Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2856: BIGGEST HEALTH LIES ! Stop Following This Advice , It's Been Wrong for 40 Years | Mind Pump 2856

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

In this episode the guys break down the five biggest health lies of the last 40 years — dietary cholesterol, fat and carbs making you fat, low sodium being best, avoiding the sun, and the myth that lifting weights isn't great for fat loss. They also get into a study showing church attendance predicts happiness better than income, a deep conversation on duty-free friendships and what makes relationships actually meaningful, Walmart ditching self-checkout due to rampant theft, and Vita Bella's free 10-minute consultation offer. Then they answer live caller questions submitted to mplivecaller.com, coaching listeners on air. T-SHIRT WINNERS Jodie Simpson & HamMan704 Send name, shirt size & shipping address to: https://mindpumpmedia.com SPONSORS LMNT (Lemonade Iced Tea — just launched May 6th) — https://drinklmnt.com/MindPump Free sample pack of most popular flavors with any purchase   Vita Bella / MP Hormones — https://mphormones.com Code: MINDPUMP Free 10-min consultation: https://calendly.com/vb-consultations/complimentary-consults?month=2026-05 3 free memberships + 10 free essential labs will be given away this month.   Seed Daily Synbiotic — https://seed.com/mindpump Code: 25MINDPUMP — 25% off first month   MAPS 15 BOGO — https://maps15bogo.com Buy 1 get 1 FREE — limited time (all 7 MAPS 15 programs same price)   Mind Pump Fitness Coaching — https://mindpumpfitnesscoaching.com 1.9 NASM CEUs   LINKS Submit a live caller question: https://mplivecaller.com  Mind Pump Store: https://mindpumpstore.com  Maps Fitness Products: https://Mapsfitnessproducts.com Instagram: @mindpumpmedia     0:00 - Intro, sponsors & t-shirt winners 2:25 - 5 biggest health lies of the last 40 years — #1: Dietary cholesterol is poison 10:24 - Health lie #2: Fat and carbs make you fat — the low-fat & Atkins era 16:40 - Health lie #3: Low sodium is best — why salt got a bad rap 27:34 - Health lie #4: Avoid the sun — all-cause mortality data is damning 32:10 - Health lie #5: Lifting weights isn't a great way to get lean 35:49 - LMNT lemonade iced tea — new flavor breakdown + caffeine & theanine 36:54 - Study: Poor Americans who attend church are happier than wealthy non-churchgoers 38:54 - Duty-free friendships — what makes relationships actually meaningful 50:42 - Walmart ditching self-checkout — 16x higher theft than cashier lanes 56:49 - Vita Bella free 10-min consultation — chance to win free membership & labs 58:24 - Zoo MRI story & blood draw anxiety (78% of people hate it) 1:04:43 - Caller: Christian (California) — splitting MAPS programs over 6 days & training around a new baby 1:14:14 - Caller: Jessica (Alberta) — 40lb weight loss plateau, metabolic adaptation & reverse diet 1:29:02 - Caller: Regina (Maryland) — GLP-1 off-ramp strategy & transitioning from Orangetheory 1:41:24 - Caller: Jake (Wisconsin) — building for a body composition competition with his wife  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, callers called in. We got to coach them on air, but this was after our intro. Today's intro is about 56 minutes long. In the intro, we talk about fitness and current events, fat loss, muscle gain.

Family life, always a good time. If you want to submit a question and be on an episode like this one live, here's what you do. Send it to MP LiveCaller.com. Now, this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Element. They make electrolyte powders that you add to water, no artificial sweeteners, no sugar, and the right amount of sodium. It's got enough sodium to make a difference. By the way, they have a new flavor.

It's lemonade iced tea. It also includes a little bit of caffeine and thionine in it. It's delicious and it'll wake you up. go give it a shot. Go to drink elemente.com forward slash mind pump and go again check out their lemonade iced tea. By the way, if you buy, if you go on that link, they'll give you a sample pack of their most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase. Now, this episode is also brought you by our partners at mp hormones.com. So if you have any questions about peptides, any peptides or hormone therapy, go to mp hormones.com.

you can get a 10-minute free consultation with an expert to answer all of your questions. By the way, just doing the consultation will also enter you to win a free membership or an essential lab to be paid for. Three people are going to win a membership and 10 people are going to win their labs being paid for. But nonetheless, it's a free conversation. If you have any questions at all and you want them answered and that's all you want, go to nphorhormones.com. Also, cool sale this month on our workout programs by any MAPS-15 style workout.

program, get any other MAPS-15-style workout program for free. This is the first time we've ever done this. Go to MAPS15bogo.com. Here comes a show. T-shirt time. And it's Tissure Time. Aw, shit, Doug. You know it's my favorite time of the week.

Two winners this week for Facebook, none for Apple Podcasts. The Facebook winners are Jody Simpson and Hammman 704. Both of you are winners. Send the name I just read to iTunes. at Mind Pumpmedia.com. Includes your shirt size and your shipping address. And we'll get that shirt right out to you. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you,

why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at Mindpumpstore.com. I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to Mindpumpstor.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. If you had followed the official guidelines for health

over the last, let's say, 30 to 40 years, you'd probably be sick, fat, and unhealthy. true. It's because they were peddling lies. We're going to talk about the five biggest lies that we believed over the last few decades. And what has been a result of those stupid lies? Let's get to it. Has anyone tried to sue the government over that stuff? You can't. Well, I mean, is that, is that, you can't sue the government for that. That's ironic. But you have people that would sue McDonald's or stuff like that, you know, which is crazy. Could you imagine?

You think about this. Like, the government puts out health guys. lines and tells the, you know, schools and some of that to teach kids this stuff, right? Food Pyramid stuff like that, right? McDonald's, by no means, it says, come here if you want to lose women. They never said that. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Or not promoting. They just made tasty food.

Yeah. And yet they can get, they've been sued for obesity and stuff. I know. And that is, that's crazy. If you could sue. This is what we knew back then. I mean, that's the go-to. Technically, you can see the government for stuff, but like winning is the other, is the other

It's like impossible. Plus they have endless resources if they want to, they want to just wear you down. But God, if you could really do that, they'd be bankrupt so quick. They already are bankrupt. Thanks, Doug. Yeah.

Thank you, Doug. Well, so. I saw somebody, a meme that said, you, the, the government, if the government, if you lie to the government, it's a felony. If the government lies to you,

you can't do anything about it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like such bullshit that it's a, felony for us, but you can't make it. Yeah, I just posted that. It was like a Bill Murray quote. Yeah, that was, okay, that's where I saw that. I was like, I saw, I know I saw that just saw that just, it's convenient. It's really convenient. Well, so being in the health and fitness space, so we've been doing this for a long time. I've been doing this now for almost 30 years,

you guys. Do you guys realize that? I've almost been doing this for 30 years. You guys are getting, you guys are so close. I know. It's crazy. But being in the space for that long, you kind of get used to the fact that a lot of the, what would be acceptable. did wisdom around health and fitness is not true. Yeah. And now back in those days, a lot of the reasons why we countered some of the things that we heard wasn't because we had data to support it, although there was some data. It just wasn't a lot.

It was just based off of experience. Like, we knew people who were healthy and fit. And it was like, but they don't go by these guidelines. And the people that do go by these guidelines seem to be worse off. And so it was always kind of this The health and fitness base tends to be counter anyways, I think, because we've been trained to be a bit counter.

But I'll go over the first lie. And this one now, I think it's widely accepted that it was a lie. But I'm going to tell you guys right now, look, 25 years ago, this was the law. Yeah. Like nobody argued this. Doctrine. Yeah. And it was that dietary cholesterol was bad for you.

Yeah. Avoid dietary cholesterol like the plague. Because if you eat dietary cholesterol, it's going to negatively affect your blood lipids, like your HDL, LDL, and your total cholesterol, the result of which will be heart disease. Yeah. And so just stay away from foods that are high cholesterol.

Black forming and all those things that they're hyphen up. In fact, if you went to grocery stores 25 years ago and you looked for health food, nine out of ten of them would say low cholesterol. Yeah. This is how believed it was. That's right. Now, what's the result of this?

The result of it is people avoid it. Yeah, dude. That's one of them. The other one is, and we'll get back to that, the other one is people avoided the most nutrient dense part of an egg, which is the yolk. Yeah. You know, egg yolks are very high in cholesterol.

They're also super high in some pretty incredible nutrients. It's like nature's multivitamin. And so really it created this generation of like egg whites. And if you, by the way, especially for kids, the studies on children who eat egg yolks and intelligence as they get older is pretty remarkable and so we just avoided

all these nutrient-dense foods because we're so afraid of cholesterol. It still hasn't gone away. Dietary cholesterol? This still... Well, yeah, because you go to the doctor and they're still worried about your cholesterol numbers and so, like, if they're not conveying that, you know, well, obviously

the dietary cholesterol isn't the big factor here, but they're not going to convey that. Yeah. I mean, you still see, especially in the, you know, muscle building, bodybuilding world, egg whites is still a thing. Oh, well, that's just because they'll try to low calories. I think that's more than anything trying to do that. Yeah, but it's still, I mean, this reminds me, too,

when people do that with the extra lean ground turkey versus regular, it's just like the difference in calories is so minimal compared to what you're losing out on the nutrient side, which has its own benefits. So it's interesting to make that trade off of, you know, oh, I'm going to trade, you know, 30 calories and not get the dietary cholesterol. It makes no sense. Especially when you're trying to build muscle. Yeah. A lot of what happened was, you know, like I said, we avoided foods that were really good for us out of fear.

By the way, this is one of the lies that now they've come completely back around and said, oops, we messed up. They now officially say dietary cholesterol doesn't really matter. It literally doesn't matter. Okay. Because some things matter a little bit. dietary cholesterol is not going to affect you in any negative way, apart from what it may come with or other factors in your diet. But yeah, we avoided nutrient-dense foods.

And then what we did is we tried to replace them with synthetic way worse for you foods. You brought up margarine, which is crazy. Yeah. People stopped eating butter and instead started eating like plastic. I can't believe it's not butter because it's plastic. And it was made with trans fats. Yeah. Which are always bad for you.

Is this when... Did Velveeta cheese get popular around this time also for that reason? Is it also like a no cholesterol cheese? Good question. It probably is like no cholesterol. Could you look that up, Doug? Because I'm... I bet it came out around the same time, like, margin.

Maybe it was before... It reminds me of like orange cocking or something. Velvita is not real cheese. You know it's not real cheese. No. Just like margin isn't real butter. No. So I wonder if that was why.

Let's see. Contains cholesterol and is not promoted as no cholesterol. I also had a lot of cholesterol on it. Oh, 10 milligrams, which isn't that much. So is it considered low compared to regular cheese? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I imagine that's what. And they also made Valvita because it melted and it stayed melted.

So they engineered it in a lap. You know what the problem with cheese is super melty? Yes, I'm so curious of what the, if it wasn't the cholesterol thing that made, that's why I'm trying to get to the bottom of right now because Velvita being fake cheese, like what made them make? Well, if you've ever melted real cheese on nacho chips, you know what happens. It gets lumpy, and if it cools, then it gets hard. You can melt Velvita in a microwave, and you've got liquid cheese for a while. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

So it's really just about... It's just like soup. Yeah, it's basically... Interesting. Velvita filled a market need for affordable shelf, stable food during the Great Depression in World War II. Oh, wow. So they were trying to make something cheap.

bolstered by craft's aggressive marketing as a healthy diet product. So they did use the low cholesterol angle. A little bit. Yeah. Okay. And it's better for you because the fats in there are better or whatever, which is pretty wild. Yeah. The next one is that fat and then slash carbs make you fat.

Now, the carbs make you fat, is not a government lie that was kind of pushed by, I'd say, the market. as a response to the fat makes you fat message that we got from the government. So we were told to go low fat for a long time. So if you grew up in the 80s, 90s, early 2000, especially 90s, low fat was the way to go, avoid fat at all costs. And this resulted in frankin foods, low fat, high sugar. They had to find a way to make food palatable. It also resulted in lowered satiety.

