Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2851: The Real Reason You Can't Stay Consistent (It's Not Motivation)

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

The guys break down the top 5 data-backed reasons people actually stay consistent with fitness, and why aesthetics (the most common motivation) is actually the weakest long-term motivator. They also cover why exercise outperforms antidepressants and talk therapy for depression and anxiety, a study on which professions age people's faces fastest, and an income-vs-attractiveness study showing women are 1,000x more sensitive to a man's earnings when rating attraction. Plus: Adam's Catrina gets mistaken for a much younger woman at the gym, Justin's son wins his gymnastics competition after seeing a sports psychologist, and the Push Scroll app that locks your social media behind squats and push-ups. Then it's live coaching calls with Lindsay, Sandy, Maggie, and Nikki. SPONSORS Joovv — https://joovv.com/mindpump Code: MINDPUMP — $50 off your first purchase Troscriptions — https://troscriptions.com/MINDPUMP Code: MINDPUMP — 10% off your first order Seed Daily Synbiotic — https://seed.com/mindpump Code: 25MINDPUMP — 25% off your first month MAPS 15 BOGO — https://maps15bogo.com Buy 1 get 1 FREE — limited time LINKS Submit a live caller question: https://mplivecaller.com Mind Pump Fitness Coaching: https://mindpumpfitnesscoaching.com Mind Pump Store: https://mindpumpstore.com Instagram: @mindpumpmedia   0:00 - Intro, sponsors & shirt giveaway 2:36 - Top 5 reasons people stay consistent — #1: Enjoyment 11:18 - #2: Mental health — exercise vs. therapy and medication for depression & anxiety 20:23 - #3: Physical health & pain relief — the real fountain of youth 23:30 - #4: Aesthetics — why it's the least reliable long-term motivator 25:21 - #5: Community — why Gen Z now ranks the gym as the #1 social venue 30:01 - Which occupation ages your face the fastest? (Study breakdown) 31:14 - Katrina overheard at the gym — "figures he'd date someone younger" 35:04 - Income vs. attractiveness study — women 1,000x more sensitive to men's earnings 43:10 - Justin's son wins first place + skateboarding kids try to punk Justin 50:27 - Troscriptions True Moon — cordyceps deep dive (75mg vs. typical 2–15mg) 52:53 - Push Scroll app — earn social media time by doing squats and push-ups 56:03 - Caller: Lindsay (NC) — Social worker, almost 50, wants to become a personal trainer 1:14:14 - Caller: Sandy (UT) — 73-year-old with MS, lifting 3x/week, asks about body fat 1:24:01 - Caller: Maggie (BC) — Perimenopausal, wants to run a half marathon while building muscle 1:38:30 - Caller: Nikki (ON) — Overtrained, low libido, gets offered 3 free months of coaching  

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That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Easily the most important factor to consider when it comes to your fitness is consistency. This is the most challenging thing for almost everybody. So here's what we did. we looked at all the surveys and data, and we found the top five reasons

why people are able to stay consistent with the workouts, and we're going to talk about them right now. Is that include, so like, would this be on there? Habit stacking. Is that on there? It's not. It's not.

No, so these are reasons. I'm going to pull them up. These are reasons why people, like, what are they writing down in terms of, you know, what keeps them consistent? And what you find in the data is number one is, and this is obvious, you guys, is enjoyment. Okay. At the top of the list.

Yeah, that they actually like the workout. And I think this is, it sounds obvious, you know, once we talk about it, but so many people go into working out hating it with the mindset that they're going to hate it, that they never get out of that mindset. And look, I don't care how good something is for you. if you hate it, trying to do it for the rest of your life, like, good luck. It's just not going to happen. Yeah, long term is just a terrible strategy.

And do you believe that that's something that you can change? Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll ask you, Adam, because we've talked about this before with jobs. How many jobs have you had that were not your ideal job, but you find a way to make yourself enjoy it? I mean, I'm such, I don't know if it's, I mean, is it considered your line to?

to yourself, you know? Are you, uh, are you just, are you trying to practice, uh, connecting to the things that you do liking it. So maybe like, because you're right, uh, I've had some pretty shit jobs. And I can honestly say I, I enjoyed doing all of them. Was there parts of them that I didn't like or that sucked or sure? But I think the thing that I hacked into at a very young age was learning to focus on the aspects I did like.

So, and I think. some people that get started, because I've had many clients like this that, like, admittedly, like, I hate to work out. You know, I pay you to, because I know I won't come unless I pay you to, to show up to this thing.

And I care more about losing money than I care. You know what I'm saying? That was like their motivation of having a personal trainer. And my goal was always to get them to try and connect the dots to the other parts of it that you do like. Like, you can't possibly hate all of it, right?

There's got to be, you got to like the fact that after you work out, you feel good later on the, the day, right? Or you have to know that you sleep better when you're consistently doing your workouts. You got to like the fact that you can get away with eating foods that maybe you couldn't eat. You know what I'm saying? So I think it's just a mindset shift that you have to work on to find that enjoyment. Well, you were saying, like, the reason why we know this to be true is because this is what we learned how to do is trainers with their clients. This is, this was number one.

as I became a better trainer and the way that I would have measured my success as a trainer was literally can I get people to want to do this for long term? Yeah. Okay, that was the measurement of success for a trainer, by the way. It's not results.

It's not, all that stuff is important. But it was, can I get this person to develop a relationship with fitness where they're going to always want to do it? Because what I found early on was I could train people great. I could get them great results. Their drop-off rate was not, it wasn't great.

It was people would still drop off, especially if they stopped working with me. Later, I figured this out, or I figured out that this was the problem. And I was able to get, so I was able to get good enough to where even if clients stopped working with me, they were able, they wanted to stay consistent. Part of that as a trainer, and this is what coaches, good coaches know, is when you're coming in to work out with me, a big part of what I'm trying to do is make this enjoyable. Your energy. Yeah. Yeah. You had to kind of learn that as a coach is really, you do play a big role in that in terms of like your excitement and, you know, what, what they're actually drawing off of when they're coming in.

Like, is it a fun environment? And, you know, of course, sometimes that would lead me into, like, structuring some things that they liked more. Like, say it's like boxing or, you know, some kind of like extracurricular activity. I'm trying to kind of weave that in. And, you know, and this is why I don't. judge too much with trainers when you see kind of like, you know, some things where they're, you realize they're doing that for the enjoyment of their client because they like to do those types of activities. But, you know, I would always still stick with like, you know, the main

part of the training. But now I would try and look for cues and signs of things that they picked up on where they're like, oh, wow, I really enjoyed that last set. So enjoyment is number one of these five. Enjoyment's number one. And I'm going to, I'm going to just stay here just for a second because I do want to say this. If you're listening, you're like, well, that's silly. I just trick myself or I just convince myself or our minds are geared towards the negative. We know this. This is the fact that the data shows us quite clearly.

If you go about your day and one bad thing happens or one frustrating thing happens, you'll focus on that bad or frustrating thing. And you'll forget all the small good things that happen throughout the day. And I've actually done this experiment. I've done where I'll set a silent alarm on my phone that would go off every two hours. And every time it would go off, I'd reflect on the previous two hours. And I'd ask myself what blessings happened in the last couple hours. And what was crazy about this was, first off, it was things I would have missed by the end of the day.

I would have forgot. Number two, it started to train my mind to notice the good things. So by practicing this, I just became more positive. My filter started to change. So you have to go into this thinking to yourself. what are the things I can focus on that I do enjoy about this? Maybe it's not how hard it feels. Maybe that's not the part that I enjoy.

But maybe it's how much energy it provides me. Or it's some time to myself. Or it's the conversations I have with the people around me. Or it's the reduction in pain. And you can develop a relationship with it where over time, it does become something that you enjoy. In fact, if you talk to anybody who's been working out consistently for a long period of time, you will not find a single person. that says they don't enjoy it. They all found a way.

Well, you always talk about how, like, working out is such a microcosm for life. And I think that this applies to so many other things besides this fitness. And I've shared on the podcast before, you know, the cleaning and doing dishes and stuff like that was like something I did not like doing at all. And looking back now, the, you know, five, six years of being very consistent with me being the one to do that every night.

Like, it's become something I actually really enjoy. But it didn't happen like overnight. It wasn't like I just lied to myself and said like, you love doing this. It's like over time you started to connect the things that like what I did like about it. And it's like, you know, I don't I really like? I love coming downstairs in the morning and like seeing the house just like completely immaculate. It's like I appreciate that. I enjoy that.

Or I enjoy coming down the stairs and knowing that that glass or that thing is available because it's being cleaned for sure. It's definitely not dirty in the thing. So I just started attaching that. You know, I love listening to, like, relaxing music why I do that. And it's this quiet time that I can be disconnected from my phone and I can be in my head and do kind of a gratitude. So I just started stacking all these things that I noticed. It was not. I do not love to scrub a pan in the sink.

It's not that. It's like, what are all the other things? And then over time, you start to connect to that. And then it becomes this thing like, I actually really enjoy this. I think it's real similar to exercise. And those things that you're going to like or connect to are going to be different for every point. person. You know, like you said, maybe it's not the workout, you know, for others, maybe it is.

Maybe it's the outcome. I love to break a good sweat. I'm like, man, that at least does feel good. Like, I hate getting there, but once I get there, I like it. It's like you have to start to reframe that to get to that place. So that's number one. I got to think convenience is in there. No, so these were values that people found in fitness that kept them consistent.

So, like, number one value was the enjoyment. Like, they enjoyed it. So this is why I do it. Okay. Second value that came up was it helped their mental health and clarity. It gave them pause, peace, helped them with anxiety, made them feel better mentally, was number two. This one for me is a big one. This is what keeps me going day in and day out.

I know when I don't work out, not as sharp, not in a good mood. I know workouts put me in a good mood. Workouts give me more ideas for the podcast. I know when I used to manage gyms, one of my favorite things you do was talk to my members who were older who looked like they've been working out for a while. I used to love talking to them.

And I would always ask them the same, I would always ask them this one question. I'd say, why do you keep doing this? How long have you been working out and why do you keep doing this? And every single one of them said, it's the mental part. The mental part I really enjoy

how it makes me feel mentally. Yeah, and I think too, the more you mature with your training, you realize there's a different workout out for a different type of a feeling or a different type of state that you're in coming into that day. And I think that, you know, our jobs as coaches, too, is to really, like, convey that and show, you know, that if there's pain, discomfort, they're overstressed or, you know, you're just,

like, you just need a good, almost therapy session physically. There's a way to do that, you know, monitoring intensity or, you know, whatever type of of movements that you're concentrating on, it's really cool because you can literally use it as medicine. You know, it's funny you bring that up. There's something that I do now that I never used to do. In fact, at least 20 years of my lifting, I didn't do this.

I do this now. When I first get to gym, no matter what I'm doing that day, I almost always go right to the treadmill and walk on the treadmill for the first 10 minutes. Oh, wow. And it's not like I think I'm getting some sort of warm. but it's really kind of to figure my mental state. And it's like, what do I, what do I need today?

Like, is it, is today going to be. It's like a little meditation. It is. And it really makes me get and figure out, like, what is today's workout going to be? Like, I go there somewhat with an idea. But the truth is, I don't make that decision until I'm on that 10 minutes of walking on the treadmill. And I'm sitting there going like, you know what, I should probably do some mobility work today. I can feel, I can feel my hips as I'm walking right now.

