybe? Yeah, about a month and a half or so in between.

And I take a lot of responsibility for fucking up as a coach here. I shouldn't have had her test that soon. I got so excited. You didn't mess up with your strategy. No, no, no. The frequency of testing. Yeah, yeah. And I'll tell the audience what happened and what?

So we started, our first test was at like 17. something percent body fat. I can pull up the numbers, get exact. But like I have all, we have all the data. We've tracked everything. So it's like around, it was around 17% body fat or so. We were hovering around 1,900 to 2,100 calories. And she stays lean like that year around. And she really wants to build muscle, the feedback from her shows when she's got on it.

The judges are like, she needs more mass. She needs more size. And so this is, this is why she came to me to. help her through this process. Now, what I know is what we're talking about right now. I know that from all my experience that a woman's body, when it's in the teens, especially like 17, it doesn't respond very well to both burning body fat and building muscle in that low. It's kind of in survival mode. And if we want to lean out and get more shredded or, in her case, build a bunch of muscle already. The body fat percentage has got to come up. That's right. And so I knew this inevitably

that we were going to come up a little bit on body fat percentage. My hope was to show her in that short period of time that we also would have built some muscle. But that didn't happen. A month and a half goes by. We're increasing calories. And all that happened in that. I mean, she's dialed, right? We, to the calorie, we know exactly what we're consuming. She went from 19 to 2100 to what? Okay, so we're up to between 26 and 2,800 calories a day. Five, five, six hundred more calories a day. Plus dramatically reduced volume. Yes.

So I, I reduced her volume probably in half. I have to ask her to get specifics like on what she would say is the total volume I've cut out. But I've cut out probably half of the volume that she was doing. I minimize her steps. I said, I don't want to. So I've reduced a lot of that. All of this intentional, because I knew I wanted to increase body fat percentage. But I was hoping I also would build.

some muscle on that. And she looks so good to me right now. And we're hitting PRs like every week. She's funny too because she looks way better. Yes. So look, looks and that's what it is. Everybody's telling me. I was like, dude, Corinne looks so good. I'm like, I know, I know. I'm so proud of her. She's kicking ass right now. And I'm like, she's hitting PRs her day.

And so I jumped the gun. Even like, knowing better that I should, should have probably stayed a little bit longer. I wanted to show her really quick. Like, look at what we're already doing. Let's keep pushing, right? And what came back? was devastating, I know, to her, you know, and frustrating to me and frustrated to me

because I should have known better. I should have waited longer and delayed longer. I got antsy and I did that. And so imagine her pushing as hard as she's been pushing for me, listening to everything I'm telling her to do. And all that happened was literally no pounds of muscle were built and we only put on body fat. So we've gone up on the scale like eight pounds.

and it's been, it's all registered. But by the way, she's still leaving. Right, right. We're still at 19%. Yeah, she went up to 19%. Right. We went from 17 to 19% by that. Now, I know the average person

might be like, oh my God, I wish I would have, but you got to understand where this is all relative. Mentally. Yeah, it's all relative to what that has to feel like as far as discouraging for a client to go through. And I'm going to add to this, right? So I think you're on point, bro. I think 100% on point.

You jump the gun a little bit because here's what will happen with muscle games. This is what happens with muscle gain predictably. You get, if you're eating right, you're doing good, you know, programming, you get stronger, stronger, stronger, stronger, stronger, stronger, muscle. It's not like stronger muscle, stronger muscle. It's like you get stronger for, and she's hitting PRs consistently. We can expect over the next 30 days for her to gain muscle.

Yeah. I mean, we're talking about what she's added what? How much is she added to some of her lifts? Oh, yeah. She's up 25, 50 pounds on the big lifts, like hip thrust, squatting. That's going to turn. into muscle. Yes.

That's just how it works. I wouldn't even add this to that, that layer that you said. It looks like this. Getting healthier, getting healthier, getting healthier, getting stronger, getting stronger, then comes the muscle and muscle. That's right. And so I think that's the part that is that people have to understand is that when you're at that lean of a body fat percentage with that low of a calorie, the body is not in a

healthy place. It may look good to the average person who's looking out, but it's not in a healthy place. And if the longer it's been in that place, the longer it's been in that place, the less it feels healthy. And so it's not going to be, and this is where I screwed up, it's going to be longer than just 45 days of being healthy. That's right. And, you know, feeding properly, reducing the volume to where it should be. It's finally going like, oh, yeah. And it's like, and it's giving us some positive feedback. Like, here you go, you're getting a little

stronger. You're starting to get a little bit stronger. But it's not giving us so much positive feedback that we see this awesome change on the scale of all muscle. So the question, just not to get too deep in the weeds, the question is, how could she gain so much strength without it registering as muscle gain? Well, first off, if you're too lean, you're not going to have good neural drive and good muscle contraction. And or recovery.

And or recovery. So that's number one. So what she's noticed, our central nervous system adaptations, more energy, more fuel, reduced volume, which is allowing her to get those strength gains. So that's where that comes first.

Now, as you continue down this path, the only way she's going to continue to get stronger is if muscle fibers actually grow larger. Yeah. And that's where you see. This happens the guys too. Like I'll get stronger, stronger, stronger, and then I'll see the stuff. Central nervous system, then it goes to muscle building.

That's right. Now, as far as, like, just to use an example of a guy, if I had a guy come up to me who religiously kept his body fat at 8%, okay, that's like a Korean, like a male Corinne, 8%. We just had that caller, remember? Yes. The body built on a collar who I talked to. That's right. That's right.

So you got a guy who comes to me and is like, he's just very religious about keeping his body fat at 8%, which is like Corinne for her 17%. 8% all the time. He's like, I want to gain some mass. I want to gain some muscle. You're not to gain some body fat, bro. It ain't going to happen to 8% body fat. Yeah.

We actually have to gain some body fat to get your body to build some muscle. Yep. That's just the way it works. And again, I'm going to speak to people. And guys' bodies are more resilient to that. They are far more resilient at lean body fat. And yet still would have to do that. Still would have to happen.

That was the same advice we gave that guy. This guy, this Iron Man running, bodybuilding dude, who's at like single-digit body fat is one to go build. and it's like, dude, we're going to have to put body fat percentage, increase calories, reduce all your training volume. Well, I'll say this. For a guy to significantly affect his fertility to where he becomes infertile, he has to diet and overtrain for a while for that to happen.

Like for a long time, women, most high school and college female athletes don't have their period. That's how sensitive their bodies are to just kind of, responsible to that. Well, they're designed to reproduce. And the baby's in you. That's what makes the human body so magical and special. The fact that because women have this ability to reproduce and we do not, it has to be kept at a certain health level in order to carry the life of another baby.

And I'm glad you said that because peak shredded Instagram look is never peak health. No. Peak health is peak fertility. This is true for both men and women. for both men and women. This is peak health, peak hormone health, peak, all that is peak fertility is typically what it looks like.

Yeah. But again, if you're listening and you're like, oh, I'm testing your body fat and you're like, I'm at 22%, I'm at 21%. I want to get leaner. Stop. Don't, now you can dip into 18%, but get right back out.

Yeah. But again, even there, if you're at 22% body fat and your metabolism is roaring, you've been doing it right. You're eating a lot of calories. You want to dip into 18% for, a month, okay, fine, but come right back out.

But if you're sitting at 22%, you're eating, you know, 2,200 calories, you're working out five days a week, the worst thing you could do is try to go on a cut. Yeah. What'll happen is you're going to feel like crap. Yeah. And you're going to lose muscle. And oftentimes what happens, and this is where it gets really frustrated. And I've seen this so many times.

And it's such a frustrating place to be. They lose weight on the scale. They beat themselves up. They restrict their calories. Like, oh my God, I'm so excited. They get a body fat test. comes back the same. What the hell just happened?

I just did everything I thought. I feel terrible. I'm working out more. My body fat percentage stayed the same. How did that happen? Well, you lost muscle. In fact, the getting leaner part, ironically, would be to just build muscle.

That'll make the getting leaner part more likely. That's just for sure. And the hard part is the uncomfortable phase. Yes. Right? The uncomfortable phase of the body, getting up to that higher body fat percentage. to getting in a healthier place,

the delayed gratification of the muscle packing on, like you said, it's like we first get healthy, healthy, healthy, then we get strong, strong, strong, and then comes the muscle, muscle,

muscle. And that's different for everybody, depending on how, like, the longer you've kept yourself in that low calorie, low body fat percentage, the longer it most likely takes to get healthy

and then to get strong and then to build muscle. And so, and the shorter that you've been in that time, the more likely it is that you can rebound pretty quick. This is why, even though there's not a large percentage of these people, but there is a percentage of people that compete. We talked to another lady that had a very healthy relationship with competing, right?

And you could tell by the way she looks, fills, how much she was eating. And so if you, for the most time, you're in an off season, you eat high calorie, and then you get shredded for one show, and then you get back to a higher body fat. You can do that. And the body will respond relatively quick. But if you've been in this like perpetual cycle, a very low calorie, trying to always push to a lower body fat percentage, the body is just resisting.

It's just, it's crazy to me how much, uh, and media has always done this. It's done this for a long time. And now with social media, we've like normalized, uh,

these like really unhealthy, um, you know, ideals. It's always been that way. It has. It's always been that way. But what I mean by that is social media is so in your face all the time.

Yeah. You were bombarded by it. Totally. Totally. And it's so crazy. It's like, What's the ideal? The ideal now is this crazy, unhealthy, very unattainable look? Well, haven't we done studies now, too, on like your likelihood of, like, your perceived

happiness based off how many hours you are on social? Oh, yeah, there's a strong correlation. Yeah, there's a major correlation to that. I mean, because it's, I mean, what is it? Comparison is the Thief of Joy. Yeah. You can't help, but, and this is not just body. It could be success.

I mean, that's the other thing. People that are striving to do better in their life. If you opened up Instagram, you would think every 22-year-old is rich. And why aren't you? You know what I'm saying? Way, way stronger. Way richer, way rippter. Faster.

It's just, and the algorithm is designed, the more you hover over it and look at it, the more you get of it. And so then before you know it, you're the only one who's not rich. It's just wild because we've all worked in gyms most of our lives. So you already have a self-selection bias of like people who, work out. Do you know how often we see six-packs in the abs? In the gym? You don't. If you listen long enough, you've heard me tell it. It's been a long time as I've told the story. But I used to do this when I used to present to people. When I would get somebody who was intimidated

by the gym and I was sitting down presenting them the membership and training and stuff like that, you know, I'm just, I feel really insecure. I would literally mid, I'd say, stand up and look around. I want you, stand up. I want you to find me. five intimidating bodies that you see out there. And a lot of times you'd see this look on their face. They're like, oh, wow. A bunch of normal people. Everybody looks like me.