So people overate, even more. because fats produce more satiety than, let's say, carbohydrates and sugars. And it pushed people towards processed foods because you could process something low fat and still find a way to make it palatable. But in nature, low fat generally tastes gross. And it caused a lot of problems. And fat is essential. And so I remember there's so many times I would train a client, especially a female client.

And a lot of her issues were the fact that her fat was too low. I'd bump her fat intake and then miraculously, everything we get so much. Skin and hair and everything else. Energy and hormones. And it was like, yeah, you're eating 30 grams of fat a day. Like, let's get you up to 70 or 80 and watch what happens. And they'd feel amazing. Which is so ironic too, because when you think about how we probably evolved, that was probably the best thing.

I mean, the first thing that you, when you kill an animal is you go after the fat. So everybody celebrated. It's like, oh, yeah, like the kill. Meat was valuable. Yes, protein is essential, but fatty meat was what kept you alive. That's what kept you alive. It's very nutrient dense. You need it.

You need protein too, but if you just eat super lean protein all the time, you'll actually die. We've talked about this before. Trappers and hunters in the West, many of them starved because they could only catch rabbits. It's cool. Wasn't it called like a rabbit disease? Yeah, rabbit starvation? I think it was called because they couldn't get enough fats. So, no, fats are essential.

You need them. But we went through a whole generation of people believing they need to avoid fat. Now, this led to this crazy rebound effect where it was like, no, fat is good. It's carbs that are evil. So then we had this whole generation of avoid carbs at all costs. Do you guys remember when Atkins became popular? It was like massive. Huge.

I remember. Huge product machine. We were in middle school, high school time around that time when that was. was really, really popular. And I remember, because I remember a lot of the kids that I went to school with, their moms were doing it, you know, that were on it. Remember coming over and seeing, like, eating bacon and stuff like that all day. Yeah.

It's different, you know. I think of butter. You're like, what? A great way to sell a product is to take a lie that everybody believes and then sell the opposite. Yeah. And it has some truth. Yeah.

And then you're going to crush. So what Atkins did is the message that was accepted was fat was bad. he came back around and said no fat is essential we need it it's carbs that are bad now he knew because what you can see the data when you go zero carb it really does crush your appetite many times but more than that it's a generation of people who are so afraid to eat fat and now they can eat the fat that they've always avoided and now it feels like it's freeing now the the fat carbs they don't make you fat too many calories make you fat it's obviously more complex than that but um it created a whole generation of people that went the opposite direction.

By the way, low fat, low carb diets both have terrible adherence. So they're both just as equally ineffective. If you have to pick one, I go low carb because fats were essential and you can cause some serious health problems. But super low carb is also not. I think any diet that eliminates or tries to eliminate a macro is just a bad idea. I mean, I think it's a good general rule. It's like if it's telling you to completely eliminate a macronutri,

obviously if it's one of the essential ones, it's really ridiculous. But even if it's carbohydrates to totally do that. And then to think that you're going to go the rest of your life, that was the biggest problem I had with the carnivore ketogenic type of diet. It's just like just so unrealistic. And I understand with health issues and for the... There's some extreme cases where it seems to help. Yeah, totally. Ketogenic, by the way, the original ketogenic diet was a medical diet.

There were medical applications for it. Yeah. And so it may, but like we always do, I feel like in the health and wellness spaces, we, we bastardize something like that because it's something that was used in the, I mean, again, we feel like we're on the, you know, cusp of that right now with GLP ones. Yeah. This is something that's been around for a really long time. We were medically prescribing it to people that really, really needed it that were, you know, morbidly obese. And this was like the option to save their life. And now it's turned into everybody. who wants to lose five or ten pounds. Just throw them at people. Yeah.

I mean, that's where it's getting used. I mean, are you guys paying attention to all the commercials and ads and the pill forms now and all the celebrities that are endorsing me? Two thirds of America will be on a gym. Yeah, you called that. I thought that was aggressive when you first said it, but I don't disagree anymore. And now I'm willing to potentially retract what I said as an argument with you early on, which was it was going to be a net positive.

I'm not sure anymore. It's become so popular. I knew it would be, I knew some people would abuse it. But we're quickly getting to the place where more people that shouldn't use it are using it than the ones that probably need it or should be using it, right?

Melted bodies are a thing now. Yeah, gosh. Yeah, so what makes you fat is eating more than you burn. It's obviously more complex than that. We've done lots of episodes going into detail, but it's not carbs or fats that are bad. Fats are essential. and carbohydrates give you energy

and going too low carb for too long oftentimes causes hormone issues in people, especially women. And believe it or not, going no carb for too long can actually cause insulin resistance, which sounds like it shouldn't be the case, but you can see the data. In fact, people like Dr. Mercola, who was like super pro no carb,

now advises everybody, you've got to have carbs at least a couple days a week to avoid that. Next up, low sodium. avoid sodium. So bad for you. It's so funny because it's like we do this to things that are essential. Sodium is essential.

Mm-hmm. You'll die without sodium. You need sodium. Yeah, there's wars just because everybody needed it. Ancient world fought over salt. They used to actually kill each other. It's a little fresh because it's still very pervasive. Yes.

I was going to say it's, I was going to say it's remained very popular up until, I want to credit one of our partners, element with this. I mean, up into that point, nobody was even putting, like, the right amount of sodium in electrolytes. In electrolytes, which is a supplement that's supposed to replenish that. And there wasn't an appropriate dose. That's how, like, overly we were compensating on the other direction. Yeah. And it really was when they hit the scene.

And I remember we didn't even look at the product for almost a year in our studio because up into that point, every electrolyte that it came out before was a bunch of bullshit. It was something that was, didn't even have the effective dose of sodium to replenish. They have like 100 milligrams. Yeah. So I remember you wouldn't even look at it. And then you open the box one day and you're like, oh my God, this is like the first. Yeah. Electrolite. And so I feel like we're, we're barely going the other, to your point, like, I don't, I think it still is. Yeah. Yeah. I find myself constantly having to educate and talk to my friends even too, like that, you know, this is, this is healthy. This is something that like, you know, your body. needs to have adequate amounts of electrolytes and salt.

And just to, even just to, for hydration, you need it. So there are special populations that, that need to control sodium intake. But such a small, though. They're pretty ill already. Otherwise, and, you know, here's why the data showed that there was a correlation between a high sodium diet and worse health outcomes. What you're looking at, if you take five, thousand people.

Yeah. And you just, and you just take their dietary information and you look at sodium, I can correlate high sodium with poor health easily. But it's not because it's the sodium. It's processed foods. That's right. When I look at high sodium for the average person,

what I'm typically looking at is a diet that is very high in processed foods. And so if you don't control for that, you're throwing in a bunch of people. This is why they thought for a long time that coffee caused cancer. But this is true. Not that was decades ago. but studies came out showing that coffee drinkers had more cancer. It's because they didn't control, you know, back in the 60s, 70s and 80s,

the heaviest coffee drinkers were smokers. And so they didn't control for smoking. They just looked at coffee. They're like, oh, my God, everybody drinks the most coffee, gets a bunch of cancer. Which is funny because the opposite is true. Coffee has anti-cancer effects. We just had to control from that. Coffee was helping you. That's right.

Yeah. So sodium, when you just look at sodium, if you want to pick out high processed food intake, One easy way to do it without going digging deeper, just look at who's consuming the most sodium. You'll almost always see whoever's consuming the most sodium that's consuming a lot of heavily processed foods. Okay, which is if you understand, if you look at any box food or frozen processed stuff,

it's, they load the shit out of it. So it preserves it. So it's a strategy. It's also an ingredient palatibility. Yeah, it makes it more palatable, but even more importantly, it extends the shelf life, which is probably one of the most important reasons

why they load it with as much. Because you can get away with just adding some of some sodium in there to make it taste a little bit better. But they put so much in there. And it's to preserve how long it lasts. It's more about the palatibility because they can. Oh, you think so? Yeah, because they could preserve salt used to preserve food back in the day before modern ways of preserving. What it is is that food companies, when they make a processed food, the goal is to make it as palatable as possible.

Duh. So every ingredient in there is put in there to make it as palatable. as possible. One of the ingredients in palatibility is sodium. So is fat. Salt and fat and sugar. One of them comes with, the other two come with calories, so one of them doesn't come with calories. That's right. So salt, sugar, and fat are the three main ingredients and palatibility.

Now, food scientists have gone way crazy with this. They've also, they've added chemicals and color. They know how to change the... Gorgum. The texture. They do all kinds of crazy stuff to make food. Like a Doritos chip is hyper, hyper, hyperproping. palatable because of all the stuff that they've figured out with science. This is why you overeat processed foods. It's a masterclass in ultra-processing.

Totally. But salt is an ingredient. By the way, Element is a great example. So going back to sodium, I agree with you. I think Element was the first one to courageously put out a product that's a thousand milligrams. Oh my God, a thousand milligrams. A serving?

Like, that's crazy. First off, if you need electrolytes, you need a decent amount of salt. Number two, it's sugar-free. There's no artificial sweeteners. Why does it taste so good? It's 1,000 milligrams of sodium. Yeah. So element was like brilliant in a lot of the directions that they went.

So sodium is an ingredient palatibility. But here's the deal. If you eat a heavily processed food diet, you're going to be unhealthy for the most part. If you don't eat a heavily processed food diet, you eat whole natural foods, especially if you work out, especially if you work in the sun, you need to add salt to your diet. And salting your food is often not enough. I'm so stuck on this palatibility reason is why you think the whole thing is because why is it then, Sal, if you were to measure, like, you cook whole foods. Yeah. And you personally salted it.

And I mean, salted it up. Yeah. You wouldn't even come close to the amount of sodium that's in this package food to make it taste good. In fact, if you put the amount of salt, if you, like a salt shaker on your food to equate to the same amount of sodium that's in a processed food, it would taste. It wouldn't taste good. It wouldn't taste good. It would be over salted.

You'd be like, oh, I taste this salt. So why? It's the combination of things that they put in there, which allow the palatibility meter to keep scaling up. So like you could can foods with no sodium the last a long time. You could box them. You could freeze them the last a long time. It's all about palatibility.

And it's they've got, they've got the science. That's so wild to me when you think of it like that because that's the other thing that, like, I remember what I teach clients is that. Because they're like a balance between salt, fat, sugar. And so they know how to, like, I keep raising the bar. And it typically looks like a lot. It's crazy when you think of the science that then has to go into that.

Because I remember when I first started teaching clients that they could go freely salt their food. When they were eating whole foods and I put it on it, they'd be like, well, how much can I season it and salt? I'm like, go to town. Like, what do you mean go to town? Like, should I measure? I'm like, no, salt it all out. I don't care. Like, as much as you like for it to taste good.

And I remember them having a hard time to wrap their branding right because it's around this time when sodium is so bad for you. And I'm like, listen, we're eating all these whole foods. You're not in your, you're literally your sodium intake is cut to one fourth just by going from processed whole foods and salting the shit out of it. So it's interesting that you're you you can't even you it's almost like you can't. I mean, obviously it's possible, but it'd be really difficult to salt your whole foods to come even close. Not even close. I remember I saw, I used to have this thing. I kept it in my, in my trainer area years ago.

And it showed. what one, like, fast food meal was of sodium. Like, one, like, supersized meal at McDonald's was, like, somebody who ate whole foods and salted all their food for, like, a week. Yeah, yeah. Like, one meal out was equivalent to a person who ate three or four square meal, whole food meals a day, and salted all of them would take the same. It was crazy.