I haven't done some good stuff. That's what I'm going to start off with. And then maybe I'll do this or that, right? Or it's just like, man, I'm feeling good today. I feel fully recovered. It's like, I'm going to go get after it today. In fact, I'm going to go lift heavy at this thing. It's like, I never used to do that.

I never, in fact, I used to mock all the, you know, trainers that we used to, and I'm guilty of being this trainer at one point of, you know, put your client on the first 10 minutes of the, you know what I'm saying, of the elliptical or whatever before you start their workout. Like really, and really what that was is so you could shovel down some food. before or whatever you'll see there's no like real right yeah yeah justified as warming up or whatever like that it's like that's really what's going on um but i actually really uh do that now and enjoy that process and i think it's to the point you're making right now which is you know

each workout does tend to serve a different mindset or adaptation or a thing that i'm looking at and that's when i just said that the data on um how exercise um affects mental health we've got got really good data now. So people have reported this for a long time, that it feels good. You hear things like the runner's high. It puts me a good mood. It gives me good ideas. We've known this for a long time. Like riders block, what's the solution for riders block? Go out and walk. Go on to run. Get you that creative space. Yeah, improves creativity. People have talked about this, but do we have data? Yes, we've got great data now on exercise and depression and anxiety. Here's what the data shows. Exercise is actually more effective. It's more effective. It's more

effective than talk therapy and more effective than medical interventions for depression, for the general types of depression people report and for the types of anxiety that people report. In fact, if we could bottle the benefits of exercise, just the mental health benefits, forget everything else, just if we could put the mental health benefits in a pill, it would be the greatest selling pharmaceutical in the history of mankind. That's how effective it is at improving your mental health and outlook. Based on the data.

So this to the point now where, you know, therapist, psychologist, psychiatrists now are starting to use it as part of their protocol. This is what they're starting to recommend. I know. It's so powerful. I've seen this as a trainer. I can see, I see it like in real time. You have a client come in in a bad mood. They leave in a good mood.

I've also seen it overtime. I've actually had a few clients who referred to me. So at one point I trained a couple mental health experts or practitioners, and they sent me some of their patients. And you know, you could tell when they'd come in, you could tell that they struggle with certain things. One of them was a young man. One of them was an older gentleman. And over the course of months, the transformation of their mental health was radical. One guy was so bad that when he came in, I had a small studio.

So I had the flexibility to be able to do this. We would schedule him when there weren't other trainers. the studio because it had to be no music and we had to have the lights down. He was really sensitive to stimulus. It would actually set him off with anxiety and stuff. So we turn the lights down. No music. By the end of our, I mean, towards, I don't remember how long it was, I trained him. It was months. So maybe six months, nine months. Music on, lights on, other people. Total transformation, there was no difference in his medication. There was no difference in his therapy. It was all from extra. And he told me this. He's like, nothing has really impacted me

like exercise. That's just a personal example. So when it comes to mental health, this is, it's so powerful that being sedentary is a risk factor for anxiety and depression. Yeah. So this is how powerful it is. If you don't move your risk of depression anxiety skyrocket. So probably one of the most powerful things it does. Do they, so do they factor in like, obviously it's going to get you out of this like cognitive loop that you're in where you're just like continually thinking about the same thing. And now you're in body more. And so now you're kind of connected more to the movement aspect.

But also, don't you get like natural rewards chemically from, yeah, working out as well. Yeah, you get feel good chemicals, but when you get feel, when you produce feel good chemicals from chemical stimulation

or something that doesn't require work, you get a negative feedback loop. Right. So what they're showing the data is if I take a drug to produce these good feelings or if I do something that's, like eat something hyper palatable or if somebody watches pornography or things like that that tend to cause this dopamine. Right.

Because there's no hard work that led to it. You get the negative feedback. When there's work that's involved or effort that's involved with the positive reward, it actually compounds over time. It's pretty remarkable. And exercise produces that. And again, I'll speak to myself. This is the number one reason why I enjoy it. I enjoy it for lots of different reasons.

But for me, it's like nothing, there's almost nothing that I can do that I know will have such a consistent. Always gets me out of a rut. Totally. Yeah, I'm just like I just need to go work out. I mean, I feel like show me a relationship that's struggling, right? A couple that's struggling. And I'll show you a relationship that lacks sex and exercise. I'm serious.

I feel like those two things like are so important to like just your own mental health and the connection. A lot of a factor than a lot of people think. Huge. Yeah. I mean, Katrina and I, we laugh and joke about this. Like, if, if, if a two or three days that goes in a row of one of those two missing in the relationship, it's like, there's, there's a different, there's a different vibe in the house. If those. Courtney has a barometer.

She's like, oh, it's been three days. Yes. It's like, it's like, there is a different vibe and energy in the house. If, if we've had a couple of those days get strung together of one or both, both those is like, you're. you're set up for a fight. You know what's a sad mood. Yeah, exactly. You just know one of us is going to be in a crabby mood or both.

It's just like wild, how important those two things, like exercising our body like that and that physical touch and connection with your partner. It's like they both, I think, and I think it has a lot to do with like you're saying is that you get this incredible, you know, endorphins and chemical response without the negative feedback like a, like a drug would.

And a lot of those people that aren't getting that are self-medicating to try and chase that feeling, but then it has a negative feedback loop. Yes, yes, yes. All right. Next up is physical health, and you can put in there things like strength, lack of pain, like taking care of my body physically, which is different than appearance, which we'll get to. So this is in aesthetics. This is people saying, I like the way it makes my body feel.

This one becomes, there's two types of people that this becomes really profound to. One is the person, it could be a young person even that's so sedentary. They don't even know how crappy they feel. Yeah. Then they start working out, getting stronger, and they physically feel different in their bodies. Yeah. The other one, which is the more common one, is older population. They feel and see this so much.

And then this becomes so valuable to them because, you know, when you're 60, you've probably had some years of not feeling good or hurting. Or you've noticed some abilities that you're now lacking. necessarily run with your grandkids like you could with your kids or you can't do certain things like you used to yeah then you start working out and you're like oh my gosh like i could go up the stairs without huffing and puffing and i'm doing things and i got energy you know it's amazing what when you're in a state of pain um chronic pain like what that does to your mood and the way that you think and your outlook on everything and to to be able to resolve that uh physically i think it just

opens up this whole new potential for a lot of people. I mean, I would argue that this is everybody over 40. Yeah. I don't think I've ever met somebody. Majority for sure. Over the age of 40, who doesn't say that exercise makes me feel better. That's a big motivator for it. Sure, the aesthetics, like you said.

We'll get to that. Yeah, is one and attached to that. But I'd say that most people over 40, it's why it keeps me going for sure. it's like the aesthetic side is nice, but the, it's like, if I don't, low back pain starts bothering me, my hips start talking,

I start feeling all that stuff like that. And so just making sure that I'm training consistently keeps all of that stuff at bay. And I mean, I feel like that's everything as you get older. It is. And if you were to, if we had to like find an actual fountain of youth,

which doesn't exist, the closest we could get would be physical fitness. Yeah. It's so powerful. And I always like to paint this picture of someone who's listening. You know, if I show you a 20-year-old that works out one that doesn't, there's a difference between the two for sure. There's a difference in the way they move.

There's a difference in their abilities and all that stuff. You give me a 60-year-old that's fit versus a 60-year-old that isn't. Like your typical 60-year-old versus a six-year-old has been working out for a long time. They're not even in the same universe. It's not even, it's like they're two different species. Yeah. It's so different. It's radically different with their ability.

their energy, their lack of pain. This for me was a big one as a trainer because towards the end, as I trained lots of medical professionals, they would send me their patients. A lot of their patients were in that age group, the older age group. And when I would show them pain relief, it was like, I'm done. I'm doing this forever. They're a whole new person. I've been, my back has always hurt.

It's always been hurt. It's been hurt for years. I thought I just had a bad back and I've been working out with you for two months and my back doesn't hurt anymore. What is going on here? I'm like, well, it's just literally lack of strength, lack of stability. the right exercises solve your chronic back pain, and it totally sold them.

Next up is the aesthetic. That's number four? Yeah, that's just how people look. Now, I'll say this. Just interesting because that's probably the number one reason why most people show up. That's right. And I think of all the ones that we're going to talk about,

because there's a fifth one, too, we'll get to, this one's actually the least effective or the least important because you can only improve upon the way you look for so long and or so subjective, and you tend to compare yourself to other people. So this one's really sketchy. Yeah. With where you could go.

And if in most people, here's the problem with the one that we're talking about right now, most people place all the value on how they look. And it is not a strong enough motivator or strong enough relationship builder to keep you working out forever by itself.

And I think we all have a form of perception drift, right? We talked about this with the face lifts and surgeons with that. and anybody who's been working out long enough that's been chasing the aesthetic side would attest to this, which is when you first started, you probably said things like, oh, if I just look like this or my arms were this size, or I weighed this much, or I was this body fat, and then you get there and what happens? Yeah. More.

Yeah. I need another inch on my arms. I got this part of my body. Yeah. And so it's this never-ending, you know, goalpost that you keep moving. So I just remind people, the reason why we think people look good when they're fit is because it's actually a signal towards health and vitality. So it's actually a side effect. It was never the main effect.

It was never meant to be the main effect of good health and fitness. It was meant to be a signal that points to better health, better mobility, better vitality. Right, right. Last, and I think this one's playing a bigger role. And I've talked about this on the last couple podcasts. What is this? Can we guess this, Justin? Well, all the things

Yeah, because you're into the aesthetic So you did cognitive stuff It's like why people keep showing up to their relationship Yeah, community Oh community Of course we should get that This one's huge I think the fitness industry

Missed this one But now is starting to realize How powerful this is Yeah Gems and fitness facilities Can do a really good job Of attracting people They've figured out how to attract people

They suck at keeping people This has been a problem In the fitness industry forever how do we keep people? The gyms that keep people are the ones that have culture and community. Yeah, real good culture. Nobody leaves. But the question is, though, Sal, is it really in their best entrance for that?

What do you mean? To keep? Yeah. Not if you're charging 20 bucks a month. Depends on your model. That's right. Well, even at, say, the 150 or higher in, like, I bet you, if you looked at Lifetime Fitness or Equinox, if every member showed up, they couldn't. The fire marshal would call on them, too.

Capacity. So almost all gyms. okay besides boutique ones that have the limited spots are actually designed that we want you to kind of show up but not really well we don't want you that hardcore well what they're doing Adam because I've been looking up I've been looking this up recently because we have trainers and coaches and I have this like I was in the back of my mind I always want to own a gym even though it's not don't I know you're going to get pissed off but it's not

big moneymaker no I know but I think we all want to do that I look at the data I want to own a bar too and I'm I'm studying the data and you know what these gyms do These gyms that are, like you just said, these really nice gyms that charge a lot. They make a lot of money on the community stuff that's in the gym. So you have a membership, but then people spend money on eating lunch there.

Yeah. They spend money on the massage. They spend money on the extras, the community stuff. Yeah, the pool where they can hang out with the other people. So it's community. And what's happening is Gen Z.

Gen Z is wanting this. And I think it's probably because of lack of connections for younger generation. For sure. I mean, one of the biggest complaints when you talk to a younger person is, who is I just, I was just talking to someone about this, how hard it is to date and meet people. It's social outlets.

Yeah, there's just. You know that Gen Z run into people. Gen Z now ranks the gym as the number one place to be social. It makes sense. It replaced bars and replaced everything. And so I, and you also, you, uh, you have a nice bias by going there. If you go to a bar to find somebody where everyone's getting, you know what you're getting napsed up.