You say like a person in here trying to get healthy. I was like, that's most of the gym. Most of the commercial gyms are a bunch of average looking people that are struggling their way through and not doing it the best way. That are, it just you rarely see a body that is jacked and ripped. Now, there are obviously anomaly gyms. Yeah. That have attracted.

They gravitate to those ones. Right. But your general lifetime, 24-hour fitness, crunch, insert, whatever, big commercial. Now, they're generally going to be more fit than the average population. Yeah, oh, yeah. You ain't watching a bunch of shredded? They're fitter than if you go to Disneyland.

You know what I'm saying? They're definitely fitter than the people that go to Disneyland. Hey, that'll make you feel good. If you feel bad about yourself, go to Disneyland. That's where the average person is. Disney World is the worst. Way worse. Remember I sent you guys, I sent you guys videos.

Dude, traffic jams. Traffic jams with scooters. I know. And double fisting like a super big gulp looking drink with the nachos weather. Yeah. Yeah, it was crazy. I remember you guys telling me that. I went like, what, two years ago?

Yeah. I went to, it was, yeah, two years ago, I think it was. It's because the South is there, so it's a little worse. Disney lands like that too, but Disney World is. No, world is worse. Yeah. I'd never been to World until this time. And it's exactly how you described it.

It's like, I've never seen so many rascal scooters in a, in a, seriously. Yeah. You will go there for one day and see more rascal scooters than you will see in a decade of like in the real world. Like that's how like centralized that is. It's a, it's a wild thing. And it's because of just it's obesity, not because they had like a knee surgery. I mean, I'm sure there's exceptions that there's some people out there. No, they're just, they can't walk.

It's always interesting to me, even the Midwest, like the propensity for people to be like, they're drinking mountain dew. They're drinking the most, the highest. sugar drinks. Like, you know, like the sweet teas and, you know, stuff that's like, that's what's popular. And it was like mind blowing to me. I was like, this is just straight liquid crack. You know, you guys are drinking all that. You think a lot of that, too, is just because trends tend to start from the outside and

come in, I guess that wouldn't explain Florida very well. Because I'm like, sometimes like it just takes a while before that stuff. It's cultural. Stuff gets there. It's cultural. There's studies on Mexico. This is really interesting. Mexico's obesity rate

After Coca-Cola. Exploded. After Coca-Cola. After soda. They were actually one of the leaner fitter, right? They didn't have an issue with obesity. And then they just exploded. So it's a huge driver of that.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's liquid calories, right? In your face. Well, it doesn't help they have terrible water, too. Oh. So all of a sudden you insert a different option that's loaded full of sugar and tastes good. Like, it's like, you know what I'm saying?

It's like, well, take a chance dying or drink some soda. We got clean soda for you, dude. That's true everywhere. No, I'm serious, dear. I know, it's crazy. Hey, I got to tell you, so I got a friend of mine who's been using creatine. So we recommend creeteen all the time. But this friend of mine does a job that requires him to lose a lot of sleep at times, okay, because he's got to work overnight.

He's working emergency, that kind of stuff. Yeah. And so he tried, he's been doing the high-dose creatine. Yeah. to see if it helps with his brain function and stuff. And he's like, bro, it's crazy. Yeah. It's crazy.

The studies on that, it's wild. Like, if you are sleep deprived, you can do a test and we can see that you're sleep deprived. In studies, they'll give people 20 grams of creatine, which is a very high dose. And it almost gets rid of all of the cognitive symptoms of sleep deprivation. So it's not going to, obviously, I don't think you can not sleep and eat creatine. But that's crazy. There's nothing that's ever done.

that. You give someone meth and it's not going to completely get rid of some of those effects. I wonder at what the threshold is. So, you know, I'm like tracking sleep like crazy right now, which by the way, last night scored my highest score ever at 87. I'm on the hunt for 90. I've never seen 90 before. Competitive with sleep. I am very competitive with this. I am becoming competitive with this. I'm on it. And I have plans to do some things soon that I'm going to add to and track and change and so I'll get back to you. But so let's say, so I had, I traveled, which that definitely gave me some, some low 70s, which for me, which is great though, because for me now, that's considered low as low 70s, which is awesome. That's a huge improvement for me. I used to score in the 50s and

60s and all the time. So, uh, low 70s. So do you think, um, there's still benefit at that? Because it's not, that's not like sleep deprivation. I'm not like way deprived, but I'm not good. So what the theory is, is that with sleep deprivation or stress, you get energy, basically energy creation dysfunction or mitochondrial dysfunction. And because ATP is like this primary source of energy for basically all your cells, when you use creatine, you have more ATP. We know what this does for athletic performance. So more ATP means you're stronger. That probably results in more muscle gain. Cratein, we've known this for a long time. But the brain uses a lot of ATP.

Now, you have to take more creatine to influence brain metabolism, higher dose, five grams for muscle, probably closer to 15 for the brain. But yes, absolutely. So that's what I'm trying to get better about, like, okay, today was great, 87, so I feel good, so I'll take my normal dose of creatine. What I haven't been good about and consistent about is recognizing like, okay, there was a day or two there where that was bad, like intentionally mega dosing it. I think because we have some relatively long studies that show creatine is really safe.

It's this really, really safe compound. We've got lots of studies on creatine. I think if you have a job that's demanding, stress as a parent, something that requires you to be sharp, I think it would not be a bad idea to always be in the higher, you know, 10 to 15 grams all the time because of all the mental load, you know. Yeah, so I should probably, what I should do is what you're saying is just try and train myself. Obviously, I have plenty of access to it. Yeah, he's using the Keon because it's like the pure powder. Yeah.

Pure, pure, super well-sourced creatine powder. Yeah. You know, just, you know, take a scoop of it, put it in water, drop in your face, whatever, wash it down. Yeah. A few times a day. Does Keon have the, I know obviously they have the powder in the jungle? Do they make individual packets too now? I thought I saw one.

Oh, do they? Let me check it out. Look up and see that if they do. I mean, Keon's always, I mean. Super quality. Yeah, it's high quality. It's super, super high quality stuff. So, yeah, it's good.

The reason why I asked that, too, because I didn't know about their other EA's done differently. And they have it in different forms. Flavored and stuff. Flavored. And then also. This is just powder. Yeah, they have it in pills.

They have it in powder. And so I'm wondering if they have, if they have other forms besides just the, the. I think they only have the plane. No packets either. And it's in the bottle. It's in the, yeah. Okay. So it's just the EAAs that come in the pills or the,

the powder. Correct. Okay, so I was wondering if they had different options. I was, dude, uh,

Jay Campbell, he, he texts me every once in a while. You know, Jay, he's like, everything's great. He's got this new thing. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. But bro, that myostatin inhibiting peptide that they worked on. Remember he talked about this? Yeah, they said that so they actually come out with it. So it's gotta be way great.

So fallistin or fallistatin. Look it up, done. Let me see if I'm saying it right. I don't know. So this peptide's been around for a long time. I just, I'm going to talk about it

Keep your eyes on this because I think this is... Dr. Khan was trying to sell. This is going to be probably used by everything. Didn't we inject it? Yeah, in the arm. No, we all inject it. Yeah. Now, he gave us, he said it was his own one-time use it.

Yeah. It stays in your body forever type of deal. No, not forever. It was like a year or two. A year or something like that. So I don't really notice much from that. I don't notice a lot from a lot. Well, so listen to this.

So Jay, I've been talking to him. And you know Jay. Joe's like, he loves hyping everything. up. So I'm always like teasing him, right? But he's showing me pictures of these people before and after himself. He's like, bro, this stuff is. So fall statin, is that, is that what it is? Falostatin is the thing he was talking about. Okay. So fall statin's been around for a while. It's a peptide that reduces myostatin inhibit. So myostatin is like, it's like what puts the brakes on muscle growth. And if you can effectively block myostatin, which we don't haven't done, they can do this

genetically with animals, you just build muscle. It's crazy. So like the, this, all this research going into these kind of myostatin inhibiting pathways because of GLP1 drugs. Are they combining them together? That's what they did in some of these studies where they'll take people on, they've done it with monkeys so far. Well, they put them on GLP1,

then they'll put them on a myelstatin, like really powerful mildestatin inhibiting drug. And they don't lose any muscle. In fact, they actually gain muscle on low-cats. It's really weird and wild. So it's crazy, like, where this is going. But anyway, Jay's guy is a chemist, and he figured out how to make the false statin

long acting. because the problem of Falstatin was it was so short acting. You'd have to literally use it like 10 times a day just to keep it active. Wow. What is that one called? Paulistatin. Okay. His is long acting and he's been telling me and showing me pictures and what people are writing.

And this is like, bro, this is going to take the athletic and bodybuilding world by storm. Either this or stuff like that. Here's where I think it's going to be a huge mistake for a lot of people. And this is just my personal opinion. based off of what I've been experimenting with myself and have come to realize the hard way is one of my greatest strengths I talk about is that I have this ability to switch it on diet training

and like just make real quick. And multiple times now I've allowed myself to fall off, the wagon, come back. And when I come back on, I put on 15 to 20 pounds of muscle like that. I mean fast. But so, then all of a sudden all these injuries start happening. You know what?

That's a good question. I'm going to ask Jay if this, this would help you with that. I would think it'd be worse. Not only that, what's the quality? Because wasn't that like a contention there? Well, the study, the monkey studies we're talking about is not this.

They're using something so powerful that these monkeys didn't do anything. And they were eating low calorie. Yeah, but see, that doesn't make any sense, you know, that, okay, so you get that signal, but, like, where's the stress and what's compressing it into, like, informing it? I mean... I don't know if it would build muscle without strength training. That's a good question.