Have you guys ever accidentally bought a processed food that was low sodium? Like peanut butter? Like, you didn't even realize, like, oh, peanut butter's got a lot of sodium. Go eat low sodium peanut butter. It's gross. Well, that's why I think it's, it's, it's so embedded in there that like you don't taste the salt

necessarily, but you start looking at the packaging of all these things and you see the amount and it's, it's astonishing how much they, like, pack in. Yeah, I've had it, ugh, disgusting. So with sodium from the dietary sodium, 70% of it comes from processed

and restaurant foods, 70% yeah, the vast majority. And not all the sodium in processed foods is salt. So it's not salty necessarily because they use MSG or sodium nitrate. And so that doesn't taste salty. Yeah.

But it's used to preserve the food. Okay. Yeah. See, that makes a little more sense to me. It's just like it doesn't make sense that. Yeah. Because if you were to salt even anywhere remotely close. Well, here's what happened.

MSG gluten and sugar making it and everything. So here's what happened too, Adam. Everybody got afraid of sodium. So companies figured out how to use other preservatives. to increase palatibility and to preserve the food that weren't sodium. So, you're a low sodium food.

Is that where the MSG came from originally? Do you know? I think it's been used for longer than that. Yeah, for a very long time, actually. We've also learned about the addictive properties of MSG too, right? Yeah. Yeah, no, it's interesting.

But yeah, so, and by the way, I started pieced this together as a trainer because I'd have, when I piece together, if I just tell my clients to eat as much as they want but avoid processed foods, it was such a game changer, you guys. It was like, It was the craziest dietary light bulb moment of my entire career.

Suddenly I had all these clients who could eat as much as they want, just avoid processed food, everybody's losing weight. Everybody's getting better shape. Everybody feels full. Yeah. But then my most consistent clients, I started to have to recommend more sodium and electrolytes because they'd get some of the symptoms of low sodium. Because processed foods are so high in sodium.

And when you make food, even if you salt it, it's not nearly. Not nearly as much. I think, do you think that's the pushback? Because there's still some pushback on electrolyte products like Elm in the fitness space. And I think it's related to comparing to the average American who still eats tons of processed foods. But I think that there's a bit of a bias there. It's like if you're listening to a fitness, health and fitness podcast, you're probably trying to eat better and exercise. I'll give you two options.

Here's a deal. if you have a crappy heavily processed food diet and you're like yeah I'm going to throw more sodium at myself because I need it you're wrong that being said if you're eating a heavily processed food diet and you love things that taste good you probably also love drinks that taste good and I'm going to make this I'll make this case all day long you're way better off drinking element than soda so go for the sodium if you want something to taste good versus your coke yeah it's going to be way better for you yeah so that's my right So even in that context.

Even that context. Next up, avoid the sun. This one's one of my favorites. This one still pisses people off. Dude, I know. Still pisses me off. Dude, I got some new data for you guys on this one. I actually saved it because...

And the sun isn't always kind to me. Yeah. So you want to not get sunburn. That's it, though. Okay, but they turned it into like sunscreen yourself all the time. Stay out of the sun. So you said reading all the chemicals they put in freaking sunscreen. No.

Four studies will put together. And here's what they've found. found. All cause mortality in people who avoid sun was two times higher. God, two times higher. There was people who got a lot of UV exposure, 16% drop in all cause mortality. 36% drop in cardiovascular and stroke events. So you know what's interesting about this? Avoiding the sun like it's the plague is as bad for your smoking.

Yeah. And this data. Stay inside. Yes. It's like, what have we done to people? And not only that, but the sunscreen people are using, it's these crazy chemicals that have, like, hormone effects.

So we're like, stay out of the sun. Bad idea. But, ooh, it's bad for you. They're lying. And then on top of the way, you slowly die. Then they're like slather this crazy chemical stuff all over your face and body.

Yeah. And put it on your kids, too, everybody, before they go to school. Wild. I'm so curious if I'm going to be able to see, like, a feel or see, like, a true measurable effect. Because I understand what all the studies say when you talk about sun and then also, like,

the sauna, which is, so, like, this has been, like this ever since I got the sauna. I mean, I'm almost daily, dude. Almost daily, the routine is to do that, plunge into the pool, just cold, and then sit laying out in my little chair. And even when it's like an overcast day, I still sit out there because you still get lots of sun.

And so even this last week when we've had kind of like low 70s and it's not really like a pool day or layout, I'm so hot from the sauna that it feels good to cool off in the pool and then still lay out there like that. And so I've been doing that every single day. I'm really curious what if I'm going to notice anything like that is measurable from consistently using the sauna and being out in the sun and like I'm doing this like daily right now. And yeah, I know what all the research says about all cause mortality on both the sauna and the sun. And this is just I've never been this consistent with both of the, at least not since I was a kid with the sun for sure.

laying out almost daily. And then in addition to that, I've never had a sauna that I've had access daily to. And so to be doing both of those, I'm curious to see if like sleep, energy, skin. I'm sure you'll feel it. I know, like, I definitely feel better. Like, I can already tell the difference with that.

It does feel good. But I'm so curious if, like, there's going to be, like, a measurable. I mean, you have any, do you have any theories if I, I'll see a measurable difference or I'll be able to, like, point to it? Yeah, I think so. I think immediately, you probably already feel better. Better skin, I would imagine.

Yeah, and I think as you continue doing it, you're going to notice more and more health benefits. But it's one of those things that if you don't, if you do it for a while and then stop for a while, that's when you'll notice. I feel like that's with everything. I feel like a lot of stuff. Like if suddenly you stop going out in the sun for a way.

Yeah, no, I think a lot of stuff that we talk about is like that, Sal. Like the reason why I feel like we can talk so much about we've been doing this for so long. And there's been many times in probably all of our lives where there was something that we did consistently, health and fitness related, and then didn't do it.

And it's the didn't do it part that I actually think I noticed the most. It's like sometimes it's really hard, a lot of stuff that we talk about, like, oh, this has got this much percentage of benefits, and it's this will help you with that. And a lot of people would argue, like, I didn't really notice a difference, you know,

but it's like if you do it long enough consistently, and then you don't do it is when you tend to really notice the difference. Here's the thing. Like, if you took someone, put them out in the sun, and then measured, you know, the UV exposure, stress factors. You would see some bad stuff happening. By the way, you would see that with exercise too. You go do a workout.

It's a stress on the body. Now, can you work out so hard that you damage yourself and cause problems? Yes. The workout needs to be appropriate. So does the sun exposure. If you never go on the sun, you've got to go out little by little and build up your tolerance. Sunburn is not good for you.

That's the issue. But going on the sun and avoiding it all the time, That'd be like saying exercises stress, avoid it. Avoid it like the plague. Terrible idea. Yeah. Is there any like studies that have really teased that out in terms of like the long-term, like chronic exposure, like burning level versus just like, you know, frequency and dosing of it?

There is. So you can find data on sunburns. Yeah. When people get a bunch of sunburns, that's a problem. But people who go out and work out in the sun around the sun who've built that callus, they live longer. They generally live longer. They're also outside more.

which has its own implication. Yeah, because Mel, no, that's the biggest scare. You know that we're always getting like inundated with for cream and like whatever. Like even makeup has like sunblock now. It's like everywhere. It's wild. All right. Next up, the last one.

And this one is changing. But for a long time, like if you wanted to get lean and you were going to exercise, like don't lift weights. That's the worst way to get lean. This was believed for a long time. It still is believed by people. and I would say the older generations because they grew up and are, you know,

I would say it's still the same ones that think you're going to turn a line back. I'd say it's still really popular in general pop, dude. We had a video not that long ago that went viral that was talking about this. In fact, I think it was a video where we were ranked,

the staff had us rank things. Oh. And for fat loss. And I think we put cardio like the bottom. Yep. And lifting weights, obviously, the top. and that went because it went viral and it went beyond our our little network right I feel like within our network or our bubble I feel like this is kind of common

it's become common knowledge and more people are aware but this reached beyond that and there's a lot of people that were like these idiots you know think that like so I don't know I think that when general pop still still this this is the prevailing theory is that But cardio is the best way to lose body fat. Weight training is not for that. So cardio burns more calories than other forms of exercise. That's true. And fat loss does occur when there's a calorie deficit, when you burn more than you take in or taking less than you consume.

But cardio is not muscle sparing. So if that's the primary way that you exercise to lose weight with the calorie deficit-type diet, you'll see a lot of muscle law. You'll see 40% of your weight come from muscle. Strength training is muscle preserving. It doesn't burn as many calories, but it also tends to move your resting caloric burn up through metabolism boosting. Okay. So it's just, it's a great way to get lean. If you had to pick one form of exercise to get lean in combination with other lifestyle factors,

because just exercise by itself isn't a great way to get lean. It's a great way to get healthy, but not lean. But if you had to pick one, strength training is king. but a lot of people don't realize that, don't know that. They think because it doesn't burn as many calories, or what they'll do is, I'll hear strength training is good, could be good for fat loss. Let me just turn it into cardio.

So I'm going to do a bunch of circuits and stuff like that because it burns more calories. But we now know it's the best way to burn body fat and definitely the best way to preserve and, of course, build muscle. Yeah. Anyway, back to Element. Have you guys, do you guys see their new lemonade iced tea?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Tastes like an Arnold Palmer. Yeah. It's got a little bit caffeine. 50 milligrams of caffeine. I tried it over the weekend. Katrina was pumped to that.

So Katrina doesn't take a lot of caffeine. She's really sensitive to it. And so 50 milligrams for somebody who doesn't drink. It's perfect. Caffeine actually gives you. They put thinean in it too. So it balances it out. So you have like a longer lasting.

So it's electrolyte. Plus, if you don't have a lot of caffeine and you're in a hard workout. Yeah, thineine drives it. This is a great way to fuel you to work. Well, you're also low caffeine too, right, Doug? Yeah. Yeah, you're not a big caffeine drinker either. Right.

Now, would you try a 50 milligram or is that too? Absolutely. Okay. So that's not too much. Like, you could, you don't do well with pre-workout stuff that's like 200 million grams. Yeah, I've pretty much avoided it because I don't feel great with caffeine. Yeah. But the anine does actually help a lot.

Oh, yeah. Theanine does on caffeine. And I imagine, because I know what it feels with the an endine feels like with 100 or 200 milligrams of caffeine. I'm sure with a nice mild dose of 50 milligrams, it's probably really easy for someone like you or Katrina. Totally. I got a cool study for you guys.

That's really, I mean, it's really, it's going viral right now. And it's going viral because it compares two groups of people. And it shows, well, how you can predict happiness. I'll just say that. So check this out. Poor Americans, so people who are below, like not middle class are considered poor, who go to church several times a week, are happier than what? wealthy Americans who don't go to church.

So you can be poor, go to church a few days a week. And they report, they report that they're happier. So 36% of people who are poor who go to church several times a week are happy. 26% of wealthy Americans who don't go to church are happy. Isn't that wild? Now, the happiest group, of course, is wealthy Americans that go to church. Yeah, it is just going to say, let's shoot. that.

So what this is not saying is that being poor is not a factor, right? If you're poor, it's hard to make it. It's a mindset, yeah. That definitely can affect your quality of life for sure. Like it's not, it's not saying that it doesn't. But what I think is wild is that it's more, it's more, a better predictor is, is being that community going to church. Yeah.

Pretty cool. It's the purpose of it. Pretty cool. Yeah, I wonder, I wonder how that, that compares to just any sort of person who, is involved in something community-driven and relationships. I'm glad you said that. Okay, cool. You have something for that?

Yes. Yeah, I'm glad you said that. So being in an active community is really great for happiness. So having great relationships, meaningful relationships. The data is good on that. But when you compare it to church, for whatever reason, I think I know the answer, but again, I'm Christian, church is actually better. But that doesn't mean it's not great to just be in community.

It's very good to be in community. Well, I think there's a way to even being, if you were not a Christian, you could still unpack that. I mean, you're believing in a higher power than yourself. It's offloading control. Right. You offload that, right? That there is, there's a, everything happens for a reason, good or bad or different. There's a good.