Yeah, it's it. It is. It's a mixed bag there. There's somebody somewhere there that's drinking there. One thing you know is everyone's there to drink. Yeah, that's, yeah, which could be for all the wrong reasons. If you're there too long. Maybe some good reason, but it's like it is definitely a roll of the dice.

And you go to the gym, everybody in there is growth-minded. They're trying to. In somewhat of an aspect, some aspect of, like they want to improve themselves. And that's a solid- better group. That's a solid quality to find. It doesn't mean that you meet the perfect person, but it's, I'd say, Would you not argue that one of the major attributes to having a successful marriage is having a partner who is equally focused on growth?

Of course. Growth-minded at least. I mean, that's... Hey, listen, what's the number one reason why we all liked working in gyms? It was the culture. Yeah. It's that culture. People are coming in and they're choosing to voluntarily.

Self-improve. So I do believe you're right. I mean, the model is going to be these high-in 150 to 250. Or more. Yeah, or more. Or small places. And you see how they're incorporating, like, your peptide and your hormone therapy and, like, a lot of these, like, kind of add-on options. Workspaces, too, because a lot of people can work remotely.

And I think having, I mean, I would love to have, the Bay Area doesn't have a good one. They have, they have one that's kind of like that, but it's not that good. It's, it's, I think it's the future. And I think it's an important focus that gyms are going to start paying attention to because the fitness industry moved away from that. It actually started that way. gyms used to be a very culture dominant. Then it slowly turned into, put your headphones on, you're in your own space, do your thing,

you like the equipment, cool, get it and get out, you don't talk to anybody. And I think that's a big mistake. Fitness, finax, don't care. I don't care because I go into my thing, I leave. But most people, the community, and they're finding this now and the data. Like, this is what people want.

Yeah. So I think the future of gyms, it's already moving in that direction. Yeah. So I got a crazy study for you. That's really interesting. First off, do you know, so they did, there's some studies on aging. Do you know the easiest way to predict someone's, like, biological age and also their

whatever, their chronological age, but also how old their DNA is or how much they're wearing terror is. There's a way you can look at someone. Not just their telomeres? No, no. It's their face. Of all the things on someone. Oh, really?

You could predict it. If you had to just pick something to look at, it would be the, you'd be the, their face. Like how stressed are they? How much is their body actually aging? It feels a lot. It does. So they actually did this study where they said they looked at occupations and ranked them from best to worst in terms of how quickly they were aging based off their face. Wild. Yes. Do you know who is the worst? It got to be things like surgeons or ER doctors or high stress jobs. Scientists and educators. Oh, okay. Scientists and educators. Yeah. I can. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's. It's, it's, it's, it's, it. It's, it's, it's, it. It's By the way, the person who posted this is a longevity scientist.

He's like, cool, that's my profession. I'm in the worst. Then it was professionals. Then it was managers, clerical, sales, service workers, athletes had the best age. Because you're playing your dream sport for a living. And you're also just exercising. Playing. That's interesting.

And you're out of your head and whatever. That makes me wonder. So I'd love to do Katrina's. I told you guys off air what had happened the other day. the other day in the gym. She's still floating about it. It's been like two weeks now. Yeah.

She's got her headphones on in the gym. And they die, but she just leaves them on. And there's two ladies. There's a trainer who's training a client like next to her. Oh, yeah. And they're talking about her. And they don't know she can hear. And they're like, that's, that's Adam's wife.

You know, with mind pump? You know what that is, right? And they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I know this. and she looks over her and she's like, looking at Katrina, she's like, figures, he would date some girl that's way younger than him. Oh, she loved that. She loved that.

Oh, God. Because she's not. No, she's older than me. So I did have a bigger story to set that. You want to set the story straight here. By the way, it's kind of like a double, like there's two sides of that. There is. There's like, it's like, it's an insult to me.

It's like, it's like saying I'm a shallow person, right? Like, of course, he's like some shallow guy that would date like. Of course you would date some young girl. So she's all happy about it, but I'm like reading it. And, like, you know, it's a bit of an insult to me, though, right? It's kind of like saying that I'm shallow or something. Like, I don't know. But so, yeah, I did this story the day teasing her because she, her stack just came in from,

Vita Bella just sent to her stack. Her peptides. Yeah, her GHC. And so I was sharing the stuff that she does for her, her routine for her face and stuff like that because she is really good about that. And she'll do her morning cream, her night cream that has the GHKCU, the NAD, I think glutathione and something else in there. There's like an exilic acid or something you might know.

I don't know what it was. I thought you would know. But that stack. And then she's more consistent than I am. She sits in front of the juvite. Right after she gets out, she does. How often is she doing the juvite? Every day.

So almost every night after. So we like our routine. So after she'll do math, max and bathe him and get him ready. So like that, that's when she takes her shower, does her cream stuff. And then she'll sit down right in front of,

the light right after that. I think she does like 10 or 15 minutes daily. So every single night, you know, she might miss a weekend night or something like that when we're doing something. If you use juve on your face to look younger, you'll notice in a week. One week.

It makes a big difference with Courtney, too. She does it all the time. Oh, big difference. I mean, I'm in and out of doing it, and I always notice a difference when I get right back in the routine of doing it. Like, I would say within three, probably three times of me.

I notice it mainly underneath her eyes. Like, it definitely. makes a big difference. Yeah. So, I mean, I think, I mean, Katrina is, she's also to the study and to the point you're bringing, I mean, probably one of the most Zen people I've ever met in my life, you know? Oh, so stress is, yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, I don't think I've ever seen her stressed out, you know? It's weird. Yeah. She's married to you. I work with you.

It doesn't work on her. How does she does not, she does not. Bounces right off. I age working next to you. Yeah. I need you. That's your... Look at a hair color, dude. It's a little further way, dude.

Stop it. Stop it. Why is Doug keep getting younger than. I'm harder. I'm harder. He's the furthest. Exactly. He's the furthest away.

He's a vampire. That's why, dude. No, she definitely is, uh, I mean, I definitely give her a lot of credit for, for checking me on a lot of that stuff like that. She's always the quit first to think of the, the most optimistic way to look at every situation. And, uh, that, between, between the, that and her skincare and her juvely. I think she's hacked into looking younger than me,

even though she's older than me. That's so great. Speaking of attractiveness, they did a study. I don't know why they do studies like this sometimes, but whatever, we'll talk about it. So they did a study on men and women, and they wanted to see how much someone's income would affect their attractiveness. For both sexes?

For both sexes. Oh, interesting. So I'm more interested in what the, Guys say about girls. Okay. So they took pictures. We all know it the other way around. So they took pictures of women.

Okay. And it was just, you just see them. Okay. And then they took pictures of women and put underneath them their salary. Interesting. And then they say did the same thing with men. Okay. They put a picture.

Okay. Cool. It's actually, this is actually a cool study. I mean, I guess. If you don't, if you don't know what's going to happen.

Well, who do you think responds better to? Well, that's obvious. It's obvious. We know that. You talked about this. Do you have a evolutionary theory,

whatever, that women that saw the increased salary are going to be more attracted to that guy. And we see this all over in society. It's very obvious. Okay. So that's nuts. What I'm more interested in is did the guys that saw the girls, well, yeah, did they care at all? Or, and did they actually look negatively around the higher income women?

Did they become less attractive as they made more money? That would be interesting. Actually made almost no effect. May no. It was zero effect. Okay. Yeah. Well, that makes sense.

So how attractive is she? And then boom, you see she makes more nothing. It had almost no, had almost no effect on the guys. So I would think, so if I had to predict, I would have predicted guys would be no effect. Or maybe slightly negative if it was a lot more than them. Because I could see that. I've seen situations like that. I've seen, I've seen guys that are intimidated by a girl that is, that makes a lot more money.

Here's the question I have. I wonder if it's less about being intimidated. did, because that could very well be the case. I'm just thinking out loud. Yeah. Or it could be more about knowing that you're less attractive to a woman. Because when they look at data, when women make more than men and their couples, the man, even if he makes a lot of money, he becomes less attractive to her.

And the divorce rate actually goes up. So divorce rates higher. Like, they're immediately going to think less. Oh, yeah. How high is the divorce rate in a situation where the woman makes significantly more than man? Well, when the man doesn't work and the woman works, it's a lot higher. So if he's the stay at home and she works, the divorce rate goes out. Oh, yeah.

Okay. So I wonder if it's that. Like, oh, she might not like me as much. That's kind of factor in. Yeah, I wonder. It could also be intimidation. I mean, like, those are kind of, the same thing is describing what you're feeling. Yeah, it's kind of the same thing.

But intimidation, insecure. How are you want to, however you want to say it. Okay, what does that say? Oh, that's not good. Read that, Doug? Yeah, a couple where the wife earns more than the husband are generally at a higher risk divorce. Studies indicating they're 33 to 50%

more likely to divorce. Doug, look up how odds increase that a woman will cheat when she's the breadwinner. That's another bad one. The rate of infidelity when the one... Well, I imagine she loses a little bit of respect for him.

Respect, attractiveness, maybe whatever, yeah. Because is that lack of respect is similar to contempt, isn't it? Wouldn't they be hand in hand? I think so. So, yeah, so if you lose respect for your man, it's like having contempt. And you remember when we did the great interview with, who was a couple that are, like, famous for all the second. Oh, gosh.

The number one, the number one reason for infidelity or divorce was contempt. And so him not making as much would lead, was more likely to lead to contempt. What does that say, Doug? Well, it actually says that women who are the primary breadwinners are least likely to cheat. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, interesting. She's too busy working.

She's too busy working. Yeah, that's interesting. Just to stay at home. Yeah, dad, that's probably... Well, men are way higher, more likely, right? Way more. Who's... Yeah, look at the odds.

Guys are way more. I would imagine. It's not that big of a difference, I think. I think there's a difference. No, it's way... Guys are way higher. Girls are more likely to confide in, like, another man and, like, be like that. Men are more likely to cheat physically like that.

Oh, like, cheat emotionally. Yeah, yeah. She's more likely to have a co-worker. She works with with... She shares all her personal stuff With her just to sleep with them. Do you guys know that if a woman's best friend gets divorced, the odds of her getting divorce go up?

Do you guys know that? Really? Yeah, dude. If there's a woman who has a best friend, they're both married, her best friend gets divorced. Super influenced. Her odds go up.

Yeah. I would think a guys would too, though. Because, okay, let's not, let's take marriage of the question. I remember when you're kids. Maybe, right? When you were kids, I totally remember, like, the homie group, you know what I'm saying?

when you're all coupled up, it's all good, you're doing a couple things. And then one or two guys are single. And then it's like, you're the one guy who's still in a relationship. You're going to hang out with your chick again. You get all the pressure to be single. I used to like you when you were single. You were way more fun when you were single. Well, so anyway, so let's go back to the study.

Yeah, I feel like that's like early on stuff. So a woman, women are 1,000 times more sensitive to a man's income when a value. Well, 75% more likely divorce, Sal. What? If your best friend, if your best friend, it divorces. Yeah. Holy cow, 75%. Wow.

That's a big one. That's high. Social contagion is what they call it. Yeah. So both sides. Same story. Oh, so it is both sexes. Both sexes.

Oh. Wow. Well, so do you guys hear what I said, though, about the data? No, no, sorry. Say it again. Women are a thousand times more sensitive to a man's income when evaluating his attractiveness. A thousand.