Yeah. So his guys are all bodybuilders. They're all guy, they're all dude. Well, yeah, that makes sense. They're all working out. Training, yeah. So he's, he himself has gained eight pounds of lean body mass in, uh, less than a year, which for Jay is a lot of muscle. He's been strength training for a long

time. Sure. Just from using, uh, so I'm just saying like this is, this new frontier is going to be wild. Yeah. It's going to be, it's not hormonal. It's going to be well. And I'm going to ask him about that with you because I wonder if it would be worse or better. Yeah. My first, uh, instinct is, yeah, that it's worse. Because you want to slow it down your game. Yeah, I need to, and this is where I'm at right now. It's a really annoying place for me to train. Yeah. Really annoying. Yeah, it's like, it's to be going to the gym and like lifting and. Your nickname Mr. Glass was right. Yeah,

that is the nickname you've given me now. That's best of it. It is. I'm sorry, bro. It's really, it's, it's, it's, but this is the only conclusion I've come to is that it has to be something like that. It's too rapid. It's so rapid. It's so rapid. And, and. and you took such a long time off from me really consistent. Gaining 15 pounds of muscle in like, you know, two months. Not even, 30 days. Not even, yeah. Oh, that's right.

You tracked it. Oh, yeah, I'm doing it. I'm doing it in 30 days. I did 21. The last time I did crazy tracking and showed everybody, it was it was 20, 21 pounds in 30 days. It's all muscle memory, everybody. I know. Oh, it's not real.

Okay, buddy. This was all gaining muscle back. I'll do it again for you. It's not hard for me. It's like literally. Brought it back. And how that happens. so quickly back and forth for me is because I'm also guilty of the other way. Like when I'm off,

I also don't eat. I don't eat. I like it's easy for me to skip the first two meals the day and then eat. And then so my calories dramatic. You're also losing. That's right. Exactly. My calories dramatically drop. My protein gets cut in half or more. I'm not stimulating it by lifting consistently. So it just pairs down. I lose I lose some weight sometimes. Sometimes I gain little because I'm drinking, eating bad stuff. And so I don't really change a lot on the scale. But I, so I gain body fat. I lose muscle rapidly.

See maybe about a, I don't know, 10 pound change on the scale or whatever like that. But definitely it can huge different composition change. And then I turn it on and I go the other opposite. I'm like dialed. Diled. Hitting everything. Tracking everything. Too much.

Lifting progressive overload week over week. Like, I mean, and then I just, it all comes back. And then all sudden the thing that happens is I am. quote unquote, feeling so good in the gym, I just keep lifting more because I can, I feel like I can totally lift weight. And I'm not, by the way, I'm not pushing it. It's not like I'm going in there and going like,

trying to hit PRs, hitting singles. It's just that every time I come back to squats, I can add another quarter on, and then add another quarter on. And it's just like, and then all of a sudden, I feel pools, tears, I feel strains. And it just keeps happening to me. You got to, like, settle and do it slowly,

and get your body used to. Yeah, and just do that for a while. And that's kind of where I'm out now. I'm like, I'm doing the same weights, which is so counterintuitive for me when it's like, when I know I can do more. And I know I'm like, I just need to stay here for a while and really just condition the body and the joints. What a weird problem to have. Weird.

You know what I mean? Weird. Weird. Stop progressing too fast. Stop it. Yeah. But what I know is that it's the same thing that I said has been so awesome about having all this muscle memory from getting older. The downfall of it is what I'm realizing now is just,

When it comes back that quick, it presents other challenges. Totally. And the irony of that is this, you know, and I understand, too, being on hormone replacement therapy, it feeds into that. If I was letting myself be low testosterone at my levels where now, I wouldn't be able to build that back that fast. What allows me to do that is I've got optimal testosterone levels. I've got optimal testosterone levels.

And so, you know, the body naturally would put breaks on that for me. but, you know, I keep it at optimal levels. I didn't even consider that. Oh, yeah. And so it packs it on where so, yeah, it's a blessing and a curse. Yeah, I'm having kind of like an entirely different experience right now. It's like, so I have had like this run of maybe a week of the most high intensity, high volume, like work capacity, you know, just physically exhausting shit. You're digging holes, bro.

Yeah. And I feel the best. have felt in a long time. And it's like really like mixed emotions about it. Because it's like I used to train at a really high intensity all the time and then like really dramatically shifted because of, you know, everything we talk about. And it made a big huge difference because I just trained that way forever. And then this stark shift was like my body responded. And I had all this like crazy progress. It's the point where I feel like I've been too low volume for too long. So now like I'm jumping up high, but I'm going full, you know what?

Full tilt. Yeah, full tilt. I like that. It's better. Full tilt all the way. I'm just like, I have to taper that now because I'm like, I'm like, antsy to now bring that into my training more because it's like I'm still, I'm lifting weights, but I'm also doing all this manual labor work and all this kind of stuff,

just trying to like, you know, be productive. on top of things. And I've getting the best sleep. Granted, I've been outside and I've been getting a lot of sun. You know, I've been eating a lot more. And so you could, like, factor a lot of these other things in. Plus, we're so sedentary, dude. But yeah, this is this.

So, okay, yes. So you want to know something interesting since you went this direction about last night's sleep score. Part of it that's a little wild to me is like it wasn't my best turning everything off early, getting to bed on my consistent time last night. You know what I did yesterday was. I did an hour in the red lights on a, I did an hour of cardio and I trained all in the day. And I, and I just slept.

I think we have become so sedentary. Yeah. For so long here. That's it. And it's been killing me, dude. Yeah. We're here from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. just for listeners, we will get approximately a 15 to 20 minute walk. That's it.

Yeah. That's it. The rest of it's sitting here doing the show. in meetings, doing business stuff. So that's it. From 9 to 5. Yeah. During 20 minutes of walking.

Yeah, that's way sedentary, bro. It's totally. Even the hour on the treadmill and working out still put me under a 10,000-step day. It was an appropriate activity day. Yeah, and then I got this great. And then also I said in the red light for the red light sauna for an hour. And so I think my body just needed to get exhausted like that. and then I, like I said, I didn't even have my best

sweep or two. I look back, I actually told Katrina, I'm like, man, I told you I wanted to get to bed early. We ended up staying up late, talking and all the stuff like that. And I'm like, but what I, so I got an 87 on my score. It's so weird. But the only thing I can draw it back to is like, oh, I did all those things. I'm like, man, if I would have also got to bed on time, maybe I would actually hit that elusive 90 that I've been trying to get after. But what it highlighted to me more than anything else is like, God, that's how much I need to get more of that

in my life because my body needs to. Yeah, I need to figure this out. How to get that in there. Is there somewhere probably in the middle, though, for you? I feel like, I can't sustain this. And I was talking to court that last night, it was just like, oh, my God, I could barely even move my arms. Like, I was just, like, so fried. And but at the same time, I had this weird, you know, like, you get that, that kind

of rush. And it's probably the cortisol jerky feeling, you know, where I was just like, oh, I'm like, I feel really, like, weirdly good and, you know, energized. But at the same time, my body was trashed. Maybe we should have like treadmills while we podcast. Yeah. It's just, I'll just be doing this little time.

It's so silly to me. I know. I get it. You're moving. But you know, you see like fitness podcasts and they'll do the podcast but they're on a treadmill while they're talking. It's so obnoxious. Yeah.

But I get it at the same time because yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't like city. I think it would be just, you did this. You know, kudos to you.

Starting us on this was like you were like, we need it at least after the pocket, get up and do our. And that's minimal. It just helps with our show. Yeah. Well, what we should do is we should do it before also now. That's right. It's like we should just agree when we get here because we kind of have a slow starting way.

Two a day. Hey, let's, yeah, exactly. Let's go walk before the first one and then do our break and do another one. And even then, we're still going to be. But I mean, I think that in itself will create. We'll actually increase our productivity. I think so too. I think so too.

And so it would be a good habit for us. And by the way, I'm not advocating for an hour of sauna, hour of cardio, hour of training to our person, but what it really highlighted to me, which is how, to your point, how sedentary we've been, how much my body needs more of that, which is not normally,

the person who listens to this podcast is normally a fitness enthusiast type of person. So it's not the recipe for the average person. I just, we are, we sit in here for so. Yeah, speaking of all that, I just, God,

you know, it's been so rewarding. Because, you know, we've been doing this now for over, over 10 years. And I haven't really, I haven't personal trained, for most of that time.

But now we have trainers and coaches here that train clients in person and virtually. And, you know, we get to kind of be a part of it here and there. And I always tell the trainers, I'd get me in. Bring me in on the calls. I'd love to talk to people.

If you need help or if the person's a fan of the show wants to meet. Like, I'd love to just get to know these people. Well, yesterday I was on with Will and one of his clients. I won't say her name just to protect her privacy. But I've talked to her several times now. And you guys, the improvement that she's been going through and seeing is emotional.

It got me emotional. So this person working with Will was came out of an in-treatment facility for eating disorder. So she started working. Her insurance was in the cover therapist. She couldn't find a good one. She was a fan of the show. She called in and wanted to work with one of our trainers and coaches. And we did the whole like, okay, we're not therapist.

We can help you with the fitness and all that. Anyway, I got on with her and I haven't seen her probably in maybe 45 days. And just the way she looked was so dramatically different. She looks so vibrant. Awesome. So healthy. And she's taking these baby steps because she, I mean, she was just really extreme in one direction.

So we're taking these steps with eating more, exercising less because she's due chronic exercise or like you know how are you thinking about yourself it's right these conversations just bro i got on camera i looked at her and i almost like i was tearing up just to see the difference in her face yeah and her hair and her health oh man now you got on was she having more challenges or was she excited about she's pumped okay she's pumped she's pumped oh cool she's so pumped she's so excited so like i can't believe i'm here and my family's excited and my daughter you know my you know this is happening. All this positive stuff.

She's still, we're still processing through, still moving through. But this is the best, I think, she told me this is the best she's ever done. And her strength's going up.

And it's just so cool. It's just so cool to see that, you know? Super encouraging to see that. Super, Will's doing a phenomenal job with her. He's a really good coach. It's so great. His brother got to sit in

because now he's working here. It's so wild to see the, so what's so different for me is most of my career, even less than personal training. I train trainers. Yeah. So I'm used to having a staff of 15 to 20 trainers working for me.

You've had hundreds over the decades that have worked for me. And I've never seen anything like the team that we have. And it's obviously I didn't have this podcast, right? And so a lot of it took, it would take a year, maybe two years of really, really developing a trainer before. They were like real good trainers. Yeah. And these trainers, Yeah,

three months. It's like they jumped five, 10 years of experience. Yes. In a year. They just leapfrogs. Yes. To that point.

Like, I listen to them communicate to the clients. Like, dude, I couldn't communicate to my clients like that. Yeah. So, like, you're eight or nine. Stumbling in my words is terrible.