Explain everything. Yeah. There's a good ending. Right. You know. So there's, so. Yeah, there's hope right there. So I think that it pairs community with that, which has got to be where that comes from, right?

Just community by itself has positive benefits, but does it, if that could lack purpose, it could lack the personal responsibilities. Like, it could lack. There's also this, and I have limited experience because I haven't, I haven't been to like a million and one different churches. So I'm sure it's different. I know there's people have had bad experiences. I've been to a lot. Yeah. Have you been a time?

Yeah. Yeah. You actually beat me. So I know that, because I've also recently looked at data on relationships, and they're not all the same. I brought this up on a previous episode, but there's like a lot of people have what are called duty-free friendships. I think I brought this up a few episodes ago. Absolutely no duties. Yeah.

So duty-free friendships are like friends, but you don't do life together. So it's like, hey, how you doing? Oh, I'm good. We're cool. How's kids? Yeah. Yeah. I don't like, we don't like, I don't suffer with you.

Yeah. We don't like really let each other in on our struggles and stuff. It's like we like to keep people at arm's distance and we're cool. And that's better than nothing. But it's not the same as like real relations. You actually didn't talk about this on the podcast. You talked about this in a question you asked a live caller called in. Oh.

A lady came in and you were giving her. It was our lady who called in a second time. Yes. Yes. And actually, because it's the first time I actually heard you use that term. Yes. So the, I do remember. Probably the regular audience has not heard that unless you listen to all the live callers.

Because that's the first time I'd heard you refer to that as a duty. Yeah. And I know in my experience, again, this is what I've seen. So I go to a great church. I have such a great community. And I know that, you know, our faith encourages this. It encourages confessing to each other, doing life, forgiving, grace. People are people.

So you're always going to get messed up people. But it kind of encourages like this deeper type of relationship. And so I think that that kind of. could definitely be a part of it. But again, I think when you look at the data on this duty-free kind of friendship thing, that's exploded. You know, it used to be back in the day, like your family, everybody lived close to each other so they know your business or your neighborhood.

Everybody knows your business. Sounds like a bad thing. And I can get that, right? I can get like you don't want anybody to know your business. But now you don't have like real close friends. Yeah, what do you think that is the big determining factor for that? First of all, men are bad at this stuff already. Terrible.

Right? So men are already, you know, worse, generally speaking. But then what separates, let's say, even the three of, what makes that different in each one of us? Like, is it more child, like what we grew up, our childhood? What do you think, what do you think separates even the three of us with that, like the way we are with relationships with people like that? Why one of us would have more or less of that? What do you think it's caused by? I don't know.

I can't speak to everybody. I can speak to myself. I think I feel like, I know how I used to feel. It's changed a lot. So it's totally different now. But you know, you asked me five years ago, I felt good being the friend that was there for somebody. But if you were there for me, now I felt like a burden. So why would I share?

Yeah. My challenge is. Yeah, what do you think that comes from? Because you had such a good upbringing and family and community. I think I was the oldest. Yeah. And so I had that kind of thing. You know how it is.

You know, because you're the oldest. I am, but we have this, we're different here. This is why I'm asking, because I find this interesting, because you would think, based off of my childhood, being the oldest, I would share that in common with you. But I would think that I think you and I are very different than that. Well, I've heard you say when you're with your younger, younger siblings, it's hard for you to be like peers. That's true. Yeah.

So that's part. Is that not part of it? No, I mean, it hasn't impacted this part with, because the relationship part, and I'm trying, I'm trying to unpack us. we talk right now. Do you talk to your younger siblings and call them about your issues and problems? Definitely not. But with other people I do. Okay. I have a lot, I have a lot of friends groups. And I would say a lot of them aren't duty free. I think a lot of them, like I do, even relationships that you guys are aware of that I've made even through this podcast, I tended deepen those and do things and share. I'm open. But like, so, I'm not like that,

but I should be based off of the things that you're saying right now, right? No, that's interesting. You know, it's funny. I just saw a clip on social media the other day of this girl. She was, like, in her 20s. And then she's, like, her older brother comes over, and he's in his 20s. And they have this great relationship. And she's like, why do you think we have such a great friendship?

And then the brother's like, because we went through a lot of trauma together with our parents. And so I'm wondering if you guys went through the crap together, if you guys, like, stuck together as a result. I mean, that's my sister and I. Yeah. So my sister and I are like that. That's for sure, the truth. but I'm not just, I'm thinking about other people. Yeah, I don't know.

Outside of family. Yeah, I don't know. You know, like, because, I mean, what you're sharing about yourself, I think, has been something that you've obviously been open about and you've been working on, right, being more of that. Even with us, right? We have this brotherhood and this bond. Yeah. But for a long time, I feel like you, you feel like that you're being a burden.

Totally. Right. Totally. But it's something that you've been. But I'm not that way. And I should be when you think about, like, the things you're pointing out, the trauma, I went through as a kid, being the oldest. I should kind of have similar, I would think, traits with you.

But it's different. And I don't know why it is. I know that in my late teens, the early 20s, I do remember connecting the dots pretty early, the power and value of strong relationships. And I leaned into that. So I know that at some point I made that connection of like, man, when you build, and I teach this to my younger siblings, my kids that I mentor and cousins

that are younger than me and stuff like that. In fact, I just had this conversation when my cousin was, my younger cousin who's in his early 20s about just how valuable it is to be good to others, to find ways to add value to their life and foster those relationships. Because right now you may not see the value of it at 22 years old. But I said, if you practice that for 20 years, you'll look back and you'll have this rolodex of 30, 40 people that you can call a friend, that you can pick a phone up at any time and be like, hey, I need help or I don't have a job. And like I said, and that really adds up in life. And so don't underestimate the value of that, of spinning those that time. So I don't know where that.

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, if I could speculate, it's probably more, the upfront, like, radical honesty piece. So when you present that with people, it's probably like, it opens an opportunity for more of a deeper relationship with people because otherwise they're going to be turned off. They don't want to get that deep right away or they don't want to, like, accept, you know, the feedback. And so they're going to move on. And then whoever kind of stays around, I would imagine you probably have deeper conversations with them. That's an interesting thought. How do you guys feel about it being taken care of?

Like, if you were really sick or, like, you were incapacitated for, like, years, how would you feel about people just doing everything for you? Yeah. I can see that being a challenge. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I'm kind of in between both. Probably more with Sal on the terms of, like, the independence of it. And, like, I've tried to be better about, and it's how.

The reason I brought that up is because that's what I've been working on a lot since I've been hanging out with you guys was just, like, tell it like it is. You know, like, first off instead of. like you try to, you know, be nice and allow, you know, people to talk and have their opinions and all this and not really contribute to it. It's like, well, I'm going to say what I'm about to. And then we just kind of meet there. And it's, it has helped with like the types of relationships I have now. But, you know, for me, I still, I struggle with it. I want like all, it mainly because of where I'm, what I, the chip that I had, you know, that kind of led me.

into like my own independent work and in my drive of like trying to get successful because it wasn't there. Like the expectation wasn't there. And so I wanted to prove to everybody. It was like a proving thing, which I've outgrown. And I don't, you know, I don't need that. Like, but at the same time, like, I have this fierce independence, you know. And so it is, it's a struggle.

I don't want somebody to wipe my ass when I'm eating. I don't think anybody does. Yeah. No, I don't think so either. But I think you're on to something, Justin. I hadn't thought about from that perspective, from the radical honesty perspective, because you're probably right. I mean, I guess you guys are better to even your experience when we all first met or the first time we met.

It's probably disarming when someone, you, like, you know this person is going to tell you the truth. You might not like it or not, but you're just like, well, at least I know it's honest and it's the truth. And starting a relationship off right out the gates with like radical honesty like that tends to probably disarm or open the other person. Some people aren't ready for it. Right, right. Like, exactly. Most people probably are guarded. And then if I start a relationship where I can be like that earlier than the average person,

maybe that opens up that possibility of relationship and connecting faster or more often. I think that's a interesting thought. I think, too, it's like with like real deep, close, consistent friendships, there's a lot of sacrifice in the sense that you sacrifice privacy. You sacrifice time. you know like imagine people just coming over like they're not calling you telling you to come with they're just an open hey I'm here what's going on yeah I'm in the middle of something you know my kids and I are struggling what you don't want them in the house you know or your house is dirty whatever

yeah there's a lot of sacrifice there's like anxiety so especially if you're a kid uh like go make those kind of friends like you can get rejected and you probably will you probably will get rejected a bunch of times and so it's easier to just not it's easier just to have that surface The extreme example of that is like social media friends. People are so afraid to have like real friendships, but they'll talk through social media or post on social media, which is really just a...

When you guys went to, when you both were in like elementary, middle and high school, was it like the same group of people you grew with or did you guys move around a lot? See, I had close cousins, so I never felt the need to have those kinds of friends. So I grew up with cousins. Yeah.

One cousin in particular, and Sep were so close that I never felt like attached to or like I needed to have. I mean, I had friends in high school, but it was not like my family. So I think if I didn't have that, I probably would have invested more in my school friends. But for me, it was like, if I didn't have friends, I couldn't care because I had my country. Yes, we're really different there. Because I didn't have the closeness. I didn't have that.

They were your family. And we moved a lot. Yeah. So I was like, just as I started to meet new friends in a fringe. group, I had to start over again and do it again. And so I'm sure it exercised that muscle at an early age subconsciously. You know what I'm saying? Because at a survival, new area, I have no family.

I have no friends yet, so I have to make friends. It takes work. Oh, and it is, it is. You got to actually go out and try to make friends. My friend Chuck was telling me this. And guys are terrible, especially when you get older. He's like, hey, he goes, if you want to make friends, you got to go like, make friends. He's like, you actually have to make it a goal.

Put an effort there. Yeah, like, I'm going to go. he actually tells a story when he went to college. He's like, there was this one guy. And he explains him as like, this guy. He's like, I really want to get to know this guy. I think I could learn a lot from him. He seems, so he's like, I pursued him.

I literally pursued him as a friend. It sounds funny. It sounds like somebody you pursue is like, you're going to date. But he's like, no, you got to actually like pursue friendships. It takes a lot of work. And then, you know, when you get older, you have kids, a wife, a job. If you just wait, nothing is going to happen. You got to actually go out.

and kind of make it, you know, kind of make it happen. Yeah. You know. So that's true. Yeah. So, and that's very strong contributed to, uh, happiness is exploding. Yeah. If you look at the data on loneliness, it's crazy, uh, how lonely people are getting,

you know, we're more connected. Yeah. You know, I saw something interesting. I thought I wanted to bring up to you guys here what your, what your thoughts were on it. Um, so, uh, Walmart just came out and, uh, said they're going to discontinue self-checkout lines. Yeah, because revamping 650. You think that's, you think it's theft? Dude, they had so much theft, bro.

Is it really high? Yes. They had a lot of theft. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. People were just going crazy with it. You got to think if that's happening at that rate and that high at Walmart, it's probably happening happening in a lot of the self-checkout.

It depends on the store. Yeah. Interesting. Walmart attracts certain types of customer, and so their theft was high. That's a really interesting. That's a really interesting. At Target doesn't probably have that kind of problem. Oh, would have been such an interesting.

thing to look thing to look at whole foods maybe target but walmart's Walmart dude like Walmart yeah it's high volume yeah well mart Walmart Walmart is different than Target I mean there's a reason why Target's nickname is targe yeah it's a very it's very fancy Walmart Doug yeah that's true that's true well yeah Walmart is like the place like some I've been some places here in the US where it's like the only store you know that provides anything now I went in there the other day And I did notice, and it was interesting because it was right around the time I read this article, and I did notice that the way their self-checkout line, first of all, they have a bunch of them. And it's in this kind of pit area.