A thousand. A thousand times. That's a big number. That's big. Yeah, you can be like a three and you make like a million dollars a year and now you're eight. Now the reverse, you could flip that on its head too with the guys. We probably care a thousand times more about physical, right? Probably.

Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. I don't know about a thousand, but definitely more. Yeah, well, a lot more, I would think. Yeah. If like you would, if they did, I'm sure there's studies on this where they've asked surveys of guys,

what's their number one thing. And it's like probably attractiveness is probably top of, most people's list for men. Beauty. Yeah, and girls probably say things like humor and like a lot of other things, but attractiveness is number one. So I bet we're probably up there with that. So that makes sense.

I know. That makes sense. It is. I find the, what machine should I do in the gym to get more girls? Good at the ATM. That's why. Make more money, dude.

Come make more money, bro. You know, so a lot of people, a lot of people hate on that, right? And there's a lot of like, oh, gold digger is there, a negative kind. But that is no different, okay, than if we were to go back 3,000 years, and the guy who could kill deer left and right, easy, with the best shot, and was coming home with deer over his shoulder every single day versus the guy who showed up empty-handed or a squirrel. You know what I'm saying?

He found some nuts outside. Yeah, yeah. He found some nuts and berries and a squirrel. You know what I'm saying? I guarantee those two guys walk into camp. I don't give a shit what's what they look like physically. The woman are looking at a dude who's carrying that deer. And she's like, I'm hungry.

He is attractive as hell because you know why? Because he can feed me and our child. And nobody would hate on that. But because today that the way we show that is. It's just the way it is, dude. Well, that's how we show it today, though. It's no different, right? No, it's 100%.

Yeah, it's just an example of that. He's proven that he's proven that he can go out and hunt. Competent. Yeah. With the best of them. And so it's like, I don't know. I don't know. I think people, I think people judge that too much.

No sex, you bet you. Blueberries? I could have went and collected blueberries. You're going to keep those blueberries. You're going to get a deer. You know what I'm saying? I'm going to squirrel. I'm not going to be.

Imagine that you had to be that guy carrying the little squirrel. Get out there. Stab something. You're with your buddies. I can't go home, dude. Bro, I killed a squirrel. No way, dude. My wife's be so bad.

I got a muskrat in the back. You can borrow them. Dude, here's some fish. Oh, my God. Go with this. I know, it's so funny. I want to hear, Justin, you have, there's a note up here about you getting called out by your boy. Oh, yeah.

So, uh, over the weekend, I went to, so my son was competing in Santa Cruz for this, like, regional. He won. Yeah, he won. Yeah, he won. What? First place, dog. Yeah. Yeah.

And he had, I mean, there was like four competitors in his, uh, level, but this is a new level for him. Um, bro, he's really good. Level 10. Yeah. So he's, he's, he's legit. He has to do like double back flips now and so he has to get a lot higher in his approach before. And I was talking to Adam earlier about this. Like he was stalled. Like he was stuck. Like so I'm really proud of him for being able to break through. And for the minute there, we actually like,

even because the coach that was working on, he's really good coach, but like couldn't, you know, help get past this one thing. Like we, I was like trying all of my speech. teaches with him you know course can you just like you know pump him up like motivate him somehow i'm like i've i've literally done like everything in my playbook yeah i'm like out so and he just would you know and he's just kind of bummed because it's it's outside of school for one so it's like he's doing this um putting a lot of work into this like outside of school not with his friends and everything and so it was kind of like he was feeling a little bit of that depression and like all this kind of stuff.

So anyway, we looked at getting him a sports psychologist, which I never would have thought of. But one of his teammates had used one and all of a sudden it like unlocked for them. And so Courtney kind of present that to me. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Let me see. And at first I tried to like, you know, look through our rolodex of people we've interviewed and stuff. And there was like Brett McCabe, I think was one. but, and I looked, you know, and he didn't get a hold of him.

But there was this one guy who was recommended that was local and started talking to him and did some sessions with him. And it was literally like after that one session with him, he went back to the gym. And then all of a sudden, boom, he got it. And he was like, yeah. And I was like, what did he say? What was it? You know, and it just, I think he just need to hear it from somebody else. of course and to just get empowered yeah um but anyways so all that to be said like my my story was

nothing to do with any of that okay I was outside I was like walking back to my car uh with ever and I was wearing my sweatshirt and it's a Santa Cruz sweatshirt and so it's like a skate surf brand but it's it's really pretty much like anybody down there wears Santa Cruz brand and so these two kids with skateboards and sunglasses come up to me and they're like hey Can you do a kickflip? And this guy had like a video and you can do a kick flip? And I was like, I was like, are you guys trying to shame me right now? Is this like some kind of setup?

Like I was like, I'm a total poser. You know, this is literally what they're doing. They're trying like, oh, come on, old man. You know, like, do a kick flip. And I was like, why don't you push press 315? You'll punk. And I walked away. And I was like, oh, man, my ego.

I was like having to check myself and like, you know, like, I was going to say some, some bad things to these kids. They were like, maybe, I don't know, 12, 13, something like that. But I was like, what is this? You know, I think it's like some TikTok setup or something. Oh, it totally is. That's what that is. These kids do this shit all the time. That would have been a win for them either way.

Either you kickflip or you fall. I was like, we're going to put this on TikTok. I was so mad because when I left, I was like talking to everyone. I was like, dude, I should just be like, yeah, no problem. get their skateboard, then just take it and bail. I'm going to go work on it. Then just like take off. I'll get my skateboard.

I'm going to get my bag. Go ahead. Get your dad. Or just like stomping on it in half. Wow. Oh, man. They're 12, Justin. Listen, that's the bully in me.

I thought all these thoughts and I didn't do it. Hey, let's be honest, they're trying to set him up anyway. Yeah. Yeah, they're trying to pump. Exactly. They're trying to make me look bad. Yeah. I just, you know, it was like, yeah, I'm a poser.

So did, did, uh, did Ethan? was Ethan happy he got the coach? He was. He was really resistant to it. So I didn't say any of that. But he was definitely pushing back. And he's like, he had a thought of like what it was. He thought it was like a shrink, you know.

And it was like, you know, we're going to get it all into like this emotional crap. And he's like, I don't want to do that, dad. It's not like that. He's a coach. You know, it's a performance thing. Like, he's trying to help you overcome an obstacle. Yeah. Your relationship with your mom.

I don't want to do that. Yeah, I was like, I don't want to say, we're not going there. Don't worry, pal. So, yeah, once we, I don't know, had a few days of, like, kind of coaxing him into it, you finally, like, agreed. And then now he would, he would say he totally. Totally. Oh, yeah.

Oh, that's cool. And then we just intermittently kind of use if he has any kind of big, you know, barrier there, like. So much is mental. It's just, yeah, it just really helps. And that sports all mental, dude. It's been so long since we did that episode. with Brett McKay, but I remember him talking about some stuff in there that was really interesting.

That was not what I thought, like, with the stuff that he had to work on with the athletes. Obviously, you guys have experienced this, but I remember when I really fully experienced the mental side of it was, it was my first tournament as an adult in Jiu-Jitics. I did as a kid, but as an adult. And in the gym, I felt like I was a machine. Like, I could go forever. I could go round after round. It felt like I was so good. And then in the tournament, I guess.

out so hard in my first match. And I was like, it was all psychological. It was all because I was too worked up, too anxious. Too anxious. I mean, I had, I had, I had similar fact, it was a big joke amongst my buddies on the team that I was like, practice at them. Like, in practice, like, I dominated. Blocking shots and D& up and hitting everything and just. And so I'd get opportunities to play.

And then when I get out on the court, like, forget to play. freeze up, do all the stuff and just make mistakes. Yeah. You know, and, you know, that back then, like, you, you make those mistakes. You're out. You have to be able to perform. You got to be able to perform. And, you know, I didn't know any better at that age to even think about working on the

psychological side of that or anything like that. I just keep working harder. And I would do so, I would work so hard in practice that coaches always wanted to give me shots like that. But when I got to, and this is when I got to that bigger school. When I was, for some reason, when I was at a small school, I didn't have that same anxiety and fear. And maybe that's what it was,

was because the crowds were smaller. Yeah. It wasn't as lower level, so it wasn't quite as competitive. Of course, less on the line maybe. Yeah, yeah. And so did great. And that was,

I tell you, my parents had such a hard time with that because here I come from being like the star athlete in one school and then all of a sudden I'm riding the bench on the other. But I knew better because I knew I'd screw up. Like, I knew I was messing up on a play

or I wasn't doing something right. And so I get pulled. And so I didn't have any sort of like animosity to coach. It's like, man, I got it. why has this happened to me?

He's like, in practice, I'm so good. I get out here and, like, mess up, you know? Dude, speaking of athletic performance, so you know that, I know you were using the troscriptions tromune for sleep. By the way, you tracked your deep sleep. Yes. And it has a big effect on deep sleep.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, have you seen their tromune? I've seen it, yeah. The main ingredient is cortisepin, which comes from the cortisept supplement. So you know corticep? Yes. Okay.

So I'm like, why is this? I've used corticeps forever. I love cortisps. Love it. I love it for athletic performance. Yeah, you've talked about increasing stamina in your workouts. Stamina. I can notice my heat tolerance goes up.

It's been used for a long time. I remember it became kind of popular because China was talking about using it. And I remember which Olympic games it was when they were performing so high. But the tromune is like another level. Like if I take that before I work out, it's like twice as effective. And then before sleep, I also get the same thing. I have the increase in REM sleep. Yeah, yeah.

It also has an effect on immune system. So I looked it up and I'm like, and I compared, I'm like, what is it about prescriptions versus just the normal cortisps that I would get? Okay, big difference, you guys. So cortisapin is the, is one of the main active ingredients in corticeps. It's what does the stuff that we're talking about, okay? When you take corticeps, typically you'll take capsules, and a high dose would be like 3,000 milligrams of powdered cortisept.

Got it. Within 3,000 milligrams, you're getting maybe 15 to 20 milligrams of cortiseptin. If you're lucky, if it's like super high quality, oftentimes it's more like 2 milligrams or 5 milligrams. Do you guys want to know how much is in a dose of trumune? How much? 75. Wow. 75 milligrams of cortiseptin.

So they literally took it concentrated. Stract it, yeah. Super concentrated it. Oh, interesting. So like pre-workout. especially if you're going to have like short rest periods or we're going to do high wraps or any kind of endurance, you'll notice for sure. And then for sleep, REM, which is crazy because you tracked it. I know Doug tracked it.

Yeah. You see an increase. Yeah, yeah, I did. So right away, the first time I night, I had one of my best REM sleeps I've had since I've been tracking. Yeah. So I was like, oh, this is cool. Yeah, super cool. Wow.

Speaking of something else, that's cool, I sell this app that is got to be one of the most cool fitness apps I've seen a long time. No affiliation. Have you guys heard of Push Scroll? Push scroll. Okay. No. It's actually pretty cool. Let's see.

What is it? So my buddy Chuck is using it. So you connect it to your, to whatever social media platforms you want to. So you can do YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, whatever you want, whatever you use a lot of. Okay. You end up earning time on those by doing exercises. Push-ups, squats, sit-ups, and it'll give you time. So like a push-up is worth two minutes, a squat is worth one minute.

minute. And I'm like, well, that's kind of cool. But like, how does it track? Yeah, how does it's tracking? The camera. So he showed me. He puts it up. It tracks his body movement and it only count a full squat. It will only count a full pushup. Then it connects to his social media. When he goes on his Instagram, he clicks on it. It's locked. And it says, do you want to use some of your time? You say, yes. Then you pull from the time that you earned. And then that's how much time you're on your social media. And then it kicks you off. And so I'm like, I'm like, and I told him, I said, is this actually working? And he goes, yes, my Total social media time went down by more than half because I said, now, why is that?