Yes. And so it's so cool to see these. And it's not because they have eight, nine years of experience. Some of them will have less than a couple years. And, but it's, they all have been listening to the podcast for them.

I came out of that, right? with Will. I come in here. Doug and I are watching something, so I'm here for a bit. I'm doing some work. I'd write some emails.

Then I walk out and all the trainers are sitting in that area and they're reviewing coaching calls for each other, which is phenomenal. They're literally watching in like, how could you have communicated this better?

How can you help with your client's consistency? Do you think this was the right, you know, the right advice? And they're just like, and they're like, It's part of the reason is the way that they're working on it. It's amazing. Yeah, yeah.

It's amazing how these- The Friday meetings are really cool, too, where, in fact, Kyle has just evolved it to another layer to it. It's similar where all the coaches and trainers have to call is designed to client challenges, what we call it, where, you know, what are some of the challenges? And every trainer that has one will start to share, oh, I've got a client, we're struggling with this, is that. Then you get to hear, you know, 22 other trainers are our, our, you know, all brilliant that are, hey, this has worked for me in the past, try this. And so they're all learning together. And then from there now, it breaks up into these subgroups. And so, and they're led by some of our leader trainers that are leading the other trainers. And so educating them.

And so that's the big focus right now. I shared a thing with Kyle that was huge for me when I was leading trainers. And I remember, I was so frustrated that it came so late in my career because I was like, man, I wish someone would have told me this sooner. But it was this, was a stat that this is 24 fitness days that they had put up on the projector at one of these big meetings. And it was a trainer that had one certification, two certification, three, third, three, three,

and four, and if you had one certification, you average this many clients in a month, you project, you did this much revenue, and you stayed this long in the company. And that, all those line items dramatically increased by every certification. The moral story was just the more educated they were. The more likely they were, the longer they stayed.

Yeah, the better they were, the long they stayed, the more sales they did, the more clients they trained. It was just like, it was a, and it was a huge leap. And I remember going back to my club that very next day and going like, okay, at that time, I had two trainers that were going through the medical program to be doctors, really intelligent, already had multiple certifications. And I sort of allocate my budget without getting approval to do this because they would have said, no, I just did it anyways. And I paid those trainers to...

Probably why you're blacklisted. I paid those trainers to elevate all their other trainers, get them up on their certifications. And so, and it was, after that, was the baddest team. Justin was a part of that team. You know, I had the smallest team.

I dropped down, I think, 12 trainers we were running at one time, broke all kinds of records, all master trainers. And it was the easiest my job ever was. And so a big focus right now, is we're pulling in brink, shallow, and then one other one I forgot,

who we're working on, that we're going to pay to take all of them through and become masters at all those disciplines. And so... That's to be great. I know. To think how badass they already are is bringing them all to...

That's so great. Yeah, yeah. So I'm super excited for what's coming down the pipe with that. So I'm going to change topics. So the Platform X just came out with this new policy that I think a lot of other platforms are going to follow suit on. So you guys already see this, that AI content

is just everywhere. Yeah. It's all over the place. It's getting so good to it. It's so hard to distinguish whether it's... It is. I shared a fake video thinking it was real just the day. And it's just going to get worse.

Yeah. So X just did this. They said, they just passed the policy. If you're caught posting an AI generated video without disclosing that it's AI, you get suspended from producing, from getting any revenue, so create a revenue sharing for 90 days.

If you repeat as an offender, they'll ban you permanently. So I think it's, I think this is what the other platforms have to do. Yeah. Otherwise, what's going to happen is, and you're seeing this right now with the war in Iran.

Yeah. What is real? Just the deception, yeah. Who knows what to trust? And Iran's producing it. Russia's producing it. America's producing it. People are producing it for views.

you're watching it come through. Is that real? Did they just bomb that place? Is that a real new airplane? Yep. Is that, did that person just start? Yeah. Is that, you know, it's just, it's crazy.

And it's just going to get worse. Yeah. So I think that they have to do that. I think these platforms are going to have to say, look, if we catch you and you don't disclose it, you're going to pay a penalty. I know YouTube did something similar. YouTube demonetized any AI pages, too. So that's the quick and easy way to do it is to do that.

It's going to be interesting how they do that because a lot of these pages, aren't necessarily monetizing though either. So like there's plenty of like, you know... Like just random. Yeah, just random popular pages. Well, at the moment, what happens on X, this is the best platform I've seen for AI, and it's not great yet,

but it's the best one, is that they'll use GROC because GROC is the AI that they use on X. And so a video will get posted. All someone has to do is underneath it. They ask GROC. Yeah, hey, GROC, is this video real? Yeah.

And then GROC, like, right away is, you know, oh, no, this is actually a video. video from 2018. It's not, you know, this. Or no, this is an AI created video. This is not real. And so you have to wait a second, but they're able to do that pretty well so far. So, yeah, that's kind of cool. Anyway, I saw Doug yesterday. He's, I think he's one of the, the culprits for the missing Chris Powerbags. He was over there crushing. I didn't think you liked him as much as I did. I mean, they're my dirty little secret. Now, you have another dirty secret.

We don't want to talk about that one. But you were eating the what, the Everything Bagel was? Everything bagel ones. Oh, I thought you're eating the fire one. That was the other day. Oh, my gosh. You are eating way more than you. Are they under there?

That's what the Chris Power is, too. Yeah, we now have a little stash here inside the studio. Our staff just crushes up. You guys see they're popping up all over the place, too. Chris Power? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think Costco.

Do I see Costco also? Maybe. Yeah. Look up. I think, I know they're also, I think, I'll tell you, let me tell you everybody why that snack is going to just destroy. Oh, bro. It's high protein.

It's high protein carb. Cool. Yes. It's high protein. It's high protein cool. It doesn't taste. It tastes like a freaking... It just tastes like, yeah, dude.

And they're flavored, and it's just good. And that, you know that. You do that. You're just gonna... No, no. They're absolutely crushing it already. And I think they're already in a bunch of major stores. I mean, like, literally from...

You didn't know about them, what? I don't know. Eight months ago? No. I never heard of them. I was like, so crazy who connected us. You remember who connected us? No.

Yes, dude, you don't remember? Oh, yeah. So you remember when we did that... Tito heads. Yes, yes. That was his old Instagram name was keto head. Remember we interviewed him

when we were at, what was that with Joe DeCina, the race. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Spartan race. This is like year, year two or three. I want to say year two or three of us.

We met him at Spartan. He remained a fan and a listener. Wow. And every once in a while, he would comment, DM. So I knew he was a listener because he would comment

on something we were talking about about with that. And so we'd stay in touch over the years. And he, I don't remember what, I think he saw me like, like one of their stuff. And he's like, hey, I can send you a box with that. And then he was one of the founders, I believe, behind it. Sent it over. And I was like, dude, we got to go on the phone.

Yeah, we got on the phone. I really like these. And that's how that happened. Well, the game with that, right, is, you make a snack, you get it everywhere. And then you sell to a big company. Yeah. And you get a big pay. That's the hope. That's the whole deal.

Did you see where it's all at all that? Yeah, you can get at Costco. It is at Costco. It's already in Costco. Geez. Wow. Game over, dude. That's happening.

That's awesome. That's super right. Have you guys seen, you guys seen the list for, speaking of Dirty Secret? Have you guys seen the list of the dirty dozen foods that are the highest than pesticides? Have you guys seen this? I've seen that. No, I have not. So can we guess?

Is it fruit? So, yeah, so there's fruits and vegetables. Which ones are the highest? So I'm going to go lettuce. and berries, so strawberries, lettuce. All berries, for sure. I'm going to throw in apples. Apples. You guys are hitting for sure.

Yeah. So spinach, strawberries. Anything without a hard... That was one of the best, like, takes. I had someone like, if you're not going to go organic, right? These are the ones go organic. Yeah, these are the ones. But you can also wash them. Yeah. You can also just wash them really well.

Yeah, I'll get the best of size. But spinach, strawberries, kale collared, mustard greens, grapes, peaches, pears, apples, blackberries, blueberries, blueberries, and potatoes. Now how much... Potatoes? Sorry. Come on.

Now, how much have you gone... I've gone a big... You know, talking about AI and what's real, what's not real. It's like, I don't know what to believe. No. I've seen some interesting content on what a scam organic is.

Hmm. And that the... In order to be called organic, the barrier is so low. And they're even using things on it that are just as bad or arguably worse for you than the other crap. And so how much have you looked into that? And do you know,

like, how valuable is it? And you're talking about it. I want to say the regulations or rules, I want to see the numbers like on average 40, 40 percent higher prices on a lot of stuff. They are. So the, so the best studies that I've seen are ones where they test the food or and or they test people's urine. This is where you'll see pesticide load. And there's actually, there was actually a few studies where they took people. And they had them only eat, so they tested their urine. They were eating conventional. Then they had them not change their diet, switch to organic, and then change their urine. And there was a remarkable difference.

Really? Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes. So it makes a difference. I'd still wash them, though. Still wash your stuff.

Because even organic pesticides and stuff can actually sometimes show higher rates. That's what I said. Heavy metals. That's what it was. Heavy metals. Yeah. So it's like you're, you know, trading one thing off or trading one thing out, but then you're getting something else that's arguably just as bad or

worse for you. Oh. And so, you know, is it worth the 40%? I do want to be clear, though. We've said this since day one. You actually remove a decent amount if you wash them. It's been like apples. Like if you take the apple, you get a brush.

You can use regular dish soap and then rinse it off. You'll get a lot of it. Dude, this reminds me, though, the food talk. Doug, if you could look this up. Apparently the grandson of the founder of like Reese's had just excited. just expose. I don't know, again, we have to fact check that this is real or not or AI, but that

like some of the ingredients that had changed over is like not even, you know, natural or real ingredients. I heard this. What I mean? It's fake. Like, yeah, like, I don't know if it's the peanut butter or like... Yeah, it's just like a manufacturer. Yeah, it's like the Oreo stuff, I told you. It's like nothing real about it.

It's like it's not real peanut butter and chocolate. Yeah. Yeah. So you're just eating like just plastic sugar. Brad Ries's grandson could have her. accuse the Hershey Company of skimflation by quietly replacing quality ingredients with cheaper alternatives. In February 26, LinkedIn letter, he alleged that real milk chocolate is being swapped for compound coatings and peanut butter for peanut butter style crims. Yeah, so exactly. Peanut butter style creams.