And there was like, I want to say like 10, 12 of those. And Target, the way they have their structured is there's only, I want to say six. And then there's a person stationed facing the four things. And that's not how Walmart is structured. It's not set up that way. And so. Walmart's incentive is all. This is always an incentive, but Walmart has a huge incentive to be the lowest price.

This is what makes Walmart Walmart. They are brilliant at cutting costs. Like with efficiency, with product accuracy, knowing how much they need to order. Like Walmart literally is, whether you like them or not, they're genius at figuring out how to make products as inexpensive as possible. So when it comes to like self-checkout, that was another way to make things way less expensive. So they're probably like as little people as possible. but the theft you can look it up Doug look at Walmart yeah Walmart staff with self well it makes sense but what I find fascinating about that why I wanted to bring that up is because

it's like will other stores follow suit and so based off what your theory is right now this might just be a Walmart problem and not like a like a self-checkout problem yeah yeah which is interesting like that's really interesting that it's only there are you looking at it up Doug yeah so it's shrink high shrink yeah it's up to 16 times higher than cashier staff lanes Yep. Increased theft, including skip scanning and fraudulent activity has prompted the retailer to bring back cashier monitor lanes, implement AI powered cameras, and increase receptor receipt audits. Now, I'd love to see how that compares to say at Target. Like, how is that compared to other? So put Walmart versus Target. Shrink.

Yeah. Shrink. Cash back glitches. Yeah. Yeah. Like what? They just, how does that work? Bro, there's social media clips where people explain how you can get your stuff for free at Walmart. Oh, really? Yeah, you know what skip checking it? Or skip checking is?

Yeah. You know, like scan one thing, pretend to scan another thing, put it in a bag. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Wow. So Target as well.

Estimating $1.2 billion profit hit between 2022 and 23rd. Okay, see, that's got to be high. That's super high too, South. It is, but I don't think that they're, okay, compare, go down, compare their shrinkage. It's hard to compare because Walmart's bigger. So I don't know if the number is... Yeah, well, yeah, you can't compare a dollar amount.

But I mean, as a percentage, that's got to be high. One point two billion? That's nothing to sneeze at. Yeah. Target heavily emphasizes the impact of organized retail crime as a major contributor to safety issues. While both Blaine theft, analysts suggest targets inventory management issues

may have exacerbated the issue. Yeah, so it's different. But I would guess that, you're going to get, depending on the location of the store, you'll get more theft. I mean, that's not like a crazy theory at all. Yeah. Obviously, both Walmart or Target in better areas, they're probably going to do. I remember my brother telling me in San Francisco.

Remember when they passed those laws? It was like, you had to steal. I remember what it was like $700 worth. People were coming in with garbage bags and just. He saw it. It was right in front of his face because they had a law in San Francisco. It was like, if it was under $1,000. Was it under $1,000?

Under $1,000, they wouldn't, yeah, they wouldn't prosecute you. 500, yeah. It was something. No, it was a thousand. It was a thousand. It was a thousand. It was something number, right? Like, if it was under this number, then you're okay.

They were literally clearing the shelf off worth $900 worth of product and then turning around the corner and then selling it on the street. He saw it with his own eyes. He goes, dude, a guy, a few guys walked in with garbage bags, filled them up, walked out, went around the corner, laid it out on the street and started selling it. Dude, there's literally no policy here that's worked. if you think about it. That's wild, right? Yeah. Yeah.

That's super crazy. There is no legal dollar amount that allows, okay. This may be new, right? I think they changed. Oh, so, yeah, so before it was like 950 or less. There it is, 950. 950 or less is a misdemeanor, which meant that people, and what it would literally happen is they would put you, they bring you to the, the cops would take you in and you go right

back on that. Right. And on top of that, what they were, what the people that worked for the stores would be told is like, it's a misdemeanor. not worth stopping you. They charge everything $950 until they bring it up to the cashier. That was a brilliant strategy. Some stores did. Yeah. Every ticket said like a thousand bucks. And then they'd mark it. They give you a mark off and then it's not why you get arrested. I know, isn't that funny? Oh, wow. It's so funny. Hell yeah. I got to say this. So, I don't know if you guys know this.

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You don't have to sign up with them. You don't have to do anything. They can handle that volume? I know. Wow. People got a lot of questions about peptides. And Doug, is there a specific link for that? Or do they just go to MPHormones.com for them?

Yeah, let me pull that up. I believe it's mp.hormones. com. And then I thought I saw it too that the people that do this also have like a chance to win a free membership. Yeah, it was like three people, I think. Yeah, three people will get a free membership

and 10 will get labs paid for it. So I'm assuming this is just for the month. I believe so. Yeah, that makes sense. This can't be something they can do ongoing. That's a lot of all. Yeah. They're going to get a lot of calls.

It's good though because people have a lot of, dude, peptides are exploding. Yeah. They're mainstream. Well, there's so many questions. Mainstream. Yeah. And they're going all over the place and everybody's interested.

And it's like, you know, get your information from experts. Don't get it from social media because I've seen some stuff on social media. Yeah. And also consider, you know, even though I know so long as they're coming from the right place, they're really safe. But getting your blood work and your labs done and seeing what will really benefit you, I think is so important. I know that they don't require that.

And so I know that that's a reason why so a lot of people are bypassing that. But it's like if you're going to go take the step to do that and inject something, you probably should do that. We did our blood work with our partners, and they sent the person here to do it. Yeah. So that was easier for us, just telling our audience, it's so, dude, how many times do they miss your veins? Oh, bro. The crazy part is that's actually like obvious veins, too.

I don't get it. Yeah, dude, you're vainy. I do not like doing that, man. That's why it's funny because you hate it anyway. I know. And it's like... You have to look away? I do.

Yeah. Especially if they're like that. Like, if they're missing and fumbling around with them. And I can feel the vein flopping. So they just like rolling? Yes. That's what they say. So somebody who obviously missed a bunch of times explained to me why.

Because it's hit and miss. Some nurses, they see my veins and they get all excited. Like, oh, this is easy. Yeah, easy. You got dodgy veins, bro. And then others will say things like, oh, yeah, there's perks to someone who's very vascular. And then there's also drawbacks.

And the drawback is those big veins can roll on you really easy, I guess. So. But I mean, I've had such a, we've done this so many times for so long now that I've had so many different experiences. I've had some people that I've gone in and done blood work. And it's like, but I look away and I look at feeling them. Well, no, or I'll come back and it's already done. And I'm like, whoa, that was crazy impressive. And then I have other ones where I'm just like, I'm sweating because I can feel them, feel them searching.

I can feel it missing. We haven't even started the first little. I hate that. That's why after you, it was like my. It's her. I'll come back to you. I'm just like, really?

You know, it was brilliant at, like, getting blood, pediatric nurses. Courtney was like, because they had to do little children. They have to do an infant. She just had to do it on their head. Oh, like little kids.

So she actually got recruited a lot, like in the hospital to go all different floors when they couldn't get, like, somebody and she would get it first. I feel like that, like, there's all these professions for, like, there's an art form. Total art forms that.

And you should get paid. I know. I'm advocating. I'm advocating for nurses that are good at this. You should get, exactly. I would totally tip that. I wouldn't even feel that.

I hate doing that. We tip baristas and we don't tip? I would tip my nurse. It should be a rating. Like how many stars? One. Yeah. You got to have to bruise.

Well, I wouldn't they do that. Than a foamy heart. I can't be alone in this either. There's got to be, what percentage of people don't like getting their blood taken? I would say like 100%. Yeah.

No, really? Some people pass out. So, okay. Okay. So you get dizzy? Well, sometimes. There's got to be some psychos that, like, look forward to it. Yeah, there's got to be some weird people.

But, I mean, if it's more than 50% of the people don't like getting their blood taken, I imagine they appreciate when they get somebody who is really good. We should be allowed to tip them. You should take ex-heroine addicts like that are sober and make them nurses. They'd be brilliant at this. 78% of people experience some sort of anxiety. That's great. Eight out of ten people.

Yeah. And we're not tipping these people? Yeah. I know. Yeah. You can start. What would happen if a nurse just also to start people just get an app or something?

They should. If I walked into a place and there was one of those little Venmo QR codes that, if I do a good job, tip me, I 100%. If you did, I would do that on the way out. 100% I would. 100%. So if you're a nurse and you do that, you should start doing it. I wonder if they get in trouble for that.

What? If they got in trouble for that, you think? I don't know. For sucking? No, no, no, for getting tips. For starting a tip jar like that. Of course, dude. You might as you walk into the doctor's office as a tip jar?

There should be. If 80% of the people have anxiety doing the thing, I know that that means you have to appreciate when you get somebody who is really good at it. And there is a, and let me tell you, there is a huge difference between really good and terrible. I mean, the feeling that you get, if you're somebody in that 80%, they get angry. anxiety and you get a person who is top tier versus somebody, five-star rating system for the nurse that got it like every single time. Like, I'm using that. Yes.

And I pay extra for that person. I have a family member, big dude. He like, he will not, he will not do it. It's only if it's a death, like an emergency. And even then he'll like pass up. It's always the biggest guys. They are so scared. I'm a baby about it.

For sure, I'm a total baby. I do not like doing it. And I have to like psych myself. up. I get distracted, like look over here and like I do all these things. But I've had bad experiences. The one right before her, I missed three times and left a bruise the size of a softball on my, on my arm. Like that, and it hurt for like a week, dude. I told you about my big friend, you know, C6, 8, and this huge guy, and he had to get MRI. He had to go to the zoo. No, he did it. You never said that. I did it. No. Of course, me, you know, I was concerned because, like,

he had, you know, past, he had like a stroke and it was like a serious, like, like, issue. And he was very scared about it. I'm trying to, like, you know, be consoling, empathetic and all this. And then he kind of told me that. I'm like, so did you have to wait after like the baboons? Or like, yeah, dude, dude. Dude, that's crazy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they couldn't like fit them, you know, in the regular one. I mean, that makes sense. Those things were pretty. Well, you remember we did ours. They're pretty narrow. I hit both ends on my shoulders. my shoulders and I was pinned.

And I'm not huge. You're almost zoo level, dude. Yeah. You're almost, no, I'm not, you're older than I have, a couple more peptides. I'm going to use that with it for sure.

Hey, bro, you're one peptide away from zoo MRI, bro. That's going to be a new thing we're going to do that. See, I would not be offended if they're like, listen. I know, I'm like, exactly. That's like,

we got to send you the zoo to get this MRI. You don't fit the machine. You would be the guy. You would be the guy in text everybody. Can you tell everybody what happened. Can you say it on cameras? It's like a show movie. How enormous I am.

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Use the code 25 mind pump, and you'll get 25% off your first months of seeds daily symbiotic. Back to the show. Our next caller is Christian from California. Hey, what's up, ma'am? How you doing, Christian? It's happened.

See you again, dude. Yes, it's good to see you guys again. Yeah, how are you doing? What's going on? I'm doing all right. I think the last time we chatted, I had our second baby girl on the way. You did. And now I have a baby boy on the way.

What? How many kids you got now, dude? This will be number three for me. God bless you, bro. Good for you, man. Look at you all peaceful and stuff. You got tired? For now, I'm being relaxed now because I know it's going to be crazy later.

Yeah, dude. So what's going on? How can we help you? Yeah, a couple questions for you. I've been running the last couple of times I ran anabolic anesthetic actually performance also I cut the foundational workouts in half and split them over two days because it just kind of worked better from my lifestyle. I was in the gym most days of the week and it kept me more active. I found out the days that I don't go to the gym, I'm just I get so many less steps and just generally less active. And so my question for that, actually now I think about it, two questions.

One, I hope the answer is no. Am I ruining the programming by splitting it into two days? No. No, yeah, you're good. You're fucking great. It's a valid message. And then two, should I still do like the trigger sessions, mobility sessions, focus sessions, if I'm already in the gym like six days a week?