He said, number one, you exercise for it. I don't mind. I like doing like activity. He goes, but what's cool is when you're picking the time that you want to go on your Instagram, you know, you'll say, I only want to be on for 10 minutes. Usually you have that idea in your mind that I'm only going to be on for 10 minutes. Then they get, you get trapped. He's like, but this kicks me off.

And I go, actually, was wasting time. And I come off. He's, bro, cut his social media time by more than half. And he's doing like hundreds of squats and pushups. He's a crossfitter, so... But I'm like, can you cheat it? No, no, no, you got to... It records you.

So he was doing squats, and if it's like a half squat, it won't count. It'll have to do like a full... That's pretty cool. It's interesting. It's interesting to see how well that would work. Yeah, I wonder how... I mean, I like that they're trying to innovate, you know, solutions for this. I think this is for somebody's fitness-minded who also wants to get off social media.

I mean, I think it's a cool tool for kids. If you have a kid and you're trying to encourage your kid... Maybe put a password on it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I see it more valuable for that than, like, for me, I feel like it would be a nuisance to have to, like, record every bit of my workout. Because that's kind of a... Well, it's not every bit of your workout.

It's just, oh, I want time. So I'm going to do body weight squats. Or I'm going to do a time. I'm going to do body weight push-ups. So throughout the day, you just earn time. That's how you do it. That's even more ridiculous. I thought it was a cool concept.

I like what you said, though, Justin, for kids, that would be kind of cool. Like, if you have a kid that's, like, inactive? I said that. That loves it. It sounds better. I see it. Yeah, it's okay. I like how you were thinking about it. I'm stolen.

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and all the things that I said within typically 30 to 60 days. Go check them out. Go to c.com forward slash mind pump and use the code 25 mind pump for 25% off. Back to the show. Our first caller is Lindsay from North Carolina. Hi, Lindsay. Hi, Lindsay.

Oh my gosh, this is so crazy to see all of you. Hi, how can we help you? Thank you so much for taking my call. I really appreciate it. I'm going to read from my email. if that's okay, just because I'm a little nervous. Of course, perfect. Bandstruck here.

But before asking my question, I wanted to express my deepest gratitude to all of you for everything that you bring to the show. I've been a listener since 2019, and the advice and insight you share has changed the way I look at health, fitness, and longevity. I wanted to add that I particularly appreciate the way you communicate respectfully and honestly to women, and I respected admire your focus on being fathers and the intentionality with which you raise your children. So thanks so much for all that.

Thank you. That's nice. I'm a huge fan of the show, and I love some advice on making a career change to personal training. I'm a trained social worker coming to the end of a long career in child abuse investigation, supervision, and administration. I love being a social worker, and I care so much about helping children and families, but I've always been passionate about fitness and movement, and I'm considering a career change to fitness.

I've rebounded from three knee surgeries, and I've managed. chronic Lyme disease. So I feel like I have a pretty empathetic mindset for helping others work through physical struggle. I've also been diagnosed with an eating disorder and I think I can understand the mental hardships of individuals battling insecurity, anxiety, dysmorphia, and dysfunctional relationships with diet and exercise. But I have a secure and a pretty stable job that meets all my needs. I'm single. I cover all my expenses, health insurance, retirement, all the things. And I'd like to make a career change.

And I'd love to hear your perspective on how realistic it would be for an almost 50-year-old to enter the field of personal training. I've spent decades working with people and meeting people where they are and helping them to make change. But I'm just not sure. And I'm hoping for some insight on how this could transfer to personal training. Yeah, very good question. I think you have everything it takes.

Yeah, you have the right heart for. personal training, which is the most important thing. Training, you know, six, seven, eight clients a day, different personalities, different challenges, lots of, you know, failures along the way. If you don't have a deep passion and love for people and wanting to help them, that gets old real fast. So that's the most important thing. It sounds like you've got that. Let's talk about the, the, the, what it would look like to move over to be a personal trainer and, you know, kind of what to expect and what the challenges may be for someone like you. I don't think you'd have a challenge wanting to help people at all. Obviously. That's what you do for a living now. And your background, I think,

makes you. You'll excel at it. You'll do very well with it. The thing that would be, maybe a challenge would be the sales aspect of it. Because as a trainer, regardless of the environment you're in, big box, which is probably where you would want to start, that'd be a great place to learn everything or private, which would be much more difficult, but still, you'd have to sell. You have to be able to get people to hire you. You're not giving clients. Sometimes in big box gyms, they'll give you some clients, but it is you building your business and promoting and selling. And that's a skill in and of itself. There's also a time period where you're going to have to build your client base. If you go in and you work hard, you know,

I would say give yourself a cushion that's like three to six months to build a good client base with, If you apply yourself, you show up, you're there, you're learning. By three to six months in a big box gym, you'll do just fine because the opportunities are so plentiful in a big box gym. And then I would stay there. And big box gyms will provide you with health insurance and all that stuff. And then I would stay there until you're really doing well, until you're like one of the top trainers.

And then from there, you can decide if you want to go private, if you want to work in a correctional exercise environment, which it sounds like maybe you'd be more interested in or something like that or working with a functional medicine practitioner. But you want to learn in an environment that provides you with lots of opportunity. Like when it comes to leads and potential clients, big box gyms, they're plentiful. In smaller studios in private, there's like none. You have to walk outside the studio and like try to build a business, which can be very difficult. But if you learn it in a big box arena and do well there, then you'll, the odds are better that you've got what it takes to do it in a private environment. I mean, Sal said it really well. And the difference

that in how difficult this would, this transition would be solely on the sales aspect. You have everything it takes to be a good coach and going to be a great trainer. It would, it's the transition from a very good income that's consistent that you've built already to this starting all over. and, you know, does that take two months, six months, eight months a year? Solely depends on how much you lean into the sales side. If you get good at that and you embrace that, you'll do well and do well fast. The more you resist it or you don't like it or you struggle with it, that is what will extend out that pain. Like, how long does it take me to get there?

I think no matter what, like you could, you would become a great coach no matter what. I think that we all feel confident with your background that you would really be able to help people. But unfortunately, there's none of these businesses that will just put people in front of you. You have to be able to get those people. And the big box is the best place to put the exercise in that because they will at least give you some clients.

Whereas if you did try and start in a small gym or go private, that would solely fall on you to go for that. And that's really hard. That's really hard for a good trainer. A good trainer will strong. I've seen many trainers that were their top. guys or girls working for me and then they went off on their own and they really struggled to to go build their business by themselves. So I can't stress enough how important that, you know, beginning stage of learning that skill set through a big box is so valuable because they'll give you so many good reps.

And so how much does that? I mean, just so you know, too, I don't know how familiar you are with the course that we created. So when we created our trainer course, we really looked at the space. and said, you know, where's the gap? Like, we weren't trying to compete with NCSF or NASM, a lot of these great national certs that do a good job with biomechanics and nutrition and human physiology. What we saw the massive gap in was building your business,

was sales, client communication, building your, scaling a business. And so our course is really heavily weighted in that. So if that's something you want to embark in, I would highly recommend getting in there because that we have a great community. And it's an ongoing community. So Anne meets with the trainers and it's within a school community. So you have other trainers that are building their business at the same time. So it's very, very valuable for somebody who's trying to make that transition.

And, Lindsay, just to encourage you, and, you know, Adam, Justin and myself have worked with and trained a lot of trainers. And have helped a lot of trainers become successful. And this is the encouraging part, okay? Sometimes when people hear sales, they think of either a particular type of personality. or like you're selling products or you got to have this kind of like, you're being pushy. Yeah, pushy and you've got to learn how to overcome objections and that kind of, what you're selling is not a product.

Really what it is is how effectively can you communicate to somebody the value in working with someone like you. And you know how much it could really impact somebody. I mean, you take the average person and if they actually, exercise appropriately and improve their eating for them, right, for their body, because it's different from person to person, there isn't, there really isn't a part of the life that won't improve from that. And you know that, right? So it's like, how effectively can I communicate that to Ms. Johnson or Mr. Smith, who's in front of me so that they say, you know what? Yeah,

I think I'd like to invest, you know, $1,000 or $2,000 in working with Lindsay because this is so valuable. That's the sales part that we're talking about because what people see when they look at fitness is they go, oh, I just, okay, just move it. I just got to go move more. Here's a bunch of gems. Oh, you're a trainer. Just show me a few exercises. And then I'll be okay. And you're just like every other trainer. So whoever's cheaper, you know, type of deal. And my membership's only 30 bucks a month. Why would I spend $2,000 for, you know, 20 sessions of training or something like that? And so the communication aspect, which is sales, is so important with that. But it's not, again, like, I've worked with so many trainers with like, I just want to help people.

Yeah. I'm not trying to sell anything. It's like, listen. That is what's going to sell them. That passion you have to help people is what's going to, you know, you just have to be able to paint that picture for them clearly. And use that communication skill to really convey, you know, what you're going to do with them, how their life's going to be different as a result of this. And, you know, after that, it's really just a matter of, like, when can we start.

So I think that trainers get hung up a lot with, you know, that end result of I have to, like, get to the point where now they get the credit card out and it's like this friction. But really, you know, you just building up that confidence of how to really convey a crystal clear plan for them is, is going to be huge. And actually, you probably already know this as a social worker. you'll go work with people and you're trying to get them to

change how they live and a lot of that hinges on how well you can communicate it and that's sales and so your client hires you the sales process isn't done every day you train them

it's like okay how can I communicate to this person in a way that gets them to make these changes in really effective impactful like forever ways and you've listened to our podcast for probably a little while that's all we do on the show is I'm trying to communicate ideas in ways that click for people.

So that's the part. And again, I'm just trying to encourage you because anytime I talk to somebody who's really wants to help people, oftentimes when I say sales, they're like, that's not what I want to do. I want to help people. Yeah. No, thank you so much. That means so much. I think, yeah, I've been listening to you for, I started listening right before COVID. Actually, I was coming out of a knee surgery.

I had been a runner and I was like ready to slip my wrist because I couldn't run anymore. And I had actually a then boyfriend who was like, you got to start lifting. You got to start resistance changing. And I started listening to you guys at the same time. And that completely changed my life. Awesome. And absolutely changed my life. And I appreciate what you're saying because I think what I've done in social work for so long,

like all I've done for 20 years is try to sell people on how to change their life. Yes. I've spent decades, but it's, but it's been different things, right? It's been like sobriety, better jobs, not in a domestically violent relationship, not being, you know, I've been selling different things to people and I'm ready to sell something. Wonderful. It's a little different, right? Like, I think I'm just ready to sell something new. That's great.

Yeah. Yeah, I would say, I think Anne should call you. She'll talk to you more about. Yeah, look at our course because I think it would really help you if you decide to move. move in that direction. Definitely, my advice would be to start in a big box. That's not where you would end up unless you love it and you might end up wanting to move up in management or whatever. But that'd be the best, it's like the best place to learn how to get this going. And then from there, if you're like, oh my gosh, I want to go private or whatever, then the opportunities really open up.