How many, like, dude, and you go through the, like, if that's one of the major companies doing this, and the course profit margins play a huge factor into this. And then they found cheap alternative. it is that taste like the food you're eating before, but it's not really the food anymore. How many, like, items are out there that aren't even real me? I got to say this, though. This is what they're probably doing. They're looking at their, like, heavy users.

Like, their Rhesus pieces, heavy users? Yeah. And they're like, do you think they're not going to buy it if we swap out? Nobody's going to care. Nobody's eating Reese's and going, oh. It's not like high consumption. Yeah, if you are, you've got more problems. Nobody cares, dude. You get diabetes and everything else.

You're not. I mean, it's the same game that we saw. in the toothpaste, shampoo, soap. Well, that's different. Those are products that are like advertising is natural. No, no, no, no. That's what I mean by that. But they're also skimming.

Oh, yeah, yeah. You don't even know. Their price went up 40 cents and they took two ounces out from it. Right. You know what I'm saying? So you're like, oh, that's not bad. It's 40 cents more. That's normal inflation.

You know what I'm saying? I think toilet paper did that the most. Toilet paper did it. Everybody did it. Toothpaste did it. Deodorant did it. Shampoo. Everything that we use on a regular basis.

all did it. They made the sense. Go back and look at your deodorant sticks. Go back and look at your toothpaste bottles. Go back and look at your shampoo bottles. They all skimmed ounces off and increased price simultaneously. So was that cotton ball? Was that just like part of, you know, when they put it in the bottle just to fill the space?

Oh, like a pill bottle? Yes. I think they do that so doesn't rattle around. Yeah. So it doesn't become powder. I think that's bullshit. I think that's literally just like give you less. I mean, that's, you.

I don't buy cotton. What's a bigger scam are chip bags. Oh, yeah. They do that chair, chip bags are double the size. But you know they do that to protect the chips, not getting crushed, right? I know, but you don't need double the size. You can get away with a 20-tification, but you can use some cotton padding or something like that.

Get away with a fraction of the price. You know, it's the worst. The worst chips. That's just a noise. The what are they called? Pringles. Oh, yeah. They're not even sliced potato chips.

They're like potato flakes. they press them into the chip shape. You know what reminds me of like particle board? Yeah, exactly. It's the particle board of potato chips. It's all the crumbs left in everybody's bags. And then they just press them into these shapes. Some dude is going around the country and he's kidding it.

Because you've, no one ever throws a bag of chips out without crumbs at the bottom. Oh yeah. You got to eat them, dude. This is you? In your face. That's me, Doug. You know me and potato chips, bro. That's my favorite.

They get thrown away from me. Salty gills. If you fry a potato, I will eat it. I don't care how you make it, whatever. If it's fried, it's done. Have you ever tried to make your own? I'm pretty much with you on that. Potato chips?

Yeah. No. I don't know how. I think it's pretty easy. I don't think it's like, I don't like making your own, I don't think it's that difficult. How do you slice them with a knife?

Yeah, you can get a slicer too. They make slicers. Yeah. Just throw them in hot oil. I mean, we watch, I've always wanted to make. It's a lot of work.

I've always tried to try and make, um, in and out french fries at home. You see them do the potato right there. And then they just just dropped into the deep fried and then it's salt. Is it peanut oil they use? Well, peanut oil they use? That's five guys.

Which I actually prefer that. Five guys, you like five guys over in and out fries? In and out? Here's the deal. In and out fries, I can eat a lot of them and not be like, five guys fries are good.

Well, see what they're frying? See what in and out. What is it out frying? It's real potatoes. They're like, oh, it's a lot of potatoes.

I mean, if we're, like, by the way, if you're like splitting hairs on what the, you know, where your potatoes get, your french fries get fried. This is that, that's the lay, Norton or you know what I'm saying?

It's like, it's like the Reese's peanut butter. It's like if you're eating bags of rice, but it doesn't really matter. It's fake. I started a diet. I'm angry about it. It's like my favorite candy, dude. You use sunflower oil.

Sunflower oil. Yeah. Also not good, right? Probably not good, no. I mean, is any, I mean, other, I guess. Well, I mean, you know, McDonald's, I think, used to use beef tallow. They used to until they got sued. I thought they brought it back.

I don't think so. Wasn't that what RFK was all campaigning on? Bring back beef tall. That'll solve. obesity. Also another great lady. But he lost, didn't Trump pass something

for Monsanto and like allowed now? Oh, they're not cutting it. They're not cutting the Glymouth seat. It's required for national security. Yeah, the roundup and all that. It's required for national security. So much food is now dependent on using GMOs.

So that would cut into the, yeah, the inventory. To maintain our obesity. Yeah. Is that, are those the numbers that it uses? We're going to put America on the North Korean diet. I mean, you've seen the studies on countries like North Korea. Like the average person loses 15 pounds because they have no food. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah, we don't want to do that. I mean, a lot of us could afford to be on the show alone for a little while and see it. It would be just all right. What if alone was a weight loss show? It becomes that. I wonder how many people get on it with that. Bad strategy, though, because some of these contests can't even last a week out there.

Dude, the vegans on the show sometimes. Sometimes I'll have a vegan on there. I'm like, do you know what you're saying? Have they made a vegan on there? In these early days. Really? Yes. Early days, there was a couple of veg.

Are you sure? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Towards the end, they actually, like, conceded and they ate, I think it was like a squirrel or something. Yeah, it was some kind of little animal. You can't be a vegan to make that show. Right here.

Right here. No way. Let me see. I saw one. While there has been not been confirmed strictly vegan, several contestants identified as vegetarian or near vegetarian. Identified. Near vegetarian.

Yeah. I was going to say, you're, you become whatever when you get out there. I mean, you're eating squirrel is normally one of the first. meals they end up getting. Dude, they signed this guy up. Like, you know they were laughing. Like, you guys, you know, we signed up. You're not going to live on a series.

If they did it, it was just for TV reasons. I don't want to kill any animals. You know, it's the last, it's one of the last real reality shows. Is it real? Oh, yeah. Has anybody died? They have, they have medical people that come out every so many weeks. And they have to go through a full testing.

And they actually will, many of them get kicked out. I saw an episode where the guy killed a caribou, I don't know, something like that. big animal and he stored the fat because you need the fat. Yeah. And a Wolverine got to it. Oh, that, yeah. And the poor guy was so...

Devastated. It's one of the most difficult parts is, like, you get a big game. So first of all... Yeah, where are you going to store it? The contestants that typically win are the ones that do get the big game, right? Yeah. But they also are the ones that are able to save the fat and keep it from the predators because all the of these little critters that get in, and so they have to build these crazy...

If you hang it, dry it out, or you smoke it, whatever it is. Like, that's, that's like a huge signal going out to, like, you... Every animal that's like in vicinity. Wasn't there one where they were like in an area with, was it polar bears? No. Grizzly bears? Prisly bears. I don't know if they've done polar bears.

No, I can't do that. Polar bear will kill you. They'll actually hunt you. You'll actually hunt you. Definitely grizzly bears. So aggressive. Grizzly bears, moose, wolverines, wolves, all of it. I saw this one guy.

He was in one of those like observation. It was like a plexiglass observation like thing. It's supposedly safe. And a polar bear was like walked up, came up and was like, I mean, was trying to get in. And the guy's in there, I'm terrified. You're like, man, if he figures this out, I'm dead. Yeah.

It'll be more terrifying. Polar bear trying to get into your plexie glass or a great white shark trying to get into your cage. Oh. Which one's more terrified? Great white shark, because I can't swim. I agree. I feel like the shark, I feel like there's a, I think there's a slim chance I get away from the polar wear. There's no chance I'm swimming away from the shark.

Well, I don't know. I just feel like. Did that right? Don't you guys think that's it? That's the logic. I feel like you could just throw, blast the shark. and just hope for the best. You can't do anything to the freaking bear.

A polar bear will eat you. It will maul you and just devour you. It actually doesn't kill you. It just starts eating you. Oh, God. Do you know that? Yeah. It doesn't kill you almost...

Where are you had to? Shark or polar bear? Definitely, a shark is more scary for me. Yeah. I mean, that's scary. So you're the only... I'll go shark, dude. There was a just a video...

I was it. My odds are like slightly better. Where was it? It's around here, Justin, where there was a great white that was just swimming around... Oh, here. Around the Marina. Well,

Bro, just swimming around the marina here? There's been a few shark attacks. There's one recent one that was in... He's just swimming around. It was in Monterey or Carmel. I'm sure you better don't check that. This lady was like... Look in the comments.

No, it's Marina, bro. This is real. Marina, over where I used? San Francisco. Look, look, it's just swimming around here. Oh, over Marina that way. Okay. Oh, hell no. Yeah, I mean, she's gone, though.

Like, there's one lady that actually got eaten and she's gone. Eaten, like fully eaten? Yeah. I thought it shouldn't even do that. Yeah. Depends how delicious you were. Justin, we get eaten. I would get eaten.

He tastes like Reese's peanut butter cups. He tastes like Reese's peanut butter cups. Bro, it's like very infrequent. He's the one, he's the one of you. I mean, like, this is like Reese's peanut butter cup. Like, damn, the marbling. Yeah. Hey, friend, come over here.

If you catch me at the right time, I would be treat delicious. He's not afraid of us. Get him. Red light therapy has been shown instead. Studies, lots of studies, improve recovery. Make your skin healthier and younger. Regrow hair. Reduce pain and inflammation.

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Our first caller is Veronica from Virginia. Hi, Veronica. How you doing, Veronica? Hello. Hi, how are you? I'm honored to be here. Yeah. How can we help you?

I'm going to dive in. Okay, so I'm a 56-year-old female who's been lifting since the age of 17. After having two children in my early 30s, I began lifting regularly at age 39. At age 49, I did my first figure show. At age 53, during my fifth show, I won my natural pro card. During my years of competing, I earned a certification for nutrition coaching, that being relevant and that I think I approach food restriction with every competition with a good mindset, understanding that competition competing is choice and privilege, not a sacrifice.