Nah. I mean, mobility is more important than the trigger with that. It's important to work on mobility. The thing is, if you're following performance, the program itself is pretty good for mobility. But if you're not following, if it's anabolic, if it's aesthetic, you're definitely going to want to inject some mobility because those are so like bodybuilding or, you know, sageal playing focused. So I would say yes with mobility, but trigger not so much. I mean, you're in the gym so much or so frequently. Then it would be like another session.

Plus you're having a kid. Like, that's a lot, dude, that you're having another kid. And you've got young ones already. So you also might want to consider, you know, adjusting it for something like that. Yeah, for sure. So if I add mobility sessions, I usually lift in the morning. Should I do the mobility sessions in the afternoon at night or during? Or you just tack them on to the workout.

Yeah, you can do it before or after the workout. Never, yeah, yeah. Or at night. I mean, anytime you have time. Yeah. Cool. So it doesn't matter too much. Yeah.

Nope. Yep. I mean, you're splitting the workouts. I'd probably tack them on to my workout and just be at the gym for an hour, right? That's what I'd probably do, unless it's more convenient to split it up. Here's the thing, too, with mobility is, you know, I don't know what your routine looks like, but I would just focus on the areas you need to focus on. You could also just do that.

Sure. Sure. Cool. That's helpful. My second question, I want to give a little context to it. because I think it'll help. I get good sleep. Ever since I started listening to you guys,

I've really prioritized it. And last year, I listened to you guys all the time, so my wife hears your guys' voices all the time. And whenever you started talking about the eight sleep, I would pause it. And I would wait until my wife was in the room or in the car with me.

So I'm now a proud owner of an eight sleep. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So generally I get good sleep. But on the off nights that I don't, when my kids wakes up or whatever, I'm sick, I know I need to adjust the volume of my training the next day if I'm lacking sleep.

Do you guys have any like general? Yeah. Cut the weights and half. Just cut the weights and half. Yeah, so two things. If you're sick, you're better off not working out. Yeah. So working out in the acute stage reduces. the effectiveness, I guess, for lack of a better term, of your immune system.

So exercise generally strengthens your immune system. But in the acute stage, like while you're working out, right after you're working out, maybe a day after, your immune system is depressed. So if you're sick, working out is a great way to potentially cause a secondary infection or make you feel worse. Now, if you're tired, there's a few variables that you can adjust. The most important one to adjust is the one that Adam is kind of implying, which is intensity. Yeah.

So more important than cutting the volume is making the workout easy. Yeah. I mean, I did this yesterday. I had really bad sleep the night before. I woke up. I couldn't sleep in for whatever reason. It's one of those nights where you just wake up early and then for whatever reason you can't go back to sleep. So I went to the gym and I just worked out really easy.

And that's the most important thing. The second thing would be volume. the third thing would be skipping the gym. So depending on how bad the sleep was, you might want to skip the gym altogether. But if it's just like, you know, instead of getting eight hours, I got six hours and I'm kind of groggy,

then you just go to the gym and you just go easy. Gotcha. So it would be, so we would keep the... Same exercises, just really reduce the weight. You know what you do when you squat, when you bench, when you overhead press,

when you do those movements, reduce it by at least 25 to 50%. Yeah. And just go, go, I mean, what I do in those days is those are like my machine pump days. Exactly. Those are the days I like to go over to the machines and I'm just like, I know what muscle groups are supposed to hit today. I'm going to go over and, you know, I'm going to leg press today.

I'm going to shoulder machine press today. I'm going to like, I'm going to use the machines. That's exactly what I did. And I'm going to get a little bit of a pump in all those muscle groups and call it. And you're, you are not going to go backwards that way. No, no, no. I'm just going easy, dude. I'm just feeling it going easy and just moving through.

Gotcha. So keep the sets and reps the same. Just cut the weight. Yeah, just cut the weight. Cut the intensity. Yeah, the intensity. Yeah, because you could also cut the weight and still go hard. Yeah. So, yeah, so it's about the intensity. Go easy. Gotcha. Cool. Sorry, back to my first question. So I was looking at Maps Strong and then there's Maps 15 strong. Is there any, what I lose or gain anything? If I, if I got MAPS strong the full one and then cut those in half? Or should I just get MAPS 15 strong?

That's a more difficult program to do what you're doing with anabolic and aesthetic because the work sessions are programmed differently. It's more straightforward with anabolic and aesthetic. It gets a little more complicated. It's not like it's impossible. You just baby better off getting 15. 15 is less of the work sessions and more of just, yeah, the foundations. In other words, cutting workouts in half doesn't mess up the programming of Maps,

enabolic or MAPS aesthetic. Cutting the workouts in half has a stronger effect on messing up the programming with strong. Interesting. So this is a programming thing. Yeah. But MAPS 15 strong is perfect

for what you're looking for. Sounds great. That's what I'll look into then. All right, Christian. You got, hey, hey, congratulations. Yeah, yeah, dude. Good for you, man. We're excited.

Playoffs tonight, bro. I know. Are they going to do it? I don't know, dude. I don't know. I don't know. Cincinnati bumblebees. All right, Christian, always good, catch it out with you, brother.

Take it easy, man. Take it easy, man. Yeah. Sports. Sports. You know, hey, you know what's, I love that he asked about Strong because someone listening may have gotten the impression that they could cut workouts in half for all the programs.

Yeah, no. But it will mess up programming depending on what program you're following. Some of them lead well to do that. Yeah, and strong is not one of them. Anabolic is perfect for that. Anabolic's fine. Cut them in half. Go for it.

But strong, not so good. But then you have maps 15. Even aesthetic is a little more complicated because we have focus sessions. Yeah, you have to cut them out. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So that changes a little bit there where anabolic is very straightforward. Cut the workouts in half.

Now you go six days a week. Fine. Yeah, totally fine. Our next caller is Jessica from Alberta. Jessica, what's happening? Hello. Hello. Hello, nice to meet you guys.

Same. How can we help you? Let me read my question. Okay. Okay, about two years ago, I was at my heaviest, about over 250 pounds. At that point, I focused more on being consistent with workouts and eating less overall. And in the first year, I lost about 40 pounds. Since then, though, progress has really stalled.

Like last year, I only lost another five to 10 pounds. And then this year, my weight stayed about the same, despite feeling like I'm doing all of the same things, if not more. The confusing parts, I'm really consistent and pretty strong. I strength train four times a week. I also mix in running and occasional spin in Pilates classes. And I'm averaging about 10 to 12,000 steps per day. My nutrition's pretty structured. On average, I sit around 21 to 2,400 calories per day. It probably goes up to 2,800 or so on social days, maybe one for twice a week. And my protein is probably around 130 to 150 grams. I do struggle more so in the past, but with periods of overeating and binging. And I do feel like my hunger and food noise

have increased over time since I started this to two and a bit years ago. My goal is fat loss while maintaining muscle. I still have like a pretty lofty goal of weight loss that I'm looking to achieve. But I feel stuck in this phase where I'm strong, I'm active, I'm consistent, but I'm not really seeing any meaningful change on the scale. So my question is, am I likely under eating and adapted? Or is this more of like a consistency adherence issue with nutrition? And I was just hoping for some recommendations to break through the plateau without sacrificing muscle or performance.

It's both. But I have a question. When you emailed in, it says 1,800 to 2,100 calories or 2,000 calories. Has this changed? Because you said 20. Yeah. I think that was my first estimate. And then when I, when I was accepted to do this call, I started just tracking a little bit more closely moving up to this.

And I feel like that's what I just said is more accurate. Yeah. Okay. This is easy. This is actually pretty. So you're in a great place because the fix is easy. So here's, so here's what's going on. So you feel like you're consistent with what you're doing.

But your metabolic rate is never consistent. Its goal is to adapt. And it's going to adapt to a deficit by reducing. metabolic output. There's a lot of different ways it does this, but to put it simply, your metabolism slowed down to match your intake. And so then what this feels like on your end is I'm doing all this work and nothing's happening. And it used to work, but now it's not. What is going on? And it feels like you're like in a car and you're hitting the gas, but your wheels are spinning. Okay. So the fix is to get your metabolism to adapt in a way we want it to adapt.

And that's going to come. Generally speaking, it's going to look like a reverse diet and probably a reduction in some of the cardio activity that you're doing. So maybe a cut down in some of the spin classes and running. The strength training is perfectly fine. Walking's perfectly fine. And let's reverse diet you, build a little bit of muscle, but speed up the metabolism and set us up for a more effective and more sustainable.

sustainable cut down the line. Okay. Otherwise, the other approach is to keep doing what you're doing and feel real frustrated. And then what's going to happen is your appetite's going to keep climbing, which you're probably already feeling right now. You're probably already feeling like your appetite's kind of starting to increase. And that's your body fighting kind of what you're doing right now. Now, what it'll feel like if you do this right is the reverse diet, you're going to eat more,

get stronger, see some performance gains. Everything's working great. Not seeing any weight loss, but that's okay. Maybe a couple pounds weight gain. No big deal. Probably water. And then when you're ready, you go back on a cut and then boom, you start seeing fat loss again. And your metabolism is faster.

And you're in a place that it's easier to maintain. Okay. That makes sense. So what would your recommendation be for like how much I reverse diet and for how long? So I can give you a general idea. Yeah. But ideally you'd want to coach to work with you through this process because a lot of it's going to be how you're responding and how you feel. Reverse dieting is way harder than it sounds, especially if you've lost weight already.

It's a bit scary. And if you start to feel like I'm getting bigger or I'm holding a little water, it's like, oh, what's going on here? And so a coach will adjust on the fly. but generally speaking, what it typically looks like is 100 to 200 calorie bump, and then we maintain there for a little while, and then we do it again, and then we maintain there for a little while, and then we do it again, until we get to a point that we want to cut from. And for someone like you, it's probably going to be around 2,600 calories eventually,

that then we can bring back down to 2,100 calories and start seeing fat loss again. Well, that's where she's at right now. It's 24 to 27. She just got there. No, no, she's been there. How long have you been to 25? She just started tracking to double-stained. So she thought she was eating 1,800 to 2,000 calories a day.

How long have you been around 2,500? I would say I'm 21 to 2,400, and I think I've been there consistently for a couple months. Okay. Yeah, no, we would get you a little higher than. Yeah. I'd say we'd get you much higher. Yeah, much higher than. Yeah, you go.

And we consistently get you at like 25, 26, 27. How often are we doing the spin in the runs per week? Um, so in the winter, I mean, I've, I've just kind of switched things up now that it's nice out. I was trying to do about three runs a week. Um, how long they're not, not too, too long. And so I've cut back. And then in the winter, I was doing less, I wasn't really running and I was doing, yeah, maybe two or three spins a week. So how long's the run for? Um, typically from like 30 to 45 minutes. Okay. So I'd immediately switch that to walks or hikes. So it's not, it's not, it's not running. You can keep doing that if you like it. I'd immediately switch to that. I'd bump calories by 200 calories right away. And then the strength training, are you following one of our programs? What do you got?

How did you put together? How'd you put together? Yeah, I had just finished anabolic. And then I had moved up to, I was trying to do four times a day, just because I liked it being like a little bit shorter. Yeah. And now that I had just kind of finished that, I'm looking to go back to because I was doing three times a week running, go down to three times a day.

You mean a week? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Yes, a week. Yeah. Yeah, I would, I would, because we're not, because, there's nothing wrong with running, but we're trying to move your metabolism in a, in a direction we wanted to go.