But that'll be the way. Are you located in an area where you've got access to big box gyms? Yeah. So I'm in Charlotte, which is great. It's a little bit of, up an issue for me only in that I moved here like 10 months ago to be closer to family and help my parents that are getting to a certain point of life. So I don't, I feel like the transition makes me nervous because I'm not super connected in this community. Like I had been in Philadelphia for 25 years and I, you know, knew so many more people. And here I just don't, you guys know like life is so much about who you know and who you trust and who can connect with. So that makes me nervous too, like putting myself out there in a new career where I don't really have connections in the community yet.

But I think it's worth a shot. And my friends, I have the best friend group in the world. And they all were like absolutely a billion percent. You should do this. But several of them were like, you should write in and ask the guys, which means you say they were like, you should ask the guys and see what they say. So I really appreciate your feedback. Yeah, you have what it takes to be a great coach and trainer for sure. I think all of us see that and think so.

And I think the first baby step before you just switch careers, I think, would be to go through the course. Because what you learn, what you're going to learn through the course, you can take that into whatever you do. And then also going through that will really give you, if you get excited going through the course, I feel like that's even more confirmation that this is where you should be. If you feel like, oh, man, I don't know how much I like this, then that's probably, then that's your answer.

So I think it's a good way to kind of like, okay, let me dip my food in this, start moving in this direction. because it's definitely going to help you no matter where you go. There's a couple of things, too, I want to touch on. One, you said community. You go into a big gym. When you walk in there, you get hired. Your goal is to be known in that gym.

I want to know everyone. I want to talk with everybody. I want to be the mayor in here. And that can happen actually pretty quickly. Within a month, if you just make sure to talk to people, introduce yourself, help people out, shake people's hands. Before you know it, you'll know a lot of regulars in there. and be kind of known in there.

So that is a great, it's a very easy way to build a community. It's one of the advantages you have being the new person coming in a gym. A lot of trainers get in their own little bubble of their client book and they're in and out with their clients and they don't hang out in the gym. And the advantage a new trainer has is that opportunity to just spend the day in there, saying hi to everybody helping everybody. And to Sal's point, within a matter of 30 days, you could be the new person, but all a sudden respected by the gym as the person that helps everybody.

And so there's a huge opportunity as a new person coming in to be to be that person. And then because of your background and you mentioned your age even in there. And I think, so I want to address that. I don't know if this is what you meant by it. But sometimes people will be like, you know, I'm, you know, 45 or I'm 60. Like, is it okay to start as a trainer? Not only yes, but actually better. Yeah.

Okay. The average client, personal training client is not 20. Yeah. The average personal training client is probably between the ages of 40 and 65. that's on average. They're going to identify more with you than they will to the 25-year-old you know.

I would argue that was all of our, I would say my biggest challenge my first decade was being 20-something. Yeah. And people looking at me like, how do you know? Yeah. Wait till you get 30. Wait till you get 40.

You know, they used to say shit like that to me all the time. And I'm trying to convince them what they need to do and they're telling me like, you don't even know you're a kid still, right? So I think it works to your favor. Totally. You have a lot of life experience. and that and that will, and you will be selling to your age and above. You're not going to be selling to a lot of 25-30-olds.

And especially, like women, women, you know, in your age group are 100% more likely to want to hire somebody that they feel will get them. Yeah. Like that was a struggle for me as an early trainer. Like the 45-year-old, you know, mom or whatever, and I'm, you know, I'm 19-year-old. It's like, it took me a second to convince her to train me, you know. Yeah. You'll do great, Lindsay. Yeah, because they think that you don't get it, right?

That's right. And they were right. I didn't get it for the most part. Yeah. Yeah. You'll do great. Well, thank you guys so much. You got it.

I really appreciate it. You got it. Thanks for all you do. Really appreciate it. Thanks for calling in. Bye. Yeah, great question. I'm glad she called in because it's good for other people to hear what she has to say.

And it gave us an opportunity to talk about, you know, the important aspects of becoming a successful trainer. And it's good for people. to hear that. Now, and I'm going to say this, I'm very clear. If you don't have the heart for training, it will be the worst job you've ever done your life. You'll hate it. If you don't have a heart for helping people, it'll suck. It's a human service business. You will, it will, you will, you will burn out so fast. Yeah, you need to be a fan of you have to have that. You also will too if you are resistant to the sales part. Yes. If, uh, you just won't grow. Because yeah, I've had, I've had coaches that really love helping people, but are so resistant

to quote the sale word that they just refuse to try and get good and do those things. And if you have that attitude going into it, you'll also fail. So it's like it takes the coach who loves people or has a passion for people and then also is willing to embrace the sales side or likes the sales side to be really. And really that will determine. That's the formula. That will determine how quickly she makes this transition is how much she's open and willing to get good at the sales part because she has.

what it takes on the empathy and the experience and the she's working more challenging things yeah exactly so she's going to be good with that it's going to be how much do you embrace this like getting good at the sales aspect of this and and if she does she'll do really well our next caller is sandy from utah hi sandy how you doing sandy hello hi guys how you doing how can we help you um well thanks for taking my call um i've been following mind pump for several years and here's my question I'm a 73-year-old retired home health and hospice nurse. I lead a pretty busy lifestyle. In a recent podcast, you talked about the Goldilocks phase, and I think that's where I'm at.

Since 2019, I've dropped 30 pounds using a reverse diet a couple of times. I've held my current weight now for about three years. I get 10,000 steps in a day, most days. I live three times a week from my home gym with one of my sons who's a trainer using FaceTime. My diet is protein-centric, and I typically get 150 to 170 grams of protein a day, with 60 to 80 grams of fat and 100 to 125 grams of carb. I try to stay between 1,500 and 1,800 calories a day. I eat mostly whole food with an occasional splurge of ice cream. I am 73.

My fitness goal is to stay mobile and to have energy to keep up with the grandkids and to stay as independent as possible for as long as possible. My question is, what's a normal body fat for a 73-year-old? My last depth of scan has my body fat at 31%. My biometric scale that I weigh on is consistent with that number. My muscle mass is around 120 pounds. With my 30-pound weight loss, I did lose a couple of pounds of muscle mass. My son measured me with his calipers, but the reference chart doesn't include my age group. For the most of my adult life, I was six-fund.

Now I'm 5-10, and my current weight is around 175 to 180. My lab works great. My cholesterol is 152. My triglycerite-H-DL ratio is 1.03. I'm only on thyroid replacement medicine. I take vitamin, zinc, magnesium. I started the seed probiotic. I like it a lot.

I add collagen and 10 grams of creatine to my coffee every day. I did start on hormone replacement last year. My sleep is six to seven hours a day. And with the progesterone, my deep sleep has greatly improved. I am grateful for my health. I do have a 30-year history of multiple sclerosis, but other than my downhill balance and heat intolerance, I have no other symptoms.

I just need to know if my body fat percentage is something I need to address or not. I wanted your thoughts. Yeah, no. You're kicking ass. You were kicking ass. Yeah, so the best, so you said you had good blood work. you're active. I'm assuming there's not many limitations if you're exercising.

So you could do things like lunges and rows and crunches and stuff like that. So you've got decent. I do all of that. Oh. I do all of that. Okay. I had a total shoulder done last year so I don't take the bar over my head right now. But I do dumbbell all the rest with dumbbells.

Yeah. Yeah, at the best predictor for your health, for someone like you is strength. And a grip strength test is actually an easy way to do this. Average grip strength for a woman your age is something like 43 pounds. Yours is probably much higher. Now, that's just a proxy for overall body strength. Okay. So there's nothing special about grip strength.

It's just an easy way to test and reference overall body strength, which you're kicking butt because of all the all the strength training that you're doing. But a grip strength measure, a dynamometer is really inexpensive. You can get one on Amazon. And if you just want to just want to see for yourself, you just squeeze it with your dominant hand and see where your number is and reference it to your age. And you're probably, I would imagine a good 15 pounds over that because of all your strength training. You've had bone density testing done? I did.

Last bone scan was a couple years ago and it was fine. Yeah. You're doing great. Body fat percentage is great. So what you don't want, yeah. So body fat percentage, obviously it's too high, starts to get associated with poor health outcomes. But when someone's fit at higher body fat percentages, it's actually very different. Now, your body fat percentage isn't that high.

In fact, for someone your age, it's probably better to be in the high 20s, low 30s. I would be to be below 20s. I would not want you to be below 25. No. 25 to 30 is like, oh, yeah, in a great point. Yeah, you're actually going to do better even staying around 30, 31 than you would around like 24. Agreed. It actually protects you if you get injured or sick and you need some of those reserves.

But because you're strong and you're exercising and you're taking your steps and your lipids look good, like you're kicking butt. Yeah, the only bit of advice I have for you aside from just keep doing what you're doing is trying to increase calories. and strength. So, you know, like it sounds like you've done a few reverse diets. Like, I like doing that with you where we try and bump calories, two, 300 calories. Let's really push the weights this week. Let's try and see if we can increase the weights in some of your exercises. So really try and improve the strength and keep creeping the calories up. And if we can do that while kind of maintaining your weight in body fat percentage where it's at, we're winning. And you're continuing to win. But what you're doing is phenomenal.

Yeah. How long have you been training, uh, via FaceTime with your son. Oh, my goodness. Well, we moved to Utah about five years ago. It was in person at his gym in our home in Central California. So we just worked it out where I do FaceTime. You know, I always tease him. I have to change my weights and do my own stuff.

How long did you train in person with him for? Oh, gosh. 2009, I hired him. He's a bonus kid. I hired him because at 59, I did two marathons back to back, and I trained, I just hired him to train me. Oh, wow. And so I did that with my oldest son, back to back marathons. And I've kept, I've kept the trainer.

And now he's a part of the family, he and his family. You're good. Because I was going to say maybe having some in-person training, but you did it for a while with him in person. So now FaceTime is perfectly fine. And then again, if you ever add. He does a strong man every year. We go back for a strongman competition at his gym, and I work out with him there. So I do about every six months or so work out with him.

You're doing good. You're doing so good. Yeah, yeah. Do you take creatine? Thank you. I do. In fact, yesterday I was stuck in an airport for six hours on a delay. So I listened to five of your podcasts to catch up.

And that new creatine company that you're touting has capsules. So I'm ordering those today. I'm going to bump it up to 20. Oh, yeah. Awesome. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I mean, you're doing really, really well. And if you ever have a question about stuff like this, just a good reminder that I like to tell people like you,

who've been doing this for a while, is look around and look at your peers. And you know this. I don't need to tell you this, but I'll just say this. If I put you around 50 other 73-year-old women, there's a big difference between you and them with mobility, with energy. with the things that you could do.

And that's a nice indicator how well you're doing. Yeah. I'm very grateful. I'm very grateful. You're doing all the things. Yeah. Incredible. Great job.

Yeah. I love the kudos. Thank you so much. Yeah. Don't worry about your body fat percentage. Yeah. You're in a great range. Yeah.

You're a great place. All right. Awesome. I'll take it from the experts. Thank you. You got it. Yeah. She was great.

So, you know, what's interesting about this. I don't even know if we've really ever talked about this. So we'll say, you know, if you're fit and healthy as a woman, generally, you'll see your body fat percentage be around low to mid-ish 20%. But as you get older, you actually, if you're fit, right, if you're fit and strong, you're actually better with a little bit higher. Well, you know, you have talked about this indirectly many times. You've talked many times about studies that show you're better off having a higher body fat percentage and being strong than you are being lower body fat percentage and weak. Yeah. And so in this case, she's obviously strong.