I love the challenge of prep and seeing how it changes the composition of my physique, much more so than the competition itself. I continue to think about doing another show, potentially doing them as long as possible, since now that I'm older I hope to continue inspiring other women to lift weight. weights. I currently lift daily approximately 60 minutes. It's part of my routine that makes me happy. I miss it if I don't go, but I don't stress if life gets in the way. I just view it as an unavoidable break. Over the past year, I've gotten bored with generic lifting and have recently been exposed to power lifting. Listening to your podcast regularly, I'm now at the point where I'd like

to carve out a six to eight week period and focus solely on everything you're going to be. group discusses strength, flexibility, power, etc., while still building a symmetrical physique for the stage. I've never followed a purchase program. I've always taught myself and created my own splits. So my question, can you recommend the best mind pump program I should be using to take me to the next level, potentially gearing up to enter another cut for another show with a more athletic physique? Wow. Yeah, I got a few, I got a few ideas. around this. By the way, great job. Yeah. Yeah, very good job and you look super vibrant and healthy. So this is, uh, yeah, this is great. I feel good and I'll add to that that I'm proud to be 56 and I,

I feel like I'm 30. Yeah. I feel like I'm younger than 30 because I didn't feel like 30. Yeah, well, you look really vibrant and healthy. You know what I love about people who are doing it right with fitness is they love to tell their age, uh, because you just feel so good. You know, a lot of times women are like, I don't want to tell you how old I am. But I love that fitness people or the first thing out of their mouth is like, hey, guess what? You know? Yeah. So that's awesome.

Okay. So I have a few ideas around this. Now, because you want to compete and there's an aesthetic component, I have one idea for a program. But then I have another program that's more unconventional that you might find a lot that's going to be fun for you. And that's going to train you a little differently. Okay. Either one I think you would enjoy. When is your next competition?

I think that'll help me. So, you know, I don't have anything specific in mind. My oldest son has his natural pro card too, and we've never done a show together. We've talked about it, but I just, we've batted around the end of the summer. Okay. Oh, so end of this summer. I'm flexible. I mean, I've learned the long way that just because,

you think you're ready doesn't mean necessarily mean that you're ready. That's a good answer. That's a good answer. Yeah, I have all the time in the world. Okay. Well, so I have a program called Map Strong. It's going to be very different from what you're used to. And I think you would have a lot of fun training with it. A lot of posterior chain focus. So, you know, as far as development's concerned, you're going to see a lot of back shoulders and glutes from that program. but it's not a, you know, bodybuilding physique,

you know, stage presentation type of program. It's, it's, it's, there's more of an athletic component. There's some stamina involved, but it's still a strength program. On the other hand, I have something called map symmetry, which is going to be,

it's going to have the aesthetic component you're looking for. And it's, it's probably different from what you used to because the first, a few phases or couple phases, is like all unilateral training. It's all one side and then train the other in different forms and varieties. And if you've never done long blocks of that, you'll definitely see some nice balance and symmetry coming out of that.

So you'll identify weaknesses from right to left and then you'll get some balance out of it. And it's more bodybuilding than map strong. So it just depends on which one appeals to you more. I'll tell you I prefer strong and I'll tell you why. How much of my competing journey have you heard me talk about on the show? Have you heard much me, have you heard me talk about it much? I have heard you talk about it. I know you guys have mixed feelings about it.

That's why I did want to put out there that I kind of, I think I view it with a good mindset. Oh, I think you do too. I think you're an excellent. I know we, we deter a lot of people from competing. I think you have a very healthy mindset and balance around it. And I think you look great. and I think that's why you look great

is because you have a good relationship with it. So I think it would be a blast to train through this. What I wanted to share with you was most of my lifting career, I trained, even though I wasn't a bodybuilder, I trained that way, did my own splits program like that. One of the best packages or physiques I brought to stage was when I, on the off-season, trained like a power lifter,

like completely let go of my kind of, bodybuilding focus split. And yet, even though it's not a quote unquote bodybuilding program, I got the greatest gains in muscle I'd ever seen on my back and my legs and my shoulder. It was just, it was incredible. And so even though MAPS, quote, unquote, is not quote unquote, a bodybuilder program, I think lifting that way in the offseason in a calorie surplus will bring you the best physique you've yet brought to stage. It's not even a powerlifting program, but so some of the lifts you might not even be familiar with,

but it is a strength program. So the goal, really it's trained, it's designed in a way for somebody who competes in strongman competitions. So the lifts are kind of around that, and there is an athletic component. But I can guarantee there's going to be quite a few lifts and exercise in there that you probably either haven't done

or haven't programmed. But body-wise, It's a lot of posterior chain and shoulders. A lot of back, glutes, and delts is what you'll get. It'll be an awesome program. And I don't remember, too, like, you, what you bring to stage is done in the off season. Like, you already have a great muscle balance. Like, you can probably diet right now and get ready and present yourself again on stage and look great again.

What will really change or bring a better version of your physique is to do something that you don't normally do, to add muscle in places that you've never added muscle before. And so doing something like a Map Strong, I think will bring something unique and different that I think you'll really, really like. It was one of the best things that I ever did in my bodybuilding career was to kind of focus over on the power lifting and the strong type of training,

which was so unique to me and so not focused bodybuilder. And yet here I bring the best version of my body to stage. And I think because you're such an experience, lifter and competitor, I think you'll get similar benefits by focusing that way. So I would do strong. I would do it in a calorie surplus to build. And then after you get done with strong, then where you're at from there, then you plan your show. Like, okay, now I'm going to go back to like a split or go to a MAP's aesthetic type of program and then start my diet heading into to the stage. For sure, it'll be fun. If you're getting, you know, if you've been doing traditional

strength training, you know, kind of bodybuilding style, powerlifting style for a while. It'll be, and you're like, eh, I want to try something different. You'll find it fun. It'll be enjoyable. It sounds fun. I think that's exactly, I'm surprised that you guys are suggesting

something that is exciting me. Yeah, cool. I'm sure about all the programs and I probably never would have went for that one. Okay, cool. It's one of our most popular programs, especially with women, who have strength training background.

They always report back and they go, oh, this is my favorite program. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, great. Yeah. You're going to love the results from it. We'll send that over to you.

And it's 12 weeks, I believe. Yeah. Yeah, 12 weeks. So trust the process. It'll remind you that. Trust the process. Run it because that's the one thing, you know, when you got a trainer brain,

you get in your own way and you start, oh, let me change this or add that. Yeah, have faith in us that we got you. and you'll be very happy. And, you know, you know this already, but just going to confer, like when you do new movements, new exercises or exercise in new ways, start, start light, go easy and learn them before you push it, because there are going to be a lot of new stuff that you probably haven't done. Yeah, the work capacity days you might want to, you know, gauge based on, like, how you recover from that as well.

So that's something that's a little more different and intense, but it's also a lot of fun. Yeah, I think you know what you're doing. So it'll be cool. I'd love to have you back on just afterwards to get a, get your review. That would be great. And you know what? I'm too old to be hurting myself, so I do always go into things until I learn the movements. So that sounds, that sounds fantastic. Thank you. You got it. We'll send it over to you. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. I love it. She's got a great attitude. This is one of the examples I give

when I talk about how being fit and prioritizing health and fitness, how much you diverge from people in your age group as you continue to age. I mean, she's not old, but she's at the age now where, you know, what is she, 54, she said, you put her next to a group of typical 54-year-old women. And it's like her peers, yeah. It's incredibly different. I also want to highlight, she didn't start until she was 40. Yeah.

So, you know, she 39 years old just turning 40 when she started lifting weights. Yeah. So how much you can do later in your life, too. So many people think that. Got time. You're at an age where it's like, oh, and so she's 54 years old, and I'm pretty sure she'd say, I'm in the best shape of my life at 54, which is pretty right. I mean, one thing I noticed her hair, her hair looks so healthy. This is it.

Like, good nutrition, good exercise. It's just, it's far beyond just muscle and body fat. It affects the whole body. Our next caller is Sam from Kentucky. What's up, Sam? What up, Sam? Hey, guys. How's it going?

Good, good. I just wanted to say thank you to you guys. I found you guys about six months ago. I listened to every episode now. You know, I was on a call with it. This is more of a follow-up call. I was on a call with you a couple months ago. You coach me towards running Maps power lift 15.

And honestly, it's been incredible. So for context, I've been on Treseppatide since last summer. I'm currently down from 340 pounds to 270 pounds. currently around 35-ish percent body fat. I attach a before and current picture for you guys. One of the biggest breakthroughs is you guys coach me towards increasing my calories. I was at about 2,200, and you said get it over 2,500, and I've been losing weight at really the same rate. And even from 340 to 270, I've actually gained lean body mass in that time.

If I recall when we had you on, we told you to reduce your volume and bump your calories because it kind of had gotten to a place where you're bit, what we thought would like overtrained, a little burnt out and you weren't getting the results. So since doing power lift 15 and bumping your calories, you've gained muscle gotten stronger, I'm assuming? Yeah. So I like I do barbell bench or dumbbell benching instead of regular benching just because I'm scared. I'm going to fail and I don't have a spotter at the gym. Yeah, no worries. Like, I'm one of those guys who like likes to push my limits and get as close to failure as possible.

So my dumbbell bench has gone from 90 pounds in each hand to 1-10. Wow. Wow. Yeah, bro. That's great, dude. Yeah. So, and right now I'm on the overhead press part of it, but my squat got a lot stronger in the second month as well.

So, um, it's, definitely been, it was an adjustment at first because, like, I used to play football. And so for me, like, I just like to lift. And so for me to, like, drastically decrease my volume, almost had to, like, reset my brain that I would actually, uh, I would actually get stronger with that much volume. Yep. Yeah. Bro, kudos to you. That's really hard. Especially for ex-athletes. That's super challenging. That's really hard to do that. You know, you want to revert back to the old, old football days every time you're in the gym and it's tough too. So the fact that you listened and followed the advice, I'm so glad you did because I'm sure now, now you're sold, right? It's like you feel it,

you see it. What are your steps out every day? Are you tracking that? Yeah, about $7,000 and $9,000 a day. Okay, good. You know, I'm in Kentucky. Once it gets a little warmer, it'll get even higher because I can take walks outside. Very cool. You're in a good place, you're in a good place, you're in a nice sweet spot. So is your question, what's your question? Do you keep going? Do you cut? Do you go reverse? Is that what you're asking? Yeah, essentially, like, I want to get to probably 15 to 20% body fat. My guess is I'll be between like 210 and 220. So like, do I go all the way down there?

Or do I like before I get there reverse? Because when I get there, I want to start like doing more bulking and cutting cycles to start really building muscle. No, no, you're right. If you're at 270 now and you want to drop another 60 pounds or so and you're at 2,500 calories. now with MAPS power lift 15, we want to continue to reverse diet. So the reason why I ask you about your steps is I think it would be very wise to go up another two to 300 calories, continue training the way you're training, and then maybe bump your steps a little bit.