And I would cut the running, like Adam said, because the goal right now is metabolic adaptation in the direction we want. Just building, building muscle, speeding your metabolism. That's right. And that's not going to help the cause. I totally don't mind you. still walking, which is great. So if you like the routine of getting out there, on a treadmill or whatever. Yeah, yeah, go ahead and walk, do your thing, especially if you like being outside and you

appreciate that and it's nice weather. Like, I totally encourage that. I like anabolic. Or muscle mommy. Yeah, or muscle mommy. Either one of those routines would be a great routine while we reverse diet. But the real focus is just really paying attention to increase strength. Sounds like you've done a good job already. I think if that's true, then when we add to 200 plus calories and we reduce the running, you should see strength continue to go back up again too. And that would be a good indicator

we're moving the right direction. Yeah. When you said you were averaging 21 to 24, if you were to add it all up, what would the average be around? Do you mean daily? Yeah, yeah. So if you took all your tracking,

added up, divided by the days, do you know where you would fall? Yeah, I think it's more around like probably, yeah, probably around like 23, 24. So we would go up from there then. Yeah. Yeah. And this is probably going to be a six month or process, maybe longer of reversing and then cutting.

If you want to work with a coach, we can have someone call you and then they'll coach you through the process. Sure. Yeah, I'd be interested in that. I guess I have one other question kind of related to the strength training. So I feel like I'm pretty injury prone. I've had multiple surgeries on one of my knees. And so when it comes to the lower body stuff, like squats and, you know, other lower body stuff, I get kind of nervous maxing out my weight. Like, I feel like it's, I don't think I'm necessarily lifting my heaviest when I'm doing a squat or a deadlift or something like that.

But it's kind of, I feel like I'm maxing out my range of motion and how comfortable I am with pushing. So that's like once, I feel like that's a limitation when I'm strength training that I'm, one of the things that you can do, I mean, obviously having someone there to help you, that would that be great. But like, it's okay if you, so let's say you're in a part of anabolic or muscle mommy that calls for five reps. Put a weight on the bar that you haven't done before that is going to challenge that. That might be a little scary that is like, I don't know if I can do this. And it's okay if you stop at three. Yeah, okay.

It's okay. Like, so if you feel it as you're going through it, like, oh, I don't know if I'm going to get five or this is. So I'm always going to encourage, especially my. female clients to to kind of push that if I'm afraid of the weight I'm not sure I feel uncomfortable it's okay we'll cut it off at two or three like get under there do what like and there's lots of benefits to putting that kind of weight on there and doing two or three reps that you've never done before like there's a lot of value to that and so give yourself that okay and permission that you don't have to get to five just because the program says get to five that's that's that's a that's

guidelines for you but really I want you to try and challenge the weight that's a weight you've never done before put it on there and then if you get a little nervous when you get to rep three, just cut it off. That's okay. You can also, Jessica, there's other ways to progressively overload besides adding weight on the bar. Yeah. So if you're doing a weight that, you know, you can do 10 reps with and you're like, man, I should add weight. You can just slow the reps. Pause at the bottom. Pause halfway up or at the bottom. Just make it harder. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And you think this is better than like, I don't know, subbing things out for like a leg press or a machine. Oh, definitely. I mean, yes, yes, but that's okay to do that.

at too occasionally, depending on how you feel and what the injuries like, you know, if you're like really like, oh, my knee's a little iffy today. And because here's the thing, there's two things. Number one, you might feel like it's iffy because it is. Or here's the second part. This is actually more common. And this is not something to sneeze at. Your fear can actually increase risk of injury. And I've seen this. I've seen people have previous injuries. They go to exercise. Their fear actually changes how they connect to the exercise and their technique. And this increases risk of injury. And so if you're in that state, you're like, look, I just feel safer switching to this one exercise that feels safer for whatever reason. You sound like my physiotherapist.

It's because it's actually true. It's because it's real. So you can, it's totally fine to do that as well. I'll add to this too. And by the way, if you, if you end up doing the coaching, this is all stuff that your coach is going to want to see like a video of you doing a squat, things like that. They're going to get to be, they're going to be able to break. If I saw you squatting, I might notice other things, too, that I could give you mobility work to do like 9090s and ankle. You cutting, are you running is not helping this either like that like almost everybody that runs that have you know quote unquote knee issues. I mean it ends up tightening up the hips and IT and that pulls on the patella and that bothers. Running is more more technical than squatting is. And running is

typically done to fatigue. Yep. In a way that squatting isn't. And when you see people injure their knees who run and strength train, they'll hurt their knee when their strength training, but it came from the running. Yeah. So. I know you're right. I feel like because I have had all these knee traumas, the running was like a goal to try to do it pain free. And, you know, like give myself that checkmark.

Yeah. But I know that you're. I mean, I would love to see you continue on the day, the days that you were running. It's still, let's go out and go get some good walk or hike outside. Right before you do it, I'd love for you to spend 10 minutes doing 9090s in combat stretch. So really do some hip and ankle. mobility and then go for your walk. I would love to see that. By the way, that's not a bad goal. Like, I love that you want to run pain free because that for you is a personal like victory.

Yeah. But if that's really important to you, what you don't do is go out and run. What you do is you hire a running coach and have them work on your technique. That is the most effective best way to you, for you to ever be able to run without pain. It is very technical. We, we think of running like you just go out and run. But when you have a coach and they'll break your technique down and have you go low and work like three, four months of working with a running coach, like does miracles on people. That combined with you doing your hip and ankle work because a lot of times you feel stress in the knee because there's instability and weakness in the ankles and the hips. And if you have instability in your ankles and hips and you don't address it and you just go

run, you absolutely. You can't even have good time. You're going to feel, exactly. You're going to feel knee pain. And so that's why I say like a great place to start would be keep doing the hikes. But before you go out, get down, do your 9090s, do your combat stretch. be consistent with that. I bet you will feel a difference right away from that.

It'll improve your squatting and how you feel there. And then use what Sal said. If you feel nervous about the weight, just keep the lighter weight on there, but then pause at the bottom and make those five reps really difficult by slowing the tempo down. And I'm going to have a coach call you, and we're going to talk to you about six to nine months

of a reverse diet cut. That's what I estimate you're probably going to have to do. Okay. And then should I give, now that I'm done, Anabolic, do you think I should give the muscle mommy a try? Yes. So if you work with our coach, you get...

Is that also three or four days a week? It's, yes. If you work with our coach, they'll set you up with any program that they... They'll also modify it for you too. And they'll individualize it, which is even better. Yes. Okay. Yeah.

So we'll have someone call you. But I'll let them know, six to nine months is probably what you're looking at for what we just talked about. Okay. That sounds good. You got it. All right, Jessica. Awesome.

Thanks, thanks for calling in. Thank you. Yeah. She's actually in a good place because the solution is simple. And she sounds open, which is good. Like she's not afraid necessarily. But she reversed diet's right. This is going to feel easy.

Yeah, she's just, she's, because she already lost 40 pounds. Yeah. But she's at that place where you plateau. And then you're like, I'm doing all kinds of stuff. Yeah. And what is going on? It's like, well, your body adapted. Yeah, you got to build.

That's it. Our next caller is Regina from Maryland. Hi, Regina. How you doing? Hi, guys. How are you? Good. How can we help you?

Okay, so I am 39. I've been on tour's appetite for about 13 months now. I've lost 65 pounds-ish, so losing about a pound a week, which I'm happy with. I have been doing Orange Theory Fitness for that year, so about three or four classes a week, one of which is always a strength class. I know Orange Theory comes with its issues, as I've learned from your show, but it is the first thing in a long time that's gotten me to the gym consistently. So I've tried to incorporate your advice, lifting heavy, lifting slow, not worrying too much about how fast I can get through the routine. I also walk on an incline instead of running, and I just frankly don't worry too much about that part because I am not trying to elevate my cortisol more than life already does.

It has been a winning combination for me, though an expensive one. I'm paying for my medication out of pocket. So it's been a pricey year. And I'm looking forward, and I wanted to write in because I am trying to plan for my off-ramp. So both of the GLP and potentially OTF, I don't want to be on the shot forever. I'm thinking about transitioning to one of your programs, but stopping Orange Theory and stopping the GLP feels very risky and a little bit scary because they've both worked so well for me. The combination of the two has been a game changer in that it's allowed me to prioritize

protein fiber, eat in a calorie deficit while still building muscle. I'm really proud of myself because I've lost weight, but I've held on to my muscle for the most part. With my age and the GLP, I just want to continue getting stronger. It makes me feel confident, and I know it will continue powering my metabolism as I enter perimenopause and all of that fun adventure. I know that so much of this is psychological. So I wanted to share what about this I think is working for me. What I love about Orange Theory is that I can walk into the gym without pre-planning. I have a pretty intense job that requires a lot of decision making. So it's helpful to not have to plan my workouts. There's also that added motivation of the no show fee that gets me definitely to my pre-booked

classes. So any advice on the transition would be greatly appreciated. I shared my body composition results. I'm mostly just nervous. It's been such an interesting year and I just want to keep going in the right direction. So I'm having Doug pull up the body composition because I'm super curious to see. You said you kept most of your muscle? Yeah, I mean, pretty much. I can pull up my numbers. Doug, can you, can you break it down to me? It's hard for me to tell.

So it says March 27th, this year, right? So you're 28.8% body fat, skeletal muscle, 78.3 pounds. Oh, so I went from 84 to 78 while losing, like a lot of weight. And then back last year, June 26, 35% body fat, 84 pounds. That's a great job. Yeah. Really good job. By the way, by the way, I,

And I mean, it's obvious that you took the advice at Orange Theory because that wouldn't have happened if you would have taken the class the way they, you know, pushed the red zone and everybody's moving through. So I can tell just by your results. And so that being said, you don't have to quit OTF. Yeah. If you really, I mean, if you, if you, if you are applying what you've heard from us talking about it, like if you really are that, that client that, you know, ignores the, the fast pace circuit and, and. takes your rest periods, pushes the weight. When you get to the treadmill section, you do incline walking instead of the sprinting all out.

Like, it's not a bad, it's not bad at all. But most people fall into the competitive trap and they get into a circuit training where it's obvious to me that you've done a good job with that. You've held most of your muscle, which is really hard to do in a GLP1 and running a class like that. So where are your calories at? So I track really well for about 75% of the day. And then by the end, I kind of am winging it. But I'm usually around 2000. That's not bad at all. I'm assuming you're using terseptitite from a compound pharmacy?

No, I'm getting it right from Eli Lilly. Okay. Okay. So here's what would happen. We have a cheaper way for you to get that, by the way. Yes. But here's what would happen if you stopped the GLP and stopped O'D.D. TF, you would gain everything right back. But I think you know that, right? Yeah. And so your question, I love that you're coming to us with this question because you have

the right idea. Yeah. What's the off ramp look like? Because when you look at the data, the data shows that when people stop at GLP, they gain the weight back. Now, there's a reason why this happens. Part of it is you lose this strong GLP signal that reduces our appetite, kind of changes our, you know, how food affects us in a hedonistic way.

we don't crave it as much, blah, blah, blah. But the other part of it is that through that process, people don't work on the behaviors that stick or the good behaviors that can stick after the GLP. And they also don't focus on exercise in a way that's the most effective. Because what we want to do post-GLP with you is we want to focus on building your metabolism. Now, Orange Theory is okay. Traditional strength training is in another universe. for that. Now, if you told me that you went to Orange Theory because you love the community,

if like your friends are there, you want to connect with them, then I would push you to stay there. But if you're like, look, I just go because it's set up for me, which is what you said, then I would say, let's set you up so that you have a routine, but one that's more effective for what we're looking for. Then with the GLP, here's what it looks like. And this is the protocol that we're getting from some of our friends who are experts at this is they scale people's doses down while working with a coach on behavior modification. Yeah. Okay.