She's taking 10,000 steps. She's weight training three days a week. Very active. So she's a very active, strong 73-year-old. And so I would rather her be at a higher body fat percentage and capable of all those, those feeds. Then you go, hey, let's try and get you down at 25%. Well, cut her calories, do something like that. And inevitably, well, her energy, get her fatigue.

Her strength would come down. You take somebody from 1,800 calories down to 1,300 calories to lose body fat percentage. and she's going to lose muscle and strength along the way. Right. And also it's not worth it. And it's really what you have to consider as you get older is resilience. Because what you see in the data is an older person gets sick or hurt. Yeah.

Knocks them. Their health declines very rapidly. So let's say you're a 73-year-old woman. You're fit. You work out. You run. You go to the gym all the time. You're at 19% body fat.

Yeah. And then let's just say you fall. You're running and you fall. It's a total accident. You break your leg. You don't have much body fat to run off of. You're in the hospital for a while. You're actually going to do worse than if you had 30% body fat.

It's true for men as well. So a little bit higher with fitness is better. Which is why, too, the only advice I have for her if she were to do anything is bump calories. Yeah, her calories are a bit low. Yeah, bump calories and try and continue to get stronger. That's right. Otherwise, keep on going. Like what you're doing is great.

Our next caller is Maggie from British Columbia. What's happening, Maggie? Hey, guys. Wow. Thank you so much for having me. It's so lovely to meet you all. Yeah, same. How can I help you?

Yeah. Well, before I begin, I just want to say, hey, thanks guys so much for everything that you do. I'm a nurse who also works in academia. And I think that preventative medicine is just so, so important. And so I just really appreciate everything that you guys do. And I love how you guys are always backed up by evidence and by research. So just keep doing what you're doing. Thank you.

So before I jump into my question, like so many callers previously, I'll give you a little back story, just to give you some context into my question. So I'm a 38-year-old perimenopausal woman. And so, of course, growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, you know, was in that culture of heavy cardio and low calorie intake. And that was very much drilled into my head for weight loss. And so, you know, yes, it worked, but it didn't last a very long time. And so I found that basically throughout my life, I was yo-yo, dieting. And so fast forward about six years ago, my body went through lots of changes when I had my daughter. About a year after that, my husband and I tried for a second child, and we ended up needing to do about two years' worth of fertility treatment. Unfortunately, in about February

2024, we had our eighth and final loss and just decided to move ahead with our family of three. And with consultation for my physician, just took about a year to kind of have my body recover, try and kind of get back to normalcy. So of course, you know, went back to low calorie intake, went back to cardio, went back to eating healthy as I normally did. But of course, that year came up and nothing seemed to change. So I was really tired. I had a lot of abdominal fat. wasn't sleeping, just wasn't making any gains at all. I'm sure that you know where this is going. So went back to my doctor. Of course, my home hormones were totally all over the place. But I did go on HRT back in September of 2025. And it was totally life-changing. I mean, like Dr.

Lauren Fitzgerald, who you guys had on, said, I no longer wanted to throat punch my husband. I, you know, it turns out that I actually do really like him and didn't want to divorce him every month. So that was great. And was sleeping again, was like seeing changes in my body in terms of, you know, my abdominal fat was getting, was I was losing that, all of those kinds of things. And then found your podcast January of this year and started to kind of slowly do weight training. the reverse dieting, which I will be honest to say that it definitely took me mentally a while to kind of, you know, put, get my brain used to that and kind of what was just so deeply ingrained in me growing up. But I'm definitely seeing the process. I'm trusting the process and I'm seeing

some changes. You know, I'm lifting heavier. My clothes are fitting looser. People are commenting on like my weight loss, even though I haven't actually, you know, lost weight essentially, but my body composition is definitely changing. But so here comes my question. I'm really proud of the progress that I've made with my body composition, and I definitely want to keep going with that. But I do really miss running. I have always been a runner.

I did a half marathon last year. I'm hoping to do another one this June. And I do find that like it's my happy place. It's where, you know, I'm meditating. I'm kind of connecting with the higher power that I believe in. But my question is like, is it possible to have, you know, your number one goal as your kind of aesthetic and strength while sort of having, you know, your number two goal as training for a half marathon? Yeah. And if so, how could I best do that?

No, that's a good question. Seasons. Now, there's a lot to unpack here. So tell me about the mental health benefits you get from. Explain that to me. What are you feeling from that where you're getting value? So, I mean, I definitely get it from strength training too. Like I definitely, you know, after I'm done my strength training,

especially where I'm like hitting harder and, you know, pushing more. Like I definitely kind of walk away being like, yeah, this was awesome. But it's just different with running. I do find that I get that kind of runners high that people talk. about. Again, like I said, I run outside. So just kind of connecting with the earth. You know, it is where I kind of do my meditation and, you know, I talk to spirit and stuff like that. So I definitely really enjoy that. Yeah. So I would say those were kind of, those are kind of the two things. It's, again, it's not that I don't get it from spring training, but I find that I

really get it more from running. Okay. I have so I have a couple more questions. Would you say that you're kind of like a go-getter, go, go, go, mind kind of racing, you know, your mentality is like, if I want something, I'll get it, I'll work hard towards it. Is that like, okay. Yeah, totally. Which is why, like, again, the, like increased calories and the taking breaks has been really challenging for me. I can do it, but it's definitely something that I've had to wrap my brain around for sure. All right. Tell me if this resonates, okay? I think the value that you're getting, the mental value that you're getting from running is that it gets you out of your head. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, which is, by the way, not a bad value. That's a great value. The problem is with someone like you in the background that you're giving me, running for someone like you is a very slippery slope. There's nothing wrong with running. But it's very easy. I'm going to, again, this is an educated guess. Here's a slippery slope, Sal. You love running. In you default to marathon.

Yeah. I mean, we can do the run. We can do some running for meditative. We don't have to go straight on to marathon. Like there's a, there's a, there's some middle ground here. That's the slippery slope right there. That's what I mean, yeah, is that, is that your tendency is to turn it into something that is no longer really healthy. So what I would say to you, my advice for someone like you would be like, okay, does hiking provide that?

The nature, you're outside. It's way better for your body at this moment. Because at this moment, what it sounds like we've dealt with is an over-accumulation of overall stress. Okay. Yeah, for sure. And so we're looking at like healing the body, building muscle or the process of building muscle really works well with that. Now, that doesn't mean you can't overdo that too because you definitely can. Yeah.

But if you're not getting stronger, it's an easy sign to be like, okay, I'm overdoing it, right? So it's a nice signal. So, you know, my advice to someone like you is if it's really about the mental benefit and you're like, look, that's what I really want. I want that get out of my head, space type of thing. I think hiking or walking with music would potentially provide that. And so I would say move towards that and then focus on the strength training. Okay. And build the muscle and get the hormone.

I know you're on HRT. An HRT is amazing. But the one downfall of HRT is it can kind of band-aid over things because no matter what, your hormones are balanced. So no matter how much you beat yourself up, my estrogen, progesterone, testosterone at these levels. So I'll see this with men, too. They'll go on TRT, and they'll immediately start overtraining themselves

because their testosterone stays high, and so the signal is harder to read. Right. So I would say focus on the strength training, not a ton. I would have you do like two days a week, full body, or Maps 15, which is like a couple lifts a day. And then I'd do the hiking. And then I'd focus on feeding and fueling your body. And what that's going to do is it's going to give you what you're looking for,

which is that improvement in quality of life and the side effect of which being this body composition, continuing change of body composition. Now, the challenge for you is going to be to not scale, scale, scale, and push, push, push. Because that's your kind of MO. So that's going to be the challenge that you're going to have to kind of work with as you go through this process. But I'm going to tell you on the other end of this, on the other side of this, Maggie, what it's going to feel like if you're able to do this is you're going to more and more you're going to have this realization that, oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm looking the way I am

and I feel the way I am and I feels like I'm not even trying that hard because the context for you is trying really hard. Totally. And I think that that's kind of where I got to at the end, right, is just being like, this isn't sustainable. This is not, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. I've done this for 25 years. I don't want to keep doing this.

My goal is just to be, you know, healthy and happy with my body for the rest of my life. And I mean, I'm like so grateful. My body's been through a lot and it's done a lot for me. And I just, you know, I want to keep it strong and, and again, sustained. So hold that thought right there too. So say that and then also like understand that where marathon running doesn't fit with that narrative. Okay. You know what I'm saying?

Like that's and that's why when you first said, I'm like, yeah, that could be a seasonal thing or a goal that we do eventually do. But it doesn't fit the narrative that you just said right there. It's something that you want to maintain and do for the rest of your life. You can't be running marathons the rest of your life every single, you know, three to six months. At least right now, any competition, any physical competition is not a good idea. Yeah. Because that's just going to push your button, the one that you love to push, which so I would just not compete. I wouldn't compete.

Like, if you really like running that much and it, it's like, look, I don't, I don't, get this from hiking. There's nothing wrong with like cruising a mile a day. Yeah. You just go outside and do a mile run and you do it at this nice pace and you just get out of your head rather than like, I got to push this run type of deal. And then you're strength train and you continue to fuel and feed your body and watch what happens. Or restorative mobility and like, you know, some kind of yoga practice, something where it's like, you know, you're directed to move, but maybe it gets you out of your head a bit. Totally. And I'll tell you what, by the way, you're, I mean, You're nurse, right?

Nurse practitioner? Yeah. Plus, I register nurse, but I also teach at the university. Yeah, dude, you're like so like this is like an avatar. Yeah. I've worked with a lot of women like you. And you're, look, look, when the, you know what hits the fan, like I want Maggie. But the, you know what is not hitting the fan all the time.

Yeah. So we have to figure out how to do things in a way that aren't just breaking you down. You live in such a great place, too. British Columbia is beautiful. And there's, you know, I mean, it's such a great place to be outside and hike. And so I love that as a goal for you. Have you ever considered going to go take long hikes? Have you ever considered working with a coach to have someone kind of guide you through this?

Yes, I have. I've chatted with a woman locally and she actually works with a team. I haven't pulled the plug on it yet, but it's something I kind of haven't thinking about. Yeah. So we have coaches. And if you, if working virtually with a coach is something that you might be interested. I can have someone call you. I know our coaches are good and I know they'll coach you properly. A good coach is so valuable. Bad ones are terrible. But a good coach is really, really valuable.

And so I could have someone call you and you can kind of talk about it and see what that would look like for someone like you. Yeah, I would love that. Okay, good. Because I think you would thrive with guidance. Yes. I think with guidance, you would really crush. Yeah. Somebody in your area would be good. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Yeah. I would love that. Thank you so much. All right. Perfect. We'll have someone reach out to you. Thanks, man. You're going to kill it. Doing great. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. You got it. Yeah, that's such an avatar.

Oh, I mean, you did so great of like asking her, you know, what are the reasons for all this stuff like that, knowing where she's going to go. And it's like, yeah, I mean, she goes from the, I want it for the meditative reasons to like, Marathon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let's hold on here. Right to the throat. Yeah, I was going to see, we could, we could do a nice jog outside or a hike outside and get a lot of those

benefits. We don't have to go straight to a marathon. You know what the problem is, too, for people like Maggie, and this is true for men, too, is she's 38 now, right? Her methods worked really well for a while. Yeah. For a while, she was like grind, go, crush. Push through and get there. And then it just adds up. It adds up. And then after a year, suddenly you're like, this isn't working. I feel terrible. Okay. So let me add to that, too, that's for the listener. And also, Maggie, who might listen to this. The worst thing that could happen is that she does the marathon and sees some sort of positive change physically. That is the worst thing that could happen.