Maybe instead of going seven to nine, try to be around, you know, nine to ten consistently. And then keep going on that path until you get to a pretty high calorie place where you're like, wow, I'm meeting a lot of food. And then you can cut from there. That'll give us a lot of runway to get your. down to 210. Because if you cut right now at 270, I mean, I could cut you down to

2,000 calories. No, no, no, no. But then you're going to hit a plateau. You're a big guy. You're a big guy. You're about where I would There's two things if I was coaching you. And we would go like week by week as like how you're feeling. Because I actually think you're in a very nice sweet spot. Yeah. You're probably in a place where you don't feel like you're starving,

eating and stuff like that. So you probably feel satisfied. You're eating low enough calorie to where you're having this kind of beautiful exchange where you're still leaning out. You're even building muscle sometimes. You can kind of hang out there so long as that kind of keeps happening. But you might plateau sooner or later. And then when you do, then what Sal is saying is that instead of what most people would do, which is cut when you hit a plateau, I'd actually reverse you. I'd go, okay, let's keep pushing strength. Let's add a couple hundred calories and see if we can

actually build some more muscle and get you up to closer like 3,000 calories and then hang at 3,000 calories for a little while trying to build strength and then go do a cut down to 25. and then watch you lean out again. So that would be probably the advice from where you're at right now. But if you're continuing to see strength gains, you're leaning out and also seeing some muscle being built a little bit, you're kind of in the Goldilocks zone. And so I'd kind of hang there for as long as you can.

As long as you feel like you're kind of every two weeks, you feel like, yeah, I'm definitely progressing. I feel better, I look better than what I did two weeks ago. Just give yourself like two weeks. Like I don't think every week is a bit, I think it's a little bit to obsess. Like, did I make progress this week? It's like, stay the course. And if every two weeks you look back and go like, I'm better version of me than I was two weeks ago,

I ride that. I keep riding that for as long as we can before I start to really adjust anything. Yeah. And then what would be good to do then is maybe we switch the program simultaneously. So you have like go to another map 15 program. Maybe go to like the strong or something else. Maybe even anabolic by that time. because you'll be reversed, you'll be eating enough calorie.

You could probably handle MAPS Anabolic. So good, like when we go to bump more calories, and we're talking now we're talking 2,800 calories or so or more, we could probably go to MAPS Anabolic. And that different program change, a little more added volume with the extra calories, I think you'll see yourself build some muscle off of that. But again, hang tight while you're seeing great results right now.

I think you're in a good spot. Okay. Yeah, because that was sort of what I was getting at next, is like at what point can I bump up the volume. I know while I'm cutting, that's tough to do. But I eventually want to get to a place where like my body fat's in a good place. And then I want to just build as much muscle as I possibly can. You're on your way, dude.

You're doing it. Yeah, be patient because you're on your way. Yeah, you're doing it right now. You really are. You're in this, you're in that what we call goalie locks. You're building a little muscle, learn a little body fat, this nice place. We don't want to ramp the volume up or go to an anabolic until you're eating at least $2,800. calories. I'd want you 2,800 or more calories before we start adding more. Right now you're at a nice

amount of volume for the amount of calories. You're doing great with the steps. I'm with Sal. When it gets a little bit nicer weather, start to pick them steps up and try and get up over 10,000 steps with what you're doing. That'll keep you leaning out just by you kind of increasing activity with what you're doing. And then eventually we'll bump the calories and go to like MAPS. Do you have MAPS enabolic? No. We'll send that over to you. So you have that. So that's the move. Right. Ride this wave. until you start to slow down, bump the calories, and then go to anabolic. Okay, that's awesome.

Thank you guys. Yeah. You got it, man. And keep us posted. It's a fun journey to watch for us. Yeah, thank you guys. Yeah, definitely will. Kick it ass, dude.

Take it easy. Congrats, brother. Keep it up. Thanks. Just for the recap, he increased his calories by a relatively significant amount and dropped the amount of training volume. Yeah. And built muscle, got stronger and got leaner.

God, another one of those examples. Just so people understand. That just doesn't science. Defy science. Come on science nerds, where you're at? Yeah, yeah. So it works, you guys. It works.

You got to try it. It works. And watch what happens. And by the way, people on GOP, because he's on a GOP one, people on GLP ones will plateau. This is what happens. They'll lose X amount in the plateau. The most common thing we saw.

And then it's like, God, do I just eat even less? And then you feel terrible. And it's like, no, no, reverse dieting is real. If you do it right, you apply it with strain training. It gets things moving in the right direction. Our next color is Karen from New York. Hi, Karen. How are you?

Hi, how are you? Good. We're good. How can we help you? Yes, I had sent in an email. I've been watching your content now for a few months. And one of the things I will be 60 in a few months. And I now want to focus on gaining strength, working on my mobility,

maintaining balance, being able to maintain balance. All right. And so right now, for the first time in my adult life ever, I'm down to an ideal body weight, but I'd like to reduce the body fat percentage a little bit and gain some muscle. I'm not so no longer chasing the scale, right? So now we're at a point where I'm refocused on some other things, which I've done over the years many, many times, but I want to hone in now with some of the conditions

as I'm getting older and do it safely, right, and not get hurt. Yeah, that's great. Karen, have you ever done traditional strength training before? Yes. 10 years ago, I went back to school after losing about 127 pounds, so I do have my personal training certification and associates and exercise science.

but unfortunately over that time and with COVID setting in and getting older in menopause and thyroid disease and such like that I was never able to keep my weight down but I always love being in the gym and next so I do have knowledge behind it but again there's so much information out there and with my particular situation of having a thyroid disorder and also having had bariatric surgery and I'm on a GLP one now it's like I need to hone in it needs to be honed to get the bang from my buck, right? And the most beneficial at this time in my life. I totally get that. Absolutely. What's the long? So by the way, your, your, your thyroid's now being treated with medication. So that's all balanced. Hormones balanced. I see in your

email. Yeah, HRT is great. You know, all those things are like really dialed in now. I have no more metabolic resistance. I have, or dysfunction. I'm not insulin resistant any longer. Awesome. Have you ever worked with like a trainer or coach for the strength training? Have you ever have anybody train you through that period of time or were you kind of doing it on your own? I did. I did years and years ago. After my first husband had passed away, I decided to get focused and I was training with someone for about a year. And it was a great experience. And I enjoyed that very much. And then I was in the gym and just, but no, recently I have not worked with a trainer recently. The, the best thing you can do and what you're going to love, you're going to love

how traditional strength training done properly, good programming with making sure, of course, you eat enough protein, all that stuff, how that's going to affect your body. The lean body mass gains, what you mentioned with mobility and balance, it's going to feel so incredible.

But it's going to come from really traditional strength training. And it's probably going to look something like two or three days a week. Now, that doesn't mean you're not active the other days. So, you know, walking and just, you know, you don't want to sit around. which I'm assuming you already have some activity and you're tracking steps and stuff like that. But nice traditional strength training, which is appropriate,

so we've got to make sure we do the right exercises for you, where you're seeing yourself gain strength. If you're getting stronger, you're definitely moving in the right direction. And it's going to feel so good on your body from your metabolic health to how your body actually feels, mobility, all those things. That's like the one. And I think you know that.

That's like the one piece that you're, you're aiming for, which is great. You see her, Doug just pulled up her numbers right here. She's deadlifting. You got assist the chin up. You got lap pulled down, row. Are those,

are those your lifts now? And you're getting between 15 to 1900, 100 calories is good. You're doing pretty damn good right now. Are you, are those current lifts, Karen, that you sent us? Or was that like what you've done the past? No, no, no.

Those are current. Actually, my deadlift now, I'm at like 115. Nice. Not a girl. Greece. and yeah, the other ones are pretty, they're recent, they're recent numbers. My deadlift just went up a little bit. That's great.

Okay, so how can we help you? Are you looking for more like programming advice or nutrition advice? Yeah, well, actually, both. I'm looking for some programming advice because honestly, after I met my second husband, we've been married for six years and I now commute to work. It's different. When I was widowed for 14 years, I came and went in the gym and, did what I wanted as I wanted. I ate when I wanted, didn't eat when I didn't eat when I didn't

want to, whatever it was. The responsibilities and my lifestyle is a little different now. So what I'm hoping to do is to, I need some programming that I can get in the gym two days a week and do it also once at home. Nice. Okay. With other, you know, some other form formatting. And yeah, that's what I'm looking for. And then also with having had the bariatric surgery and being on a GLP1, I mean, I got a fight to get. get 150, you know, 140, 150 grams.

Yeah. So I did have a question incorporating like one good dose of an EAA by itself once in a day could help to supplement that because it is hard for me to get, you know, I'm constantly, it's almost like years ago when I had issues of not being able to keep my weight down and food was like food, food, food, thought, thought, thought, you know, I don't want to be in that realm either all the time. would actually, EAAs I would do three times a day, which is great. So it's great. You're already on that thinking that way. Are you doing a shake already? Yeah, I usually end up doing a protein

latte on my way in and the work in the morning. I make it myself. Okay, cool. So that's, that's hitting like 40 grams of protein, just drinking on the way in. And then I'll get to work and I'll do, I'll either bring with me some eggs and ground beef and some cheese and I'll hit that. I try to hit like 70 to 90 grams before lunchtime only because the remaining day is hard for me. Good job. No, you're doing it. You do it. You do great strategy.

Would you be open to working with one of our coaches through this process? Because I think that you're in a really good place to have somebody work with you and iterate as you go along, change of programming, nutrition as you go along. Yeah, I'd like to look into that because I would, I have one of the, you know, eight electrical bioimpedin scales that, you know, so I'm looking at other numbers besides just hop on. on the scale. No, you're doing really good. And based off of like your schedule and how we do two days in the gym, one day at home, you'd be a great candidate for a trainer to just kind of be modifying you kind of week to week as you're going and slowly messing with your macros and advising you because you're

in a good spot. You're doing a really good job right now. And you're heading down the right path. So we could have someone call you, show you what that would look like. And they'll set up all the programming, take care of all the stuff for you. Yeah. Yeah, that would be that. I would like to, I'd love to look into that.

Yeah, that would be great. All right, Curran. I'll have somebody call you today. Doing a great job. Yeah. You really are. Great job, by the way. Yes.

Very cool. I had that momentum. Yeah. Great. Well, I appreciate you're taking my call and looking into this because I know you're going to be finding more and more people I think as time is going by. Yep. GLP ones or having had surgery and there's a lot of information out there.