So to give you an example, you know, someone may be an overeater because they are, when they're anxious or when they're sad. And it's a way to self-medicate, for example. Those are two common ones, right? then what we're going to do is we're going to try to replace what you might have done with food with other behaviors. Now there's a silver lining here, and that is that the neural networks that were so strong before the GLP one with how you use food have actually weakened because you haven't used that

like you did before. So we're actually going to really get great place to develop new neural networks, new behaviors. So your success rate is actually really good if you coach your way through the this and you scale down on the medication and don't just drop it off. Now, you can't do that with the Eli Lilly because it's preloaded, but you can with a compound pharmacy. So compound pharmacy, same medication. It's like ibuprofen and Advil. It's the same thing. With the compound pharmacy, you get a vial and then you can scale the dose down yourself. And then you work with the doctor and you're like, okay, I was on this dose. Let's go on this week on this dose. And then what they can do is you

can be like, hey, listen, man, I went on the lower dose this week. And for the last two weeks, like, it's uncontrollable. I feel the appetite and I'm having a tough time. But like, all, let's scale you up for again. And let's step down a little slower. And so you can kind of do this up-down, scale-down process. Just baby step it down. That's right.

Yes. And if you're already paying out of pocket, you'll actually save money. Yeah. With a compound pharmacy anyway, it's going to be cheaper anyway. Okay. So what I would suggest to you, if you really want to make this stick, you want the best, best, best, best, possible approach would be to work with a coach through this process and then be able to work with a get your GLP from a compound pharmacy and work with a doctor that scales it down.

And then that process would probably look like, I don't know, three or six months of off-ramping. And then you got the GLP in your back pocket if four months later, you're like, oh, my God, this is getting. And then you go back on and then kind of. And so I've seen people do that. Well, they'll jump on two or the. three times and then finally get off and then they're all good. So there's definitely light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah. Great. The other two things about Orange Theory that I've kind of informed

this thought process are that there's only so high you can go with weights, right? Like there's a limit to those dumbbells. And then with the, I don't want to say it's random because I know there's a structure, but with my schedule, you know, I might be hitting the two same, two of the same body parts, two days in a row and then three days later doing something else. And I, it feels a little inconsistent. Yeah, yeah. No, it's not ideal. Honestly, you did the best you could do with it.

You did a great job. You really did. I'm really proud of what you did. It was mainly what you did. You applied to this because you did a hell of a job. I'll give you the ideal. So the ideal would be you work with one of our coaches, have them individualize your workout program.

Whatever results you're getting from Orange Theory, you're going to get way better results with individualized strength training. And they'll coach you through the nutrition behavior part. And then I'll say, you a link to our people who work with a compound pharmacy. And you can compare the prices and do the whole thing. You'll probably end up saving money.

Not probably. I know she will. So it's significantly cheaper. Yeah. And then through that process, you tell them, hey, my goal with this is,

I'm already taking it. My goal is to scale it down. And then they'll do that. They'll work through a scale down process. And then they'll individualize it. And you'll be in contact with them through this process. You could always message them. You'll be able to message them,

hey, I think that dose was too low. Is it okay if I bump it up again type of deal on the work with you? And then you'll work with your coach simultaneously. And I think this is probably, you're probably looking at a three or six month process. Okay. And then one last question for you. So you see my weight there.

I'm five foot nine. And I honestly never thought like this kind of success would be available to me. So I'm like, okay, now where does this go? Like if I'm going into pari menopause at the healthiest weight, body fat percentage I can be. Like, I'm not super worried. I mean, I obviously want to look good. But, like, where is that body fat percentage, you know, best for success? Mid-20s.

Yeah, you're probably. Yeah, mid-20s is a nice target. You're not far from there. Yeah, you're not. You're doing great. Okay, so honestly, here's the other thing, too. So the way that usually we work with a GLP1 patient as they're scaling down is we time it with a reverse diet. It just works out better.

Your appetite's going up anyway. Let's build some muscle. let's boost your metabolism. We do a reverse diet. Then we set you up for a nice cut. And then that's when the 5% body fat drops off your body. Okay. So that's the strategy.

Cool. Yeah. Doing good. Awesome. Doing really good. So I'll send you the link. You can talk to the doctor's there. And then I'm going to have a coach call you.

And you can talk to the coach about this. And then it'll be great. If we see you in there, I'll pop in. Yeah. I'd love to hear back from you in about three to six months, too. It'd be cool to catch back up. But you've done really well on your own. Like really good job.

Yep. Thank you guys. Thank you. Really appreciate your time. Thank you. Have a great rest of your day. She's going to crush. I know.

She's totally great a place or no. She's 100%. I couldn't wait for Doug to pull up the, because obviously we're listening to the OTF and the GLP one. I'm going to, oh, this is going to be bad. Yikes. I know. And I saw that she had posted her results. And I'm like, let's see, because it'll tell the whole story.

She crushed. Absolutely. I mean, that is, that is an example of how you can use that. In fact, her lean body mass was lower in the second measurement than it was the last. She actually built muscle at the end a little bit. The one of the way that happens, she deliberately did her own rest periods. Oh, yeah. I know that.

And she hit her protein targets. Yeah, and protein targets. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, she did a good job. Yeah, because usually what you see, because what is that, that's 30, it's like almost 40 pounds of weight loss. Half and half. Usually you would see 40 pounds and a good 15 of it. Oh, yeah, at least.

Yeah, yeah. It's almost half, especially on the GLP 1. It's a tough. Great time for her to transition for sure. Our next caller is Jake from Wisconsin. What's up, Jake? How you doing, Jake? What's happening?

Hey, hey, guys. Great talk with you. Thanks for taking your time with me. You got it, dude. How can we help you? Yeah, I just want to start off by, you know, saying thank you for all you guys do for us all here. You know, just living our lives in the world and whatnot. My wife has been a listener since 2018 and she got me on the train 2019.

So I've been with you guys for a while. Thanks. So in February, she started training with one of your trainers. and kind of got my butt kicked a little bit. So I was like, hey, let's do a little challenge here, right? Let's see who can get in the best shape by the end of August. So our anniversary is beginning of September. And she gets one of our coaches?

It gets worse, bro. You're fucked, Jake. You're so fucked. That's why I'm on here, right? Okay. We'll help you out as much as we can right here. So we're just doing eye test, you know, whoever looks better. So honestly, she's going to win, like, all the stuff.

Yeah, I'm like, what are you talking about, bro? You for sure tell her she won. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just got to concede that. Hey, man, I'm not stupid. We're all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He still wins.

He still wins. Yeah, yeah, smart guy. Yeah, she was also in, like, the top 1% of listeners on Spotify last year. So, yeah, just, you chill. Oh, awesome. Okay. Uh-huh. Yeah, so started off in February.

I'm just about to finish up anabolic for the first time. I've kind of been a yo-yo worker, out or person for the last, you know, eight years or so. Started off calories were 2,600. I bumped up to 29 right now where I'm kind of stabilized at 188 to 190 for my weight, eating 180 grams of protein a day. My lifts are going up pretty good. I just got my one rep max incline up to 190, squats about 270.

I'm still a little bit of ways for my goal on where I want to be with that, so especially the incline. I got like in-dense where I should have pecks, right? So it's like I really want that chest to blow up. Other information, I'm 34-hour. I work a desk job. I work in IT. Got four kids under 10.

Winter's over here. So I'm going to start getting my activity up. So I'm looking forward to that. I currently have anabolic performance in Maps 15. So I guess what the question is is, what should I be doing for the next four months? So I win, quote unquote, win. Yeah. And just wondering what I should do for my nutrition,

how much try I should go up to for my calories and all that stuff. So, yeah, please help me beat my wife. You got four months? This is a static goal, yeah. You got four more months. Yep, we started in February. So it's kind of like a set of month time. It sounds like we're trying to build, though, right?

It sounds like you're more interested in building than you are. Here's what you do, dude. You take her favorite candy bar and you hide them throughout the house. You sabotage. Sprigling her morning shake. And you win. She's been baking all sorts of stuff, dude. I'm done for it.

You got a reverse diet, followed by a cut. and focus on getting stronger. At the end, when you're cutting, a phase one style anabolic program is good because you want low volume when you're cutting. Do you need to cut? You look like you're pretty lean. I've always been skinny guys.

So this is the most I've ever weighed is one-night-ish. Well, he'd probably bulk all the way through. I know, he could. Yeah, you might as well just build all the way. Just keep building. You'll probably look the best you ever looked. Yeah. So just keep going.

Yeah, it sounds like you're actually doing a good job. And it sounds more than anything else is just consistently keep doing that. Heavy lifting. Like, keep. keep getting stronger, keep hitting your protein consistently. Don't miss your workouts, and keep bumping the calories. If I was coaching you,

I'd be trying to keep push those calories, 200 calories every couple weeks. So we'd go up 200. I'd be hearing your feedback. How do you feel? How your workouts, how your lifts. And then, hey, let's go up another 200. I would just keep inching you up like 200 calories every other week or so

and keep pushing that and pushing weight and strength and consistency. and I think you'll build right into this competition and hopefully we'll probably look and feel the best you've ever felt. Cool. Yeah, so that last month I would kind of do a cut then? If you wanted to, if you wanted to, if you're already a pretty lean guy. Do you know what your percentage body fat sits at? Yeah, about 19, 19 to 20.

Oh, yeah, no, okay. So if we're at 19 to 20, yeah, then what I would do is reverse diet for about two, two and a half months, the last eight weeks or so. then you go into a cut. But when you go into the cut, don't dramatically increase your volume of training. No, no, no, no. Everybody does that.

They go into cut, and then they start doing crazy cardio and stuff. You go into a cut, and you actually drop the volume a little bit, and the low rep phases tend to be better because of the volume's lower. Okay. So it would probably be like an eight-week reverse diet,

followed by like an eight-week, mild kind of nice cut. I'll give you some generic advice that should work pretty well knowing where your numbers are and what he just gave you. So do exactly what he said. if we do that right, your calorie should be upwards of 3,500 calories by the time it comes time to cut, okay? Okay. So literally take your 3,500 calories, drop it down to like 29 to 3,000 calories.

Every week, for those eight weeks, try and get 2,000 more steps per week per day. So in other words, like, let's say you average 8,000 steps a day or 6,000 steps a day. So week one of that cut, get up to 8,000. Week two of the cut, get up to 10,000. Do that through just activity and walking. until you have to get on a treadmill or you have to get on a lipicle to get those steps up. Literally do that in that deficit for 600 calories. You'll get a little.

And don't change anything else. Just do that all the way it feels like that. You'll drop close to a percent body for a week with something like that. Yes. That'll be a perfect. Like if you ramp up, goal should be to get up to 35, 3,600 calories. Just slowly inching your way up, getting stronger. Final eight weeks getting ready for is the cut.

The cut looks like drop about 600 calories. and every week at about 2,000 steps, that should lean you out nicely right into that. And don't change anything else. All right. Sounds good. That's a pretty good map. One last question.

So can you guys just encourage my wife? She's kind of one of these people who, like, worries about the weight, right? So just encourage her, stick with the plan. Yeah. You don't do it. Do you know who her coach is? Because maybe we could peek in on one of her calls. Mary, she just shouted it from the other side of the wall.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No good. She's working with a coach. She's doing great. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We actually, I'd just like to just tell her we appreciate the support. Yep.

Thank you so much for listening to the show for as long as she has. Yeah, even if it took Jake three years to finally get out more. Yeah, I can only listen to you guys so much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right on. Well, yeah, I love a pick of the two of you guys before you guys hit your vacation. It'd be cool to see kind of the before and after and everything like that. We'll pick the winner.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. See, that's what I said. She said no on that, but I'm like I'm just going to do it anyways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love it. Yeah. Love it.

You guys keep it out, dude. All right, Jake. All right, man. Thanks. Take it easy. Yeah. That sounds like a trap, right? At the end of this.

Oh, yeah. We'll just look at each other and say who won. Like, bro. Like, where you get your friends to judge or what? Yeah. That's a trap, dude. I mean, I think he knows what he's doing. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel like he knows what he's doing. I think he's, I think he's every intention to lose. Exactly. I would. I would too. I don't know.

I get real competitive. Yeah. Let's do this. I'm crushing. Yeah, yeah. That's great. Look, if you like Mind Pump, come find us on Instagram, Mind Pump Media. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.

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