She signs up for her marathon that she's told herself, I do this for meditative reasons. Oh, and I got leaner. Just reinforces. Yeah. Oh, I got a little leaner where I look a little bit better than what I did. You're commenting. And, oh, yeah. And then now all of a sudden it becomes that.

But the truth is that wouldn't happen. She would do the marathon and her body would start shutting me out. Yeah. Yeah. Most likely it would speak to her. And so that's probably what would happen, though, at, you know, 28 and 32 is. that she would do something like that. And then it would reinforce this.

I love this thing. I love this, you know, because it also gave a little bit of that. And so, yeah, no, the worst case. And again, that's why I say that because maybe there's somebody who's in their early 30s that's listening to this and this is their method. I know, by the way, one of my closest friends' wives is a nurse. Her method to getting in shape has always been the marathon runs and so like that.

And now where she's approaching 40 and it's such a different battle right now, you know, but that was how she'd get in shape is, oh, I just signed up for my marathon. And by the way, if you're in your 20s and you're like, Oh, cool, I can do that and get in shape. There's still a better, faster way. Oh, yeah. In spite of the crappy way you're approaching as your body's getting in shape, but there's a much better faster way to do it.

Our next caller is Nikki from Ontario. Hey, Nikki. How you doing, Nicky? Good to see you again, man. Hey, got you. Hopefully this time we don't lose connection. Yeah. Yes.

All right, it's going on, man. Let's start over. So tell us what's going on. Should I start over? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I'm going to go short because I really, like, I need you guys to just talk. I need to hear you guys.

Okay. So history of, it's hard because there was the only guy in an treatment program for anorexia in the early 2000s. Stayed there about three years, outpatient. Growing up, I was really vague. I know you guys hear that all the time, but it was true. I was a chubby Italian guy. My mom fed me everything.

And then, so I started doing training. I think I was doing it all wrong. I fell into the beach body programs. And then I was now the last few years, I was following other people, you know, the whole RP scandal and everything like that. So I was looking for some of the trust. I stumbled on to you guys. And it was honestly, like, I know you guys hear it all the time, but you guys are amazing. Like, honestly, like, you guys are so good.

like all three you and four of you actually with Doug i love how you roast them about google um you can't help it thanks nicky um so here uh i work as a tech i'm a work at bmdbrew so i'm on my feet um i'm i my libido is crazy down like i feel like garbage i like i'm i'm not trying to his weight, but I, like, I was trying keto and then now trying to get carbs back. Like, I listened to you guys and you guys are talking about whole foods and even from, like, potatoes and rice. And I'm like, I don't know. Like, I just want to hear you say it, like, that it actually works.

And also with training, like, I was doing every day. And I'm at the gym. And I'm not getting stronger. I know that. But I'm watching other people do it. And you guys are preaching the three days a week, four days a week. Like, I looked at anabolic because I was like, hey, looks pretty good. I need an actual structured program.

And what do I know in the off? What do I do in the three other days? I know you have the functional one, but is it also, can I really just take a day off to do nothing? I have a kid. I'm about, I think I'm, I weighed myself, so I'm 165, 55. I try to, I try not to track my macros, I mean, except protein. but I'm pretty low and it's just

it's just hard it's hard I know you guys tell all the time you guys hear all the calls because they listen to you guys so much about people trying to get their stuff in and they can't and you just got to do it and like I just need to hear you say that

really like honestly like an anabolic or thing actually works like it changes people you reduce the volume it goes up because I go to the gym I see these guys and they're there all the time And like, why are they, why are they so successful? Why am I not successful when they're there every day pumping and doing whatever they're doing?

Like, I hear you, Nikki. I hear you. Yeah, yell at me. No, no, no, no, no. Listen, I think you beat yourself up enough. Yeah, yeah. Let me ask you a question. You're saying, I want to know if it works.

What do you define that? What do you mean? What would be works? What would be successful for you? Okay. So I wrote some notes down. Like, you guys preached the reverse time. When I say preach, I don't mean in a bad way.

You guys talk about the reverse diet. And then you say you just stop. You figure out when to stop. Like, if I, you guys refer me to a coach, but I just can't afford it. Like, I was speaking to Rob and it's just, I'm sorry. Like, I appreciate it, but it was just out of my range. I got you. I got you.

I understand. So how do you know when to stop and like working in the sense that you feel good and you're getting stronger? and you're, but obviously you're not getting fatter. Okay, I understand you're saying you're going to get a little bit, but I'm not a ton of, like, bloat, not bloat, but like, you know, like I want to maintain, I don't know, I guess, I guess 34, 33, you know what I mean? Like, I don't want to, but I want to feel better. Okay, so what works, to define works for you is feel better?

I guess, yeah, like I want my libido back. I want my testosterone back. Like I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I'm trying and I can't. Okay. Okay. Would you say that, um, that means being healthy? Yes. You know, improve your health? Okay.

Okay. Um, so let's start here. Um, do you think you're somebody that, uh, is worthy of being taken care of? I ask myself a lot. Well, you got to have the answer, Nikki. Yeah. Yeah. You got to, you got to say yes.

It has to be a hell yes. You got to say yes. Well, yes. Okay. Okay, that's a good place to start. You definitely need to outsource all this control, dude, because I'm telling you, I can tell right now, if I tell you, whatever I tell you to do, you're going to turn it into a control thing. And yeah, and so I think you need to outsource it to a coach. I know you talk to one of our coaches. We are pricey because we're good. I'm going to give you some free coaching. I'm going to give you a few months with one of our coaches because I think you need to outsource this and work with somebody. and have somebody work with you through this process. And what I mean by that, Nikki, is this is all you got to do. All you got to do is say to yourself,

I'm worthy of someone, I am worth taking care of. I got a kid, I got a wife. I am valuable. I'm worth taking care of. So I'm just going to listen to what this coach is saying, even though it doesn't feel right, even though maybe they're telling me to eat too much food because it feels like that to me,

even though they're telling me to work out two days a week. and I want to go work out every single day. I know I don't take care of myself very well. I know my history. I can't trust myself. I got to trust somebody else. So I'm just going to follow what they say. And I think a few months of that should give you a better perspective on what this kind of looks like.

Is that all right? Okay. And then all the questions you have, they'll answer. But they're going to walk you through the steps. Because, yes, reverse diet's probably what you're going to have to do. Definitely you'll get better results. strength training less than every single day, for sure. But we got to get you in a different space around this.

You need more than just the blueprint. That's right. You need more than just. We could sit here and lay out the blueprint of what it is, but you need more than that, Nikki. And we knew that the first time that we talked to you, and that hasn't changed. And it's literally what you need to do right now with a place that you're at. If you want to be successful at this, you have to outsource it. And pay attention to your energy, libido, and strength.

Don't look at the mirror. Don't look at the scale. Don't worry about your, you know, if you think things are fitting tighter or looser, focus on those other things. And then you'll start to define your success by your actual health, not by the things that maybe you defined it by before, which, you know, can lead us towards a dark path. Does that make sense?

It does. Now, if I could just ask a question about that. Yes. Like, so you're, okay, if I don't look at the mirror, which I'm trying not to. now because I am trying to kind of eat more. How do you, how are you guys as coaches? Strength.

Strength. Kind of stop me. Strength. No, no, no. Strength. We're watching strength. We don't need, listen. You're not going to, Nikki, you're not going to gain 100 pounds of body.

Yeah, they're not going to put you, they're not going to put you on a 500 to a thousand calories more every single day. It's going to be small incremental bumps that we know the, we know the science of that. You could over, you could overeat 250 calories a day every single day for the next month and you won't put on a pound of, to two pounds of body fat. Nicky, how long you've been listening to mind pump? It's about maybe five months now.

Five months? Okay. Be honest with me. Do you listen about, but you're like, it's about like two episodes a day. Okay. Do you trust us?

Pretty much. You trust us? You have no idea how much I love you guys. Okay. Oh my God. Okay, listen. You're going to just have to trust your coach.

Yeah. Trust us that we hire coaches who are good and that we watch them and that we know what they're doing. Yep. trust that because that's the only thing that's going to carry you through the first month or two. Because the first month or two, you're going to be telling yourself this,

I got to do this, I don't know. What if I get too much fat? What if I do this? Just trust, trust, trust. Now, there'll be a point where I'm not going to have to ask you that anymore because then you'll start to see. Oh, my gosh, this is working. But in the beginning, you're just going to have to trust our coach. It's going to be tough.

And you got to give it a little bit of time because you've beat yourself up pretty bad for a while. And so the body doesn't just all sudden, you know, week one, we do. this all of a sudden you're oh my god this is amazing i see everything already it's like trust the process trust the process but on the and it's going to be hard but on the other side of that nicky oh my god it's so freeing and you're going to feel amazing we're gonna fix this dude we're in your corner man libido's gonna be up you talked about that and i'm like i want to be that guy like i want to experience it i want to you want to call you know i want to call you know i want to call back and be like you know it worked and you will be that guy but the thing that sal asked you is so important you have to believe you

deserve it first. You have to believe you deserve it first. And then when you believe that and then you outsource it, you trust me, which we're going to take care of for you. You literally just got to follow the steps and stick to it. And then you will be that guy. We're going to have a coach call you. You get three months for free with a mind pump coach. And then I'm going to have you back on the phone here. That's right. And we'll talk to you again and three months. Follow up. Can I just have one nutrition question? Yeah. You talk about whole foods, like carbs. Now, is oats in that category?

Like, let's say if you want to make like a protein cold oats in the morning, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, that's fine. I hear you guys talk about potatoes and rice a lot, but what about I was just curious. Oats are fine. Oats are fine. It's just because they're easily digestible. Yeah, some people have issues digesting oats, but usually they're pretty good. Okay.

Yeah, you're good, dude. You're good, bro. This can be good. I'm going to see you in 90 days, Nikki. We'll take care of the rest of you. Okay, and listen, in between the 90 days, if you want to see me, tell your coach, I want to get Sal on here with me for one session and I'll pop in. Thank you. All right.

All right, Nicky. We'll see you. We'll see you. We'll see you soon, dude. All right. Take care. Take it easy. All the best.

Yeah, you could just hear the desperation. Yeah. Fear. Yeah. Well, that's how we sent them that way. A lot of fear. Yeah. And look, coaching is a big investment.

It's worth it, but it is a big investment. But I want to see this guy do well. And I think he will. I don't think it'll happen without a coach, though. No. No, it won't. Are you kidding me? I mean, he hesitated to say that he believes he deserves it.

Yeah. I know. If you don't believe you deserve it. There's no way you're doing it by yourself. I mean, it's still going to be challenging with a coach. It's going to be hard as heck with a coach. Yeah. If you have.

Possible without one. Yeah, exactly. If you have that mindset already where you're unsure if you even deserved to be taken care of, the thought. that you are going to do that on your own is crazy. And just having a coach is going to be hard. It's going to be difficult. And so hopefully he trusts the coach,

hopefully that he sticks through it. We got the best coaches. Yeah, no, I feel confident if he sticks with it. If he sticks with it, he's going to be okay. Totally. Watch the difference of the sound in his voice in three months. Oh, yeah. I'll know as soon as he gets on.

I'll know as soon as he gets on. Yep. I don't have to see him. I don't even know the metric. I'll know by his voice when he gets on. That's right. That's right. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram.

It's Mind Pump Media. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes MAPS Anabolic, Maps Performance, and Maps Aesthetic,

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