We just got off another call. We got done helping somebody who's been on one for a year and he had hit a plateau. He was a follow-up call who just got back on and he's added all kinds of muscles. and leaned out by reverse dieting with us. And so, yeah, no, there's a lot now. So you're doing great, though. Excited to help you out. Oh, yeah, I'm forward to it.

And out of your programming, your maps programming and different things that are that, what would you recommend? Well, so off the top of my head, it would probably be something like MAPS anabolic, but since you're going to work with a coach, they're going to individualize it. Yeah, they're going to individualize it for you because of like how your schedule is. So it'll look like, it actually looked like a modified program. It'll look like anabolic mixed with something that you do at home.

And then, As you go along through coaching you, they'll be able to modify it as you go along because you're going to have that coach with you the whole time. Okay. That's great. I look forward to the call. Awesome. All right, Karen.

Thanks. Well, good for her. She's doing really good. Yeah, good for her. It's very surprised with the GLP1. And surgery. She's able to still eat that much protein. I know.

She's impressive here, which is rare. I didn't even think of that, but I wonder how many bariatric patients also now are using a GLP1 on top of it. I wonder. I bet it's sure. I mean, what was the statistics? Do you remember what it was? Taking business for that. What was the statistics on bariatric patients that end up, end up just like going, end up going putting the way back on still? I don't know what the number is, but some of them do that. It's also a very, I mean, intrusive procedure. I believe, I think the bariatric surgery numbers has dropped considerably since GLP ones.

Yeah. Because it's like, try this instead of. Yeah, weighing the option. going in. Oh, I bet it's probably crashed. Yeah, I'm sure she did that a long time ago. And then now is, and the GP-1's probably helped her way more than that ever helped her. But I had, man, kudos to her to be deadlifting. Yeah.

Going after her protein like that to be able to be able to eat 15 to 1900 calories on a geo-pillin and with bariatric surgery is impressive. So her whole strategy was real on point. Yeah, yeah. So cool. I'm excited. I hope she ends up with one of our trainers so we can see her progress for this. Our next caller is Daniel from North Carolina. What's up, ma'am?

How are you doing, Daniel? What's happening, Daniel? Hey, how's it going, guys? Good, man. Pretty cool to talk to you. I've been listening for about three years. But I'm one of those weirdos that when I discovered mind pump, I actually started all the way back to the beginning,

listened through an order an average of like three to five episodes a day. So I feel like I know you guys already. I'm still not even caught up. But, you know, once I get caught up, I feel like, you know, it'll be kind of sad because I won't have three to five to listen to every day. Have you gotten to Justin? I'll talk to you guys.

Yeah, not yet. Did you get the... It was really brief. It was really brief. Like episode 1,000 or something. Yeah, I'm somewhere around like 2,100, something like that. So I don't even know what you guys are talking about in the last few episodes. That's right.

Put the work in. I remember that. I remember that. So how can we help you, man? A day to remember. Okay, so, yeah. So I'm 30 years old. I've been training consistently for about six years now.

I was overweight most of my life. And actually, I'm one of those guys that the pandemic was one of the best things that ever happened to my fitness. I've been able to fall in love with fitness, with my fitness journey. I've maintained a healthy fitness level the past several years. So when I originally emailed, I had my first child on the way, but I have since become a dad in the last month. She's three weeks old as of yesterday. So I own and operate a landscaping company. So I'm in the offseason now.

My schedule is a lot more open. I'm a lot more sedentary. but during the season from about March to October. I'm incredibly active some days, 30 to 35,000 steps. But on average, close to about 20,000. But with the baby on the way, I decided to go all out of my training and nutrition. I was pretty neurotic with both of them for about a month and a half at the start of the year before my daughter came along.

Long term, I really want to get in the best shape of my life just to see what I can do. And, of course, also set an impossible standard for my daughter for any future boyfriend's husbands, that kind of thing, of course. Um, but, um, but I'm also noticing some left or right imbalances in my physique and in my movements, um, that I'm sure need to be addressed. I'm actually currently running map symmetry. Um, I actually just finished a phase three workout right before I jumped on this call. Um, and I previously run anabolic performance aesthetic and I started split. Um, and the volume was fine, but I noticed that once I really got going, that's when I could tell I had the imbalances. So I actually stopped it and jumped over to symmetry. Um, and I've been strongly considering something. like Map Strong because I've actually never in my life focused on 100% strength focused because, you know, I was always the overweight guy and it sounds like it'd be great. But I'm mostly, especially with the newborn, I work out from my home gym. So I'm not sure if that program's feasible with my current equipment.

But also with the newborn being around, you know how it is like sometimes pretty sleep deprived, but I've actually, we've come into a pretty good rhythm. So I've got kind of this rule for myself. I get seven, eight hours of sleep, then I'll train pretty hard. but let's see so one of the things I would like to do if my sleep stays on is you know finish symmetry, anabolic advance, maybe split. But I was kind of curious what you guys think would be a good way to go with a newborn, but also trying to want to feel like I should probably go strength focus because it's never

been something that I've really focused on. My nutrition was very dialed, but when my daughter was born, the people in our church, I'm very grateful they brought us a bunch of food and stuff. We didn't really have a whole lot of time to cook. So my nutrition kind of went out the window the first three weeks of my daughter's life. So I'm trying to figure out how to get my nutrition back on track with very little time to meal prep. And then also I know I've got conflicting goals. I've got a newborn.

I want to be in the best shape of my life. I want to focus on strength. But, you know, I know that you guys say you can't always have your cake and eat it too. So I'm just kind of curious. I don't really know which way to go from here. I've got a lot of moving parts to think about. Yeah. So if your sleep is good, it's perfectly fine to focus on strength.

And the program that would be strength-focused purely would be power lift. So strong is strong-man-inspired. So what you're going to get in strong is strength-focused, but you're also going to get some stamina and agility in there a little bit because strong-man competitions require some of that. It's actually one of my favorite programs. By the way, you could totally follow it with a home gym. I have a curveball.

You might want to do that 15 version. I have a curveball. I like Maps 15 power lift for you. Exactly. There you go. Take the extra time that you're not having to be working out for a full hour, hour and a half, prep your meals, and that's what's going to keep you dialed. You're going to get strong doing MAP 15 power lift.

Real strong. You'll get real strong doing that. And your nutrition becomes the next most important thing, making sure you're staying dialed, and dedicate that extra time because you're not spending an hour in the gym working out now. You're only spending about 20 minutes or so, maybe 25. Spend that extra 20 minutes, getting those meals prepped and really, making sure you're dialed on the nutrition part. And then it also saves you too because, you know, the inevitable is going to happen as a dad.

You're going to have some rougher nights and sleep. That's a more appropriate amount of volume trying to consider that. And so I like that. And hey, if you have days where you get great rest, foods all prep, you're trained, and you want to do more, go for a walk. You know, move, move or do mobility, do some other stuff of activity. But that amount of, that volume, focused on strength, eating well, I think would serve you the best. Suggestion. For sure.

Yeah, that's perfect. Totally agree. Okay. And I was so, and I mean, that's awesome. And like I said, I'm catching up on episodes. So I'd heard that you had some like 15 versions, a lot of your other programs. Well, I wasn't sure what you had. Yeah.

Before my daughter was born, I was, so my maintenance calories is around 3,000-ish. I'm 5'9, about 175, and 15 to 16% body fat. I was running right around. I was doing symmetry, running right around. maintenance with maybe just a slight deficit because I would really still like to lean out, but I didn't want to go too hard. And part of me was feeling like if I run the strength program or the power lift program, I don't know if I should try to push calories.

I haven't really counted the last three weeks since she's been born. I don't know if you'd suggest pushing calories. I don't think so. I think if your calories, if you keep them consistent, the reduction in volume should take care of that. Now, you could bump the calories and make it happen a little faster, but I don't think you need to bump much. You can go up a couple hundred calories. You're in a good place. You know, your size is a good amount of calories. So you're in a good place.

Yeah. So you could go up 100 or 200 calories or keep it the same. But Matt's 15 power lift, the reduced volume, I think we'll handle that. Yeah. Okay. All right. That's awesome. And then one more question I had in there. So obviously my wife is postpartum right now. And she came to me. I want to preface this with this. She came to me and said that once she was done and recovered and cleared by the doctor. She wanted me to help get her back. I'm obviously not a personal trainer, but I've learned a lot from you guys,

listened to over 2,000 episodes. So just if you guys have just some basic guidelines, ways to handle certain things, bringing her back from postpartum. Map starter. Yeah, that's the program. Nothing more than that. Nothing more than that.

Map starter, and that's it, and be very kind, give your wife a lot of grace, and help her give grace to herself because she might get frustrated with the whole process. But that's the perfect program, postpartum. Okay, sounds good. I appreciate it. Just one more thing. I appreciate all that you guys do.

It's been super life-changing for me. Sal, I love what you're doing with Caldus Kingdom. It's been a really cool thing to follow on the regular basis. I'm actually, I sent you a message a few weeks to go, a prayer request for my daughter, and I appreciate you responding. That really meant a lot. And but yeah, just keep everything up that you're doing. I love it. And by the way, Sal, if you're looking for some Christian-based heavier workout music. I don't know if you've ever tried Skillet before, but you should check out Skillet. It's my go-to.

It's my go-to. Yeah, yeah, skillet's my go-to. They were actually here in town where I'm at a few months ago. Awesome. Real good stuff. Awesome. I appreciate you. Thanks, man.

Thank you, bro. Yep, so much. Thank you guys. You got it, brother. That's great. Yeah. That's great. Yeah.

I think he was still, his pre-workout was still in his system. He was on fire. He's on fire. He just got that lifted. He's a little caffeine. No, I mean, great suggestion at him. I mean, he wouldn't even, I don't even think you need to bump calories because of the reduced volume. He's in a good place.

Yeah, dude. He's doing a good job, man. That's so awesome. 3,000 calories. He does listen. That's for sure. Yeah. I definitely think that, yeah, I think it's a safer bet.

I mean, he could do more. But, you know, you got a three-week-old. Yeah. You know, I remember how cocky eye was the first 10 days. Yeah. Yeah. It's easy, guys. With it, with it's hard.

When they just are boring. bored, bro. They still think they're in the womb. They just sleep for the first week, you know what say? And then they wake up. You know what I'm saying? So he's still got that coming. So, yeah, I think MAPS 15 protocol is better protocol. Love it. If you like, Mime Pump, come find us on Instagram, Mind Pump Media.